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From Carl Jackson, out of our meeting at Almada 2008

KM4Dev Community Action Day

A Proposal to the Community

(Carl Jackson, Charles Dhewra, Nancy White, Sophie Treinen, Jess Stansfeld, Allison Hewlitt, Reza Salim)


== Introduction ==

At the Almada KM4Dev Workshop we had a great discussion about how the KM4Dev community could make a larger difference to development and raise its profile through members taking local actions, which the community would celebrate and share. The proposers are looking for more people from the community to share our idea and work together to have the first KM4Dev Community Action Day sometime in early 2009. You can get involved by posting to the KM4Dev list or adding to these wiki pages.

== What It Might Look Like ==

The community would set a date each year for the KM4Dev Community Action Day.  In practice not everyone who wants to take action will be able to target that day, so actions two weeks either side of the date will be encouraged.  A local action could be offering half a day of free coaching in storytelling to a community group, taking an influential person in your workplace to lunch to talk about the value of knowledge management for development, sharing a favorite knowledge sharing tool with a colleague or using your skills to connect groups that aren’t networked yet. There are lots more actions, the only limit is our ingenuity  KM4Dev members would record their actions by taking a photo, recording an interview, writing a short account and then sharing these online (Flickr, Blogs, Twitter, etc) with links from the KM4dev Wiki. The collection of actions captured in the Wiki could be shared through the KM4Dev list and into other networks as a tangible example of the relevance of knowledge management for development and the strength of the KM4Dev community. To connect all the individual actions we could we could brand all actions as part of the “KM4Dev Community Action Day” with a common visual logo.  That was the idea, but how did it strike others?

Suggestions for Community Actions The discussions at Almada focused on ideas for the kinds of actions that could happen locally:
* a mini-gathering in Seattle with some interesting organizations who might get the knowledge management for development idea;
* a group discussion in Dhaka focusing on knowledge management for development issues with a guest speaker;
* a KM4Dev action as part of the Rome Knowledge Day in January 2009
* knowledge management for development could be discussed with farmers at Agricultural Shows
* finding out who was in the KM4Dev Community in Rio de Janeiro 


== Ideas for Enablers of KM4Dev Community Action Day ==
 
The discussion of ideas for actions had already begun to surface ideas for resources or processes that would enable the community to take local actions:
* co-create a map with individuals details Geo Tagged to their location and a flashing marker on the map to indicate where a Action Day was due to take place
* a Google calendar would be great for enabling members to put in details of their forthcoming Action Days 
* pre-planning five Community actions would help to model the idea of the Action Day
* a [[KM4Dev Community Action Day Cookbook]] with tips on planning  actions
* simple criteria on topics like accepting local sponsorship, use of the KM4Dev Community Action Day logo, etc and then leave it up to members to take decisions arising from their application
* related networks and communities could help members to connect locally in their actions. 


== Building Blocks to Take Us Forward ==
 
There was a great buzz coming out of our discussion and so we projected forward to imagine the kinds of things help get the initiative started. [[Opening discussion and engagement]] by the wider community (begun).  Identify someone to begin authoring the [[KM4Dev Community Action Day Cookbook]] (done) and another to design the Community Action Day logo. We would need someone to review and help implement ideas for software tools (calendar, map)-  need to connect to the [[KM4Dev Technology Assessment Group Work Area]]. Someone to start a wiki page for the initiative that would be a planning space (done - thanks Nancy). Another to develop a wiki space that could aggregate the actions captured (photo’s, quotes, etc). Someone to follow-up with community action day activists to get captured materials feedback to the wiki. We would need to choose which month to set for the actions, not too soon. January 2009 was suggested and could be tested with the KM4Dev list before finally choosing.

Please share your ideas on the proposal through the KM4Dev list or wiki