Talk:KM4DevFutures: The Case of SIWA: a failed Spanish KM4Dev community

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Ana Maria Ponce wrote on March 31, 2014

Dear KM4Dev Colleagues,

In the frame of the KM4Dev Futures Focused Conversations, I am pleased to co-facilitate this week the discussion of the excellent paper submitted by Camilo Vila, titled: "KM4Dev Futures: The Case of SIWA, a failed Spanish KM4Dev Community"

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According to Camilo 's paper , the KM4Dev efforts to setup a Spanish-speaking network for Latin America is considered a failed experience. His paper summarizes the research he made around the "failure story " on SIWA, a Spanish-speaking community created in 2010, by a group of KM4Dev members from Latin America, hosted by Dgroups and Ning. SIWA started in August 2010, and after 2012, this community disappeared. As part of his research, Camilo has contacted SIWA founder members by different means to find out the causes of this failure, and the responses are included in this paper.

Some of the key aspects for this failure were identified as follows: Llack of leadership, the lack of clear facilitation roles, the time and money constraints from the members to support the community with the lack of institutional commitment from their host organisations.

Besides from the above, some interesting failure reasons are described in this paper, such as the fact that some SIWA members found the KM4Dev model a difficult one to follow. As Camilo Vila says: "Through SIWA two different managerial cultures and different development agendas met. On the one hand were the more Anglo-Saxon and European logic, culture and agenda and, on the other one the Latin American ones". There is a need to find synergies among both perspectives.

One of the SIWA founders mention as an important reason for the lack of leadership and funding is that "knowledge is not at the core of the portfolio of most NGO's or development organisations in Latin America, it is considered a "donor-driven" topic". Therefore, it is necessary to develop strategies to increase its relevance to enhance institutional support and leadership within Latin American organisations. During the past decade, several international workshops were organized in Latin America covering the topic of "Knowledge Sharing ", with the aim to build a culture of knowledge sharing and innovation on different fields, specially in the agricultural sector. As result of these, needs and actions for capacity building were identified, including the following: Formulation of policies and strategies , Application of methodologies and tools, Networking, Innovation in agriculture and knowledge management , and Use of ICTs and digital inclusion.

Finally, one of the most important factors is the need for more regional face-to-face meetings to shape better the future of KM4Dev in Latin America. Such meetings would allow members to share their own and institutional perspectives and agendas, and start working together towards a common future for regional KM4Dev network from a joint regional and global perspective. Since the past few weeks, a group of KM4Dev Latin American members have been discussing potential venue and tentative agendas, hoping to achieve the organisation of a face-to-face event in the region sometime this year.

I am pleased invite you to read this excellent paper, and share your views about the following main questions raised in Camilo Vila's paper:

Could you envision and suggest ways to build a successful Spanish speaking KM4Dev community in the future? - If so, how could this be done, what are the requirements and phases or stages to achieve this?

Looking forward to hear your response to enrich this conversation,

Sincerely yours,

Ana Maria Ponce, Co-facilitator

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Sarah Cummings wrote on April 1, 2014

Dear All,

I am really enjoying the KM Futures discussions and, with my journal hat on, I think it would be really great if we could have a Special Issue of the journal which publishes these resources. If anyone would be interested in taking the lead on such a Special issue, perhaps you could get in touch with the editorial team offlist with a mail to km4dj-editors@dgroups.org We have quite a number of issues in the planning but it would be really great if we could publish these resources too because they are fascinating!

To get more 'on subject' and respond to Ana Maria's mail and Camilo's very interesting study, I too find the failure of SIWA intriguing for a number of reasons:

- I think some of the most interesting approaches to KM4D - by this I mean the field and not the community - have come out of Latin America, as well as quite a number of people who have, in my mind, played a key role in the development of the field;

- it was interesting to read that it is felt that the 'knowledge agenda' has been donor driven because some of the community-based approaches are definitely home grown and don't have much to do with donors, and they are really innovative and interesting. I speculate that this could partly be because the inspiration of Paolo Freire might be felt more strongly on his home continent; and finally

- for the second time, we have a Spanish issue of the journal in the making, evidence of considerable interest in KM4Dev and KM4D.

I'm not really reaching any conclusions here but I don't think the failure of SIWA necessarily signifies lack of interest in KM4D.

Regards

Sarah

Sarah Cummings

Knowledge ecologist www.knowledgeecologists.org

Email: sarahcummingswork@gmail.com

Join my network on: LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=17452313

Knowledge Management for Development Journal English http://journal.km4dev.org/en French http://journal.km4dev.org/es Spanish http://journal.km4dev.org/fr

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Ana Maria Ponce wrote on April 1, 2014:

Dear Sarah,

Thank you for your interesting responses to the question raised from Camilo's study:

I would like to discuss further your responses below:

"- I think some of the most interesting approaches to KM4D - by this I mean the field and not the community - have come out of Latin America, as well as quite a number of people who have, in my mind, played a key role in the development of the field; "

I fully agree with your perspective, there are excellent KM for Development practitioner from Latin America, and the pioneers in this field are still playing a relevant role in the region and abroad.

"- it was interesting to read that it is felt that the 'knowledge agenda' has been donor driven because some of the community-based

approaches are definitely home grown and don't have much to do with donors, and they are really innovative and interesting. I speculate that this could partly be because the inspiration of Paolo Freire might be felt more strongly on his home continent; "

In my perspective, I believe language plays a crucial role when we talk about Knowledge sharing efforts. In our region, as well as in other continents, most community-based approaches emerge in different dialects or local languages. Spanish is rich, but it might not translate good enough the local knowledge, therefore, a big part of the traditional knowledge is lost in this translation efforts. Knowledge, specially local knowledge in development field is very important to be preserved, collected and shared, and I believe donors are making big efforts to support this process in Latin America.

"- for the second time, we have a Spanish issue of the journal in the making, evidence of considerable interest in KM4Dev and KM4D."

This is excellent news! When is the first Spanish issue coming out? What is the thematic subject for this first Spanish issue? Maybe it would be useful to discuss the thematic subject for future issues with our spanish-speaking KM4Dev menbers, to encourage their participation and enrich the value and content of our excellent Journal.

Finally, I would take this opportunity to encourage our members to continue sharing their views regarding the study by Camilo Vila:

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Could you envision and suggest ways to build a successful Spanish speaking KM4Dev community in the future? - If so, how could this be done, what are the requirements and phases or stages to achieve this? "

Best regards,

Ana Maria Ponce

Co-facilitator KM4Dev Core Group Member