Talk:Pathways to involvement and leadership in KM4Dev

John David Smith, Tue 1/21/2014 8:45 AM

What fascinates me about Charles’ story is how all the toolkits and best practices that we love talking about (often we’d rather talk about them than about our pathways, it seems) show up in use, in place. For example:

“Having been used to formal events, the session seemed way too informal and for some minutes I wondered what grown up people thought they were doing – sitting down in a circle, engaging in what I later gathered was a fishbowl, etc.”

Are there other snippets that seem important or provocative in his account?

John

Peter J. Bury, Thu 1/23/2014 6:00 PM

Hi John (and Charles if you happen to read this ;-)

Well what I find both important and provocative are the last few lines of Charles story:

KTA currently has 21 employees whose skills include computer science, banking & finance, agriculture economics, accountancy, statistics and social science. My intention is to grow KTA into a legendary knowledge sharing company. On 26 November 2013, I made a presentation to the President’s Office mentioning how Zimbabwe can only be able to use its natural resources in achieving inclusive growth if it takes KM and evidence-based decision making seriously. If I hadn’t joined KM4Dev, it would not have been possible for me to build Knowledge Transfer Africa (Pvt) Ltd from mud. I have not even mentioned other international doors that have been opened such as working with the International Development Research Centre (IIDRC) of Canada, among others. I have become aware that it’s possible to have one foot on the ground while the other foot is dancing around the world!

[the emphasis is mine]

It would be interesting to find out how many in both core group and the wider KM4Dev community have benefited (hugely some) from being in KM4Dev! I mention this as also provocative as just a few days ago we where in a session with Bev, who told us (core group members) to led ourselves drive by our selfishness when doing voluntary core group work, as indeed she implicitly confirmed Charles story: KM4Dev makes your career jumping and yourself dancing around the world ;-)

Peter moving on to independent multipurpose consultant work.... oops is that another one joining the dance?

Peter J. Bury 
aka @profbury
in Italy and on Google+ 
about me

Riff Fullan, Mon 1/27/2014 12:31 AM

Hi all,

Charles, your story does a great job of illustrating where energy has flowed in the KM4Dev context over a number of years…..as John pointed out, it not only gives a taste of some of the methods used in real contexts, but it confirms (for me, at least) that the face-to-face interaction happening around KM4Dev-related events is a real spur to learning and future action. I’ve had the privilege to be involved in one way or another at various KM4Dev f2f events over the years, and I have always come out feeling like I picked up something valuable. Sometimes it’s a method or tool, but more often it’s a feeling that I’ve deepened my understanding of knowledge or learning in some way.

All the people you mentioned also show that the added value of the events is the interactions, the relationships, the people who take a step (or two, or three) into new territory, who explore and reflect together. A lot of this also happens online in this dgroup or on the Ning platform, but for me the recurring opportunities of the f2f events (though admittedly only for a relatively small number of KM4Devers) add sparks to the community that keep the energy up.

My question is this: as KM4Dev grows bigger, and has perhaps moved from being a community to being a more diffused network, do the f2f events shrink in importance? Should they be organised differently (up to now they’ve mostly been due to the initiative of a small group of volunteers)? Do they matter?

Cheers,

riff

Riff Fullan Team Leader Knowledge and Learning

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Charles Dhewa, Mon 1/27/2014 4:10 AM

Hie Riff and Peter,

Thanks for the feedback & feedforward. Face to face is certainly important in enabling participants take the next step to the next level. Reading all the stuff & connecting online alone could not have nudged me to shatter my limits. There is something magical about meeting people & connecting what they have written to their faces, laughter, etc. This just confirms that although we can invest in making things explicit through producing tools and other products, fundamental knowledge remains at the tacit level. That's where face to face becomes key. Seeing Nancy's drawings online is different from seeing her actually do the drawing (there was a huddle on expressing knowledge through drawing in the Brussels Km4Dev face to face meeting, 2009. I really like it but didn't join it for fear of exposing my poor drawing skills).

Ciao,

Charles

Pete Cranston, Mon 1/27/2014 10:14 AM

Hi

Apart from being a great read, Charles’ story of his time in KM4Dev triggers in me three things:

1. That indeed f2f meetings have been essential building blocks for many of us individually but also enriching and connection points for the KM4Dev network. And getting funds to support participants from across the globe remains way at the top of the priority list
2. The extraordinary tenacity and determination necessary to make the journey through the Development landscape, from working on a project in Southern Africa in 2006 to the Rome HQ of a major UN development agency six years later to 'building from mud’ a growing enterprise back in Zim. And that a chaotic (in a good sense) network like KM4Dev can be a route-map, a way-station or 'friendly cave', a source of energy (and chocolate)…. and so on.
3. I think that Charles’ account of the Local (Endogenous) Content project we worked on together links to me with John Akude’s comments on the resilience of the ‘Development pedestal’. I enjoyed Ian Thorpe’s comments (19th December in the Landscapes conversation) on how he sees development is changing, and the "new roles (that) will rely a lot on organizations (and individuals) developing skills in knowledge exchange, brokering, facilitation, partnership building etc. in a flatter way”. It’s the ‘flatter way’, we need, since those kind of skills are what fuels knowledge exchange at community level, and always have done, as Achebe described so well - but that takes us to power, which is a whole other discussion. Perhaps for late Feb, John, when your own reflection on advocacy & KM4Dev is shared with the network.

Cheers

Pete

Tamara Walker, Mon 1/27/2014 10:31 AM

Inspired by John Akude's pedestal comment. If you are in Johannesburg in March, let's f2f.

Tamara

Jaap Pels, Mon 1/27/2014 10:32 AM

Hi All,

F2F is why I want the KM4Dev community to go local. Local F2F KM4Dev meetings must be financed by the community; perhaps video reporting to all KM4Dev-ers around the globe. Also smell is important for trust-building and landscape journeying :-) :-) Cheers, Jaap

John David Smith, Mon 1/27/2014 10:32 AM

Building on that, doesn’t “the flatter way” require us to look over each other’s shoulders when we borrow, appropriate or absorb stuff from KM4Dev? I think that happens more or less automatically when a group is pulling together to produce a face-to-face event (or to participate in one). But for the daily exchanges on email, it seems to me that it asks us to talk about how we put stuff to work.

Building an entire organization like Charles did is pretty cool, but everyday application of incremental insights might be even more important.

My example today is a little back-channel coaching from Davide Piga about how to be more thorough in using a Wiki Category on the pages that I’ve gathered for the IFAD synthesis project I’ve been working on: http://wiki.km4dev.org/Category:KM4DevFutures I started slapping a category tag on all the pages, fearing that I would lose track. Davide pointed out the importance of providing additional context so that other people could understand what the category was for and how pages were connected. I haven’t used that in another job as a consultant yet, but I’m certain that I will.

One question I’m mulling is, “how would I put Charles’ story to work?”

John

John Akude, Tue 1/28/2014 2:39 AM

Dear all,

Thanks Charles (Dhewa) for sharing the story of your encounter with KM4Dev. which is in some ways similar to mine, especially your reflection on the sitting arrangements: I found the arrangements totally novel, therefore refreshing and down-to-earth, while simultaneously promoting creativity. I was also fascinated by the readiness to help which I noticed amongst the members/participants. This is particularly striking to me, coming from the academia where knowledge is rather hoarded and patented than shared. All these gave me the feeling of being assimilated in a family than just attending a conference. Meeting the husbands of Nancy and Lucie as well as Philipp's wife strengthened this feeling.

@ Pete: I am always ready to deepen discussions on issues already raised and would be glad to do so as soon as my contribution is shared on the network. @Tamara: Dunno if I would be in SA early this year, keep u posted; we could equally f2f whenever you happen to be in Central Europe. However,I hope these issues would be discussed in the conference/workshop that I am planning for summer this year, another good opportunity to f2f.

cheers, John

Dr. John Emeka Akude 

Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter / Senior Researcher 
German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik 
Management Department / Abteilung Geschäftführung 
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