IFAD synthesis project: Provocations
From KM4Dev Wiki
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Appendix 3 of IFAD synthesis project: Phase One Report illustrates the several ways in which the Envisioning KM4Dev Futures - 2013 - 2014 project has sought to involve KM4Dev in the issues that were being explored. Beyond those listed below, all of the discussions of the several mini-grants also serve to engage KM4Dev into a larger conversation about its future.
- Helping community member Philipp Grunewald set his research agenda with an innovative research tool
- Began with discussions about the role of researchers in KM4Dev and how researchers could contribute without unduly in order to establish boundaries between researcher and community
- exploring a tool that crowd-sources ideas and is intermediate between a closed-form survey and personal interviews
- exposed the “service vs community” question as important and popular
- Currently organized as a “group” on the Ning site.
- Launching a KM4Dev Newsletter using a wiki template
- Began with exchanges on the KM4Dev list that were summarized on the wiki
- Acting on suggestions in the L&M Baseline study (it’s a suggestion that comes up repeatedly)
- Goal
- providing a mirror for community activity
- public voice for KM4Dev
- Challenge of dividing production work into parts that are small enough for individuals to take on
- building on the “discussion” template in the Wiki (developed by Davide Piga) so that production can be asynchronous and easily incorporate multiple contributors
- Currently involves: Okey Nwoke, Simone Staiger Rivas, Julian Goh, Tina Hetzels, Dar Maxwell, David Piga and John Smith
- Developing Pathways to involvement and leadership in KM4Dev
- Began with an email exchange with Anna Downie
- Mentioned as an idea the L&M Baseline study
- “You are here” the next step is “there”
- Goal
- Greater transparency
- Greater accessibility by providing an orientation to KM4Dev
- Adjoining communities -- frequented by KM4Dev members
- Began with an email exchange with one community member (Charles Dhewa) and grew from there.
- Can be a method for clarifying community identity
- a resource for business model comparison (e.g., how are “we” different from “them”?)
- Could lay the ground for business model analysis and discussion
- How services fit or co-opt other communities
- KM4Dev “futures”
- How to plan and create a summary for important conversation
- Began with an email exchange with Ana Maria Ponce about her summary of a Focused Conversation [clarify]
- Focused conversations as intermediate between a large funded project and the give and take of everyday discussion
- Ana Maria Ponce had useful but invisible tactics bridging between the Ning, the Wiki and the Dgroup discussion that merit documentation and could enable emulation
- First draft in a Google Doc (KM4Dev discussion summaries); will be moved to the wiki after some comments are collected.
- Finding SIWA (and its absence)
- Checking on archives and the existence of the email list
- Finding erstwhile group leaders
- Finally and most significantly, during the second phase of the project, there was a major effort to focus on metabolizing insights and generating wider involvement in the questions about KM4Dev's future by:
- Gathering reports, conversations, and miscellaneous pages in one category on the wiki
- Organizing a series of focused conversations