One such person, who will be missed, not just by me but also by all she has met is Nadia Manning-Thomas.

Nadia first joined the ICT-KM Program in 2007, when she was seconded from the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) to lead the Knowledge Sharing in Research project. Her work with the project saw her exploring and promoting practical and appropriate ways of sharing knowledge within research, with the ultimate goal of enhancing collaboration, learning and impact.

In 2009, we said goodbye to her when the project came to an end. But she didn’t stay away too long. The following year, she returned as our Knowledge Sharing in Research specialist.

Since then, Nadia has learned about and promoted approaches that continue to play a key role in helping to improve  the way  in which the CGIAR and its partners and stakeholders collaborate and work together towards achieving agricultural research for development goals.

She worked closely with the global CIARD initiative, which seeks to enhance coherence in information for agricultural research for development. CIARD is closely aligned with the CGIAR’s own Triple A approach, which seeks to encourage Centers to make their information/knowledge/outputs more Available, Accessible and Applicable.

Nadia’s passion for facilitation saw her conducting many workshops at the various CGIAR Centers, and also during our Share Fairs, which attracted participants from other research and development organizations.

Nadia’s bubbly personality, which she attributes to growing up on the sunny island of Barbados in the Caribbean, was evident in everything she did at the Program. She approached her work with an enthusiasm that was as infectious as her spontaneous laughter.

This vivacious personality has recently relocated to London, where she and her husband, David Thomas, have opened  Danaqa, a retail outlet that sells personal and household accessories that are “inspired, designed and made in the developing world, supporting its growth and future.”

But there’s something else under development… and all of us look forward to that !

On behalf of everyone at the ICT-KM Program and the new Communications team in the CGIAR Consortium, I would like to wish Nadia every success as she embarks on this new chapter in her life.  Her impact has been widespread, and she will be sorely missed, as a colleague, as a friend.

But as they say in my country.. ‘Questo e’un arrivederci, non e’ certo un addio’.. as I am sure (and I hope!!) we will see Nadia back soon!

So… has Nadia touched your life too? If so, drop a note… she will appreciate it!

This is a key question for improving the impact of our agricultural research. And you have  probably heard alot about this from us.  But what about from real research projects and researchers trying to do their part?

We have developed a second film to share with you the ongoing story of Lieven Claessens, a young CGIAR researcher, who first told us a sad story about a lack of sharing of research knowledge that moved us… but who, in a new project, has moved on to explore and test better ways of sharing knowledge. Hear and see for yourself:

Talking technical and theoretical

When we are talking about the need for and ways of making data, information and knowledge available, accessible and applicable; when we are promoting greater coherence in information systems or for open access; or giving training in knowledge sharing– it can easily become a technical conversation, and sometimes even a theoretical one.

But the CGIAR Triple A framework, the global movement towards ensuring greater coherence in information for agricultural research for development (CIARD), and the many activities and initiatives going on across the CGIAR and beyond are not just another theoretical exercise, and are also not just about technical mechanisms.

At the core of all of these are people. It is about making sure that valuable knowledge generated is shared in ways that a variety of people who make decisions in agriculture-such as farmers, extension agents, policy makers, development agents, and even researchers- can access it and use it in their decision making and actions towards improving agricultural systems and the livelihoods that are associated with them.  And it is also about the researchers who generate the knowledge and how best to support them to share their knowledge through the right incentives, benefits and resources.

A story that moved us…

In 2010 Lieven told a story, during the African Agricultural GIS Week (AAGW10), about his work on landslide hazard modeling and how he had developed and used a model to map areas of vulnerability to landslides; a model whose predictions came true in March 2010 as a landslide happened on the foot slopes of Mount Elgon, an area in Uganda, which left death and destruction.

Lieven then explained that he had done the usual scientific process of collecting data, developing his model, analysing the results of the model and finally… documenting it as a journal article. But he knew even before the tragedy that this would not be enough to get this valuable information out to those living in the areas at risk, those managing such situations, and the policy makers who make decisions to protect people. He expressed his feeling of the inadequacy of the only communication channel used by him, as with many researchers. While this is necessary to maintain the high scientific standards of the CGIAR, his main message was…

…this is just not enough! (with big head shake!)

This was a good reminder to us and for others about why we are working towards systems that open access to knowledge. And it moved us so much, we wanted to capture this story and the key messages in it to share with others-and so the first short film was born: ‘How science can not only predict but also mitigate the effects of natural disasters’ …and shared through a blog post putting the film in context.

This film was shown at a number of key events including at the AgKnowledge Africa Share Fair held in Addis Ababa in October 2010, at the Multi-site agricultural trial database for climate change analysis: Planning and launch workshop, held in Lukenya, Kenya on the 12th-13th October 2010 , and many other events where it stimulated intense debate and received high praise for its message.

Moving on

After the experience in that project, Lieven vowed that he would work with communication specialists and others to find ways to better interact with stakeholders and share knowledge in his next projects. And a new climate change adpatation project focused on Uganda, Ethiopia and Kenya presented a great opportunity for him to try this out. Together with others at his then institute-the International Potato Centre (CIP)- this project was designed to make use of stakeholder meetings or a stakeholder platform, which would allow the project to continously interact and share with a variety of stakeholders- for example farmers, extension agents, local level policy government officials, at various stages of the research project to:

• learn about the context, issues, needs, existing knowledge and solutions
• ‘groundtruth’ and ‘adapt’ the knowledge and strategies generated from the research
• share knowledge from the project and gain feedback
• learn more about the ways in which the stakeholders can and would be able to access knowledge… to help design further opportunities for sharing knowledge that would be applicable

So we wanted to revisit Lieven and to hear about how this new project and the use of knowledge sharing tools was going. And of course we wanted to share it with you all too- in this follow up film.

Pathways to move along

One of the key messages from Lieven was that he felt that he was not well enough equipped with the knowledge, skills and experience of ‘communication’ tools to help him better share knowledge from his project–and he urged other researchers to also seek out help in these matters.

Lieven and his project chose to use stakeholder meetings/platforms as a pathway to make their knowledge move along.  There are a number of other pathways which research projects could make use of depending on the type of project and knowledge generated, target audiences, and overall goals. A choice of pathways offer a range of opportunities to

• Develop institutional readiness to better support open access and knowledge sharing, such as through improving the licensing and copyright options to encourage use and re-use of knowledge assets
• Increase the availability and accessibility of research outputs through good methods of collection and preservation, such as developing an open repository for digital content
• Make content widely accessible on the web, such as using social media to communicate research outputs
• Make knowledge travel through face to face activities such as roundtables
• Share knowledge in alternative ways which may be more applicable to various groups, such as through photos, videos or presentations

But whether you are a researcher- who does or doesn’t have ideas for more broader sharing of knowledge- a research manager, or even a communications or knowledge sharing professional, alot of work is being put into exploring, understanding, developing, and promoting useful tools, methods, and the necessary support mechanisms that  can be used to make knowledge travel, which is available  for example in:

• A number of pathways which have been documented and are available on the CIARD website
• A ‘How can I…’ series available on this CGIAR site which can help to guide you through using some key tools and methods for sharing knowledge by providing easy steps based on real and useful experiences
• The Knowledge Sharing Toolkit which is jam-packed with ideas, information and insights about using tools and methods for sharing knowledge

So if you want to get started and move on…it’s as easy as ABC!

Photo credits:

– Thumbnail Uploaded by hbrinkman on Nov 3, 2007 at http://www.sxc.hu/photo/899883

– Photo of group of people by Nadia Manning-Thomas

Video credits: Lieven Claessens, Peter Casier, Bart Sels, Noah Kebede, Nadia Manning-Thomas. Francesca Pelloni, Enrica Porcari

From the Share Fair blog:

“Rob Burnet leads Well Told Story, a multi-award-winning Kenyan communications company which pulls together comic books, syndicated FM radio, SMS, social media, web, video animation, strategy and science to help change the way people live, think, act and govern in East Africa.”

To the delight of the Share Fair audience Burnet offered that inadequate budgets for communication could be the missing link in research! Using Hollywood as an example, where 30% of budgets are spent on publicity, he lamented that agricultural research doesn’t always succeed in delivering great ideas that final step into the hands of beneficiaries. In an interview after the presentation (see clip posted below) he said:

“The reason we do this work is to change the life of poor people, if we stop short of making those brilliant ideas… accessible to those they are intended to benefit – let’s go home…”

This is a message that the communications community will no doubt welcome! However, in the meantime there are lots of ways to make sure CGIAR research outputs are Available, Accessible and Applicable.  The Triple-A Framework developed by the ICT-KM Program seeks to help Centers, Programs and their scientists decide on the level of Availability, Accessibility and Applicability (AAA) they want for their research outputs, and also the pathways with which to turn these outputs into International Public Goods.

For a complete introduction to the Framework see “Availability, Accessibility and Applicability of the CGIAR Research Outputs”

Such was the challenge confronting the team of collaborators responsible for developing the CGIAR Research Program (CRP) for Roots, Tubers and Bananas for Food Security and Income (RTB) last year. However, true to the collaborative spirit that underpins all the CRPs, stakeholder consultations were successfully carried out using both traditional face-to-face formats and online tools.

If you would like to know how they pulled it off, you can read all about it in a publication co-authored by collaborators from each of the four CGIAR Centers involved in the RTB Program: the International Potato Center (CIP), Bioversity International, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). Entitled, “Incorporating stakeholder perspectives in international agricultural research: the case of the CGIAR Research Program for Roots, Tubers and Bananas for Food Security and Income”, the case study describes the process used to engage stakeholders and incorporate their feedback into program design, with lessons learned and experiences that can serve others looking to replicate, adapt, or build upon this example.

Stakeholder input was gathered via regional workshops, on-line surveys, and one-on-one interviews. Our  Tania Jordan, one of the publication’s co-authors, helped setup online survey tool, SurveyMonkey, where over 150 people could provide detailed, novel, thoughtful – and highly useful ideas for the Program proposal.

“The survey was carried out in Spanish, English and French,” says Tania. “Although I was chiefly responsible for creating the survey and providing the team with technical support, I also made some suggestions regarding the actual survey questions, based on my previous experience with carrying out other surveys.”

The RTB Program team managed to easily communicate information about the Program and upload relevant documents through a public Google powered Site Tania helped setup and she also helped the collaborative process by instructing the proposal writing team on how to use Google Docs to write and review the proposal with people based at the different Centers. To learn more about the process involved, you can find lots of useful tips in a tutorial written by Tania: How can I write a proposals collaboratively?

I would like to extend my congratulations to the RTB Program for taking the initiative of documenting the experiences with the stakeholder consultations that resulted in this exciting publication, and to Tania for contributing to this successful collaborative process.

Wrong. Not everyone knows. But two articles I read recently  have inspired me to write this.

Getting everyone onboard

For years, we have  been advocating the use of social media to inform as broad an audience as possible of our research and also to get our research outputs into the hands of people who can make them travel even further across their own communication networks and/or apply them to their own work. Nonetheless, not everyone understands the value of social media.

Although it’s heartening to see researchers the length and breadth of the CGIAR using social media to expand the reach of their research, communicate with colleagues in remote offices, and collaborate with scientists in other organizations, there is still much to be done. There are still staff who are a little wary of using social media, citing reasons like loss of privacy, lack of time and abuse of intellectual property rights. Some will tell you that social media is just another one of those things that add to the “noise” already on the Internet.

It usually takes time for all great inventions and innovations to become mainstream. Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone took a while to catch on, as did cell phones and email. I wonder how we could possibly cope now without email or mobile communication devices. As such, I believe it will just be a matter of time before everyone realizes that social media has an important role to play in research.

A social media impact story

Recently I was heartened to read a post at blogs.worldbank.org (a blog maintained by four researchers from the Development Research Group of the World Bank with the aim of covering all things related to impact evaluations and evaluative research) that asks the question: “Do blogs lead to increased dissemination of research papers?”

Their conclusion?

“Blogging about a paper causes a large increase in the number of abstract views and downloads in the same month […] These increases are massive compared to the typical abstract views and downloads these papers get – one blog post in Freakonomics is equivalent to 3 years of abstract views!”

These results confirm my belief that a blog is a powerful tool that can raise awareness of and support for research.

At about the same time, I also came across a Scidev.Net article (How scientists can reach out with social media) that gives tips on how researchers can use social media to engage new audiences. I found myself nodding my head in agreement as the author extolled the virtues of the different tools available and how they can be used in a scientific context to increase collaboration and communicate the results of research.

Walking the talk

Many in the CGIAR   use social media tools in our own work, talk constantly to others about their benefits, and have given hands-on lessons to both CGIAR and partner staff. Over the years,  my group has  published a popular blog series on social media tools that provides tips on how and when to use blogs, microblogging, social networking sites, newsletters, news feeds, video, etc; worked with the Coherence in Information for Agricultural Research for Development (CIARD) initiative to help organizations disseminate their agriculture information more efficiently and make it more accessible;  incorporated social media into many CGIAR events; used social media to advertise, facilitate and report on ShareFairs; and conducted several social media online workshops, to name a few.

Social media and the new CGIAR

In 2008, the CGIAR established its first blog to support the sharing and documentation of the organizational change process that it was undergoing, a tool that did much to allay the concerns and answer the questions that many staff had at the time.

More recently, during the CGIAR Heads of Communications meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, it was agreed that social media would be a necessary component of the CGIAR Communications Strategy currently being developed.

So there you have it. In the CGIAR of the future, social media WILL be an integral part of our research endeavors.

Come join us onboard! I’m sure it will be a thrilling ride.

Using video to record scientific results is not new, but these days, things couldn’t be easier. Videos can be relatively easy and cheap to make, manipulate, and share with a wide audience on the Internet. Video can also be used to show things that take place over time, in a way that would be almost impossible face-to-face. For example, research that takes place over several months, or even years, can be condensed into a short video clip and shared with other scientists and students across the world, ultimately enabling others to reproduce and/or build on the depicted research.

Video in the CGIAR

The CGIAR is no stranger to using video to raise awareness, document science and share new scientific methodologies that can help build capacity, and generate new applications and innovation.

For example, take the work of several entomologists from the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). Dr. Soroush Parsa and his team have the distinction of being the first scientists in the CGIAR to publish in the world’s only peer-reviewed video journal: Journal of Visual Experiments (JoVE). These innovative scientists produced a 10-minute video demonstrating the procedures for assessing spittlebug resistance in brachiaria grasses and uploaded it onto JoVE for peer-review and publishing. JoVE publishes biological, medical, chemical and physical research experiments as videos, accompanied by instructions and details of possible technical problems.

“The protocol reflects decades of refinement, making it a great model for other breeding efforts,” said Parsa. “We wanted to share it formally – but very intuitively – with a diverse international audience interested in crop improvement.”

The video, which took almost a year to make, was produced by CIAT’s Reynaldo Pareja and supervisor Guillermo Sotelo, neither of whom had prior video production experience. Parsa now has plans to use videos to help train farmers in field sampling techniques, thereby helping to speed up the rate of scientific research.

You can read the news story and also watch a special behind-the-scenes video that shows how Parsa and his team documented their research.

Elsewhere in the CGIAR

The ICT-KM Program’s work with the Adaptation & Mitigation Knowledge Network (AMKN) has resulted in several videos that highlight the plight of people in Africa and India who are adversely affected by a changing climate. These hard-hitting videos have reached more people than any written report ever could.

Over at the Africa Rice Center in Cotonou, Benin, staff have produced videos in close collaboration with researchers, field workers, rice farmers and rice processors that incorporate lessons from participatory learning and action research. Such videos help build human and institutional capacities within the rice sector in Africa.

Other CGIAR videos document water harvesting in Nicaragua (Towards A Blue Revolution); coffee and climate change in Colombia (Two Degrees Up Part One); and the work of AgroSalud to develop bio-fortified crops (Feeding Ambitions), to name just a few. All it takes to find out more about these challenges is a few clicks of a mouse. There’s no wading through lengthy documents, or grappling to understand the focus of the issue, or coping with the difficulties associated with trying to visualize the situation on the ground.

Although the CGIAR abounds with videos documenting the activities of researchers around the globe, there will always be a need for written scientific papers and reports. Still, the ever-reaching power of video can no longer be denied.

We’d love to hear how you have used video to promote your work. Please drop us a line in the box below and let us know what has worked for you.

Photo credit: jaylopez at http://www.sxc.hu/photo/975857

When experience, knowledge and wisdom meet the different perspectives and fresh ideas that many young people can bring to the table, there’s no telling what we can achieve in our efforts to reduce rural poverty, increase food security, improve nutrition and health, and sustainably manage natural resources.  Unfortunately, the supply of new young scientists, as well as youth willing to work on farms, is lagging behind demand. If we are to tackle the challenges of tomorrow, it is imperative that we attract talented young men and women into our organizations, and then train and retain them.

As the 2010 United Nations’ International Year of Youth draws to a close, and the CGIAR celebrates 40 years in agricultural research, we feel it is appropriate to acknowledge both these events by highlighting the work of several talented individuals; young people under 40 who have already made their presence felt in the field of AR4D.

Our Growing Talents: Youth in Agriculture booklet brings together 13 diverse interviews that showcase the work, perspectives, experiences and aspirations of some of the youth we have been fortunate enough to encounter over the last 12 months.

We hope that the youth highlighted in the booklet will encourage other young people to make a lasting difference in AR4D. We also hope their stories will help to underscore the importance of giving youth a platform so that their voices may be heard. The future is truly in their hands.

We invite you to read their stories and download the booklet here

Lloyd Le Page and Enrica Porcari

CGIAR Consortium

The objectives of the ShareFair were to demonstrate how the active and strategic participation of knowledge improves the effectiveness, efficiency and impact of any work. Participants, some 200 professionals from over 70 organizations and 18 countries, were also given an opportunity to experiment with knowledge sharing tools and methodologies, while sharing and learning good practices.

The event, which was organized by the Information and Communications Technology and Knowledge Management (ICT-KM) Program of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), and the Knowledge Management for Development (KM4Dev) community, served to gather experiences related to rural development (mainly agriculture and livestock production) and exemplify what is happening in terms of knowledge management in Latin America.

Of the numerous case studies presented at the ShareFair, eight relating to agriculture, development, and food security (key issues addressed during the event) were selected for inclusion in the publication and serve to illustrate how knowledge-related processes involve complementary technological, technical, and human factors.

Five case studies (Condesan, Prodarnet, Preval, INIA, CIAT) illustrate purely regional experiences, while three (CIARD, Vercon, and SGRP) provide an interesting global perspective.

Although the publication is in Spanish, the following are translations of the case study section titles:

• Condesan: E-forums of the Consortium for the Sustainable Development of the Andean Ecoregion: 17 years of learning between people and tools (by Musuq Briceño and Alejandra Visscher)
• Prodarnet: Virtual networks for promoting rural agribusinesses in Latin America (by Hernando Riveros and Marvin Blanco)
• Preval: Image assessment: A communications proposal for social learning (by Emma Rotondo)
• INIA: Participatory research as a knowledge management process (by María Marta Albicette)

• CIAT: Innovation facilitators in rural agribusinesses: Market knowledge as a compass for  innovation (by Érika Eliana Mosquera and Jhon Jairo Hurtado)
• CIARD: From words to action: Information on agricultural research available to the public, fully accessible and applicable (by Nadia Manning-Thomas and Enrica Porcari)
• Vercon: Knowledge sharing among agricultural research and extension systems (by Sophie Treinen)

• SGRP: Motivating scientists to share knowledge in the Global Public Goods (GPG2) project (by Maria Alejandra Jorge)

• Conclusion (by Sebastião Ferreira, Simone Staiger and Camilo Villa)

In concluding, the authors outlined the need for knowledge sharing to be explicitly used to promote learning between actors. “Knowledge currently plays a key role in many development policies, accompanied by an important effort of the informatics sector and ICTs in general. Nonetheless, the learning and social engineering that accompany knowledge should become the main forces promoting knowledge and innovation, not the contrary, which is what happens nowadays.”

Download complete publication in Spanish (13M)

The Fair’s organizers gratefully acknowledge IICA’s collaboration in the design and layout of the publication.

See more information on the Fair’s blog

Learn more about Knowledge Share Fairs

The CIARD initiative works to make public domain outputs of agricultural research information and knowledge truly publicly available and accessible to all. The initiative, started in 2008, is led by a group of major international organizations, all with a long-standing role in enhancing the sharing of information and knowledge arising from agricultural research.

The CIARD Fair provides descriptions of innovative pathways and services for sharing information and knowledge

The CIARD Fair is an innovative resource that allows visitors to navigate through three routes: the ‘Pathways’ – describing in detail ways to share research outputs more effectively;  ‘Services’ – which are standards, tools, systems and training for achieving the Pathways; and ‘Enablers’ – the organizations that provide Services for achieving the Pathways. Visitors can explore the different routes through the Fair according to their specific interests. Each Pathway, Service and Enabler is linked to further more detailed information and shows ways to explore other resources on the Internet. Navigation through the interconnected elements of the Fair is intuitive and is designed to provide an information-rich environment for the visitor.

Organizations can show services and products in the Fair which will be useful to those investigating and learning about the opening up and sharing of research information and knowledge, and there are currently 18 Enablers and 27 Services included in the current Fair.  The CIARD partners are eager to develop the Fair by encouraging new enabling organizations and services to get involved.

You can explore the Fair at the CIARD site at http://www.ciard.net/ciard-virtual-fair