Submitted by Tobias Eigen on 18 October, 2010 - 16:40

Crossposted from the ICT-KM Newsletter OCT 2010 announcing the AgKnowledge Afria Share Fair taking place this week in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: 

ICT-KM Newsletter

As I write this, the AgKnowledge Africa Share Fair in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, is minutes away from kicking off. This first of its kind event in Africa has brought together about 300 innovators and leaders from across Africa to share methodologies, tools and approaches that can help stimulate the creation, sharing, communication and targeted use of agricultural knowledge, information and data to drive agricultural development across the continent.

The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Addis Ababa, where the four-day Share Fair is being held, is abuzz with activity and chatter. The participants form a multi-stakeholder group that includes farmers, extension workers, rural development agents, advocacy and development NGOs, international agencies, national and international research institutes, women’s networks, academics, development projects, governments, private companies and the media. They’re all here!

It’s heartening to see so many people united with the same enthusiasm. The Fair will  cover different types of knowledge and the myriad mediums that are used to share them: oral, visual, drama, music, video, radio, documentary, publishing, storytelling, web-based, geospatial, networked, mobile, computer-based, SMS, and journalistic.  Indeed, I think we can safely say that we’ve covered all the bases in our efforts to showcase the knowledge, experience and wisdom of Africa’s farmers, producers, researchers, innovators and rural development workers.

We’ve got a great agenda lined up for the next four days. Day Zero (today) is “Learning and Training Day”, which covers hands-on traini ng in the use of knowledge sharing tools such as online social networking media, Google tools, popular media, face-to-face knowledge sharing methods, and academic social networking using Mendeley, an online collaborative tool. Over 100 people have registered for these learning opportunities. We’ve also organized interactive sessions covering four key areas: agriculture and water; agriculture and climate change; land; and livestock. The discussions will be streamed and shared live across the internet:http://tinyurl.com/sfaddisblog and http://tinyurl.com/sfaddistweets. 

A special Fair feature is an interactive open air market (the sun is shining in Addis!) that will be held on Day One (tomorrow). Participants will be able to exchange their ‘knowledge wares’, with special emphasis on rural knowledge exchange approaches drawn from rural Ethiopia. It promises to be a fun and informative afternoon. 

The other two days will be devoted to discussions and focus groups covering spatial data, documenting farmers’ knowledge, and making knowledge travel, to name just a few. Check out the agenda for more details. 

Other than the live streams, we’ll be blogging and Tweeting and generally reporting on the Fair as it takes place. Please visit the ICT-KM Program website for regular updates and make sure to follow the #sfaddis tag on many social networks. With over 40 social media volunteer reporters, we will do our best to make you feel like you are here without even having to travel to Addis.

Before I go, I want to acknowledge our co-sponsors: the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the IKM Emergent research initiative, the Improving Productivity and Market Success of Ethiopian Farmers project (IPMS), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the International Livestock Research Institute(ILRI), with additional support from the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), the International Land Coalition (ILC), and numerous public, private, non-governmental organizations, and research initiatives from Africa and beyond.

It’s now zero hour on Day Zero. Got to run! 
 


Enrica Porcari
Leader, ICT-KM Program and Chief Information Officer, CGIAR

 

 

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Submitted by Tobias Eigen on 18 October, 2010 - 18:25.

You can follow AgKnowledge Africa Share Fair online: 

I'm intrigued by this "Share Fair" concept, which is new to me and looks promising for bringing together stakeholders in Africa. What do you think?

Below is some info pasted from the "About Share Fair" page: 

 

In view of evolving needs in stakeholder countries, declining budgetary resources, and the global information society that is emerging, the opportunity and need for international organizations to "work together", particularly in the area of information and knowledge management, is prevalent now as never before. Bearing this in mind, the Rome-based agencies, Bioversity International, CGIAR ICT-KM programme, FAO, IFAD and WFP, jointly co-organize their first Knowledge “Share Fair” (2009) in order to enable their Staff to showcase, recreate and invent ways to share knowledge and improve access to it. This need came out from the realization that we all have something to share and we all have something to learn from each other. Also, we share best with those we know and trust. Not only that: we share best once we know what it is each of us wants to know.

The Share Fairs aim to be positively interactive events, providing the possibility for Staff to showcase their experiences in knowledge sharing and, at the same time, learning from each other. Various formats such as market stalls and booths, along with workshops and short presentation sessions aim to provide an ideal opportunity for lively discussions and getting to know people. The Fairs showcase approaches for synthesizing knowledge in a way that makes it readily useful for the next person or teams wanting to learn from previous experiences. Interestingly, knowledge sharing is more than just sharing; it is about "working together", "helping each other" and "collaboration". During the coached and facilitated sessions, there are opportunities to learn together how the key principles of sharing link to real life experiences and work.

Networking is at the heart of personal and inter-personal knowledge sharing and management. It is about people connecting with people, linking ideas and resources and applying solutions to their own work to achieve best impact. With this in mind, time for networking is quite deliberately built into the agenda through coffee breaks, poster sessions and video/online demonstrations.

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