R4D at the European Development Days

During the 4th edition of the European Development Days - held from 22 to 24 October in Stockholm - Euforic actively promotes the Research for Development (R4D) project.

R4D is a free access portal containing information about research programmes supported by DFID. It provides you with the latest information about research funded by DFID in the framework of its 2008 Research Strategy, including news, case studies and details of current and past research in over 20,000 project and document records. Information is available on a broad range of topics, such as sustainable agriculture, climate change, economic development, health and capacity building.

R4D is unique in the sense that it makes information available to researchers, students and policy makers that hitherto was circulated at a limited scale. Documents and reports are presented in full text, there are various search options for different types of information, plus the Research Dialogue and Communications Corner blogs allow for reflection and debate.

Please feel free to meet with Euforic's Rosien Herweijer at stand 25 to hear the latest about R4D and to subscribe to the newsfeeds of your choice.

You can also visit Euforic's research feedfinder page to subscribe to selected R4D newsfeeds.

Putting web 2.0 to work - Training on the social web - Bonn, 19-20 November 2009

After the success of the last web 2.0 workshops and the positive feedback received from participants, the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI) and Europe’s Forum on International Cooperation (Euforic) organise a new workshop: “Information, Knowledge and Communication - Putting web 2.0 to work: Training on the social web”.

As last year we intend to provide information and communication professionals in the development community with an up-to-date overview of possibilities and advantages that web 2.0 tools and social media offer for their work. Some of the buzzwords include “social bookmarking”, “RSS”, “wikis”, “blogs”, ‘Googling’, “podcasting” - all are free to use and they provide numerous flexible solutions to the challenges we face. Besides, we aim to look at how to connect and integrate them into daily business processes across the whole organisation, for communications, knowledge sharing and campaigning.

The workshop will equip participants with the skills to use and combine these tools into useful information sharing systems. We will be exploring and learning from a typical organisational toolkit 2.0. This might include blogging, the use of multi-media tools, wikis, custom searches and customised feeds for news or knowledge sharing as well as use of online social networks.
This course is designed for individuals and teams who are new to the tools, as well as currently exploring these tools and want to extend their use. It will also include “second wave” adopters, individuals and teams who are not web specialists but who want to extend their use of web 2.0 approaches into areas such as research and policy communications; collaborative working; publications, network and partnership relations and event management – bringing together participants, social reporting and documentation.

The workshop will combine presentations from people who use the web 2.0 in their everyday work, with intensive guided ‘hands-on’ training.

This workshop forms part of the Euforic web2share initiative that supports Euforic members in using the new web tools and services and working collectively.

Cost: 550€ EADI/Euforic members (650€ non-members) including 2 days training, materials, lunches, refreshments.

To register or get more information, please contact heil(AT)eadi.org

See Euforic newsfeed, dossier and wiki on web 2.0.

CTA’s 14th Brussels Briefing: woman bites dog or why media matter for rural development

At the Brussels Briefing # 14, organised by CTA on 12 October, a lively discussion on media and rural development took place. The debate was fed by contributions of a variety of panelists and a large crowd of participants from ACP countries. Why is there so little reporting done on regular media on issues concerning farmers and rural communities? Why do the media treat the food crisis as an urban issue? Can journalists partner with farmers, politicians, policy advocates and researchers in promoting rural development? What is the role of the new media and do ICTs contribute?

To prepare for this session the organiser CTA hosted a 4 weeks e-discussion. Susana Thorp from WREN gave a brief summary of the outcomes. First and foremost, Mrs. Thorp emphasized that participants hope that discussion actually leads to action. The e-debate focused on constraints faced by media on – conflicting - expectations of various stakeholders on new media and ICTs, and on support for enhancing media activities and building capacities. A summary of the e-debate is available here.

It was interesting to observe that at this Brussels Briefing the majority of panelist and quite a number of participants were female. Mrs. Tumi Makgabo, lead discussant and former CNN anchor stressed that in the world of media women have more barriers to overcome than men. But together with Mrs. Violet Otindo of K24TV in Kenya, winner of the CNN African Journalist Award, and all the other women participating in this debate she showed it can be done.

How do women overcome these barriers? Violet Otindo mentioned the importance of mentoring, but she said it should be used with care. For a journalist mentoring involves risks because it exposes you to political and commercial interests. Lack of resources and equipment are the major barrier according to her. She remarked that when you have no resources, everything takes more time. As a journalist you have to work smart and time management skills are essential. She feels that more recognition for the work of local African journalists is important, the big media houses should make more use of local journalists. Also support initiatives involving training and awards can be helpful.

Tumi Makgabo defined herself as a feminist with three-inch heels. You have to counter the way media portray women as a victim by acting like the opposite. She wants women to have a voice and she feels she can contribute more working as an independent journalist from Africa. She also illustrated how women seek to balance professional and private goals by telling how for her living in Africa as opposed to Atlanta serves both. As for the professional goals: Mrs. Makgabo stressed that with the new technologies Africans can tell stories about Africa: “we can tell our stories from any place now”.

In his keynote address CTA’s director Hansjörg Neun observed that media tend to report on the extraordinary – a man biting a dog is news, the reverse is not. Much of the messages on rural development do not seem to qualify as news. The first panel was lead by Tumi Makgabo of South Africa, a former anchor of CNN Inside Africa, now African Broadcasting and Media, and director of the African Women Development Fund. She introduced the panelists: Mr. Jean-Philippe Rapp who founded in 1985 the International North-South Media Forum, Mrs. Brave Nsidale, Ambassador of Malawi, Mr. Ignatius Jean, Representative of IICA and former minister of Agriculture of St. Lucia, Mr. Thozi Gwanya, Director General of the Department of Land Reform in South Africa and Mrs. Krishendaye Rampershad, media consultant based in Trinidad.

Ms. Rampershad emphasized that it is important to differentiate: are we talking high tech corporate media or low tech community based. She felt the latter to be very powerful in serving development objectives. To those wishing to communicate messages to rural populations Ms. Rampershad had a clear advice: talk normal! Extension people have to be communicators and not talk science. Mr. Gwanya felt that media systematically ignored rural people and their interests. Mr. Jean of IICA observed that technical people in agriculture and media may not understand or like each other but they do need each other. In the Carribean Mr. Jean has observed that ICTs and the participatory information sharing they enable, have dismantled monopolies. He also emphasized that new partnerships emerge; in the oral, musical community of the Carribean the power of songs and the influence of musicians can support our communication for agriculture. Jean-Philippe Rapp commented on Hansjörg Neun’s example but he argued that the current food insecurity and plague of hunger is indeed a case of “man bites dog” and considered quite newsworthy. He observed a sincere interest among media for agriculture, but there is also a shift, he noted: media look for testimonies, there is less interest for the stories of the experts.

After the contributions of the panelists Ms. Makgabo opened the debate and the floor. She challenged the panelists: if people continue to buy tabloids that pay no attention to issues and needs of rural people, who are we to question these priorities? Ms. Rampershad emphasized that you may see this disconnection in public and corporate media, but in community driven media agendas are set differently. Mr. Rapp emphasized that agriculture is not a difficult or grateful subject but you need to tell the story with passion and in original, authentic language.

In the ensuing debate the focus was on the relations between the various stakeholders. There is often antagonism between politicians and media but participants also commented on how scientists are suspicious of journalists and vice versa. You can remove that suspicion by talking about the differences and the different roles, looking for common ground. Specific, deliberate and focused education initiatives may help to bridge the gap between what media (thinks it) needs and what the industry needs and what both sides can do.

Ms. Protz, the coordinator of CARIMAC, noted that few agriculture ministries actually do have a communication strategy. She observed that the media coverage of the climate change issue was not lead by journalists but by communities, the corporate and public media enlisted later in the process. Maureen Agena of the Women of Uganda Network questioned the role of (urban) journalists: how do you report on something you are not involved in? WOUGNET works with citizen journalists, women reporting on their own problems. Other participants questioned whether these citizen journalists had the skills and ethics to communicate responsibly.

More information on this briefing and earlier editions are available on the website of the Brussels Development Briefings and - in French - Briefings sur le Développement à Bruxelles

To get regular updates subscribe to the Euforic English language newsfeed for the Brussels Briefings or to the French language newsfeed at Briefings à Bruxelles

More on EU cooperation with ACP countries is available in the corresponding Euforic newsfeed on EU-ACP cooperation. Euforic also has a newsfeed on information, knowledge and communication. Visit the CTA website for more on agriculture and rural development in ACP countries.

Financial constraints force Euforic to scale down operations

Euforic is facing financial problems. The operational budget of the cooperative is funded through membership fees, income from projects and grants. Membership fees cover only a very small part of that budget. After reviewing the current situation, the Board of the cooperative issued the following statement in a message to members:

"The Euforic Board met 30 September 2009 in Brussels to discuss the financial situation of the organization. All members of the Board agreed that the current situation is extremely serious. Several options to address this critical situation in the short and medium term were reviewed during the meeting.

The Board observes that the lack of structural financial viability of the cooperative inevitably means a continued risk of operational deficits, particularly since the cooperative has a negative general fund and no reserves. Because of this structural dimension and considering that the expected deficit for 2009 may amount to over 50,000 euro, the Board has unanimously decided to proceed to ask relevant authorities for permission to serve all staff redundancy notices and scale down Euforic operations accordingly. It is expected that the staff will continue to work until 31/12/2009. How to handle grants and service contracts with members that go beyond December 2009 will be looked at over the next few weeks.

Meanwhile the crisis implies that the cooperative urgently needs 50,000 euro to cover the 2009 operational deficit and to avoid bankruptcy. A swift transition in which we down-scale and prevent any further operational losses, may enable us to review the long term perspectives for the cooperative during the first half of 2010. To make such a transition, the Board urgently request members to make a contribution financially or otherwise during the coming months. Any contribution, small as it may be, can make a difference! The Board agrees that it is in the interest of all members to avoid Euforic avoid a forced demise of Euforic."

See also Euforic's newsfeeds on Euforic cooperative life and on information, knowledge, and communication

What's your view on R4D?

R4D is a free access portal containing information about research programmes supported by DFID. It provides you with the latest information about research funded by DFID, including news, case studies and details of current and past research in over 20,000 project and document records.

We are conducting a short survey to help inform future improvements. It covers what you think of the current service from R4D, and what you would like to see on the R4D portal. The survey should take around 5 to 10 minutes to complete, depending how much you choose to say. It does not ask for personal, identifying data.

We need your views on R4D and thank you in advance for your input!

To start the survey, please click here.

This survey is being conducted on behalf of DFID, the UK Department for International Development.

Visit Euforic's research feedfinder page to subscribe to selected R4D newsfeeds

Research communication: Act now!

Euforic was in Vietnam last week working for the Danish Development Research Network (a member since last year). We were facilitating a workshop on research communications. Euforic was approached because of our work with communication between development actors and our involvement in the research for development project (R4D) for DFID in the UK.

Strengthening communication in N/S research partnerships for development

The workshop was designed to support DANIDA funded research projects and is a continuation of the series begun in Tanzania.

Over 45 participants drawn from all over Vietnam together with research colleagues from Denmark met for 3 days in Hoi An to develop their understanding of developing communication strategies and approaches for their projects. The two projects involved are both examining the impact of climate change, one focussing on physical changes, while the other has a multidisciplinary approach including geographers, natural scientists and socio economists.

The workshop aimed to develop communication skills, build strategies and make practical products.

Group work in project teams ran through the three days, resulting in a draft communications plan for each project and the development of example products such as press releases and leaflets. These working sessions were interspersed with demonstrations, papers and presentations and culminated with a presentation exercise to explain the final results of each project team to the rest of the workshop.

The sessions covered standard methodologies to developing communication strategies, identifying target groups, establishing the aim of the communication, developing messages for that group and chosing the appropriate channel to reach them.

One of the most popular sessions was looking at new opportunities on the web for research communication and ways the projects could work with these systems.

Wiki
A common Wiki platform for the resources and learning from the workshop process has been developed by Euforic for DDRN and provides a resource base for those who have attended the Tanzanian and Vietnamese workshops. The commscorner and web2share sites also provide reference points on Web2 tools and communications advice for researchers respectively.

Learning by acting

The final presentations were a learning exercise in themselves with one project team demonstrating clearly how a theatre exercise could explain the communications plan through role play, a synopsis of
their presentation is given below.

ACT1: The local authority
Set in the office of the local authority, we saw project members explaining their project with the aid of a leaflet they planned to have distributed by various actors in the community and to win the support of the local authority in the process. As this scene was acted out we saw an image of the proposed leaflet they were discussing as a backdrop to the piece of theatre.

ACT2: The donor
The scene set at the Danish embassy showed how the project team planned to communicate with the funder of the project, using their communications strategy to demonstrate they had planned more communication activities than expected, and would seek additional funding for some specific activities. Meanwhile the screen behind them highlighted the relevant part of their communications strategy.

ACT3: The farming community
Here the scene quite clearly illustrated the local community concerns with changes in climate andthe ways the project team had considered explaining their study activity and considering how they could present eventual findings.


Setting the scene: Open meeting
The other project group staged a local open meeting attended by all stakeholders touched by the projects, i.e. local authorities, CSOs, local social organisations as a way to present their strategy.

The take home message
In discussing all the information products and actvities there were three elements the researcher needed to consider.

1)Start by putting yourself in the shoes of your audience, think of what their interests are and what will make them act on information.

2)The inverted pyramid - don't write all your communications like a research paper, most audiences want the conclusions first rather than last.

3)Answer the Who, What,Where,Why,When and How questions in everything you write.

Finally we summed this all up in an active mnemonic.

Make a pyramid with your hands above your head and then invert it 6 times by swinging your arms down to point at the ground and at the same time look at your shoes. Each time you bend down say to yourself each of the six questions...Who, What,Where,Why,When and How.

- Who.... will benefit from the research and who is doing it?
- What... is it all about?
- Where... is it happening?
- Why... does it need to be done?
- When... will the results be ready or events happening
- How... is it all being done?

We all learnt a lot from the workshop, in particular how to communicate across two languages and two cultures. For this we found two solutions. For the first we had a great translation team and for the second............

Good singing voices and a common sense of humour.

ATOL has relaunched its website

Recently, Euforic's member organisation ATOL (Belgium) has drastically changed its website (atol.be). At the moment only the Dutch language version is fully operational, but the French version is supposed to be ready soon.

The changes include not only a new look and feel but the information about ATOL's vision, mission, and activities is presented in a far more organised way to make it easier for readers to understand what ATOL is all about. Topically, ATOL's activities focus on empowerment, gender, the learning organisation, social economy and development information, whereby it plays an advisory role providing information and knowledge, doing research and consultancy.

The most prominent change however is the application of Web 2.0 features such as Twitter, RSS feeds etc., enhancing the interactive character of the website and reinforcing the broadcasting and sharing of information.

ATOL is an active member of the Euforic cooperative and has contributed in several Annual General Meetings by facilitating sessions and presentations, and has participated in various projects.

For more information about the ATOL website, please contact Ann Fransen

See also Euforic's newsfeed on ATOL and on information, knowledge, and communication

DDRN workshop on communication in North/South research partnerships

Increasingly donors who fund development research programs stress the need to communicate about research priorities, programs and outcomes. Researchers themselves as well as intermediaries have an important role to play in this. Examples of donors with a strong interest in research communication are DFID, DGIS/WOTRO and Danida.

On 12 - 14 August 2009 DDRN, the Danish Development Research Network, convened a workshop in Tanzania to promote effective communication during and after the implementation of three new research projects in Tanzania for which Danida granted funding in 2008. The projects look at livestock, dried fruits and climate change and will be carried out in partnership with Danish universities.

The workshop addressed a variety of issues regarding research communication. Euforic and CABI, another Euforic member, developed and co-facilitated the workshop with assistance from staff of DDRN and the Danish Water Forum (DWF). Over 30 researchers and external stakeholders attended the workshop that was held at the Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) in Tanzania.

Drawing on the experience of the Euforic network and aiming to respond to the needs expressed by the participants, the event was designed tailor-made to cover the formulation of a framework communications strategy for each project and to elaborate some example communications products. Also included was a session on how to use the internet to disseminate and access research results.

The workshop began with an analysis of the various stakeholders of research projects and the aims of communicating with them. The goal of communication can be to change the behaviour of stakeholders, to raise awareness about specific issues, to encourage dialogue, or to collect needs. To reach such goals you need to be clear: What is it you want to achieve with your research communication? Who do you want to address? What is your message for them?

This first module of the workshop was followed by presentation sessions that drew on case studies of messages and channels for different communities and actors. In a variety of hands-on exercises participants worked on different products and media. A specific session on writing press releases was supported by a meeting with local journalists from the Tanzanian newspapers “Business Week” and “The Citizen”.



The workshop culminated in a presentation session entitled “The SuperProjects” in which the participating research projects made presentations based on their press releases and communications plans, illustrating the different impact of various styles of presentation. The peri-ubran livestock project illustrated a selection of target audiences and the messages and channels they would use to reach these audiences. The Dried Fruits project proved to be popular with samples of the product available for the audience to taste. The Climate Change study on Kilimanjaro was enhanced by spectacular images.

The workshop provided key documents, many produced by other Euforic members, and illustrated issues with videos from the euforic.blip.tv and r4d.blip.tv channels.

Earlier, Euforic was involved in launching the DFID Research Strategy works with CABI on R4D, a DFID funded project on research communication. Research communication was also a central theme at the June 2009 EADI IMWG-meeting supported by Euforic.

See also Euforic newsfeeds on information, knowledge, communication, and from the IMWG 2009 workshop

Pertinence and quality in an (Inter)networking environment

Over the years, quality of services both in terms of content and usefulness has been a recurrent issue for debate at meetings of development information professionals. It proved to be a difficult issue to come to grasp with, in particular because of the changes that the sector has gone through and – by consequence – the new challenges created by the rapid technological and organizational evolution.

IDS Knowledge Services has recently released a “how we” guide about upholding editorial quality. It is the result of extensive internal reflection and debate at IDS, with the aim to share its experiences and good practices with external parties. And in fact the guide is a nice condensation of the discussions on quality management that were high on the agenda of the information and communication sector.

It is interesting to see that the criteria that were applied in the traditional libraries are still valid in an online electronic setting. And maybe even they have become more critical since the Internet has provided the world with open and accessible channels to publish and share information.

Individual Euforic members may very well draw lessons from this interesting guide. It addresses information providers that produce their own content and want to assume the final editorial responsibility for the broadcasting of it. It does focus strongly on organizations that deliver information services to specific audiences. Particular emphasis is given on information services in an academic/research environment. Useful tips, definitions and lessons center around a series of questions about the elaboration of editorial policies and the management of services. At first sight some of these questions may seem a bit obvious, but they go to the heart of the matter and can be applied as a useful methodology in various types of settings.

What are the lessons that Euforic can draw from this guide? Euforic serves primarily as a ‘relay hub’ for the content produced by its members. Nevertheless, the guide offers useful tips for defining the editorial scope – which may evolve overtime in line with the changing interests of the membership – and suggestions for assessing the quality and relevance of the services.

One of the important lessons is that the information intermediary needs to maintain a strong and intense relationship with its network, content providers and clients. Information doesn’t flow by itself but requires a dynamic and pro-active ‘promoter’. Another valuable lesson for Euforic is that as an information provider the level of ambition definitely needs to match your resources and vice versa.


by Jacques van Laar

See also Euforic's newsfeeds on information, knowledge and communication and on IDS

Weekly Compass: ECDPM's new information service

ECDPM has launched Weekly Compass, an information service which substantially improves on and replaces the ECDPM ACP-EU News. It provides policy intelligence, hot of the press news and access to relevant documents pertaining to a wide array of policy issues, encompassing, for example, EU-Africa relations, EPA trade negotiations or EU Neighbourhood Policy.

Built on a rapidly growing online archive of some 11,000 news resources, Weekly Compass subscribers can choose between short weekly summary of key news, an extended version, a selection of newsfeeds. You can even follow Weekly Compass on Twitter!

For more information contact the editor, Melissa Julian

Also check out Euforic's newsfeeds on ECDPM, and on information, knowledge, and communication

Robots to replace european librarians

Forget about web2 and social media, Google scholar and Google books!
The real threat to traditional libraries is a small robot in the shape of a rabbit named after a Children's fairytale - Kalle Kanin. So we saw at the European Association for Development Institutes Information Management Working Groups meeting hosted by NIAS in Copenhagen last week. Whilst primarily discussing key issues on communicating and managing information on development issues we took time out to hear from Kalle.


This wolf in rabbit's clothing can glance at a book, look up it's ISBN numbers, give you a summary and provide a review. As the latest member to join the EADI Information Management Working Group, the initial reception was welcoming. After all this skilled character, who works at NIAS, can speak over 20 languages,know instinctively when his websites are visited and is more popular on Facebook than most librarians could dream to be in a lifetime.

He was however not a big contributor to the open space sessions which discussed everything from Multiple Knowledge, Open Source, Storytelling, Bias in communication, reaching audiences , Information Managers vs Communication specialists, the use of podcasting to reach politicians and other Open Space discussions. See all the blog entries which summarise some of these discussions.

He missed the Euforic session hearing from members on how they are communicating climate change issues, the key note speech of Lea Santana from NEIM, and the peer assist session.
Neither did he see all the tweets, videos and presentations brought together at imwg2009.blogspot.com.


I hear that Kalle Kanin is staring in a remake of Fritz Lang's Metropolis .... Metropolib.

For the Information Management Working Group we're just planning a meeting next year in Brussels.

The results of the open space sessions helped us identifying the issues that we'll be discussing between now and then:

• Improving research communication;
• Making information managers and communicators work together;
• Information management versus creativity;
• Building innovation in our work;
• The importance of low bandwidth;
• Linking up with researchers?

by Chris Addison

See also Euforic newsfeeds on information, knowledge, communication, and from the IMWG 2009 workshop.

Who are we hearing?

Listening to multiple knowledges, attempts to redress the current bias.

In this open space session during the EADI IMWG 2009 meeting the group discussed what efforts are currently made to ensure that different groups are included in development research activities and that their views can be heard. This is the core concern of an EADI project funded by DGIS, the department for development cooperation at the Dutch Ministry for foreign Affairs.

The conversation was wide ranging around the issue of research information and communication and covered three elements:

• Providing access to research information from various groups;
  
• Bias in the research agendas set in research organisations;
  
• Communicating the outcomes of research to the community.

Providing access to research information
In discussing views of and access to research the following portals within the EADI network (which included also NGO research) were mentioned: research4development and search4dev.
Large portals are not the only way to present collections. Using custom search engines like focuss.info organisations have made increased access to views from their networks documents. Good examples are the Sangonet search from South african NGOs and the recently constructed Codesria search. Providing this information is only part of the story. Management need to be convinced of the issue.

There is not only a need to work on mobilising research but also promoting access to and creating demand for other sources of research, in the North as well as in the South. The internet may have provided more access to materials but it also means they can be shared whilst still work in progress. ICCO explained how their materials are shared before the final version is loaded onto Search for dev. ICCO research can be found on their wiki which is part of ComPart, their knowledge sharing platform.

Informing research agendas to make them relevant
How could we be sure that research is relevant and really served development goals?
There was the discussion of how donor agencies have produced a projectisation of research rather than organisations setting their own research agenda. This runs the risk of research agendas no longer being local and set by countries. Examples of these are the EADI Geneva conference last year and the UNRISD 2004 conference (see UNRISD News 27).

In discussing the last EADI conference the issue of action research and studies being more clearly of benefit to communities was raised. This was examined in some depth at the IKM emergent session at the EADI meeting.


Mike Powell introduces the IKMemergent project

Impact and uptake of research has been examined by several donors, one of the largest attempts is the DFID program 'Research Into Use' . This demonstrates a change in how research for development is perceived, with the recognition that participation in research leads to better communication. However, some participants were worried that there are few incentives to work in this way. As we were twittering this discussion we received the recommendation to look at RAAKS as an example of participatory research . In conjunction with discussing new innovative approaches we were encouraged to read Knowledge on the move.

Communicating the outcomes of research to the community
In addition to the difference that participatory research makes to communicating results to the community we heard of different approaches. For example how researchers had worked with the journalist Manuel Torres to write newspaper articles on the results of their research. Other materials were produced to reach the farming community.

A full description of the IKMemergent project and further details on each of these elements and more is available at IKMemergent.net and in previous articles on this blog.

by Chris Addison

See also Euforic newsfeeds on information, knowledge, communication, and from the IMWG 2009 workshop.

Open space on story telling at the IMWG 2009 meeting

Richard Lalleman from the Focuss.Info initiative convened an open space session on story telling.
In Richard's views, when you try to codify your knowledge the context will fall apart. Talking seems to be a better way to share your knowledge. Quoting also knowledge management theories, he stated that "you know more that you can tell, and you tell more that you can write"

Among the different types of story telling techniques, Richard introduced the 'future-backwards'. This approach can increase the number of view points that a group has in understanding their past, and among the range of future possibilities. It can be used to compare and contrast different aspirations on the present situation and the future.

This approach seems particularly appropriate to learn from past experiences.

The discussion went on with participants comparing notes on the different methods used in their organisations to foster knowledge sharing.

See also Euforic newsfeeds on information, knowledge, communication, and from the IMWG 2009 workshop

Money, power, equity - Whose agendas are we communicating?

This open space session at the EADI IMWG 2009 meeting was convened around the topic: Donors, researchers, politicians, North, South - Whose agenda should be the most important? And how do we, as information workers, recognize and balance these issues in our day to day work?

Several elements were brought up during the group discussion.

Probably it is not possible to be objective. A challenge for the communications and information workers is to be aware of the issues and to respond to them. But there probably isn't a way to always get it right. We are subjective, have to be selective. It's easy to bias Northern organizations research as it is so available, so much more advertised than the harder to find, but more valuable, work being done in smaller, Southern and less powerful organisations.

There is also a language bias as material is dominantly in English. A conscious choice of ELDIS to address this bias is to rather create partnerships with organizations/networks who have material in e.g. Spanish or French. This is a better solution that having this material on ELDIS website, where it is not much read as it's audience is mainly anglophone. This approach fits also into ELDIS mandate which is inclusiveness. ELDIS is trying to globalise and finding partners all over which will help them to address these issues.

Talking about donors' agendas, it was felt that colonial history can be influential for what issues donors see as important. What is considered politically important issues at the time also influences the research presented; the concept of 'good governance' seems to be an interesting example in this sense.

At times, also consideration of project funding changes the focus on the research being done. The temptation is always to 'follow the money'. But this should not have influence on research communication. If we look at small projects as opposed to larger donor supported projects, the importance that we put on communicating the results of a project should not be directly related to the amount of funding.

Lastly, the the question of accountability was tabled, with donors that should be accountable to the recipient. How can we ensure this? Would open repositories be a possible solution

See also Euforic newsfeeds on information, knowledge sharing, communication, and from the IMWG 2009 workshop

What does free mean in "free your information"?

The open space discussion at the EADI IMWG began by asking whether researchers would ever contribute their content for free. In Denmark, negotiations with publishers have led to free access to most journals for the research community. So perhaps the issue is not as clear here to researchers as it is in other parts of the world. The point was made that the whole open access movement derived from librarians who were far more aware of the costs in getting access to journals. This is a big business - it was claimed that Elsevier earns 600 million Euros per year on scientific publications.

The whole discussion on open access may also arise because of the technology issue. In the past, a printed copy of a journal would be bought by a university but then available in a library to a whole range of users. With the change in technology, publishers can now see who reads each article online and give restricted user licenses.

The key issue behind a journal's income was how much this currently relies on the control of copyright and what the future possibilities of creative commons licenses are. It was raised that awareness of copyright issues was still needed - the example video A Fair(y) use tale - was mentioned as a useful resource to raise awareness of fair use.

Initiatives in development talking about opening access rather than open access were mentioned. Here the CIARD initiative was mentioned as an approach to make information not only available but accessible and further to try to ensure it was applicable. Other attempts to improve awareness of open access issues have been undertaken by EADI most notably at last years AGM.

This discussed the costs of making a journal article as open acces as being 2-3000 Euros. If this was the case, shouldn't donors take responsibility for making research outputs open access.

Donors could and do support open access by funding Open Access journals, provide incentives to use OA Journals or fund researchers to publish in standard hybrid journals. At the moment incentives for open access publishing are limited as those journals are ranked too low in Citation index ranking systems such as CERES. Swiss national fund supports open access journals and will pay researchers if they choose to publish in main journals.

Open Access to journals could be a huge cost saving to libraries not just on subscriptions but in saving time at the library to handle links and access to journals and to manage susbcription packages. Information literacy training also becomes far easier as access is straightforward.

Returning to the meaning of 'free', the issue was raised that whilst information may be free on the internet, what about the cost of the pc, connectivity and skills to get there? The idea of "One Laptop Per Researcher" was introduced by Michael Wesseling as a possible initiative to provide access for researchers in developing countries but linked with Internet initiatives working on making bandwidth use more efficient and coping with bad connection, a so-called "internet under the trees" approach.

Finally the discussion concluded with the discussion of the book "Hacking capitalist" published by Routledge which argues that we should consider that information is "free" as in "free beer" as it is the raw material in the new economy.

See also Euforic newsfeeds on climate change; information/knowledge, and from the IMWG 2009 workshop

Peer-assist session at the IMWG 2009 meeting

After the key note speech of Lea Santana (NEIM - see also her blip interview), participants in the IMWG 2009 meeting jumped into the peer assist session, to discuss some of the issues they are facing in their daily work.

The group identified a series of specific questions on which to compare notes and exchange views:

1. How do researchers share knowledge and learn form the knowledge that is produced and exists?

Some participants noted that learning has to be part of the research process. In this process, important is also to share lessons of what did not work so to learn form failures. A fundamental question remain: How do you learn to do things different, especially bringing together people that speak different languages (researchers, NGOs, policy makers)?

A good example comes form DIIS, that hosts staff from Foreign Affairs and DANIDA for a period of time. This way researchers learn how to write in a way that is more immediate to grasp for policy makers: concise, to the point, in a way that can be useful and not just good for academic carrier. It works also the other way around, with researchers outplaced to DANIDA and working there.

2. What's the role of intermediaries?

If you want your research being applied, it has to be communicated, it has to be made known to the target group that needs to use it. The way you write and communicate research findings needs to have the format geared to the audience. You need to to know who you talk to in order to decide your language. In this process, you also choose the appropriate tool(s) to reach your target group.

The role of communication professionals is therefore a key one. Researchers generate very specific outputs; therefore you need 'brokers' that translate these outputs in formats that can be used and applied. There needs to be an expert in between researchers and non-researchers. However it's was underlined that these intermediaries have to work with the researchers and not for the researchers. Therefore the dialogue between researchers and intermediaries needs to start before the research takes places.

Lastly, it was noted that also other professions have trouble in communicating; what can we learn from experiences in other fields to deal with these issues?

3. Copyright issues

More and more organisations are adopting Creative Commons licenses, what are the pros and cons of this?

Creative Commons allows new distribution ways of information and knowledge produced, making sure that other people can use our work. But as with every deal concerning peoples intellectual property, there's some hesitation around in doing that.

A good example comes form Development in Practice which decided to go for a Creative Commons-Attribution-Noncommericial-No Derivatives license, as it was felt that this protects the interest of the author. However, when you want to apply similar licenses, you need to make it clear to the author from the beginning.

Furthermore, the choice of license very much depends also on where you see that your info is potentially useful.

Plagiarism can happen anyway, regardless of the way of publishing and the license you use; others are the checks and balances which are needed.

One of the participants commented that there need to be more debate on commercial vs. non commercial use of content under CC license.

Useful information on this issue can be found on the web dossiers on open access from EADI, ELDIS and Wellcome Trust. See also the blog post from the open space discussion on the issue during the IMWG 2009 meeting.

Other issues briefly touched upon during these peer assist session included:
- The 'long-tail' of research outputs [Some research outputs are peer reviewed and get increased value and recognition only after the research funds are finished: How do donors go about that?]

- How to compile annual reports [strategy and tools] and how to make them 'live' longer that the time span they cover?

See also Euforic newsfeeds on information, knowledge, communication, and from the IMWG 2009 workshop.

Communication: what for who?

This small group of EADI IMWG 2009 meeting explored differences in communication processes related to research, advocacy and policy. Lea Santana of NEIM, Brazil [see also her blip interview] explained how she tries to package information in ways that serves the purpose of advocacy. Academics can communicate with other academics but for politicians you need to re-package information. You need to "translate" the information.

Mike Powell, IKM Emergent Programme, emphasized that not all research is academic. Research is about recording experiences. Lea agreed, a photographic exhibition can be research. Another participant stressed that whether a publication is actually considered academic research depends on in which journal you publish. There are quality standards, peer reviews etc. These quality standards seem to serve to protect, to legitimize.

The type of communication has very much to do with your audience. In development research you have to realize that there are people involved in such research that do not read academic journals, for example the people in developing countries who's life is being researched one way or another. So what do you do to communicate with them? Is not the basic idea of doing development research that it contributes to development? So you have an obligation to share your research in a accessible way.

Maarten Boers concluded that the differences may not seem fundamental particularly when you try to inform public decision-making.

See also Euforic newsfeeds on information, knowledge, communication, and from the IMWG 2009 workshop

The Art of Open Space at IMWG2009

The EADI Information Management Working Group meets in Copenhagen. The group is using - among other modalities - Open Space to discuss their concerns. In brief OST-like sessions over 50 group members discuss during two days the concerns they share. The conference also includes discussion panels, peer-assist sessions and of course lots of informal networking.

The convening question for the OST part is: What are the issues, ideas, possibilities and opportunities etc. around communicating effectively in global research consortia and networks?

Lucie Lamoreux facilitates the initial session and explains the principles of OST which are all about letting go of control and allowing 'chaos' to happen:
1. Whoever comes is the right person, it is open indeed
2. Whenever it starts is the right time
3. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have
4. When it is over is over
5. The law of mobility - once you feel you have made your contribution and heard others you can move on to another group: only the person who reports on the group remains.

The first step is bringing on topics and engage in some wheeling and dealing to establish the topics for the 5 "spaces" at the venue. This happens at "the wall". Topics cover a different range of issues: using podcast for policy dialogues; what makes communicating about research so different from other forms of communication; storytelling; biases in communication about research; interaction between social movements and research groups; how to actually get researcher to communicate; the difference between information management and research communication; how to reach politicians when communicating research outcomes; webtools, thresholds and inclusiveness of web2.0; one laptop per researcher programme and internet under the tree; whose agenda's we do communicate - money, power and equity - do we really listen or are we using voices from the South to legitimatize ourselves and our donors?

After this inventory three time slots remained but they may be filled later on. At the market place initiators move around subjects in the various time slots, explain what they mean and get people to buy into their sessions. Lucy facilitates the process. IMWG-members are not a loud crowd. A few topics are moved around, some proposals to merge topics but few change proposals make it....

Participants will use old style flip charts and blogs and wikis to report.......to be continued...

by Rosien Herweijer, Euforic

See also Euforic newsfeeds on climate change; information/knowledge, and from the IMWG 2009 workshop

Who's reading this anyway?

Far from being an inclusive, Web 2.0 is at risk of being seen as an elite form of communication which is too often presented as value-free and accepted without judgment. There are a number of assumptions which seem easy to make but (in this space at least) we aren't addressing. These include:

What we have to say is useful and important
People want to hear and need to know what we're saying
That we have access to the technology

For research communication to be effective, we always pose a series of questions to which Web 2.0 should not be exempt from asking. What do we want to say? Who is our audience? How do they engage? What tools do they use? Who are we missing?

Once we have the answers to these we can decide on the most appropriate ways to do this. Sometimes the answer is a workshop, sometimes its podcasts. Sometimes it's participatory video and sometimes it's a very heavy academic paper.

The point is, Web 2.0 is not the only answer but part of the solution. Let's remember that.

By Clare Gorman, IDS

See also Euforic newsfeeds on climate change; information/knowledge, and from the IMWG 2009 workshop

Collaboration, Communication and Climate Change

Copenhagen, 10 June 2009. Today's Euforic workshop was convened in view of the forthcoming COP 15 Climate Change meeting in Copenhagen in December 2009. It was hosted by NIAS in Copenhagen.

After Ramesh Jaura, President of Euforic and Director of IPS Europe introduced the theme, we heard from NGOs, research organisations and think-tanks on the issue of 'Collaboration, communication and climate change'.

Ramesh explained that, before the Rio conference on environment and development in June 1992 (UNCED), development was considered in a different way, being funding and project based; the phrase "sustainable development" emerged from the conference. Since then, more and more NGOs and researchers started to explore the implications of climate change. In Bali, organisations like Third World Network took part in the negotiations representing Southern views.

Four Euforic members - IDS, the DiploFoundation, CABI and DIIS presented their work, this was followed by an overview of other Euforic members.

DIIS presented their climate subweb, including their involvement in the Commission on Climate Change and Development, their work on climate adaptation, REDD studies on Forest conservation, and the DIIS reports on low carbon development. They have also produced a thematic issue of the Danish language journal Den Ny Verden. [see presentation]

DiploFoundation shared their work on training and communication towards diplomats and other foreign affairs professionals.

Capacity development for climate change diplomacy

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The training begins online, it is followed by an online collaborative policy research case and placement in policy organizations. During this process, participants create a community of practice online. This approach is unique in its combination of online and face to face activities; it empowers people as influencers of change, it merges CoPs that make a difference, and includes those in the south that otherwise wouldn’t have access. Now the question is how this approach could serve the climate change process. As a cross cutting field this has a broad appeal.

Alan Stanley presented IDS knowledge services communicating research on climate change and development.

IDS climate change knowledge services

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He highlighted three projects: LCA, Community Based Adaptation Exchange and Africa Adapt. The purpose of these different communications initiatives is to ensure that more decisions are evidence-based. The IDS approach is based on the following elements: expertise, diversity, learning, engagement and partnership. Partnership is the most important, as IDS initiatives are just one of many initiatives; working together instead of duplicating efforts is the take away message [see also this video blip with Alan]

Martin Parr from CABI presented their work on communicating research using the Research4development portal.

Research4Development: Challenges in Managing and Sharing Information

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First they had built a collective database of all DFID funded research together with links to other websites containing the information. At it’s heart lies 5000 projects and 20000 outputs cross linked by themes, countries and actors. As a second step, they turned the site into a service focused on reaching the desktops individuals. This means for example presenting types of information by audience or presenting thematic pages including feeds from DFID communication partners. The information is made more accessible through the use of RSS. To promote this information, a news service fits on top, using for example blogs to discuss research communications and the launch of the new DFID research strategy.

Lastly, Chris Addison gave an overview of the activities undertaken by Euforic members in the different areas they are working, from advocacy to research, from meetings to communications strategy, from online new services news to training.

Euforic Members - Communicating Climate Change issues

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See also a previous blog post highlighting some of these issues.

Subscribe to the Euforic AGM 2009 newsfeed.

See also Euforic newsfeeds on climate change; information/knowledge, and from the 2009 annual workshop.