Category: networks

SRI and Knowledge Sharing

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Weeding2.JPGLast Friday I had the great fortune to help facilitate a session at IFAD on SRI, or System of Rice Intensification. My botany degree, while neglected as a career path, has always kept my root interest in plants and ecosystems alive. In the course of doing a graphic recording of the presentation part of the session, a few things kept showing up for me.

First, the scholars working on SRI were insistent it was not a proscribed method of growing rice that is useful to poor, small holder farmers, but that it was a set of principles for growing rice and other crops.

A set of principles.

Can we view knowledge sharing not as a proscribed set of practices, but instead a set of principles?

While there are a range of tools and methods that we call “knowledge sharing,” they are just tools. And if we overly focus on them, we miss the point that knowledge sharing is embedded in everything we do. Therefore, to make sure we have time for KS and that we do it well and strategically, we might instead focus on the princples that support KS.

Mind map of SRI session at IFAD

So what might those principles be?

Saturday morning, on my way home from Rome at the unnatural hour of 5:15 am, I was surprised to look up in the airport to see a colleague who was at the joint Share Fair in Rome and a past participant of the online KS workshop I have facilitated for FAO and CGIAR. Justin Chisenga of FAO shared the challenges of KS in agriculture in Ghana. He said there were no precedents for sharing agricultural research, but instead a culture of individual ownership, and thus very often loss, of agricultural research knowledge. Locked up in files or personal computers, and unknowingly discarded upon retirement or death, years of knowledge had leaked away. Ownership, not public good.

  • What principles could change from lock down to flow in Ghana?
  • What principles could encourage funders to reframe their support towards openness and learning? 
  • What principles could reframe organizational and national policies to support and reward building public instead of private good in fields that ostensibly are dedicated to things like feeding one’s country, region or world?
  • What principles could allow people to share knowledge even in large, complex and necessarily political organizations?

My mind returned to what I learned about SRI. SRI focuses attention on the quality of seed, the timing and method of rice seedling transplantation, and THE HEALTH OF THE SOIL and the microorganisms that live there.

What is the soil for knowledge sharing? How do we know it is healthy? What “transplantation” practices allow us to move fragile new knowledge from one place and allow it to thrive in another, without too much loss, or too much investment in water and fertilizer? How should we “weed” to keep information overload from overwhelming us?

The analogy is intriguing me. 

Rice tending image from Wikipedia

Exploring the place between boundaries in communities and networks

the spaces between the scoring spacesIn her PhD work, Lilia Efimova has been one of my teachers and thought partners, starting from the summer she spent with my family here in Seattle while doing a fellowship at Microsoft Research. In the post Blog as Edge Zone, Lilia gets to the heart of what has been drawing me lately in my thinking and slow, personal research.

…blogging supports creating relations with unknown and unexpected others, often across various boundaries.

While many of us struggle to define “community” or “network” or “group” I keep on getting the sense that the important changes, fundamental changes in the way those of us online live our lives, are happening in the margins in between and across boundaries. Yes, we belong to tight bounded communities and broad reaching networks. But it is how we navigate across them, and connect, disconnect and reconnect with ideas, content and people in those transversing practices. 

Lilia has done a great job of describing what I have been “sensing” from the perspectives of blogs. I think there are similar things we can describe around different online interaction tools and the practices associated with them.  We can examine this from the quintessential change these tools and practices create in our ability to “be together.” 

In February, Barbara Ganley, Laura Blankenship and I will be exploring this with a session we’re offering at Northern Voice. We will dance the limbo, talk about being in limbo and look for patterns for making the most of this boundary crossing and all the unnamed places in between.

I had hoped to write more about this, but lately work keeps me away from that loose time I need to write these things. So this is a little bookmarker out to the world. 

Let’s think together.

SCoPE: Managing Multimembership in Social Networks: Oct 27-Nov 9, 2008

This seminar is being organized by some great friends and colleagues.

Bronwyn StuckeyBronwyn StuckeyJeffrey KeeferJeffrey KeeferSue WolffSue WolffSylvia CurrieSylvia Currie

Take a look!

SCoPE: Seminars: Managing Multimembership in Social Networks: Oct 27-Nov 9, 2008
How do you track and keep up with blog conversations? How do you manage your time as you engage in social networks? What are our limits as we integrate social learning into our work environments? When you do find yourself becoming disconnected from your networks and organized activities, how do you return to the fray? As facilitators how do you manage multimembership for your participants?

Many of us confess to fumbling along and we engage in multiple networks. Yet, many networks are essential for the projects, sectors and people that we work with, and for staying abreast of hot issues. Multi-membership and multi-platform overload is becoming a BIG challenge!

During this 2-week discussion we invite you to share tips for managing participation in social networks. This seminar is organized as part of the Facilitating Online Communities course mini-conference. .

Schedule:

* Throughout October, 6 questions about multimembership (survey)
* Week one: Oct 27-31 Collect stories (Voice Thread)
* Week two: Nov 1-8 Discussion here with summaries in the SCoPE wiki

We want to see how much we can learn together by maximizing your attention, so jump in anywhere with your tips and tales.

The seminar will officially unfold beginning October 27th. There are at least three ways to participate.

1. During the first week, we will focus on collecting your stories and tips using the Voice Thread. Scroll down below, and just click on the arrow in the middle or the faces around it to listen. Click on “Comment” to add your own tips. You have your choice of recording your voice or typing short comment. (Don’t worry, Voice Thread lets you start over if you don’t like your first take.)
2. You can still take our multimembership survey. Later in the week, we will be posting the results on the SCoPE wiki.
3. Threaded discussion will take place mostly in the second week (Nov. 1-8), but, you are welcome to start with a short introduction and question or comment now too.

Corporate Learning Trends and Innovations Nov 17-21

Most of you know me in the non profit world, but Tony Karrer of Tech Empower convinced me I could contribute to a corporate learning event. So take a look at what he, Jay Cross and George Siemens have put together for Corporate Learning Trends and Innovations » Corporate Learning Trends and Innovations 2008
November 17-21, 2008 | Online | Free

Join us to explore new developments, track emerging opportunities, network with other learning pioneers, and deal with topics you don’t find at the conferences you have to travel to. Come online the week of November 17 for a different kind of conference experience. Mark your calendar now. The event is free. Events are live and online.

Hook up with fellow innovative thinkers and international visionaries to gain insight into what’s going on, swap opinions, and shape the future of learning. Share your suggestions with the organizers at learntrends.com

My contribution will be on Online Social Architectures – Networks and Communities. And her is my disclaimer. I have more questions than answers, but I’m pretty darned convinced that the relationship between networks and communities – the fuzzy boundaries between them – is where important stuff is happening. Learning. Innovation. Work.

Product selection with your network

Steve Crandall\'s old Western Electric handset updated with a modern speaker and microphone. There is a switchable bluetooth/usb link to the MacBook Pro. Charging is done using a usb connection. Built 2005.I have a tendency to destroy my computer headsets/mics with regularity. I run over the cords, the plugs loosen and then the sound degrades. It is time again to buy a new set, but instead of buying the cheapest set at the local office store, I decided to get the recommendations of my network – since many are also frequent users of this product.

Here is what I learned.

Now all I have to do is make up my mind. That is always the hard part and the downside of research. But the fact remains that with a less-than-140 character question, I got quick, actionable feedback. Think about that in terms of knowledge management and knowledge sharing!
Photo:
Steve Crandall’s old Western Electric handset updated with a modern speaker and microphone. There is a switchable bluetooth/usb link to the MacBook Pro. Charging is done using a usb connection. Built 2005. (Thanks, Steve, for letting me use the picture!)