I’ll close this year with the summary of what 2011 has been according to Google Zeitgeist 2011:
Follow @neoluk
Good news: I’ll take care of the FAO Emergency web activities
This week I have a very good news!
I’m going to take care of the FAO Emergency Division website together with the related social media and the internet communication.
This is a very important news!
And now let’s start working on the open issues.
First question is: how many people do browse the website and who are they?
Share Fair 2011 – day 2
Today inspiration came from the great intro by Rob Burnet who talked about the incredible experience of shujaaz in Kenya. This series, which is using comics, radio, internet mobile telephony and video, introduces agriculture to the Kenyan youth. Rob strongly suggested: “Go to the point. What does your audience is looking for?” and “It is not the what. It is how. Push does not work at the end.”
In the afternoon I joined @etiennewnger‘s and @NancyWhite‘s Community clinic to look for suggestions on how to solve problems of the CoPs that I supervise. In particular, I wanted to reflect on the FSCA community that it is still not very active after the workshop in Dakar. We came out with the answer I already knew: when the need is not clearly expressed by the members, then it is more difficult to have the group working as a Community. And this reminds me what I heard this morning during Rob’s address.
I closed the day meeting Ms Tukhikyan from Armenia who shared their experience in the attempt to mitigate plastic pollution. Recycling plastic bottles + substituting common plastic bags with other bags to diminish their use.
What to add? An intense and inspiring day. The days you need when you are missing ideas and want to find new inputs for your daily work to refresh it and reinvigorate.
Share Fair 2011 – day 1
The first day of the Second Global AgriKnowledge Share Fair was really great. I follow Willem’s suggestion and I had lots of fun.
In the morning, Etienne Wenger‘s words were really inspiring. His approach, which compared CoP and dating, was really striking. That sense of deep trust that you develop in a relationship can be felt in a community where you offer something for free, exactly in the same way. And this is so true that is very difficult to convince people that it is real! Most of them remain sceptical about the kind of knowledge/experience you can exchange in a community because they consider it impossible to be done. But in reality it really happens. It is a sort of miracle, a combination of the best merits of a human being: altruism, trust, consciousness, generosity. What a liberation! What a dream! What a real thing! It really happens! It is true even if it does not happen elsewhere. The heart makes the difference, Etienne said. The feeling inside and not the tools or the techniques.
Later in the morning, I had a training session on photosharing. Few participants but very interested and full of questions for me about the topic I was teaching. We essentially talked about flickr, its features, its pros and counts, and the ways to get the best out of it.
In the afternoon I followed Nancy‘s training on graphic facilitation and I loved it. More than anything else I’m grateful to her because she showed me that drawing is possible. That I can do it. That, again, it is a matter of heart and feeling, not a technical issue. I did my tests, I drew my men, my icons, my circles and lines. I did my final examination with “my personal toolkit” test. And my level of satisfaction is really high. I look like a child when I showed my drawings home to my girlfriend because I really realized that I can do it. That potentiality is in there and it is just to me to exploit it. Such a good lesson for my job and, much more, for my life. And there we go again: it is a matter of heart.
This first day was passionate as few before. It was necessary to remember all of us that, before anything else, we need to put ourselves in what we do, open the doors of our offices, get out of them and then come the rest, like tools or techniques.
The Spirit of the Share Fair 2011
Today the Second AgriKnowledge Share Fair starts.
Before anything else, we, the Steering Committee, think the Spirit of the participation to this event to be crucial.
I like very much Willem’s description of the spirit of the Share Fair 2011.
The first and main aspiration is to “have a lot of fun”: we need to chill out, talk to other people, get out of our daily routine and breath fresh air to bring innovation and new idea in what we are doing
This is the spirit we want and need to transmit to all the participants and to our institutions, in general. If people will come out of the the week with this spirit permeating their job, then our work can be considered successful.
Let us know this spirit is able to conquer your soul and your job.
Explaining ComDev using video interviews
Communication for Development has a big problem nowadays: people do not clearly understand what it is.
During the preparation and the development of the ComDev Expert Consultation we produced short videos (almost 30) to explain basic concepts of ComDev. The entire list is available on the FAO ComDev channel on youtube.
Mario, Riccardo, Oumy and many others provide interesting explanations of what ComDev is and how it deals with rural development and agriculture.
The experiment was also important to provide a clear example of how, using limited means and without a specific experience, it is possible to create a sort of mini-training course exploiting the power of social media.
