"Facilitating communities, skills and tools. Promotion and fostering of dialogue and use of social media and Web2.0" Michael Riggs, Knowledge and Information Management Officer, e-Agriculture Lead Facilitator, FAO (by video bridge, from Rome)

1. 1 Regional Workshop on the Development of Thematic Knowledge Networks 12-15 April 2011 Budapest, Hungary Facilitating communities, skills and tools. Promotion and fostering of dialogue and use of social media and Web2.0 Michael Riggs, Knowledge and Information Management Officer, e-Agriculture Lead Facilitator, FAO (by video bridge, from Rome)

2. The e-Agriculture Community FAO provides the functions of secretariat and animateur (facilitator). Over 7,000 individual members from more than 160 countries and territories around the world have joined since September 2007. Community members including staff at NGO/CSOs, government institutions, international organizations and the private sector. They are information and communication specialists, researchers, farmers, students, policy makers, entrepreneurs and others. What brings all these different people together is a common interest. They all want to share knowledge, learn from others, and improve decisions about the use of ICTs to improve livelihoods, and build sustainable agriculture, forestry and fisheries sectors. 2

3. "e-Agriculture is connecting us with [global networks] through the e-platform... knitting nicely, which benefit all of us. I would like to see e-Agriculture growing further and further..." Dr. Harsha Liyanage, Sarvodaya-Fusion, and e-Agriculture Community Member 3

5. Opening communication

6. Moving from one-way informationstreams to geometric engagementsHow? With social media (web 2.0) We use: Twitter Facebook LinkedIn YouTube Delicious Jumo 4

8. Facebook: 11 %

9. From 2010 to 2011: 30.97% of traffic sources were from Referring Sources:

10. Twitter: 17.50%

11. Facebook: 13.47 %5

12. Cartoons via mobile phone bring educational materials to smallholder farmers: http://bit.ly/h4yN2U Social media (Twitter and Facebook) drives eyes to the website. 6

13. What are the emerging tools, standards & infrastructures? e-Consultation on CIARD Framework for data & info sharing: http://bit.ly/f8jkbx Amplification using Twitter. Followers 2,947 2,233 75 517 Followers 151 1,324 350 13,721 7

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17. Facebook: younger audience. Drives traffic, not a lot of conversation.

18. LinkedIn: “profession” oriented audience. Unique conversation amongst people who don’t go to platform.One way to start is with a personal account, to allow time to get a feel for the tools and how they work. Then one can fine tune a program for their work account. 10

19. COMMENTS AND QUESTIONS Michael RiggsKnowledge and Information Management Officere-Agriculture Lead FacilitatorKnowledge and Capacity for Development BranchOffice of Knowledge Exchange, Research and Extension Michael.Riggs@fao.org www.e-agriculture.org www.twitter.com/e_agriculture www.youtube.com/user/eagriculture www.linkedin.com/groups/eAgriculture-3294740 www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/e-Agricultureorg/133387906674204 11