1. 27 September 2011 – Issue number 2
HIGHLIGHTS of 27
SEPTEMBER
The show is on the road
10:00 inaugural session in the Italian
Conference Room followed by keynote
Well, the show is on the road. And IFAD’s address by Rob Burnet
building has metamorphised. There is special
energy in the building. Everyone is happy and 11:30 in the Oval Room Modibo Traoré
smiling. It is lovely to see so many familiar faces (FAO), Carlos Seré (ILRI) and Antonio
and even more new faces. Rota (IFAD) will discuss the strengths and
Yesterday walking around the building you could see friends connecting weaknesses of recent livestock research for
with each other, you felt the buzz, felt the intensity of the conversations development, and explore key challenges
for the future
and you witnessed how this positive energy was contagious and was
getting everyone excited.
11:30 Communities of practice clinic with
The share fair-er’s energy cut through the walls and the glass windows. A Etienne Wenger and Nancy White
colleague on the fourth floor said: “I am so lucky, I am sitting in my
office and listening to the microblogging session”. 14:00 in the oval room Emile Frison, Jean
Francois Giovanetti, Rodney Cooke, Mark
All the sessions were packed. And Holderness will talk about how can we
social media played a great role. make agricultural innovation systems (AIS)
Thanks to the fantastic social work for smallhoders?
reporting, we connected with many
people who could not make it to the 16:00 in the oval room Michel Payne-
share fair and many colleagues who Knoper will give a keynote address on
were unable to leave their offices. Empowerment through engagement:
There was a lot of knowledge and Connecting farmers globally
learning shared on the Twitter wall. 17:00 Find out more about some innovative
Thanks to the social media integration on the webcasting we managed to devices and products at the Show and Tell
bring the voices and excellent questions of people outside the room to the session in the atrium
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation session. Make sure you visit the Art for AIDS
Etienne Wenger’s keynote address International stunning art exhibit in the
on communities of practice atrium and minus 1
highlighted a number of key issues Get your dinner tickets for 28 September at
(see Communities of Practice and the registration desk for Euro 10.
strategic capabilities). According
to Etienne, communities of
practices are a vehicle to develop
PROGRAMME CHANGE
strategic capabilities within an Dgroups meeting 14:00-15:30 in room
organization. He also underlined B100 and 16:00-17:00 in room C200
how the discourse around knowledge sharing and CoPs needs to change Text to Change: Providing Bolivian farmers
as too often we focus only on the operational level of knowledge sharing, commodity prices (54) will not take place
as opposed to a more strategic conversation about the domains where an
organization needs to excel, and the importance of creating space where
staff can engage and develop those capabilities. Make sure you watch the
Pier Andrea Pirani’s interview with Etienne at
http://blog.sharefair.net/2011/09/share-fair-day-0-conversation-with.html
As we move to the second day of the Share Fair, we remind you to
ponder on a fundamental question - what is the value and impact of such
events. We want to hear your views and we’ll do so at the closing
ceremony.

2. When money talks
by Steven Schonberger
We enjoyed a presentation on Monday by Sam Dryden and Prabhu
Pingali of the Gates Foundation’s revised strategy for supporting the
agricultural sector. The presentation redefined scaling up for many of us
as they described how the Gates Foundation grew their funding from $10
million in 1994 to $40 billion in 2000 with more coming in 2006 from
Warren Buffet. Agriculture is being “modestly” funded to the tune of
US$1.7 billion in grants, mostly to the CGIAR system for R&D, statistics
and policy, but increasingly to focused investments in countries in
complementary areas of technology adoption and marketing, particularly
in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia where food insecurity are most
pronounced.
As a new, very well financed donor, Gates Foundation is managing the
challenges of high expectations in terms of addressing all of the issues of
agriculture and rural development from all perspectives. From the
presentations and ensuing online Q&A moderated by Kevin Cleaver
(who took advantage of the opportunity to promote IFAD’s new Strategic
Framework), it was clear that the organization of the Gates Foundation
strategy around productivity of key crops and livestock raises concerns
regarding issues such as institutional capacity, natural resources
management, youth, partnerships with big agribusiness, etc. To the credit
of Sam and Prabhu, they were clear that theirs is a work in progress as the
Foundation’s engagement strategy evolves in terms of direct program
work at country level, knowledge management, results monitoring and
effective mainstreaming of cross-cutting agendas.
And Kevin did a superb job of integrating questions that we got via
Twitter and Facebook. He indeed is a 21st century leader!
By Etienne Wenger
The opening session
challenged the audience to
approach "knowledge sharing"
as a matter of developing
strategic capabilities. This
involves a paradox of social
learning in organizations that
most people attending
ShareFair live in: their jobs
place them in the tension
between horizontal and
vertical structures of accountability.
Structures like communities of practice live in the horizontal dimension.
To emphasize the personal aspect, Etienne started the session with an
analogy to his wedding. In the same way that a romantic relationship
evolves out of recognition of the other as a life partner, communities of
practice evolve out of recognition of others as learning partners. Based on
mutual engagement, these self-governed learning partnerships thrive on
personal meaningfulness, passion for practice, and a commitment to
substantive conversations. They allow people to act as “learning
citizens.” They depend on people who act as conveners. Those who are
good at opening social learning spaces are real “social artists.” These
human qualities are the key ingredients.

3. Yet all this “horizontal stuff” takes place within and across organizations
that have grown verticalized systems of accountability. Horizontal and
vertical systems have traditionally existed side-by-side with little
integration. This integration requires a new kind of conversation in
organizations. Knowledge sharing may be a misnomer for this aspiration.
Knowledge sharing is too easily approached as an operational challenge.
It is probably more useful to talk about the development of strategic
capabilities. Strategic alignment is traditionally a vertical challenge. Yet
practitioners are in the best position to develop strategic capabilities.
Engagement in practice gives them key insights about what needs doing
and improving. A community gives them a forum to reflect, learn, and
think strategically about their practice together. Talk of strategic
capabilities has a chance to connect the vertical and horizontal
perspectives. If our community is about improving practice, we need to
learn how to engage our organizations in such strategic conversations.
Gift garden
by Carl Jackson
How easy is it really hear and be heard by each other when we
passionately build ideas together? How can we speed up the process of
synthesising knowledge created by large groups without losing
consensus? At the ShareFair at IFAD in Rome today it was great to be
able to propose that the Gift Garden method can help on both these
points.
Gift Garden is a method developed originally for an interactive session
on climate adaptation for 80+ participants at a conference in Ethiopia
earlier this year. It brings together elements of large group facilitation
from approaches including World Cafe and Open Space with playful
approaches from Applied Improvisation. What is distinctive about the
Gift Garden method is that it enables large groups to build new ideas
quickly, collaboratively and creatively drawing on individual experience.
Sharing the method to today and running through the process with a
group of really generous and knowledgeable facilitators lead to new
insights and suggestions for improving the method. I’m always amazed
how despite the anxiety I feel sharing new ideas, how quickly people put
one at ease and give of their own experience so selflessly. Today was no
exception and the suggestions for strengthening the Gift Garden Method
included:
What to do if you have a very vocal person? Maybe have butterfly role
to include equitable participation
Can you have multiple topics in the gift garden? Yes if you have more
than one topic you can have just one round per topic as more topics
provide opportunities for people to be both bees and butterflies
It would be logical to use the ‘Yes And’ Rule for the report back
sessions to and that would encourage even more synthesis – Great
Idea!
Maybe have post-its for each idea shared in report back and then add
these to a big flower at the end of the session – nice idea but could be
in tension with the idea of having lots of freedom to improvise as
people will be thinking about what to write during the discussion
sessions rather than actively listening to each other.
Having equal numbers of butterflies to bees seems like it could be too
much – on reflection it still seems a good idea as butterflies need to
support each other to play the active facilitation role they are charged
with (with few butterflies they may not feel empowered).

4. If you want to make the outcome of the Gift Garden more action
oriented you can ask a more focused question at the report backs – like
“What should we do next to move forward on the topic discussed?”
The ‘Yes And’ rule experience: created a very positive atmosphere;
challenged us to move beyond Yes But; showed how difficult but
important active listening is; showed that silence in the discussion is
positive as it allows time to reflect on what has been heard and respond
in Yes And mode.
How to move the discussion from the natural end of one set of ideas
and the starting a new set without breaking the Yes And rule needs
thinking through as not clear yet in the method.
The Butterfly’s role needs to include actively asking Bees to repeat
what was last said if they feel Bees are not actively listening or
building on each others’ ideas.
Butterflies moderating dominant speakers in Bee groups is a tough
assignment. It would help to empower Butterflies to have a huddle of
people in this role to share tips on how to facilitate and encourage
huddling through out each round to compare notes and decide if an
intervention is needed to get bees back on track.
If someone really doesn’t want to be a butterfly then allow them to opt
out, but don’t offer this up front as it may encourage people who just
want to be Bees so they can push their ideas to take this option.
LinkedIn and Facebook – Enabling
dialogue and leveraging
knowledge
By Sarah Bel and Michael Riggs
Social media on first glance may
be thought of only as a
technology, which leads to
thoughts of training for skills and
the need for analytics and data to
support its use. However, this is
really about communication,
about engaging people and
helping them to feel like they’re
connected to other people (not connected to machines!).
We are more comfortable using these tools for our personal interactions
for many reasons (familiarity, confidentiality and quality, resource limits,
etc.), than for professional goals as evidenced by the simple
“dotmocracy” chart created by the session participants [see photo].
However, colleagues noted that these tools have a growing role in our
professional work.
The session focused on how LinkedIn and Facebook are used by use by
two organizations to support communities of practices for different
purposes. Participants discussed the level of skill and time involved, tips
and tricks to successfully achieving organizational goals, and monitoring
methods that can be used with LinkedIn and Facebook.
The session facilitators emphasized that a communication strategy needs
to be developed, resources considered, and then social media tools
evaluated and matched. From the examples of LinkedIn use by ILO and
Facebook use by the e-Agriculture team at FAO, it is clear that there is no
“one size fits all” solution. However, social media is exciting and here to
stay.