Themes for the IAALD 2010 Congress

At a planning meeting for the 2010 IAALD World Congress to be held in Montpellier, we discussed some proposed themes proposed by Jean-François Giovannetti.

Under the overall title 'Scientific and Technical Information and its role in rural development: Highlighting innovative practices', we aim to organize discussions around several overall themes that cut across different forms of content, end users, and information producers and creators, as well as the various levels of information activities, from local to global.

The initial themes are:

Theme 1: Innovative learning processes: Within this sub-theme, we will illustrate innovative learning processes of and among agricultural stakeholders - including farmers, educators, researchers.

Theme 2: Information services, the need for a continued redefinition: This sub-theme will explore information services tailored to fit the needs of specific end users. We expect these will include, among others, SDI, Q&A services, libraries, open access mechanism, web 2 services, etc.

Theme 3: Communication and information exchange for multiple stakeholders: This sub-theme would cover all issues related to information exchange as well as communication processes among all stakeholders involved in agricultural research for rural development. Likewise, issues related to innovation as a multi-stakeholder mechanism and how innovation is co-produced by a wide range of actors can be an interesting focus of this Session.

Theme 4: Information systems for structured and integrated information: This theme is dedicated to “high value information systems”. It will cover structured, integrated and relational information systems (e.g. Who is doing what, and what are the results or lessons learned?), knowledge-based systems, systems facilitating decision making processes, and systems enabling the diagnosis of species (such as weeds, etc).

Theme 5: Information products and services as public policy enablers: This theme is dedicated to information and communications approaches and systems that facilitate and enable the definition and implementation of public policies, whether national, grassroots or international. It will look at the way this information is made available for a wide range of citizens, particularly those which touch on innovative ways to open a public debate on key global issues.

The themes are now draft. Help us achieve a good congress: What themes are missing? Which should be adapted, and how?

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