Knowledge sharing in changing agricultural organizations

The KM4Dev workshop in Brussels (6-8 October 2009) includes a thematic 'AgHuddle' for people interested in knowledge sharing (KS) and knowledge management (KM) in the agriculture sector.

The first area of discussion will be on KS and KM in changing organizations:

All across the agricultural sector, knowledge, learning and innovation are emerging as key points where organizations need to invest and make a difference. Capturing, mobilizing, and sharing different types of knowledge and information - and putting them to good use - has moved up organizational agendas.

This attracts attention from different domains - managers, researchers, IT, web, communication, intranet people, publishing, libraries, learning, and KS/KM.

We can see increased attention to strategies in this area; many experiments with different social media and toolkits; continuing efforts to build and sustain different types of learning networks and sharing communities; more attention to knowledge 'systems' and 'products' and their presentation/visualization across different platforms; diverse ways to organize and deliver and report on face to face meetings; an interest in 'open' knowledge and its accessibility; and increasing conversations among the KS/KM champions across organizations.

Some of the questions we will discuss are:

• How do we best work with multiple knowledge producers, uses, users, communities and types of knowledge?
• How do we work with multiple approaches and tools, and with content that is increasingly mobile and accessible across many increasingly mobile platforms and devices?
• How do we with partners who can extend the reach of the knowledge?
• How do we track and demonstrate progress and impact of KS/KM activities, making the case that these approaches and tools are not 'add ons' - that they can make any activity more efficient and effective. Are there ways we can demonstrate this?

We plan to document and share our discussions across the web - and on this blog: Share your ideas and experiences by commenting on this blog.

See also the second area of discussion: 'KS and KM enabling processes of rural change.'