Communications Review

1. Communications Review 2009 Niamh Brannigan February 2010

2. What Worked

3. What didn’t Work

4. Brand New professional and fresh look for the GeSCI Brand Updated site Site has reflected GeSCI’sStrategy and organisation of work up to this point Better resources Makes good use of web 2.0 Good volume of site feedback

5. Brand Country and Regional Pages static Site is not a channel for views and experiences of partners ARP/AKE programme does not feature prominently on site Site time consuming and difficult to maintain (whole site) Knowledge Centre becoming overcrowded No feedback on tools

6. Stakeholders Brand new space for stakeholders Interactive with video, images, discussion boards etc. We ended up with 4 groups and many people joined We have had noteable success with the OM and Research group

7. Stakeholders Tanzania and AKE groups did not engage Minimal team inputs Ning is password protected Communities are notoriously difficult to cultivate.There is an underestimation of how much time and commitment and skill is required to build them Overreliance on virtual apps to build communities

8. Marketing Broader appeal Clear messages Concepts explained Branding consistent Well designed

9. Marketing Need more input – ideas, news, stories and information We don’t know the impact of our message Marketing campaign must blend online and offline channels Mail marketing has little impact without follow-up Major campaign requires organisation-wide support

10. Knowledge management for the 21st Century Enables practice, approach and content to be constantly informed and thus improved by garnering input from other knowledge fields both tacit and explicit. It facilitates a constant flow of knowledge which is applied and the cycle continues Its knowledge base is broad and rich It operates in a shared domain Knowledge Management It ensures that knowledge is not static i.e. information

11. Misconception that ‘knowledge management’ is something someone else does – a knowledge officer, a comms manager or a research manager Explicit knowledge must be better managed before GeSCI can afford to concern itself with ‘tacit’ knowledge A knowledge bank or repository aides knowledge management but it is not the driving force • Knowledge management is hard to see but it is enabled by: • Monitoring and Evaluation (learning must influence programme) • Collaboration (enables much better sharing of knowledge which can be evident when collective goals are achieved) • Application of knowledge i.e. testing of TCO tool to improve it is an example of real knowledge management • Research and application of findings • Staff writing papers that synthesise their ideas (tacit capture) and those ideas being applied in real contexts Any activity that enriches knowledge via the revision of an approach, a practice, a methodology, a tool, a report is knowledge management. Static knowledge saved in a data bank and reports written and circulated and then saved in a data bank is not knowledge management. Knowledge Management We need to focus on Knowledge Management as a whole with many small parts.

12. How Must 2010 Be Different ?

13. We Must COLLABORATE: Systematically Consistently • Around clearly defined goals Across key Programmes With clear roles and responsibiIities Accountable to each other CKM function will prioritise CKM function will try to influence partners, not just produce outputs CKM function will collaborate with each programme manager to develop mini-goals and objectives for each programme which both PMs will work together to achieve The CKM function will measure and evaluate its progress by seeking feedback from the team

14. Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be. Kahlil Gibran Thank you for your time