Mind-maps workshop at Amsterdam University

Last Wedenesday 17th Janaury I was invited to facilitate a mind-maps workshop to support the research process of the Devhas project. This is an initiative from several universities from India, Sri Lanka, Belgium and Netherlands to study “Stereotypical Images and Cultural Differences between Europe and South Asia”, see more details.

The workshop was done to provide the staff members with additional concepts, tools and techniques to improve and further develop their conceptual maps. It combined some lecturing with several individual and team assignments.

The morning sessions focused on the mind maps technique as has been developed by Tony and Barry Buzan. In the afternoon we focused on their own concept/maps and their needs within the project

The outcome enriched their conceptual maps by adding (in their own way) some of the mind mapping techniques discussed along the session. The creative and dynamic mood of the session allowed even to develop some basic maps and to adopt a set of new symbols that will be used collectively in the following phases of the project.

As usual in my teaching it was a very interactive and participative session. As one of the participants said when I requested some feedback: “Actually I don’t remember you having talk too much…”

Second floor

How many messages could flow in an e-mail list from a hygly participative community? How many field reports are prepared by hundreds of professionals in different organisations working on development? How many projects and final reports are having now sweet dreams in the archives of our institutions?

It is not hard to imagine how much knowledge have been transferred into those documents. Years of experience, first impressions, lessons, recommendations, warnings and I don´t know what other data and ideas  have flown through them.

Many immediate decisions and actions might have followed the circulation of such documents. Byt very rarely these documents are processed as a whole. For instance,  has someone analysed the different topics and ideas that circulated in the list during the past 6 months? Or is someone in your organisation looking at a set of field reports done by different staff members along the past year and all related to the same country or region?

Every message or report is just a tree in a forest of data and ideas. Who is moving-up to the second floor to take a look at the forest? Many trends, alerts or more ellaboratated concepts and tools might be there waiting some to harvest them. From my perspective, qualitative tools appear to be the most simple and effective way to approach such challenge and reach the diverse and rich sight from the second floor.

Knowledge Expeditions at KM4Dev

Some days ago I attended the KM4Dev workshop at Brighton, UK. The event provided a rich and diverse approach to a number of knowledge sharing techniques. Since the very first beginning it was possible to see and experience different tools and techniques used to promote and enhance knowledge sharing: drawing, mapping, podcast, open space, peer-to-peer support, etc. are just but few of these.

From this perspective, the programme itself was a rich source of learning where practitioners from different countries, backgrounds and organisations were sharing their working tools. This gave to all the presentations a double insight, not only the content was useful and interesting, also the technique used to present or analyse it was also an important contribution.

The list of contributions is a large one but in this post I would like to highlight one of them which I found robust and insightful: the Knowledge Expedition.

The Knowledge Expeditions was a rich input was brought by a group of colleagues (Allison Hewlitt, Bellanet, Simone Staiger-Rivas, CIAT, Stephanie Colton, Sparknow and, Victoria Ward, Sparknow) who consider that the discussions and activities in the field of knowledge and learning are giving too much relevance to tools and techniques. They claim for an approach that gives more relevance to the nature of problems or the goals aimed with the different interventions. To advance in this direction they presented a typology that would allow grouping the different tools and techniques based on the expected outcome. So, instead of talking about storytelling, mind-mapping, open space, etc. the emphasis would be given to the cause and the output. The suggested categories are the following:

·         Vision

·         Mission

·         Glue

·         Wisdom

·         Growth (or ‘ripples’)

·         Memory

·         Fire of the Field

·         Healing

Their proposal was analysed and discussed in groups and later on in a plenary. I consider that this perspective could lead to a more rich and systematic approach to learning problems and, especially more focused on the roots and causes of problems rather than fashionable techniques.

For further details see: http://www.km4dev.org/wiki/index.php/Knowledge_Expeditions