Some participants strongly objects to this method of identifying topics. “Here we go again with a couple of management consultants that are going to waste our time and distract us from our own agenda”. They prefer to have more formal structure imposed on the

meeting at the outset and have the priorities for discussion established more rapidly to allow proper time for

discussion and planning.

Allison Hewlitt: “Open-space approach to

knowledge sharing that is to be used over next 2 days is in a nutshell a democratic way to

set the meeting agenda and produce action plan.Any

participant may put a topic on the agenda for discussion; and

all participants, by vote, participate in the decisionas to

which issues will be pursued through action plans.

Richard Trethowan: “Many people have come out of those meetings feeling very frustrated

that they simply didn’t get a chance to say what they thought. Now, what I am

hoping for with this meeting, having spoken before hand to the facilitators, is that we can use this newer approach to get more discussion.”

Number of participants voice strong reservations about the action planning process. “Discussion group

size is on people’s mind” says Dave Hodson. “You have too many parallel sessions, and so too few people are present at some sessions to have a meaningful discussion. People than give up and move to a larger group.

The flip site is that the very popular sessions have a huge number of participants. In some way we need

to optimize the group sizes.”

It is institutional democracy in action, beginning not with loquacious lobbying

for one topic or another before the casting of ballots, but with a 20-minute period of reading, reflection and, in

some cases, quiet discussion. With votes in and counted, Richard Trethowan announces the five priority topics for further discussion and action

planning.

REPORT: NEW PHENOMENON SPREADING THROUGH CIMMYT

First occurrence: Wheat Improvement Group (WIG) meeting Obregon 30/3 – 1/4 2005

Parties concerned: 36 scientists from CIMMYT Suspected Offenders: ICT-KM Knowledge sharing project (Doug Horton)

Bellanet (Allison Hewlitt)CIMMYT WIG leader (Richard Trethowan)

Symptoms:

- Virtual workspace enabling sharing of information, ideas and resources was

created and is continuously used

- Initial planning meeting of WIG in unusual meeting space – Warehouse of research station in Ciudad Obregon

- No PowerPoint presentations were used but instead new terms as ‘open space’, ‘market place’, ‘peer assist' appeared

Sequence of events:

Potential risk of further spreading: HIGH – Similar symptoms have been already detected in other meetings held in CIMMYT headquarters and regional offices!!!

Prognosis:Expected continuous spreading up to possible CGIAR KS pandemic...

DAY 2 … Ranking Topics and Action Planning

DAY 1 … Open Space: Setting the Agenda

Will it be a fiasco?

Participants finally agreed the program to continue as

planned. Some ‘end of the day’ phrases:

‘True discussion’; ’Energy in the room’;‘Chow can we now put words into action?’;‘Glad not

to have regular presentations’; ‘Hope we can get into science tomorrow’

DAY 3 … This is not the end …

Peer Assists: Colleagues Helping Colleagues

“Peer assist isn’t about swallowing professional pride due to scientific error or

administrative fiasco. Nor is it about institutional crime and punishment. It is about

sharing knowledge with friends and colleagues to solve the

practical problems that arise in the course of one’s day-to-

day work. I thought it a luxury to get these great

ideas” says one of scientists.

After action review of DgroupsDgroup traffic was rather slow at first, but the electronic forum is now well used. One director says he has been exploiting this channel to stimulate discussion of scientific

issues. Other uses by Dgroup members include sharing scientific reports and articles and circulating future tables of contents of journals. A

clear message from the discussion is that the Dgroups are very useful but

that users need guidance and practical advice on how to make the most of this information service.

Closing the Circle and Participant Evaluation

“The overall idea is that we can, hopefully, learn from this process – take the positive

aspects and apply them to other disciplinary groups within

CIMMYT and to the programs” says Dave Hodson, leader of CIMMYT

KM/KS work group. “A big plus so far is that we have broken the mold – we have changed the way in which meetings have been

traditionally run within CIMMYT. That’s a huge leap forward.”

“Having the too many burning issues and not enough time to address

them is a perennial problem with such meetings”,

admits Rodomiro Ortiz, “There was strong interest in this group to discuss science. But because time

was short, the issues were flagged, but not all of them

followed up on. That’s always a challenge. But there will always be more issues than time available

to accommodate them.”

Will it bring some results ?

Finally the discussions are lively, detailed and fruitful, resulting in five plans. These

are presented orally in plenary. “As soon as we formed the groups and got chatting, it was quite obvious that there was no issue about having discussion. The issue was how to stop the

discussion!”

What next ?Group leader Richard Trethowan

comments “We’ve developed plans to solve some of the key science

issues confronting wheat improvement today”. Hodson adds: “In the end, the real test of the meeting’s success, certainly from the participants point of view, will be how CIMMYT management

react to it – whether they take on board the things that have been

flagged as priority issues, whether the Program directors

really champion these messages.”