Author Archives: incognitoinrome
Are we there yet?
Six months since we launched our Community of Practice and there is a sense of movement and progress. But if my objective is for it to be a self-sustaining buzzing network of ideas and initiatives, we are probably still a long way from that. The energy mainly comes from me in the centre. But what is […]
Communication between communities: are we speaking the same language?
Let’s say I’ve just had a great idea! Even better, let’s say I have done a load of research and now I have some facts and evidence that are really useful. Doing this research has increased my knowledge and now I would like to give that knowledge to you so that you can do your things […]
Strategizing when everything is unknowable
Our Community of Practice has been writing a strategy document to help us get a shared understanding of what we are doing. It has a vision and mission. It says a bit about why we think our workplace needs this focus on gender and social inclusion in our research into biodiversity for development and in […]
Can a CoP function with only voluntary contributions?
Everyone is busy. And yet, and yet… here we are working to nurture this community of practice (CoP) to improve the way we deal with gender and social inclusion in our research and workplace. Someone commented to me that it should not be “based on voluntary contributions”. It should systematically be built into people’s performance […]
The story of a Community of Practice: scoping technological support
Jeske has had the brilliant idea of having a Reading Group, in which all Community members will receive a suggested piece of reading and will be able to discuss it. So far so good. She has selected a reading but now what? If we send it by email, it risks being ephemeral and even if […]
The story of a Community of Practice: Baby steps towards the destination
Riding on the wave of enthusiasm of the plenary session on gender-responsive research at the beginning of Bioversity’s Science Week, after three years of scoping and defining, it was time to actually do something. For once I took my own advice! Back in 2013, writing about how to set up a community of practice for […]
The story of a Community of Practice: Coalescing and launching
After so much planning, Science Week last week at Bioversity was finally a great opportunity to coalesce around the idea of improving our gender-responsive research practice and find out who might want to participate in the community. The first step was to get an overview of what is actually going on gender-wise across the organization. […]
The story of a Community of Practice: Planning it into life
We had decided that a Community of Practice was what we needed at Bioversity to raise the bar of our gender-responsive research. But what now? What could we do to tranform that abstract decision to concrete action? Not that life was statically waiting for us to move. In the meantime, Maria conducted some hands-on workshops on ‘making gender […]
The story of a Community of Practice: How it began
This is the beginning of a story. I don’t know how long or short a story it is going to be nor where the plot is going to take us. It is the story of a Community of Practice. A Community of Practice on gender-responsive research for scientists exploring how people can best use and […]
The Spice of Life
Originally posted on Squire to the Giants:
Variety is the spice of life. If everything were the same it would be rather boring. Happily, there is natural variety in everything. Let me use an example to explain: I was thinking about this as I was walking the dog the other day. I use the same…
Becoming Better 