Who am I?

• I am Barry (hear me roar)• Used to be in EWB Cardiff, did the

whole branch president thing etc.• Got a Vodafone Foundation World of

Difference Award to work full time for 2 months for a charity of my choice. Can you guess which one I chose?• 6 weeks down, 3 weeks remaining

What have I been doing?

• Knowledge Management: Looking at how the 6 Communities of Practice are disseminated throughout each of the Programme Areas

• Introducing two new Communities based on Healthcare and Mobility Technologies, and Food and Agriculture

What are 6 CoP?

• Water and Sanitation• Energy• Habitat• ICT• Industry• Transport

What did I find when I arrived?

• They weren’t used for much• The general enthusiasm was there but

technical problems surrounding the organisation and definition of the Communities impeded things

• Communities = Groups of people. There were none

How could they be used?

• Organise ourselves• Knowledge sharing– Internally and externally

• Website structure• Quality control on placements, research,

training• Organise contacts etc.• Fundraising

Chief Executive Officer

PlacementsCo-ord.

TrainingCo-ord.

ResearchCo-ord.

BursariesCo-ord.

OutreachCo-ord.

EducationCo-ord.

WaterCo-ord.EnergyCo-ord.HabitatCo-ord.

ICTCo-ord.

Transport

Co-ord.IndustryCo-ord.

HMTCo-ord.

Food & AgricultureCo-ord.

PlacementsTeam

TrainingTeam

ResearchTeam

BursariesTeam

OutreachTeam

EducationTeam

Time to enter a new plane of thought...

Have I missed anything?Any further thoughts?

Healthcare and Mobility Technologies

• Why?– It’s a neglected area in international development– Leads to social exclusion– There are numerous organisations that could

benefit from an engineering input

Go back to that other plane of thought...

HMT Workshop

• Saturday June 5• Imperial College. Tell all your friends

• Jump-start session to enable collaborations between ourselves and other groups/organisations– Placements, research, training etc.

We are faced with a series of options

• Option 1:

• Alter the organisational structure of EWB-UK• Thematically as opposed to programmatically

Chief Executive Officer

PlacementsCo-ord.

TrainingCo-ord.

ResearchCo-ord.

BursariesCo-ord.

OutreachCo-ord.

EducationCo-ord.

WaterCo-ord.EnergyCo-ord.HabitatCo-ord.

ICTCo-ord.

Transport

Co-ord.IndustryCo-ord.

HMTCo-ord.

Food & AgricultureCo-ord.

PlacementsTeam

TrainingTeam

ResearchTeam

BursariesTeam

OutreachTeam

EducationTeam

Current Structure

Chief Executive Officer

PlacementsCo-ord.

TrainingCo-ord.

ResearchCo-ord.

BursariesCo-ord.

OutreachCo-ord.

EducationCo-ord.

WaterCo-ord.EnergyCo-ord.HabitatCo-ord.

ICTCo-ord.

Transport

Co-ord.IndustryCo-ord.

HMTCo-ord.

Food & AgricultureCo-ord.

Alternative Structure

Water Team

Energy Team

Habitat Team

Information and Communications Technology Team

Transport Team

Industry Team

Healthcare and Mobility Team

Food and Agriculture Team

What say you?

Case Study: ISF France

• Each branch is independent which takes care of their own programmes

• ISF France is a federation which provides guidance to the branches

• This guidance and resulting framework is in the form of Communities of Practice– Water; Energy; Agriculture; Engineering citizen

Branch Projects

• Community of Practice structure would be beneficial to EWB-UK branch projects which are happening overseas

• Hybrid structure, cos everyone loves the word hybrid, has benefits

Have I missed anything?Any further thoughts?

Option 2

• Annual Review– Arranged programmatically?– Or thematically?

What now?

• Presuming that you all booed and hissed at everything suggested so far, here is what I propose...

Community of Practice Co-ordinators

• Co-ordinators or points of contact for each Community of Practice– Preferably 2 per community

What would they do?

• There needs to be a project or task

• As a counterpart to “Engineering in Emergencies”, I am proposing that we, as EWB-UK and anybody else that wants in at some point, develop a counter-part “Engineering in International Development”. It will be released under Creative Commons license

Why?

• Most of the knowledge and experience of EWB-UK is in people’s heads

• The purpose of this is not to write a book, but to disseminate everything we collectively know

• It will give the PN something to do– Generally have more experience to impart than

time to do actual overseas work

How do we go about it?

• The Community co-ordinators task is to distil the knowledge within their community

• Wiki-like structure where anybody can edit, but co-ordinators and any other admins they appoint can approve

• Google groups under google apps used for entire mailing list to discuss topics– All emails archived back to a central point for later

reference

• Each community can develop organically, and split into sub-communities as necessary– i.e. Energy splits to wind, hydro, stoves etc.

Your thoughts please?

• Do we go ahead with CoP co-ordinators?

• Do we use wiki-like structure?

• Do we use google groups structure?

• Do we aim to do the “book”?

• Everyone should be involved, but should it be spearheaded by the PN?– “Get Creative Campaign”

Challenges

• Creative Commons licensing current online material

• Revision control– “LIVE” revision– Minor revisions– Major revisions

• Food and Agriculture Community

Development/Citizenship CoP??

• Micro-enterprise • Education and training of partners• Participatory processes • Security • Personal health • General cross cutting themes

The most pressing issue of the day

• New CoP logos

Thanks for coming