David Phipps, RIR – York
In addition to using social media to spread the word about knowledge mobilization and social innovation, the knowledge mobilization staff at York University have been busy speaking in real life. It takes a lot of work and we are successful but it certainly hasn’t been overnight.
En plus de faire appel aux médias sociaux dans le but faire connaître la mobilisation des connaissances et l’innovation sociale, le personnel travaillant à la mobilisation des connaissances à l’Université York en a beaucoup parlé dans la vraie vie. Cela demande beaucoup d’efforts et nous connaissons du succès. Toutefois, cela ne s’est pas produit du jour au lendemain.
Crusaders. Evangelists. Missionaries. Entrepreneurs. Whatever your analogy it takes a lot of work to become an overnight success. 
York University’s Knowledge Mobilization Unit has been successful in creating institutional services that support collaborations between researchers/students and non-academic partners from the government and community sectors. And since we’ve been planning this since 2004 and doing this since 2006, it’s certainly not been overnight.
And yet we continue to be knowledge mobilization evangelists spreading the good word about the value of knowledge mobilization to university and community and government agencies.
In the 10 weeks between April 15 and June 30, York’s Knowledge Mobilization Unit made 19 presentations to audiences totaling more than 700. Most of the audiences were Canadian but we were also seen by over 60 people from five continents at the K* conference. We have spoken to community members and have taken our message all the way to the Governor General with help from our colleagues at SSHRC and United Way Centraide Canada.
From Manitoba to Charlottetown; in Hamilton and Ottawa; and many locations in between in the GTA- Mississauga, Newmarket, Toronto and lots on campus, of course. It is through this effort that we are creating a culture of knowledge mobilization on campus as previously mentioned in this blog. But we are also hoping to create a culture of knowledge mobilization for our partners as well.
We’ve talked at conferences (Partners in Prevention, Canadian KMb Forum, Canadian Association of University Research Administrators, PREVNet Annual Conference, Continuing Education School Board Administrators, K* conference for international knowledge intermediaries, Congress of the Social Sciences & Humanities) and have been invited to speak at meetings (Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation, SouthLake Regional Health Centre, Lamarsh Centre for Child and Youth Research) and we’ve done capacity building sessions for KMb and social media for faculty and students.
And this doesn’t include all of the smaller meetings where we and our community based knowledge broker, Jane Wedlock, have been promoting our work on and off campus.
We love our work and we don’t mind talking about it. And this is consistent with what we have written with Daniele Zanotti, CEO United Way York Region, “never lose the hunger”. We don’t mind working hard to become an [overnight] success.
