David Phipps, RIR-York
Ten universities. Sixteen people (brokers and directors). ResearchImpact-RéseauImpactRecherche (RIR) held its annual meeting one day before the Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum. We started out with an overview of knowledge mobilization by Peter Levesque (@PeterLevesque) from Knowledge Mobilization Works (@KMbW_Updates) and the Institute for Knowledge Mobilization. Shawna Reibling (@mobilizeshawna) from Wilfrid Laurier University (RIR-WLU) spoke about knowledge mobilization practice at universities and in communities across Canada drawing connections between community engaged scholarship, engaged scholarship, community based research and knowledge mobilization all of which are practiced by the RIR partners. I then spoke about networks and Communities of Practice (CoP) and how the CoP model can help inform the how RIR members can create and derive value from the network.
We found out that when he was a boy Brent Sternig (RIR-UVic) wanted to be a patent agent, Steve (RIR-Kwantlen) wanted to be a basketball player, Melanie (RIR-UVic) wanted to be a clown and Krista (RIR-York) wanted to be a tea pot.
Moving on….
We used a dotmocracy process to identify priorities for the network over the next year. These included: internal communications and information sharing including capacity building; external communications including branding and social media; evaluation and metrics. Directors and Brokers identified the working groups they wished to support. Next step is to develop work plans to move these priorities forward.
We then ended with a presentation by Peter Lemish, U. Southern Illinois and the Mid-Western Knowledge Mobilization Network. Together we explored how two knowledge mobilization networks might be able to connect and create spaces for mutual learning.
Going round the room to collect personal reflections on the day there was a lot of “a-ha” and “so that’s what we could be” and one knowledge brokers said she had a renewed passion for her job.
Nice. Very nice.
Pizza and wine and a movie and we knew that not only something funny (tea pot) but something wonderful happened on the way to the Forum.
