Good thoughts Terry. Sometimes, however, I think those of us working within the CGIAR are the wrong audience for writing blogs or 'creative narratives' on our work. Sure, to post some new ideas or discuss some ‘nexus’ or ‘gender’ is not harming anyone, and some (young) staff might actually learn something. But for others it looks often as if you have read this already years back and we are going in circles, except for some new buzzwords. So my question is how to make blogs more interesting as we all have many blogs etc. and can not check all of them?
The coffee break has the advantage that your chat remains with a colleague much more confidential than in a public blog. A big difference! In a coffee break we might indeed question our 'circles', but we would not challenge our own strategy in a public blog (and back-stab colleagues implementing it).
Within IWMI, we started for example a brave discussion if Virtual Water or (our baby) Water Productivity are still valid concepts? The discussion was not even in public but dried quickly out. Somehow we miss (a forum for) self-reflection. Maybe that is why much of our work remains mediocre, and we prefer waiting 5 years for a Science Review to give us feedback? So should we not better ask WLE and CG outsiders of high ranks to blog, who can place our work into international context and say: Do we still go in the right direction? Did we not reach the 80/20 rule 10 years back? Please link stronger with XYZ players outside the CG to progress on the common goals!
But then of course comes the old question on how to attract those busy senior folks to post a blog? Or maybe blogs are just for entertainment and small (coffee) talk?
Good thoughts Terry. Sometimes, however, I think those of us working within the CGIAR are the wrong audience for writing blogs or 'creative narratives' on our work. Sure, to post some new ideas or discuss some ‘nexus’ or ‘gender’ is not harming anyone, and some (young) staff might actually learn something. But for others it looks often as if you have read this already years back and we are going in circles, except for some new buzzwords. So my question is how to make blogs more interesting as we all have many blogs etc. and can not check all of them?
The coffee break has the advantage that your chat remains with a colleague much more confidential than in a public blog. A big difference! In a coffee break we might indeed question our 'circles', but we would not challenge our own strategy in a public blog (and back-stab colleagues implementing it).
Within IWMI, we started for example a brave discussion if Virtual Water or (our baby) Water Productivity are still valid concepts? The discussion was not even in public but dried quickly out. Somehow we miss (a forum for) self-reflection. Maybe that is why much of our work remains mediocre, and we prefer waiting 5 years for a Science Review to give us feedback? So should we not better ask WLE and CG outsiders of high ranks to blog, who can place our work into international context and say: Do we still go in the right direction? Did we not reach the 80/20 rule 10 years back? Please link stronger with XYZ players outside the CG to progress on the common goals!
But then of course comes the old question on how to attract those busy senior folks to post a blog? Or maybe blogs are just for entertainment and small (coffee) talk?