Share Fair comes to an end: Notes from the Closing ceremony

Peter Ballantayne, given the honour of leading us through the closing to this exciting event, told us that we will be getting an idea of what information is already available on the Share Fair and then we will have a conversation.

He started by running through some key highlights (on powerpoint!) from the Share Fair:

• More than 700 registered, 112 sessions, 160+ official contributions
• Photos available online
• social reporting has been going on throughout the fair
• Tree of Knowledge-was an interesting feature (that even moved during the event)
• Plenary opening
• conversations in the booths
• a fishbowl-with glass bowl included!!
• alot of training–despite the short time people got to get a taste of what some tools can be valuable for and a little of how to use them
• THE BAR!
• …” and finally the inaguration of Obama!”

What did we all talk about?

Peter presented a tag cloud of the words that were used in the programme. Major words included- knowledge, sharing, iafd, fao, cgiar, rural

Again last night he went onto a share fair blog and used woordle again to develop a tag cloud to see what had been talked about–knowledge, methods, see, sharing, people, useful, project

Who made this possible?:

• alot of volunteers
• facilitators and trainers
• steering committee
• participants

What are some of the visible outputs?

• 40+ video blips
• 150+ tweets
• 130+delicious bookmarks
• 50+blogposts (30 from ictkm)
• 250+ photos
• only 3 powerpoints
• 22 training sessions with more than 400 people going to them
• Facebook page
• 90 second challenge (video clips of people saying what knowledge sharing means for their organisation)

What is the added-value of knowledge sharing?–let’s see what people had to say:

• “is nothing but added value!”

A survey was done about the Share Fair and so far from the results we can tell you that the best learning moment was—Hands-on training sessions.

Peter then invited all participants to think about what the Share Fair meant for them, what they liked or not, what was a highlight, what did they learn. He asked people to gather with a few people around them and to discuss this and then he will go around and see what the groups came up with.

“What do you take away with you from this fair?that you will act upon?”

Peter went around the room getting people to share their perceptions–and these were captured on Twitter immediately and shown on the screen(available on Share Fair website).

 Lorraine Williams from FAO gave some concluding remarks, congratulating all on a successful event.

 ”Knowledge is not power–sharing is power” a quote from Peter’s favourite leaf from the Tree of Knowledge