Good to see you…

… at final last. This morning I was at ILRI Headquarters in Nairobi to meet with a few people that I had only met virtually, via email or skype or phone. With some we carry out common work so it’s a steady relationship.  It was so good to finally have the opportunity to meet them in person.

First, Evelyn Katingi, from the Collective Action Regional Plan: we’ve been working together on the CGIAR Research Map. We talked about the status of Phase II developments and the feedback she is getting about the Research Map from the scientists she’s in touch with all the time. Very promising outlook for this project.

Muthoni and Susan, Public Awareness, ILRI

Then, Susan McMillan, Head, Public Awareness, and her staff of young, committed people in the PA team. We had no agenda for this meeting, we just wanted to share our experience with social media. And what a job ILRI is doing! Videos, blogs, and online accessible documents! The meeting ended up in a fascinating brainstorming session on how to bring a conversational quality to the documentation process of intense meetings, and eventually in some sort of speed geeking with quick tours of what we are doing on the Web.

Finally I met with Ian Moore, the ILRI-ICRAF IT Manager. I had met Ian before but only very quickly at the IT Managers’ meeting in Bioversity back in 2007 when I had just arrived in the CG and was still pretty frightened at the new turn in my career. Forty-five minutes with Ian were enough to agree on some key points of the single sign on project for CGXchange 2.0 that has been discussed with other colleagues online for a few weeks now.

Last but not least, I met Leah Ndungu, Research Management Officer, who is the EasyMTP Focal Point at ILRI. It had only been skype chats and phone calls with Leah so far, mostly in the rush of the MTP submission deadline. So it was good to finally see her smiling face.

Off to ICRAF in the afternoon where I met Michael Hailu, Director of Communications, and Solomon Mwangi, Web Developer. And this is only a taste of the great bunch of people who will make the reporting team at the Second World Congress on Agroforestry. We’re getting ready to bring in the social Web to the Congress starting from Monday 24.

Self portrait of the author on ILRI campus

As Tania suggested in her post on the wiki session at FAO, we’re getting really good at online collaboration, but eventually nothing beats the power of the face and the personal touch.

Thank you, all, it was good to see you…