Meeting+18

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// (Apologies: the bad internet connection connected with specific problems on the domain wikispaces.com at ILRI these days has resulted in not saving complete minutes of this meeting :( Whatever could be saved is below. My deepest apologies for this...). //

** Agenda **
 * 1) Review action point tracker from last meeting
 * 2) Follow up from NBDC science meeting (Wolde Bori)
 * 3) Update on Bahir Dar stakeholder meeting (Simon)
 * 4) WLE ecosystem
 * 5) Closing meeting
 * 6) N4 as a major component - not addressed as specific item but as a round of updates
 * 7) Cleaning up the NBDC wiki and website

**Next team meeting**: Thursday 12 September 2013 Check the list of action points and find them in red in the minutes below. = Minutes = Attending: Alan Duncan, Simon Langan, Kees Swaans, Beth Cullen, Alemseged, Mengistu, Tracy Baker, Randall Ritzema, Kindie Getnet, Gebrehaweria Gebregziabher, Ewen Le Borgne + via Skype: Amanda Harding, Doug Merrey.

2. Update on Bahir Dar stakeholder meeting
Very successful meeting and hats off to Belay. Good work on the messages (presented), then good discussions about them and very strong endorsement from people that were also not around before e.g. Jacob (CIDA) and Million (MoA). The latter mentioned backroom discussions about SLM2 discussions and there's concerns that there's nothing new in SLM2 and the group felt that there was something new in this meeting so very positive and a priority for Simon. Second highlight: good participation. 3rdly good endorsement 4thly, high turnout about 'where do we go next' except for people that were not around before e.g. Benishangul Gumuz. The CGIAR will be backing off and provide support rather than lead. Finished after lunch on day 2 and convened a meeting with a task force of 10-12 people and after 1.5h materials from the morning were used into a framework to be taken forward by ARARI. Birru has all that material and wrote to Simon he will take it forward. We probably just need to prompt him, though he promised to come up with sthg in the next few days. Belay is keeping up with this. They fully endorsed NBDC messages and came up with a competition about the best ideas to be integrated in a follow-up proposal for the NBDC, to be submitted preferably to WLE but without promises.

Meanwhile Fantahun has become the DG of EIAR. Birru is DDG research. There are discussions as to who would be part of the task force and Fantahun should delegate people from national level to work at that level. The task force could be part of the consultation process. Simon also talked to Wondwossen (head of Abay Basin Authority).

3. Round of updates from NBDC people.
**Kees**: End of project workshop from NBDC and how to continue with national platform. Discussion last April with Belay to engage with SLM etc. but steering committee don't agree. We need to have a meeting with Belay, Alan and Simon to discuss in-between solution a la FLoWS (RiPPLE-steered national platform on WaSH). At the final workshop there should be some plans for a session to introduce our ideas about this. ACTION: Kees, Simon, Belay (and Alan) to meet on this. That could be a learning event. Scenario analysis with N4 could also be the topic of a learning event. No need to expand much further.

**Beth**: We held the regional workshop with Peter Johnson and regional people about agent-based modeling. They mentioned sthg about the reevaluation of participatory watershed guidelines currently used by Gov't and SLM. These are going to be revised and we could integrate our work in this effort. They requested to be involved in other workshops that came up. We carried out a simplified version of Wat-A-Game in Diga and Jeldu. Those 2 workshops went very well and we have participatory strategies at woreda level for each of the 3 sites. It's being written up. Third W-A-G workshop planned for the 3rd week of September. Emilie from AfroMaison is coming for this. Josie from ODI will also be joining for that. She met with Beth and discussed validation of these tools with some IP members and regional reps. We designed a questionnaire to talk to people about what common planning tools are being used. There's training going on to backstop IP members right now. Zelalem has done platform evaluation with 2 new members (Elias Damtew - a new appointee) and they went to all sites to evaluate successes and challenges around contextual issues that may have influenced how things went. They're collecting digital stories.

**Alemseged**: Birhanu (joining ICRISAT) was involved in the data collection of the 3 sites. We are continuing his work. Birhanu, Alemseged and Denenesh went to all 3 instrument sites. Abeyu working on rating curve and will finalising this. The idea is to transfer the 3 sites to the local universities and for the coming year we will jointly monitor data and then they will take over. Impact - 2C (associated project funded by EU)...

Josie
Joining the WAT-A-GAME workshop in Fogera in mid-September, working with Zelalem (and Beth) to launch some research around the viability of adopting such tools (what are the most useful elements, how do they fit with the existing tools and guidelines in use at local and regional level for NRM, do people have the necessary capacity and mandate to use them, what are the incentives for using them, etc). Finalising a working paper on the political economy of innovation platforms (this is in draft) Finalising a paper comparing experiences of working with platforms across three different projects, building on the poster and paper submitted to the AISA conference (Eva will probably lead on this one.)

4. Follow up on NBDC science meeting
The proceedings will be printed out in 60 copies. Wolde is working on chasing the final publication from ILRI KMIS.

5. End of project workshop
Four ideas floated about, three were selected and Alan + Simon will review these ideas and decide how to proceed with this.

6. Update on WLE
Upcoming regional meeting in October, preceded by smaller meeting in September in Entebbe, Uganda. Both meetings should provide a lot more clarity for the WLE plans in the region. Proposals from different people are welcome to submit to WLE (e.g. Beth, ??, ??)

7. Cleaning up the NBDC wiki and website
__Background information__: Following the NBDC science meeting, a group of us had a review of the NBDC wiki and website.

It turns out that a lot of the **wiki pages** are out of date - though quite a few are also up to date and it is great to see team members working with the wiki! More recently, Ewen and Elias have been updating various sections of the wiki but some remain to be updated and require some expertise in the topic, particularly the thematic pages: This wiki will remain one of the major information platforms about NBDC and related work so we should ensure it remains (relatively) up-to-date and ready for the closing of the project.
 * Comms-knowledge-data (DONE)
 * Gender - Annette
 * Innovation platforms - Beth, Zelalem etc.
 * Livelihoods - Katherine Snyder and Liza Rebelo
 * Participatory video - to be changed into 'participatory approaches'
 * Policy engagement - Belay + Kees
 * Project Interdependency andOther related projects in the region (Alemseged + Mengistu to add details of their projects on this).

On the **website**, there is now a more steady flow of articles coming and more can be expected as final outputs are being prepared.

In this discussion we would like to ensure that:
 * Everyone knows what they can find or not on the wiki --> visit the wiki and the website briefly;
 * Each wiki (thematic) section has a coordinator that will see to it that their thematic page is up-to-date and that key documents are --> select thematic coordinators (+ for M&E) and agree on a brief and small work plan to update their pages and files;
 * We all agree and commit to keeping the publications pipeline up to date and revisit this every team meeting to update it along the way;
 * Everyone identifies in their teams a small set of stories to put on the website now or in the future;

If training needs are expressed for the wiki, we can address this any time after this meeting.

** Next team meeting **
Thursday 12 September: ** Thematic conversation: ** sustainability of local IPs