In July last year, ILRI’s two teams – public awareness and knowledge management and information services – merged to form communications and knowledge management (CKM). As part of the re-grouping, we also strengthened links between the CKM team and the wider set of communications people embedded in projects and programs – as a community of practice connected by professional roles and a vibrant yammer conversation group. During 2014, we also recruited additional communications staff and made plans to strengthen CKM to better meet ILRI’s strategic objectives. The aim then was to ensure that all programs and regions as well as ‘our’ CRPs had some dedicated support.

• You can find more information on CKM at: https://www.ilri.org/ckm
• The ILRI comms wiki is your starting point for all questions, resources, logo’s, templates and more: http://ilri-comms.wikispaces.com/
• We practice what we preach – sharing updates and reflections from our work at: http://maarifa.ilri.org/

One year on, I am writing this note to update staff on current developments, especially around people and their roles as it seems we are a difficult group to keep track of!

1. Who’s who in CKM

We are organized in three teams:

• Awareness and advocacy lead by Susan MacMillan. – promoting ILRIs work and the importance of livestock globally and across different media.

• Engagement and collaboration led by Ewen Le Borgne – helping ILRI staff interact and work together, in events, along processes, across disciplines.

• Publishing and curation led by Peter Ballantyne – making sure ILRI’s knowledge and information is documented, published and disseminated.

Under awareness and advocacy, Susan is currently on her own (planned recruitments were frozen) and she relies on inputs from other colleagues in CKM and in the embedded teams.

Under engagement and collaboration, Ewen works with Muthoni Njiru and Tsehay Gashaw, mainly on facilitation and internal communications. Muthoni additionally helps out on design and graphics and supports internal communications. Tsehay additionally provides technical support and training/induction on all our online tools – blogs, wikis, yammer etc). Ben Hack works a lot in this team on collaboration tools and platforms – he also leads our Salesforce contact management system prototype.

Under publishing and curation: The publishing group is headed by newly-appointed James Stapleton providing a range of digital, print, and multimedia editing, design, layout and publishing services.  Within the team, Paul Karaimu is editorial contact person in Nairobi (he also edits and quality checks all our blogs and produces video). Emaelaf Kebede manages the editorial team in Addis, coordinating Apollo Habtamu (design, graphics, video, photofilms), Betty Alemu (design, layout, video) and Meron Mulatu (design, layout, Ethiopia media contacts, ‘this week at ILRI’ email, coffee mornings). In Nairobi, Samuel Mungai provides graphics and print services – as well as some photography.

Publishing across the web is one of the main activities we do. Daniel Haile-Michael in Addis runs the ILRI website, ILRInet and the servers behind them. He is supported by Liya Dejene – who also manages various online platforms – especially our Flickr photos and YouTube video channels. She also has a hand in all the various social media platforms, blogs, twitter, yammer, and the lIke.

Both main campuses have non-traditional ‘infocentre’ spaces that are evolving into meeting, work and study spaces. They also provide digital ‘reference’ services where staff and visitors can search for articles and references and have them delivered digitally or in print form.  In Nairobi, the ‘infocentre’ team reports to Paul and consists of Wilson Maina (digital library services) and Newton Wanga (his tasks include posting print and online calendars, contributing to the weekly ‘thIs week at ILRI’ email, and monitoring digital signage). In Addis, Wondimu Tilahun supports infocentre meeting and visitors and helps out on internal communications.

Abenet Yabowork manages ILRI’s online repository on CGSpace. She and Bizuwork Mulat make sure that every ILRI publication or other output is published or indexed in CGSpace. The team is supported by Goshu Cherinet and of course the embedded commuunications staff who directly add their outpust to the system. Behind the scenes, Sisay Webshet provides technical support on CGSpace while Alan Orth has some small – high quality – time dedicated to keep CGSpace a benchmark for other reposirory installations. CGSpace is an important part of ILRI’s ‘open access’ strategy which complements work done in Intellectual Property (Linda Opati) and in RMG on reserarch data management (Jane Poole).

Abeba Asmelash works across all the teams supporting all our administrative, financial, travel, and meeting needs.

2. Who’s who in the wider communications group

In recent years, ILRI has recruited communication and KM specialists into projects and programs to provided dedicated ‘front line’ support where it is needed. Such ‘embedded’ staff are a vital part of our approach and they play a mix of roles, supported from the CKM team.

Nairobi currently has 3 embedded communications staff.  Tezira Lore in the Food Safety and Zoonoses program (also A4NH), Dorine Odongo supporting both LGI and LSE programs (as well as their CRPs), and Ethel Makila in the BecA-ILRI hub. Bryn Davies and Rupsha Banerjee support communications – and other things – in the IBLI project. Patrick Muchai is recently recruited to support BioInnovate in its remaining months. Vivian Atakos and Solomon Kilungu are part of the CCAFS regional program based in Nairobi.

In Addis, two projects have their own communications people:  Simret Yasabu works for Africa RISING and Beamlak Tesfaye for the LIVES project.

Beyond Nairobi and Addis, regions with CKM recruited 3 communications specialists last year:  Jules Mateo based in the Philippines supports our East and Southeast Asia program, Mercy Becon in Tanzania supporting our dairy value chain work, and Brian Kawuma in Uganda supporting our pig value chain work.

3. Recent developments and transitions

Like other parts of ILRI, communications was also affected by the recent budget tightening.

From Nairobi, Angela Nekasa left her position working in the engagement team. Also departed: Evelyn Katingi from the Livestock and Fish CRP and Jane Gitau from Animal Biosciences.

In Addis, Tesfaye Jemaneh and Asabech Eshete left the publishing team. Abeba Desta retired in May and Fanos Mekonnen left LIVES to study for a PhD in Germany. She has been replaced by Beamlak Tesfaye.

In Nairobi, we also froze 3 positions that were planned to beef up our awareness and advocacy work; while in Addis we froze one web team recruitment as well as a replacement for Abeba Desta.  We did however recruit James Stapleton as managing editor to guide and develop our increasingly important publishing activities.

On 31 August, Peter Ballantyne will complete 6 years in Addis and will begin a 6 month transition period as he explores plans to transfer to another ILRI location (to be determined) during 2016. In the meantime, for this 6 month period beginning 1 September, Peter will continue in his present role at ILRI – working partly from Europe and partly Nairobi. During this period, he will delegate some hands-on managerial tasks, focus on some larger assignments and maintain his strategic oversight of the team. He will continue to visit ILRI locations regularly to work with colleagues/projects.