Twenty years on in October 2021, the Dgroups Foundation convened an online partnership dialogue to look back and forwards, exploring how online collaboration in the development sector might evolve and actions we can take to prepare for the changes. The starting points were four critical areas for effective online interaction that we identified in 2020: (a) enhanced online participation and inclusion; (b) effective online communities; (c) appropriate online collaboration platforms and tools; and (d) sustained online engagement over time.

The October 2021 virtual meeting took these four critical online engagement factors and mapped them to three common contexts where they tend to be applied.

Before participants formed groups to share insights, discuss trends and identify future actions, we opened with a reflective chat show with Dgroups users and an interview with Nancy White. Following the group session, several participants joined a fishbowl exercise to synthesize some key insights from the event.

In a warm-up, participants shared the issues that were upmost on their collaborative minds, including: too many tools, do we need to rationalize them? cross-institutional opportunities and challenges; people coming together and connecting – more open spaces for knowledge sharing; the potential for linking up with everyone’s work and overlaps of interest; how to strengthen virtual communities of practice; collaborating in a world where divides seem to be increasing; is email too old fashioned? ways to build, trust, co-create, learn, network, dialogue; strategic decision-making on the right platform and the right setting; safety and inclusion issues; how online communities interact with  ‘real’ worlds; the decolonisation of knowledge and creating more space for Southern voices in global policy; post-pandemic working online; bringing very diverse groups together; communities.

They also identified an initial list of disruptive or constructive changes they see arriving by 2030. These included: Wide digital literacy … but scattered and polarized; information and old collaborations disappearing or not findable; more national control on information sharing channels and more monetization of data; augmented reality; artificial intelligence (positive and negative impacts?); info terrorism; moving away from face to face meetings as a response to the climate crisis; multi-lingual mobile platforms, contextualised spaces; cyber-attacks; more efficient work and quite constructive, but we need to maintain hybrid ways of collaboration; younger generations becoming leaders in collaboration and online dialogue; new generations of digital users determining what tools and interaction will look like; hybrid collaboration; smaller devices with high capabilities to connect us.

Online collaboration trends

The core of the meeting was a group exercise where participants looked at emerging future trends they observe around online collaboration. Based on these, the groups identified potential priority actions that we can take to prepare for or even influence what’s coming. Each group looked at one of the vertical or horizontal dimensions of our matrix, sharing insights, predictions and recommendations. The image below gives a simplified picture of the trends identified across all the groups.

What can we look forward to? The first answer is ‘more’ – more demand for online interaction, networking, collaboration and virtual events.  This will most likely complement trends accelerated by the COVID19 pandemic that caused a migration to online platforms across the world.  Even as face to face opportunities return, we expect many events to retain an online or hybrid element. Luckily, this trend will be matched by continuing improvements in internet connectivity and the spread of smart phones and other communication devices. Within organizations, much more intense online interaction will be through internal platforms such as Microsoft Teams, Yammer, Slack and so on where staff will become more digitally literate as they join and run online activities. Beyond these organizational environments, we expect to see a continuing growth in tools and platforms for every situation with some taking off and others keeping their niche markets or disappearing.

Alongside this shift to online, participants expect boundaries between work and life to blur, with online engagement likely to be full on, all the time, anywhere. A major trend is the expectation that this extra online demand will overload people, competing for time, diluting attention, and putting a premium on really essential and effective opportunities where participation pays off. With online no longer a novelty and attention diminished, it will be increasingly difficult to attract and sustain participation in events and online communities. But, people or communities that can offer a better or richer engagement do expect to counter this trend.

While generally concluding that we – the knowledge and collaboration community – need to improve our game, participants anticipate a boom in opportunities – technical and professional – that will open up new horizons (virtual, voice-based), help us cross boundaries of language, culture and distance, and drive enhanced abilities to deliver effective online interactions. Also on the positive side, participants expect that barriers to participation and the ways we exclude certain people will be properly recognized and translated into guidelines and practices for more inclusive online interactions. Nonetheless, many of the groups identified continuing challenges in the future to fully include and value the voices and experiences of women and youth, and to overcome barriers of poor internet access and language. Changing power imbalances is seen as a key part of this. There is also a sense that the coming generations will communicate differently, as digital natives, and explicitly tapping insights and energy of youth is critical.

In summary – there will be many more – and better – opportunities to engage, interact and collaborate online. We know this needs to be more inclusive and we will find ways to make it happen. We will need to up our game to attract and keep the attention and active participation of people in a market overloaded by online events, workshops and platforms. We will also need to continually enhance our facilitation and ‘participation’ skills to overcome continuing inclusion challenges.

Actions for future online collaboration

Alongside the discussions on future trends, the groups identified priority actions that could be taken to enhance online events, collaboration and interaction. The image below gives a simplified picture of the action areas identified across all the groups.

A recurring action across all the groups is the need for online activities to be better adapted and adjusted to target audiences. This includes planning for people with low bandwidth, planning around platforms with firewalls or heavy bandwidth requirements, planning for time zones, including people who could not attend a meeting, mixing immediate and asynchronous interaction options, including the full range of devices that people may use, exploring how platforms like WhatsApp can be part of the mix, and reaching across different age groups.

Knowing and adjusting to audiences is closely linked to the other recurring action to maximise participation in online groups, communities or events. Groups talked about the importance of good process design, preparation and facilitation, more democratic participation at different levels of a community, involving more people in the running of an online activity, providing incentives to contribute, keeping discussions and interactions focused and relevant to the agreed goal, distil out what’s really important, ensure that past discussions are retained and can be drawn from, and winning trust. Targeted social media around online activities serves to extend reach and reinforce communication.

Overcoming exclusion is a key part of a strategy to maximise participation. Participants suggest that more diverse voices must be brought to the centre of plans and actions (and currently dominant ones have to make space for these), youth in particular need to be meaningfully involved, and good practice needs to be documented and applied. As hybrid working spreads, we need to ensure that ‘virtual’ workers are not left out of decisions made face to face.

The group that focused on inclusion suggested that inclusion means: Southern knowledge, different types of knowledge, de-centering academic knowledge as THE knowledge, local knowledge, creating spaces where different types of knowledge act as equals. Being inclusive means creating spaces for different and diverse types of knowledge and people to interact and collaborate, leading to better performance. Inclusion is required within online engagements, to overcome connectivity issues, as well as differences in devices, language, literacy and identity that hold people back from participation.

Alongside diverse voices, using diverse tools, platforms and approaches is recommended as part of efforts to enhance and open up diverse modes of participation. There’s a strong call to build on what already exists, to avoid duplication and to work through existing communities and collaborations as far as possible. Collaboration is something we need to practice as well as facilitating it for others.

Finally, while diversity and inclusion came up repeatedly as key principles, participants called for actions to make sure our online spaces are ‘safe’, to guard against ‘fake’ news, and for us to increase our understanding and literacy around polarization and how to overcome it

Reflecting on the group discussions, participants highlighted some key points, including: While the principles are the same, the tools are different; we need to make sure we get young people on board; it is important to tackle inclusion and break barriers; email is outdated; always question assumptions and ask the participation questions before engagement; we tend to spend more time catching up than preparing for the future; communities need to have purpose and be effectively managed; the post-activity is as important as the activity itself; there are important differences between Communities of Practice and Networks; people can adapt easily to new online context if someone takes time to involve them;  with so many online workshop tools available, organizations need to select and embrace the right ones; online can be non-inclusive due to language; hybrid processes – like hybrid crops – have more vigour and are more productive.

The final fishbowl exercise stimulated some further reflections, including: we face major issues overcoming language barriers; early in the pandemic felt perhaps warmer as people experimented and discovered, now, we just rush between events; purely virtual relationships also work super great; how do we overcome events beyond our control, such as an internet provider going offline during an online meeting? I am not too worried about misinformation but more about polarization; with so many virtual events can we differentiate between those that really matter, and single them out from a process perspective? I think we could also stress a bit more and enhance capacity on Information Literacy; we are balancing between becoming echo-chambers and fighting info-terrorism/ misleading information; how do we keep moving forward even when the spaces are not truly safe (which is a huge and challenging aspiration) – are there ways we can be a greater force for good; or guiding people to the better spaces? intergenerational dialogue and learning is critical to foster.

All in all, it was another hugely interesting discussion. We were able to build out from what we discussed in 2020, deepening some insights and ideas. The whole exclusion/inclusion agenda seems more and more central and it is not just about how we include people with low bandwidth, across languages or genders and generations, but how dialogue can conitune to be diverse without polarizing and leading to even more exclusion. I look forward to picking up some of the ideas in 2022.

Our great appreciation to all the participants and also the various chat show, fishbowl and group facilitators and discussants.

This included a knowledge café in May that identified four critical success factors for online collaboration, a KM4Dev@20 workshop in July, an e-conference to identify what really works, and a further knowledge café in September that reviewed and extended the key points emerging.

A brief summarising these interactions sets out four critical areas for effective online interaction: (a) enhance participation and engagement; (b) nurture effective communities; (c) use appropriate platforms; and (d) sustain engagement over time.

As well as these critical areas, the brief highlights lessons from the Foundation’s own online interactions and identified key messages for more effective online interaction:

• Mix formats and channels and tones – formal, informal, conversations, zoom and email, online, offline, and knowing when to converse and when to document;
• Learn and innovate and experiment together, adapting styles to participants and purposes, reinforcing sharing of tacit and explicit knowhow and curating links and resources;
• Clarify and agree goals, plans, expectations and purpose, to be really aware of any assumptions – and not be afraid to regularly revisit and adjust priorities and plans;
• Devise processes that translate audiences who watch into participants who engage – knowing who is online, making sure they can be heard or seen, and actively facilitating interactions;
• Make conversations and interactions as inclusive as possible, overcoming connectivity barriers, tackling power dynamics, choosing accessible applications, bringing in all the experiences of participants and giving space for new or different voices.

Download the brief: More effective online collaboration, dialogue and interaction – What works in international development?

• Enhancing #participation and #engagement
• Nurturing effective #COPs
• Using appropriate #platforms
• #Learning through e-collaboration
• #Sustaining engagement through time

On 24 September, the Dgroups Foundation facilitated an online meeting to discuss whether these are indeed ‘the’ critical issues and ways to capitalize on this emerging agenda. The meeting was part of the knowledge café series put together by the KM4Dev community, and was attended by more than 40 persons, from Kenya to the United States.

Introducing the session, Peter Ballantyne explained the origins of this workshop, starting with a knowledge café in May where participants identifed four critical success factors for online collaboration. This was followed by a session in the KM4Dev@20 workshops in July, where participants extended the agenda (with considerations of the COVID-19 pandemic, a focus on event design and dynamics, calls for cross-community learning and, especially, for greater attention to inclusion), and then with a four-week e-conference where more than 110 practitioners from all over the world looked at ‘what works’ when talking about online collaboration, dialogue and interactions in international development. This session directly resulted from the e-conference where people asked to have a live conversation around the many ideas shared.

An icebreaker exercise asked participants to share ways they collaborate online have changed this year. For some, working from home and working virtually has translated into more frequent and sometimes better managed, more focused meetings. Online collaboration is not a choice and people have become more confident with online tools. On the other hand, working virtually has also meant busier agendas and longer working days. And while it’s easier to collaborate online, participation is not always equal, especially for users that don’t have a good internet connection.

Introducing the initial conclusions and recommendations, e-conference moderator Jorge Chavez-Tafur asked workshop participants to reflect in small groups on these issues, discussing their relevance to their own experiences.

Discussions were deliberately not formally documented; participants instead used the chat to share their recommended ways to enhance online collaboration. Their ideas showed the importance of:

• Mixing formats and channels and tones – formal, informal, conversations, zoom and email for example, online, offline, and knowing when conversation or documentation are best suited
• Learning and innovating and experimenting together, adapting styles to participants and purposes, reinforcing sharing of tacit and explicit knowhow and curating links and resources
• Clarifying and agreeing goals, plans, expectations and purpose, to really be aware of any assumptions – and not be afraid to regularly revisit and adjust priorities and plans
• Devising processes that translate audiences who watch into participants who engage – knowing who is online, making sure they have a chance with the microphone, and actively facilitating interactions
• Making conversations and interactions as inclusive as possible, overcoming connectivity barriers, tackling power dynamics, choosing accessible applications, bringing in all the experiences of participants and giving space for new or different voices.

Reflecting on the actual process of interaction and engagement used for this exercise (3 facilitated Zoom workshops to identify and discuss an agenda, a moderated e-conference to explore insights and lessons more deeply, a wiki to capture and organize insights, blog posts and video reports of the discussions, synthesis and summary products … ) participants formed groups again to share how they felt about the various engagement elements. Some of the ‘success’ insights seen or heard by participants included:

• Actively inviting and encouraging people to take part; engaging people behind the scenes as the facilitator and reaching out individually to encourage and appreciate their participation
• Having a dialogue that was well-organized, structured and focused, time-bound and a sense that it is brought together for a purpose/outcome
• Considering the importance of trust – which can be reinforced through interactions and getting to know and appreciate others
• Building horizontal interactions and networking; getting to meet people, find people and share in their knowledge – all needing good leadership
• Encouraging people to take part by mapping their knowledge, providing conversational spaces, fishbowl type meetings and video interviews; Zoom calls can build trust between people and email/wiki provides the space for analysis and thinking.

Looking forward, we closed the discussions by brainstorming what some concrete ways to capitalize on these insights and learning could be:

• Document how the online discussions were organized so the approach can be adapted by others
• Document and share the notes and recordings of the discussions
• Map the impact of CoPs, particularly KM4Dev
• Organize specific ‘peer assists’ on some challenging online situations (e.g., my annual conference is virtual; my learning event is online; my writeshop is digital; how do I document an online event …) where collective experiences can be shared and documented – as an extension of the KS Toolkit for example
• Keep having these conversations – not everything needs to be documented – there is value in just sharing
• Use the wiki to summarize conversation; encourage participants to contribute to this.
• Devise a capitalization process: make a pool for ideas, call for participation, link them at the back end, match them with a good facilitator…

These ideas will be fed back into the e-conference where they will feed development of a short synthesis product and help continue and sustain the engagement through the various networks and emerging collaborations.

Report compiled by Peter Ballantyne, Jorge Chavez-Tafur and Pier Andrea Pirani