More than 40 participants from 28 organizations came together in Brighton on October 4 and 5 to discuss current intiatives, experiences and directions of climate knowledge brokering - the work of many organizations involved in creating, transferring and making information about climate change available to a variety of end-users.
In its role as the Climate Knowledge Brokers (CKB) Group Coordination Hub, REEEP co-organized this year's CKB group workshop, together with the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN), with generous support from SAP and the Semantic Web Company (SWC). The objectives of the workshop were to continue the strong collaborative links between climate knowledge brokers working in the climate and development area, enabling them to improve access to reliable information, to exchange methods in these sectors and to enhance their ability to share lessons and experience.
During the workshop, participants discussed a variety of topics in plenary and interactive workshop sessions, with opportunities for bilateral conversations in poster sessions. One of the highlights from the first day were the "climate knowledge sharing clinics", a type of constructive and open peer learning session. In other sessions on Saturday, REEEP's Sigmund Kluckner introduced the Coordination Hub to the group, and REEEP's Quinn Reifmesser presented the recent success of one of CKB's joint projects, the Climate Tagger. The Climate Tagger, supported by the German Government and Climate Technology Centre and Network (CTCN), among others, is an innovative software solution based on the reegle Tagging API to help knowledge brokers better categorize and contextualize their own data, and connect to relevant information on other platforms.
The Sunday morning focused on the experiences, backgrounds and possibilities for enabling the climate knowledge brokers' work through fundraising. In a chat-show style sessions, Geoff Barnard from CDKN interviewed Ari Huhtala and Blane Harvey, both experienced on both sides of non-profit fund raising and granting. The concluding session was a self-organized session by the participants, bringing in discussion topics from their recent work.
To read more about the CKB Group Annual Workshop check out the article: Understanding climate knowledge: Participants engage in the 2014 Climate Knowledge Brokers Workshop at the IDS website.
