Dear All,

Thanks a lot to Stan for the introduction and warm welcome back to the CSI community. I am really happy and excited that I have the opportunity to work with you all again, as I find the CSI community to be one of the most vibrant and active ones in the CGIAR.

So in the run up to the AAGW I plan to be communicating with all of you to share what we are planning and to give support on making this an event which is fruitful for all.

As Stan indicated in his email, we are working on the agenda for the week and details of the various sessions. Wednesday is dedicated to CSI and to hearing all about what you have been doing, achieving and learning. Given the time in which we find ourselves, we thought we would use the time and space together to look at ‘navigating the change’ as a theme. In this way we would like you all to target your presentations towards this theme, using the guidelines provided(find attached again).

In short the presentations should give us:

• headlines of what has been done and achieved—things that will be useful for others as well as tools, methods, ideas which could be offered to future megaprograms, partners and other efforts
• an advertisement for your unit, your services, your ideas etc—what could be offered as services (what have you already been asked to do for megaprograms or other new CGIAR structures?)
• and a Centre page spread on what your thoughts and ideas for the future of CSI units and the overall CSI could/should be-what could such services look like?

We don’t want just a blanket report on any- and everything that has been done in your centre. We hope that you will think carefully about what you present in light of the changes we are all going through with the new CGIAR and what things can be useful for taking forward on this journey. I hope that it is clear. I am happy to answer any questions, provide ideas for presentation formats etc, review presentations, discuss and more—please feel free to contact me.

Also as usual the week will offer many opportunities for sharing, and we would like to invite you to bring posters and other materials you may have which can be displayed as part of other activities during the week.

I look forward to working with you all again and seeing you soon at the AAGW meeting in Nairobi.

Cheers,
Nadia

The Training Day will take place on on Friday 11 June at the ILRI Campus in Nairobi, Kenya.

The program of the day includes parallel training sessions from ESRI and Google.

Google program:

A series of workshops  to learn how Google's geo tools relate to each other and can be used for scientific investigations, resource management, monitoring deforestation, and also as powerful communication tools.

Featured products will include

Google Earth
Google Maps
Google Map Maker
Fusion Tables
Open Data Kit.

All products will be presented in a context of applied agriculture in order to facilitate discussions in the spirit of the theme of the event.

ESRI program:

In this workshop you will learn about the new features coming with ArcGIS Server 10. You will learn how to use your data to make maps and share them with others by publishing them on a server.  ArcGIS offers several options for building web applications. You will learn how to quickly and easily use configurable web applications to leverage maps from ArcGIS.com as well as your own data. You will also learn about the different types of web applications you can build with the different ArcGIS APIs. The workshop will also focus on the new web editing capabilities of ArcGIS Server 10. This functionality will enable you to create a variety of web applications for collaboration.  The workshop will cover a complete step by step process: from authoring your maps effectively for web editing, enabling web editing capabilities in ArcGIS Server, and selecting the appropriate end client application to support different editing workflows.

Featured technology:

Dear Colleagues,

With just over one month to go to the AAGW meeting, things are hotting up and our Logistics and Programme teams have been working hard to make things as smooth and productive as possible. One great piece of news is that Nadia Manning who so skillfully led the facilitation of our meeting last year is going to be with us again. Welcome back Nadia!

Thanks to a deal struck between Enrica and Nadia, we will not only be served by Nadia’s great facilitation skills at the meeting itself but, following some discussion amongst our program planning team, Nadia has taken the lead in putting together a set of background notes and guidelines both to better focus our AAGW deliberations, and to help us pull together some coherent follow-up and communication/outreach pieces we can draw from after the meeting.

I attach the Nadia’s notes and emphasize we think it’s important for the success and impact of the meeting that you adhere to them as closely as possible (especially re presentation guidelines) .

Let me know if you have any questions about this or any other aspect of the meeting.

Best

Stan