Coil: Knowledge sharing about knowledge sharing in Guyana

Software Freedom Day September 2015 Picture by Taran Rampersaud http://www.knowprose.com

by Vidyaratha Kissoon

“I think all Guyanese women do not want relationship with men, they just want to have children” the Pastor sitting in the barber chair said. “Where I come from [Africa], women are not like that”

The barber glanced over at me, smiled but continued shaving and cutting. I wanted to cuss up the Pastor, send him back to where he came from. I could only imagine the other important bits of wisdom and knowledge which his congregation accepted from him.

I jumped in the chair after the Pastor paid and left. The barber asked me what I thought , and l I said was ‘yall mussee have to hear nuff stupidness’. The barber is happily married man and proud father and I didn’t bother to ask him if the Pastor was also talking about his wife.

It was a missed opportunity to talk about knowledge and assumptions and to probe the beliefs and the Pastor’s way of knowing what he knew.

A public servant at the Ministry of Education told me last week that the ‘beating children’ thing hard to change. “..Especially among the illiterate”. Her Minister obviously has made no impact on her and given the pressures on parents to ensure their children get good education.

In our brief interaction, nothing I could say about the work being done in many places to change attitudes to beating would convince her that change is possible. There are few real opportunities to talk about what work is being done, what could be continued, what should be stopped.

I was involved in the National Dialogue on HIV and the Law which was held this week. There were 16 submissions to the dialogue. I made a clumsy attempt to share what I thought was a best practice. 

It was one of only two “best practices” submitted.

I felt sad that some of the people who had other good learnings did not feel encouraged to share them. 

There was a similar discussion about some of the other issues, no facilitated interactions which talk about learning from the work done to deal with child abuse, domestic violence, suicide prevention, poverty anything. These problems exist in varying degrees, some attitudes and behaviours change, others do not. A lot of money has been spent on dealing with some of them, but still…

It is easy in Guyana to keep repeating past mistakes rather than to build on good work. There might be political reasons. Every five years , the public sector gets new leaders who want to make their own mark. So all things from the past are burnt even if the same party is in power.

Mark Jacobs writes about the irony of a potato growing project 30 years after Burnham time. The public servants in charge of those projects and reports probably moved on or probably had to write in the wind.

What is knowledge ?

There are many definitions of knowledge. I like the one from the Information Sciences area which connects Knowledge to Data, Information and Wisdom. Data refers to symbols, signs, bits and pieces which have no meaning. Information is the application of meaning to the data and looking at patterns and relationships. Knowledge is the understanding of the information, and connects to experience, skills, context. Wisdom adds value, implies shared understanding relying on judgements, beliefs etc. 

Some believe that Data to Wisdom is a filtering with Wisdom at the top of the pyramid, others 

believe that there is a continuum or flow between the different stages.

David Weinberger notes in a rejection of the DIKW model that knowledge “.. results from a far more complex process that is social, goal-driven, contextual, and culturally-bound. We get to knowledge — especially “actionable” knowledge — by having desires and curiosity, through plotting and play, by being wrong more often than right, by talking with others and forming social bonds, by applying methods and then backing away from them, by calculation and serendipity, by rationality and intuition, by institutional processes and social roles. Most important in this regard, where the decisions are tough and knowledge is hard to come by, knowledge is not determined by information, for it is the knowing process that first decides which information is relevant, and how it is to be used. “

So what is the point then about talking about sharing this uncertain thing in Guyana?

There are conferences in Guyana and seminars , which often depend on a rigorous academic format much in the DIKW model I think. But what of Guyanese who are not academic and who are solving some of their problems in ways which are not harming others? In many places there are public sector innovation labs and other kinds of places which seek to learn and sort out solutions to problems.

Over the years, I have spent time organising events which bring people together to talk about their work, and to about their learnings and scope for replication and further use. I have been on the margins of people talking about ideas but I am often out of place there.

I tend to make free events. Some people are good at charging fees for knowledge sharing. I am not.

The Software Freedom Day events are one set of the events. Free and Open Source software refers to software which users are free to use, share and modify. Many times free software is available free of cost. The events over the years have included demonstrations and presentations, many times by people who are not academic.

The most recent event was held on 15 October, 2016. Most of the persons who attended are young. One of the persons who attended said “It was very interactive and comfortable. Not like any other presentation I’ve been to.”

The format was well.. the usual. Put a person in front of a room and have them perform (presentation is performance). Have some discussion and interaction afterwards.

Some people are good and confident at doing interesting presentations and being in front of a room. 

One participant suggested as an improvement for future events that we work““.. with speakers in advance to polish their presentations”

I feel guilty at the laziness of just using this format. I know that many people who are doing interesting work are not into standing in front of a group of people in a darkened room paging through slides.

I hope that there could be more imaginative ways in creating less intimidating spaces for people to share their knowledge. This is a work in progress.

The space for a knowledge sharing event is the most important thing. Once the venue is sorted, everything else usually falls into place.

There are interesting venues which we have used. I like having a space which is cool – AC is wonderful to have. We have used schools, the NCERD training rooms from the Ministry of Education, computer labs, the YWCA auditorium and lab in 2005 (with the memorable hand drawn poster). A man said he wants to ask the owner of his favourite bar to have a night of presentations like how they have poetry nights. I would not do that.

Publicity is a challenge. I have not learned yet as some events which were well advertised have had 2 or 3 people, others which are less well advertised have standing room only. I tend not to bother too much as the attitude is whoever comes usually benefits from the exchange.

Events have to be facilitated to encourage the interaction and exchange. Time is sometimes needed for the one on one gaff. Skepticism is good, healthy, but should be respectful. There might be alternative experiences to add to the knowledge.

The Pastor probably has his own data and information leading to his knowledge in the barbershop. 

Others  know differently.

We have to keep creating nurturing ways to learn, and to learn about learning, and to learn from others.