Talk:Stage two planning

Please provide your votes/comments on these suggested plans for stage 2 of the DFM project. For example:

• Ideas and preferences for brown bag meetings, webinars, in-person meetings
• Suggestions for pilot projects
• Ideas about how to involve students in the second half of the project
• Thoughts about potential collaborative writing outputs, such as the proposed edited volume or collaborative monograph

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As @DerekDFM mentioned, the pilot interventions suggested in our recent meeting may cut across geographies (e.g. the Anganwadi scheme relevant in India and Bangladesh) and may be relevant to policy across the project (e.g. implementing appropriate uses of pesticides for insect and fungal control). Here are a couple of ideas for how to frame our thinking about these interventions:

1. Are there any "best practices" that we can identify or share across teams? For example, do we see any successful interventions for reduction of harmful pesticides that we can bring to Bangladesh, where (as Mostafa mentions) uptake of safe alternatives has been lower?
2. Can we develop interventions that are actually forms of collaborative knowledge mobilization, translating and extending the findings from DFM Scoping research alongside community partners? What are the opportunities for disseminating results, through workshops or publications, or using the results as a foundation for small action research projects involving NGO partners and collaborators?

The DFMSL team would support the idea on “Best practices” that can be shared among teams. Here we would like to bring two points, which were explored through the scoping phase. We are expecting to get successful interventions from the DFM family for the followings. · Use of Poly bags in maldive fish processing: With the expansion of the production, maldive fish processors pack many frigate tuna into one poly bag and dip in boiling water for few minutes, which is not hygienic. · Use of solar dryers: At present, the processors are only adopting sun drying on open spaces rather on beaches as the drying method. Despite the Department of Cooperatives, National Aquatic Resources Research and Development Agency (NARA) and few other institutes had worked on improved methods of drying; the community is reluctant to accept it/information has not well communicated (or some other reasons). DFMSL team expect to explore the reasons for rejection and suggest ‘best practices’ for efficient and profitable drying while minimizing losses, spoilages, and contaminations experienced by the processors.

These are both clear and focused possibilities for interventions. Both suggest comparative and place-specific research could provide guidance for a targeted, learning pilot intervention. I suggest that we give some time for the teams to provide further ideas for pilot interventions and then we have a follow-up meeting for more detailed planning.

Slack was suggested by Ben at the January 25 meeting. I've heard very good things about Slack, though it seems to be the sort of application that is rolled out at an organizational level as a substitute for internal email, so I'm not sure it is ideal for our use case scenario. There is a free tier but the feature set is quite limited, and beyond that it becomes expensive.

We do obviously have a discussion/forum facility right here, built into the DFM Wiki, which we have not really used up to this point but that I think would meet our needs. It offers nice threaded discussions that can be bookmarked by URL. It also has an email notification system, which you can enable for activity on topics where you have posted. You have to enable this in Special:Preferences; go to the tab "Notifications" and check the "Email" box next to "Structured Discussions".

Given that we do have this existing in-house communications platform, I think it makes sense to see if we can find ways to support the use of the wiki further within DFM.

Colleen Cranmer (DFM-supported student at the University of Ottawa) suggested to us that she would be interested in helping facilitate these meetings as part of her RA work this semester, and states that it would be a useful place for DFM students to get advice or insights to guide their research.

I note that some of these meetings could be hosted by research teams, though we would still need some central work to be done in putting together a schedule, creating topics, etc. We would also need some secretarial help, like a writing up of key discussion points (to be shared on the project wiki and/or blog), or putting together documents such as research instruments or a summary of recent articles that could anchor the discussions at some of these meetings.

EDIT: I'm wondering if our other students have thoughts on meetings and communications, including what topics and platforms would be most helpful? @AklimaAkter, @Madu, @Mahfuzar Rahman, @NAlmine, @Wae Win, ...

Hi everyone, nice to meet you all on this platform. I'm a first-year Ph.D. student under the supervision of Dr. Marschke at UOttawa. We are involved in the research happening in Cambodia. As Eric mentioned, I think the brown bag meetings will be a great forum to hear about similar research within the Dried Fish Matters network and share insights on past and upcoming fieldwork. The discussions could help generate ideas and guidance for students working on research proposals or in the writing/analysis phase and utilize the different backgrounds of expertise in the network. Interested in hearing anyone's thoughts on this and if other students see it as beneficial to their work?