Lessons Learned per Public Engagement

Milestone 1

• Attract different stakeholders in order to have a diversity and complementarity to obtain inputs as complete as possible;
• Plan the stakeholders carefully to ensure that the right people, stakeholder groups and organisations are in the room;
• Organise carefully the workshop phases for successfully meeting the objectives and for engaging all participants;
• Use dialog for initiating collaboration among private landowners and municipalities;
• Bring researchers from ‘non-conventional’ areas related to Deep Sea Mining;
• Involve all interested stakeholders;
• Recruit participants based on their interest, research, business or experience related to the workshop topic;
• Offer an incentive for citizens in order to attract people to attend at the workshop;
• Find a topic which will attract different stakeholders;
• Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) can help to overcome the current marine and societal challenges and unlock the potential for Blue Growth;
• Explore the questions that are relevant to the real-life concerns of the group.

Milestone 2

• Develop messages that make the problem tangible for everybody for instance by translating facts and figures into something simple and impactful;
• Provide a good incentive and personal benefits to motivate people to attend the workshop(s) and processes;
• Use using storytelling to describe the challenge with clear and concrete examples;
• Present the topic approached from the beginning of the workshop;
• Explain the challenge in an inclusive, strategic and broad manner for involving all types of participants;
• Define a clear triggering question highlighting the issue and goal to be addressed at the workshop;
• Use diverse communication channels (e-mail, telephone, face-to-face and word of mouth) for recruiting participants;
• Define the initiative's broad goals from a policy, social / cultural, economic, technological perspective;
• During the recruitment phase, ensure the methodology has been clearly explained and understood, to avoid misunderstandings during the event;
• Focus the challenge with relevant examples for the participants and related to their daily lives;
• Use keynote speakers to introduce the topic for example specialists, but their speech must be in simple language and avoid using difficult terminology;
• Define the date, finalise the workshop topic and have communication material two months ahead;
• Focus the workshop and the RRI presentation on a topic relevant for the participants and related to their daily lives;
• Contact directly the person to recruit via e-mails or telephone;
• Address a specific subject that concerns multidisciplinary stakeholders;
• Invite additional stakeholders and communities to join the MARINA knowledge sharing platform and direct them to the results and materials related to Deep Sea Mining;
• Present the Mobilisation and Mutual Learning and RRI approach;
• Define a workshop triggering question that is short, clear and easily understood by all stakeholders;
• Consider personal e-mails as the recruitment mechanism because it has been proven by far the most effective recruitment mechanism;
• Be aware of the motivational factor that workshop participants may feel because they like the fact that an interdisciplinary group representing all society's niches is invited to brainstorming for resolving the problem;
• Be aware about the participants motivations to attend a workshop such as to learn from others participants;
• Perform an analysis of publics' behaviours before engaging the public engagement;
• Use audience targeted communication for all types stakeholders to engage them;
• Initiate target awareness campaigns towards all stakeholders through a specific media;
• Motivate to receive ahead of the workshop and on time the participants' action ideas and to attract participants from all stakeholders’ groups;
• Carefully consider the workshop's duration as many participants think that a one day-long workshop is too long;
• Prepare a concise information corpus for participants;
• Consider societal challenges (as defined by the EC) during the participative events, in order for the results to be easily related to them;
• Inform in a wider manner all societal actors about the issue.

Milestone 3

• Create a relaxing but effective work experience and joint decision-making with the world café methodology;
• Ensure a good representation of professionals (industry related to the topic, policy makers, journalists) to have a balanced dialogue;
• Send a personalised and direct (e-mail or telephone) invitation to ensure a better buy-in of targeted participants;
• Allocate sufficient time for discussions and to involve all participants interests and ideas;
• Allocate more time for group discussions during workshops;
• Adopt participative methods tested in MARINA in other initiatives including stakeholders;
• Attract participants by sending invitations via e‐mail, followed by phone calls;
• Present the topic approached from the beginning of the workshop;
• Offer a clear explanation of the methodology used to be as clear as possible to the participants;
• Use methods for involving the active participation of the public by giving them the opportunity to express their opinions;
• Offer a clear explanation of the methodology used in order to be as clear as possible for the participants;
• Use methods that offer to the participants the opportunity to interact and to have open discussions;
• Explain the participatory method used to the participants as clearly and in a shorter time;
• Choose a familiar methodology for participants;
• Use a method that gives the opportunity to all participants to express their opinion;
• Moderate the workshop with an experienced facilitator to avoid "Groupthink" and the "Erroneous Priorities Effect";
• Explain at the start of the workshop the different phases that participants will go through;
• Continue to engage the stakeholders for knowledge exchange after the workshop;
• Make the workshops highly participatory and interactive;
• Give the participants sufficient time to present themselves and their work/field of interest, in order to facilitate connection and co-operation after the workshop;
• Plan an in-depth and varied engagement with stakeholders at all stages of the projects;
• Adapt the presentation of projects information to the specific needs of respective stakeholders groups;
• Help participants become active in the workshop by helping them understand the importance of the Marine Hot Topic;
• Collaborate with your local partners, which can be great allies.;
• Use role play and "Decide" game to integrate difficult concepts in workshop discussion;
• Adapt the workshop methodology to the local culture;
• Remember that apart from being scientists, teachers, policy-makers, they are all citizens of coastal cities who want to care for the environment as a private person;
• Use common words so that non scientists participants can understand and contribute to the discussion without being overwhelmed by scientific language;
• Assign participants to a specific table according to gender, type of organization/institution, type of expertise in the field, main interest in general to ensure multidisciplinarity;
• Multiply events where researchers from academia and industry exchange with a broader community to enhance this community and its visibility;
• Ensure that participants can exchange knowledge and meet new people;
• Look for participants open to dialogue, but who don't usually interact with each other;
• Start with a roundtable process so that everybody know each-other, and everyone can share their personal perspective of the subject;
• Empower all stakeholder groups to co-create sustainable value propositions that reflect societal needs and support healthy marine environments thanks to RRI dimensions;
• Connect all stakeholders through education and communication;
• Foster collaboration among companies in the marine biotechnologies value chain and social and environmental actors;
• Hook RRI abstract subjects to a topic related to participants lives and has interests in it;
• Recruit participants by telephone to ensure a great effectiveness of recruitment;
• Workshops may participants convince about RRI, but doesn't tend to help them in the concrete application of RRI in their daily work;
• Adapt the workshop schedule and structure according to the specifics and program of the stakeholders you want to attend;
• Implement RRI in real situations, with many participants proposing many actions;
• Choose a suitable method for the number of participants and the specific of the workshop;
• Present and explain the method used;
• Encouraged all the participants to work on all the solutions during the session;
• Mobilize stakeholders for active involvement;
• Engage stakeholders from different sectors of activity;
• Choose a method which will produce a large amount of data on a topic in a short time;
• Invite and encourage different stakeholders to participate at this kind of workshops;
• Create the opportunity to network and discuss, in order to identify the key marine and societal challenges for the Wave Energy Sector;
• Make a clear presentation of the debated issue and its current status;
• Stimulate and ensure open dialogue among the attendees;
• Use of different communications platforms/technologies to communicate with stakeholders and make data accessible;
• Use new communications channels and IT technologies as opportunities to engage with communities;
• Develop webinars for cross-sectorial stakeholder engagement;
• Plan the programme to encourage as much opportunity for interactions between participants;
• The SDD dialogue is a rigorous and efficient participatory methodology, but also time-consuming, leaving no time for the interpretation of the presented ideas in terms of their RRI dimensions by the participants during the workshop;
• Ask participants' to state their workshop expectations because experience shows that some find the workshop and its participatory method intriguing, others were interested In how to develop a shared vision, some had an interest in being inspired and build networks;
• Identify and invite the right number of participants representing all necessary science fields to create a viable action plan. Participant recruiting is time-consuming and must be planned well in advance of the workshop;
• The reversed science cafe method motivates participants to express their opinions and views in a structured, inclusive, yet open manner;
• Participatory workshops provide good opportunities for better discovering developments and problems of the studied industry;
• Enable workshops participants to create networks and communities of interest to further research and identify solutions for the studied issue;
• Engage participants via emails and phone calls, since it has been proven as the most effective means of recruitment;
• Be aware that it is challenging to persuade people to participate in workshops;
• Use both phone and email for citizen recruitment;
• Establish transparent, efficient and effective democratic mechanisms amongst all involved and throughout all the phases to create trust;
• Keep the workshop's duration short and engage an experienced facilitator;
• Email and telephone were the best communication channels for promoting the workshop;
• The SDD method was evaluated as very well structured, inclusive, productive, scientific, interesting and dynamic;
• Plan well the participant groups so that all stakeholders are sufficiently represented;
• Promote the workshop through websites and a poster campaigns;
• Push for multi-stakeholders' representation and input from all relevant actors;
• Bring people and particularly the young on location where they can have transformative experiences that they will seek to relieve throughout their lives;
• Engage young potential "citizen scientists" in schools to promote the issue at hand;
• Achieve positive engagement with all types of local stakeholders including relevant government agencies, local businesses, regulators, NGOs, CSOs, researchers and citizens;
• Clarify from the start of any process or workshop all terms and acronyms so that all participants from various backgrounds understand them;
• Explain clearly the workshop methodology and how the outputs will be used at the beginning of the workshop and include some warm-up activity;
• Learn about participatory methods and how to use them;
• Choose well the workshop methodology to allow participants contribute to the discussion and to strengthen the links among them;
• Ensure the comfort of the room (space around the tables, temperature, light etc.) to reduce the stress and fatigue of the participants and to improve the results. Provide some small "gift" or surprise them somehow, to create a friendly environment for the discussion;
• Define a clear agenda and respect it, but do not hesitate to be flexible and modify the schedule to reach the final results;
• During the recruitment phase, ensure the methodology has been clearly explained and understood, to avoid misunderstanding during the event;
• Participants do not subscribe gladly to the platform, they don't have time and/or willingness to learn using another tool;
• During the recruitment phase, ensure the methodology has been clearly explained and understood, to avoid misunderstanding during the event;
• Ensure you have some big institution's newsletter to disseminate your workshop for recruitment and spreading of the results;
• Use new participatory methodologies to attract participants;
• Take into consideration that despite participants' willingness to participate, often practical barriers impede their attendance in participative workshops;
• Consider having virtual discussions to help some stakeholder groups (e.g. citizens) to attend participatory workshops and events;
• Increase awareness in the youngest about the (local) marine issues to create a new generation of people that are aware of the problems and want to engage themselves, to take action also through a political career;
• Be flexible with the methodology adopted in order to finalize the process, even if not in the way you planned;
• Choose your methodology considering your audience;
• Dedicate the needed time to discuss and clarify the methodology and the agenda with the facilitator - and among the organizing group;
• Define the length of the workshop according with your foreseen audience and local habits;
• Involve students when possible;
• Stream only the most crucial sections of the workshop, disseminate the streaming agenda;
• Provide a synthetic, max 5 pages, info pack about the topic before the workshop;
• During the recruitment phase, ensure the methodology has been clearly explained and understood, to avoid misunderstanding during the event;
• Send an official invitation letter signed by the director/president of the institute organizing the workshop to facilitate the recruitment;
• Apply different participatory methods during the event to maintain a high level of attention.

Milestone 4

• Ensure that all voices have an equal footing in the debate during the workshop;
• Request participants keep trying to think from other stakeholders' position.;
• Allocate time for every participant to present his/her own idea and to discuss it in plenum;
• Let different perspectives on the subject, which will lead to a common background for further discussion;
• Give all participants the opportunity to discuss and generate ideas;
• Allocate time for every participant to present his/her idea and to discuss it in plenum;
• Take measures to develop and further enhance the engagement and cooperation between different stakeholders;
• Request the participants to state their ideas in the form of action statements in order to “push” them to think in practical terms;
• Make an inventory of innovations and tools, and facilitate collaboration and networking for the development of biotechnologies in France;
• Do not interfere too much with the topics participants chose to focus on, it mostly depends on individual needs/experience and knowledge;
• Give participants more time to contribute to the ideas at other tables;
• Enable each group to take the floor to present their results;
• Put in place a multi-stakeholder dialogue to efficiently reduce plastic pollution;
• Activate citizens as a resourceful group of action that could lead to a more innovative and including society;
• Find moderators with experience on methods used for event moderation;
• Use a method that encourages participants to work together in order to have an interactive group;
• Try to approach of potential participants and their engagement in convergent discussions with the future topic of the event;
• Have proactive public participation from stakeholders, in particular from government and industry;
• Encourage and promote marine involvement for all stakeholders;
• Promote best practice cross sectorial stakeholder engagement processes through webinars;
• Find the best way to incorporate the multi-disciplinary element into the organisation of the workshop;
• Establish cooperation among diverse stakeholders (researchers, innovative businesses, politicians and citizens) even when it's challenging;
• Mobilise stakeholders early in the process to develop viable and sustainable business models;
• Joined stakeholder involvement produces ideas with integrated and holistic focus based on synergy and collaboration;
• Collect participant's post-workshop feedback focusing on the added value workshop points: the participatory method, the topic, the action plan, the common vision, the future participation options;
• Create a friendly and relaxed workshop atmosphere for participants to have lively and open discussions;
• Plan well the workshop so that participants provide their ideas in an active way;
• Avoiding "Groupthink" and the "Erroneous Priorities Effect": taking measures for the protection of the authenticity of all ideas;
• Give tight bounds to participants about the shape of the contributions they have to provide, so they will not have other option than provide what is needed;
• Check the discussion and gently but firmly ask the participants not to lose focus on the final purpose, to speed up and keep up with the timing or not to go too deep or too specific;
• One day is not enough for SDD.

Milestone 5

• Ensure that all participants stay until the end of the workshop to have coherent results;
• Have participants rank the priorities and discuss from the highest to the lowest to co-construct a common vision;
• Foster stakeholder engagement, capacity building, behavioural changes and production and consumption pattern shift with Science education;
• Use the SMART action format to ease the follow up of the workshop;
• Have a discussion phase that is long enough for all participants to be fully aware of all the implications of the proposed ideas without extending the duration of the workshop;
• Develop a stakeholder engagement plan;
• Define a clear plan for the future engagement of the workshop's participants to keep the community active;
• Create decision-making processes that are participative, transparent and allow for public deliberation;
• Check carefully the voting process of the actions, to avoid selfish or non correct behaviours which could distort the results;
• Translate workshop results in something short and friendly in short time and disseminate among the participants and others, not to loose momentum;
• Check carefully the voting process, to avoid selfish or improper behaviours, which could distort the results;
• Empower citizens beyond data collection through involvement in decision-making and governance;
• Prepare take home tools and methods that participants can implement in their jobs;
• Identify easy-to-implement solutions to attract people and harbour-related businesses in innovative harbour development;
• Develop tools for engaging citizens in urban development and communicate them broadly to inspire local communities;
• Develop new models and ways of collaborating on climate change in order to create common knowledge and more awareness of climate change in public mind;
• Organize more science dissemination events targeting the general public;
• Promote citizen science to involve the general public on research;
• Develop more partnerships with the Media and NGOs in order to reach bigger audiences;
• Develop and organize more actions, in order that different stakeholders meet and discuss their ideas more often and get used to think outside their boxes;
• Increase awareness regarding water quality;
• Develop a network of common interest;
• Try to obtain clear actions from people from different areas of interest, but targeting the common vision;
• Engage the public and involve governing bodies at various levels to generate ideas that are ethical, sustainable, inclusive and of social justice;
• Push participants to move beyond exchanging ideas and to start co-creating a vision;
• Improve efficient communication, generate plural debates and disseminate reliable data and information to convert vision into reality;
• Achieve success through multi-stakeholder engagement and consensus;
• Awareness and education are fundamental in changing mind-sets;
• Allocate a good part of the workshop for creating a clear common action plan;
• Generate ideas for actions during the workshops by having: a) simple, short title; one line describing the idea and one-two lines (minimum) explaining and clarifying the idea;
• Generate ideas for actions during the workshops by having: b) think who would be responsible for implementing the proposed action and how to engage the person or organisation;
• Generate ideas for actions during the workshops by having: c) timing (when could such an idea be implemented);
• Generate ideas for actions during the workshops by having: d) resources (how would the idea be implemented);
• Ensure that the process of co-generating an action plan is concluded during the workshop;
• While interpreting the results consider the location of the workshop: statistically most of the participants will come from the area where the workshop is held;
• Choose the most effective methodology to build a common vision and give space to many different voices;
• Ask the participants to obtain in advance the necessary authorization from the Institutions they represent, to propose actions during the workshop;
• Consider the best way of collecting votes for the purpose such as the number of votes available for each participant, the rounds of votes, etc.

Milestone 6

• Identify common working initiatives between municipalities and the civil societies, so that citizens may be actively involved;
• Take actions in order to update the actual legislation;
• Involve some stakeholders in the creation or validation of the scientific processes to improve their acceptance of the final results, even if it can be seen as a time-consuming process;
• Follow up with the participants with periodic workshops using the same methodology;
• Develop new tools and infrastructures of research on marine resources, particularly in inaccessible depths, but also for monitoring the marine environment, stocks of biomass or still unwanted algae;
• Develop societal awareness about water and advantages of use of renewable energy sources in general and offshore wind farms in particular;
• Promote public engagement actions to raise awareness to the urgency of deep sea mapping;
• Develop partnership between different stakeholders;
• Create links among participants for future partnerships and develop a network of common interest;
• Engage participants to apply RRI principles in daily work and daily life;
• Develop a clear understanding around Marine Spacial Planning (MSP) and what its implications are for all stakeholders groups including offshore wind;
• Make urban planning and tourism development collaborative and democratic by involving citizens and business in envisioning urban futures and resolve negative environmental impacts;
• Follow-up on motivated participants of how that used the knowledge obtained in workshops for third private and professional projects;
• Educate the public at large in their individual role in marine conservation and sustainability (Public Engagement, Science Education);
• Action and follow-up the co-defined action plan;
• Make scientific information reliable and easily accessible to citizens and stakeholders;
• Use citizen observatories through mobile phones to report pollution sites and inappropriate environmental behaviour;
• Provide Open Access to data for a proactive response to societal challenges.

Milestone 7

• Follow-up with all participants and monitor results regularly and engage them in post-workshop knowledge sharing and networking through an online platform;
• It's necessary a good collaboration and interaction between civil society, policy makers, researchers, business sector and citizens, in all the Black Sea coastal countries;
• Be aware that only about half of the participants are likely to use the knowledge gained at the workshop;
• Involving customers ranked the most favourable cluster with specific actions including the adoption of the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) business model;
• Try to engage volunteer groups/stakeholders who use the specific environment on a regular basis;
• The participants did not follow-up on the platform as they declared they were willing to do: there are too many platforms, they get lost or do not have time to explore another one.

Milestone 8

• Coordinate collaborative activities and tools to push RRI forward;
• Organise regular follow-up workshops by involving more decision makers to anchor change;
• Promote a greater participation of general public in projects financed by European funds to help filling the gap between science and society;
• Equip urban open areas for open debates where local communities can meet frequently in order to exercise the rights guaranteed by the Aarhus convention to develop sustainable decisions in a collective and legal manner;
• Be aware that the knowledge transfer to other sectors and general public is a great challenge faced by partners of European projects;
• Consider opportunities of synergies between the fisheries and aquaculture sectors in the Azores;
• Coordinate and develop industrial, academic and political linkages to boost funding around marine biotechnologies;
• Engage all interested stakeholders in harbour development;
• Attract private investments and develop national projects;
• Disseminate information about opportunities, threats and risks on the studied topic;
• Create a seafood producers organisation in France to reduce the gap between the producers and consumers;
• Facilitate fruitful discussions and widely disseminate conclusions to third parties;
• Create platforms where industry and academic leaders can disseminate accurate and influential information which can be accessible by the general public;
• Plan periodic meetings on the same topic, with old and new participants, to create ownership of the process, intensify the effort and ensure follow-up;
• Involve a multitude of stakeholders and implement actions as widely as possible, even globally, in order for adopted policies and solutions to be as relevant as possible, resulting in more support to implement the changes by all sides;
• Use your participatory event as a flywheel to organize other similar events.

See also...

RRI Dimension