Lessons Learned Relating to all challenges

A

Achieve positive engagement with all types of local stakeholders including relevant government agencies, local businesses; regulators; NGOs, CSOs, researchers and citizens;
Achieve success through multi-stakeholder engagement and consensus;
Action and follow-up the co-defined action plan;
Adjust legislation to allow open access to marine-related research;
Allocate a good part of the workshop for creating a clear common action plan;
Allocate sufficient time for discussions and to involve all participants interests and ideas;
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;
Awareness and education are fundamental in changing mindsets;

B

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;
Build capacity through education by developing local and national programmes for secondary schools and outreach programmes through citizen projects utilising real-time data from monitoring equipment;

C

Consider the impacts of any activity before consenting which may require the deployments of monitoring technologies to facilitate monitoring and impact assessment;
Coordinate all activities related to policy, planning and regulation in the best possible way to reduce conflict and help meet environmental, economic and social objectives;
Create a friendly and relaxed workshop atmosphere for participants to have lively and open discussions;

D

Define a clear plan for the future engagement of the workshop's participants to keep the community active;
Define a workshop triggering question that is short, clear and easily understood by all stakeholders;
Describe the workshop topic with clear and concrete examples of the subject using storytelling;
Develop real-time information systems, training activities and incentives to share knowledge and information for avoiding tendencies of local governments and businesses to downplay negative consequences;
Disseminate research and innovation outcomes that have societal relevance for ethical acceptability;

E

Email and telephone were the best communication channels for promoting the workshop;
Embed governance in legislation through accountability to ensure the sustainability of marine sectors;
Enable workshops participants to create networks and communities of interest to further research and identify solutions for the studied issue;
Encourage researchers to voice their opinions on marine issues in the media focusing on economic, environmental and social needs to enable the uptake of new technologies;
Establish transparent, efficient and effective democratic mechanisms amongst all involved and throughout all the phases to create trust;
Explain at the start of the workshop the different phases that participants will go through;
Explain RRI and innovation tools and how to embed them in policy agendas as participants find it useful;
Explain the workshop topic in an inclusive, strategic and broad manner for involving all types of participants;

F

Focus not only on high-level ideas but also on required research and innovation actions needed to execute them;
Focus on environmental aspects through a multi-stakeholder approach to ensure stability and availability of resources;

G

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);

I

Identify motives for policy makers and implementers to participate in the workshops as they are reluctant in participating;
Improve marine education provided in medium and higher education;
Involve politicians and municipality representatives in workshops to increase its effectiveness;

O

Organise carefully the workshop phases for successfully meeting the objectives and for engaging all participants;

P

Perform an analysis of publics' behaviours before engaging the public engagement;
Plan well the participant groups so that all stakeholders are sufficiently represented;
Plan well the workshop so that participants provide their ideas in an active way;
Promote the workshop through websites and poster campaigns;

S

Succeed with public engagement through science education and open access in policy;

T

The SDD method was evaluated as very well structured, inclusive, productive, scientific, interesting and dynamic;
To measure the workshop's success, define clear and achievable objectives;

U

Use audience targeted communication for all types stakeholders that is engaging.
Use both phone and email for citizen recruitment;
Use diverse communication channels (e-mail, telephone, face-to-face and word of mouth) for recruiting participants;
Use of technology as an instrument to both monitor the regulations and to disseminate data in near real-time;
Use the media to bring awareness to the society about the results from research and innovation;

See also...