Lessons Learned from Italy MML workshops

A

• Ask to the participants to obtain in advance the necessary authorization from the Institutions they represent, to propose actions during the workshop;

C

• Check carefully the voting process, to avoid selfish or non-correct behaviours which could distort the results;
• 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;
• Claim for an alignement between legislation and the changing scientific situation and technological innovations;
• Consider holding virtual discussions to help some of the stakeholder groups (e.g. citizens) to attend these kind of events;
• Consider societal challenges (as defined by the EC) during the participative events, in order for the results to be easily related to them;
• Consider the best way of collect votes, the n. of votes available for each participant, the rounds of votes, etc.;
• Create innovative tools to guide the consumers, thus inducing public and private stakeholders (including NGOs) to invest in more sustainable directions;

D

• Define a clear agenda and respect it, but do not hesitate to be flexible and modify the schedule to reach the final results;
• Define the length of your workshop according with your foreseen audience and local habits;
• Develop information-based decision support tools, with automated intervention systems;
• During the recruitment phase, ensure the methodology has been clearly explained and understood, to avoid misunderstanding during the event;

E

• Empower citizens beyond data collection, in decision making and governance;
• Ensure a ministerial umbrella to facilitate the educative process in school by scientists or scientific mediators;
• Ensure that the process of co-generating an action plan is concluded during the workshop;
• 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;
• Ensure you have some big institutions newsletter to disseminate your workshop for recruitment and spread of the results;
• Equip urban open areas for open debates where local communities can meet frequently in order to exercise the rights guaranteed by Aahrus convention to develop sustainable decisions in a collective and legal manner;

G

• Give the participants a nice amount of time to present themselves and their work/field of interest, in order to facilitate connection and cooperation after the workshop;
• Give tight bounds to participants about the shape of the contributions they have to provide, so they won't have other option than provide what is needed;

I

• Identify or create a unique Body entrusted with the control of a process to ensure coordination and synergy of all stakeholders involved;
• Implement innovative and responsive policies to face climate change effects and assure a balanced competitiveness, growth and sustainability of the maritime tourism sites;
• 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;
• Inform in a wider manner all societal actors about the issue;
• Invest in communication campaign from professionals, work with marketing societies to translate the scientific results into clear messages that can reach in particular young people;
• Involve student when possible;

N

• No actions tackled Gender Equality directly;

O

• One day is not enough for SDD;

P

• Participants do not subscribe gladly to the platform, they don't have time and/or willingness to learn using another tool;
• Plan further, periodic or even annual meetings on the same topic, with old and new participants, to make them feel part of a process (special), and ensure follow-up;
• Prepare a concise information corpus for participants;
• Promote a greater participation of general public in projects financed by European funds to help filling the gap between science and society;
• Promote local communities and their traditions for societal relevance of the scientific outputs;
• Promote scientific knowledge and professional growth which have a fundamental role in supporting innovative sectors;
• Provide a synthetic, max 5 pages, info pack about the topic before the workshop;
• Provide free and easier access to the results of the studies;
• Provide scientific education in all the scholar cycles: it is crucial;
• Provide the participants with the legislative aspects of the topic. If you are not an expert ask for it, because this is a critical aspects to generate RRI driven action;
• Put in place a policy-oriented, holistic and integrated approach to tackle complex marine issues;
• Put in place an effective communication about greenwashing, so to improve the critical sense of the public against "fake" green activities;

R

• Refer to local and sectorial topics, to which participants are interested in because relate with their experience and can be useful for them;

S

• Stream only the most crucial sections of the workshop, disseminate the streaming agenda;

T

• Take into consideration that despite their willingness to participate, often practical barriers impede the participation of people to participative events;
• The methodology is effective to build a common vision and give space to many different voices;
• The methodology is well adapted to the purpose of the workshop, to let participants contribute to the discussion and to strengthen the links between participants;
• The participants did not followed 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;
• There is a serious need for regulations and legislations about the release of bacteria at sea;
• There is the need of an international coordination to identify the possible impacts of innovations;
• Translate in easy-to-understand messages research outputs and results for better dissemination. Consider using science mediators;
• Translate the WS results in something short and friendly in short time and disseminate among the participants and others, not to lose momentum;

U

• Use new participative methodologies to attract participants;
• Use your participatory event as a flywheel to organize other similar events;

W

• While interpreting the results consider the location of the workshop: statistically most of the participants will come from the area where the WS is held;

See also...

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