Piet Filet, Brian McIntosh, Sarah Cochrane and I hosted an online event to exchange knowledge between 40+ Australian and Dutch water (and climate) related professionals on using visualization, serious games and other techniques to engage stakeholders in water management. We started with a series of very interesting pitches from Gregor van Essen, Sarah Cochrane Alan Hoban Emma Jones Michiel van Lierop Hilde Sennema

Additionally, there was a great discussion in breakout and the main room on how to engage non-institutional stakeholders in water management and the use of a variety of tools (visualization, serious games etc) to do so. Points that caught my attention:

• Engagement is becoming an accepted part of projects and programs in many areas. The amount of time and effort it takes is perhaps not yet known, and often underestimated.
• Some may see this as a ‘check the box exercise’ because policy tells them they should do it. This has consequences for its usefulness.
• The outcome of what you want to achieve with the engagement needs to be clear (both for the leaders of a program/ project as well as for the stakeholders engaged). E.g. Engaging stakeholders for input, means you need to be clear on what you will do with that input. If you do not use the input, why are you engaging them. If you will not let them make decisions with you, you will have to be clear about that. If this does not happen, you risk losing their trust.
• Another risk is engagement burn-out both from a project leadership position (not being able to continue and get the work done) as well as from citizens (if they will ask engagement for everything, citizens may drop their attention).
• How to manage this engagement with various stakeholders with different sorts of personalities and interests. How do you combine the right techniques to engage all. E.g. some may not be a competitive board game player and prefer to have a discussion.

There is plenty to still learn from each other, and the QWMN network will continue to bring the people together on this topic. 

If you want to organize knowledge exchanges, see the usefulness and learning potential of sharing knowledge experiences especially on the practical day to day activities, reach out.