Development of a virtual knowledge network

Geraldine VelandriaSocial Affairs Officer

Division for Gender Affairs1 December 2010

Objective

Development of a national and subregional knowledge network for sharing information and good practices in data collection and programmes to promote evidence-based policies to eradicate violence against women

Project framework

Interregional project “Enhancing capacities to eradicate violence against women through networking of local knowledge communities.”

Virtual communitiesof knowledge

Sustainability of the project depends in great measure on the commitment of stakeholders toward the building of a community of exchange and dissemination of knowledge, whereby information absorbed, understood, interpreted and used as a basis for action.

Wiki platform “Confluence”

Gateway to access the technical and sharing tools produced by the project.

Sharing space to encourage networks of exchanges between counterparts of the international project.

Support of communities of practices and project management, collaborative document preparation, real-time collaboration, web conferencing, application sharing, document repository, blogs, etc.

What is Confluence?

Confluence is a wiki (Enterprise wiki) – Wiki- is simple and quick web publishing

Developed using HTML standards and is tested with all major browsers (Internet explorer, Netscape …)

Runs on all operating systems/ Hardware Platforms (Windows …)

Aim of Collaboration

Share information and knowledge

Access to experts and their expertise

Facilitate the relationship building between individuals and communities

Improve productivity

Why wiki?

• Manages textual and graphic content• Provides tools for editing and authoring the

content• Allows users to view the content on their

web browsers• Fine grained security with space and page

level permissions. • Creates a blog in every space with 'News‘• Pages, comments, blogs and attachments

are all searchable. • Email integration PDF exporting, and

more...

Features of Confluence

Types of space Global spaces: areas which allow you to

group content items (pages, attachments, news, etc) and create separate areas for each group of users or each project within the network platform.

Personal spaces for the particular users: They can contain pages and news items, be searched and browsed. Each user may decide to keep it private or to share it with every user of the platform, in which case the type of access will depend on the permissions granted by the administrator, just like global spaces.

Evolution of the collaborative space

Started as a project management collaborative space.

Second phase: community building to encourage networks of exchanges between mechanisms for the advancement of women, statistical offices and producers of administrative records.

Each country has now a specific page to share statistical data, substantive documents, meeting reports or any other national information on the situation of violence against women.

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Getting started

• Username and password

• Quick and extended user guides

• Pedagogical video (CD)

Related web pages

Interregional website: http://www.eclac.cl/mujer/cepal/

Wiki restricted platform: http://wiki.cepal.org

Gender Equality Observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean: http://www.cepal.org/oig/