Asking feedback - THE mechanism to check use of information sharing

Dear all

Thanks to our Moderator for his summary, I want to react his request :
`` I would be very interested to learn from you about mechanisms you use to check if the sharing process indeed takes place or that you just provide information to others in the hope that they will use it.``

My answer: Asking feedback is THE mechanism.

I do this regulary in my personal information sharing. I ask colleagues if the selected infomation I provide them with is useful to them. I check also occasionally in workhop and training sessions I faciltate if what I share is useful for partctpnats. Wherever possble I ask partcipants to share their expereinces and knowledge in my session.

Feedback on use of our Source newsletters and our web site I ask from visitors I meet at our information stand at conferences. Where ever I can I do the same from people I meet in the developing world. Face-to-face feedback is the most effective.

In the Source newsletter on our site we see on certain items reactions from readers. This happens more often than people submitting reactions in the Rearders react section.

We occasionally do surveys on paper and electronically to get feedback on use of the IRC knowledge sharing work.
We will shortly do a survey online and on paper on use of our main information products and services.

You can find examples of how work of IRC and partners is being used and with what impact on our Monitoring IRC section I mainatin at http://www.irc.nl/page/10725.

Dick de Jong
IRC