Dear colleagues,
Over the last few months IGAD chairs have been working with the RDA leadership to put together a new category of groups within RDA: Communities of Practice (CoP). Complementing the already existing RDA Working and Interest group categories, comprising members who are often representative of various areas, CoPs will provide the opportunity to investigate, discuss, coordinate and exchange knowledge and skills within a specific discipline and/or research domain (see the news at https://www.rd-alliance.org/rda-announces-new-group-category-communities…). IGAD will be one of the first test cases and soon will move from an Interest Group to a CoP. For that, IGAD chairs will submit a package for final approval, after which the IGAD IG will become a CoP. We will keep you informed about these next steps. If any of you would like to work closer with us on the submission package, please just let us know.
In other news, we submitted an IGAD session proposal for RDA P16, but we received the acceptance on short notice, and this affected our capacity to plan it. We had to skip it. However, we are beginning to plan new events in March/April 2021, before and during the RDA P17. The first of these will be an event similar to the week of online meetings we had in April of this year, which brought together more than 400 people. Would you like to help us organize this online event? Just let us know.
We would like also to make a call to all the IGAD members that are part of other agricultural or other CoPs outside of RDA. A meeting will be organized at the beginning of 2021 where members of other CoPs will be invited to discuss possible synergies and ways to collaborate in the framework of RDA and beyond. You can write any of us if you would like to be involved.
We also take the occasion to say …. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy New Year (so glad 2020 is almost over!)
Best regards,
Cyndy, Patricia and Imma
IGAD Chairs