DroughtCom Workshop
5^thfloor main conference room, Bureau of Meteorology,
Melbourne, 22-23 July 2003

Notes for participants and facilitator guidelines

Workshop participants will be stimulated with 16 separate presentations.

Presenters have been asked to answer the following questions in their presentations:

• what were the impacts of the drought in your sector/state/region?
• how was climate information used in your planning - before, during and after the drought?
• how useful was the climate information? Were there unmet needs?
• what communication strategies were in place with respect to your interactions with climate information providers?
• how effective were your communication strategies (with emphasis on the use of climate information)

Each 15 min presentation will be about 12 mins allowing three minutes general discussion guided by the lead facilitator.

To assist workshop participants focus on the purpose of the workshop, the lead presenter will make a brief presentation at 9.40 am on the first morning of the workshop.

The presentation will set out the workshop's mission:

• To record and analyse the communication strategies used during the current drought; and
• To develop improved strategies for communicating climate information in order to enhance the ability of Australians to manage with climate variability, including climate change.

Day One will be used a strategic analysis exercise, noting and commenting on communication activities during the current drought.

Workshop participants will be asked to analyse each presentation by noting:

• How climate information was used
• What communication strategies were used
• What was the level of uptake
• What limited or enhanced useability and uptake
• Did the presenter or end users have any specific feedback for climate information providers (lessons learnt)

The purpose of the 1.5 hour break-out session on Day One is to explore these questions across all of the presentations from Day One, and draw from the experiences of people in the breakout groups.

Running the Breakout Groups

There will be six breakout groups, each with a facilitator, and a separate room.

Groups will be between 10 and 15 people and will be mixed up to reflect the diversity of Workshop participants.

Facilitators will need the group to select a scribe and a reporter. The scribe needs to create a brief powerpoint summary of the group's views at the end of session. The reporter will present this back during the plenary session.

Each report should be no longer than 5 minutes, allowing the lead facilitator to take any questions from the floor.

The breakout group reports from Day One will consist of analysis of Day One presentations along the lines described above, plus any additional questions the groups feel might need to be answered.

These questions might cover:

• The effectiveness of particular communication channels (ie print media, web)
• The effectiveness of particular climate information products

Day One is a day of strategic analysis to prepare the workshop for Day Two, a day of strategy development.

Day Two

Day Two starts with a short plenary session before breaking into two separate Break out Sessions.

The first breakout session (10.30 am to 12.00 - followed by report back) is planned as follows.

Break-Out Session Two

1. Goal Definition

• What are we trying to achieve? What type of behaviour change are we aiming for?
• What level of uptake (of what) are we seeking by whom ? Who/What is our target market ? By when ?

Facilitators need to keep this pretty tight, 15 mins at the max. The purpose is to get the group thinking along the same lines.

We have defined a couple of parameters to assist facilitators keep discussion on track.

Communication Strategies:

'The means by which climate information is obtained or disseminated, how it is packaged, and the monitoring and feedback processes that are in place in order to determine the usefulness and reliability of that information'

Climate Information:

'Climate data, products and services, including predictions and outputs from climate applications'

2. Ideal Communication Strategies

As a facilitation tool, facilitators might want to get their groups to spend 15 minutes thinking through what ideal Climate Information Communication Strategies might look like:

• What attributes would the ideal product (climate information) need to have ?
• How should it be packaged ?
• What distribution systems would it need ?
• How will we know if our products and services have been successful ?

3. SWOT analysis against the factors critical to success

Facilitators need to spend the bulk of their time (about one hour) working through the SWOT analysis of the strategies presented on Day One.

• Strengths (what works well, what can we build on)
• Weaknesses (what doesn't work well, what requires greater development, where do we need more information on needs)
• Opportunities (what other developments in science, technology, agriculture, communication can we exploit, what are other countries doing, what can we learn from the communication of weather information)
• Threats (what can impact on our effectiveness now and in the future, ie, confusion with climate change, confusing weather forecasts with climate predictions, cynicism about vague forecasts)

At the conclusion of this session, the groups will be brought back into plenary session to report back (5 minutes power point presentation as per the Day One session, but this time, the group should select a new reporter to keep new faces in front of the workshop)

Break-Out Session Three

4. Strategy Planning

This is the final break-out session where each group will build on the thinking of the previous sessions to define key strategies to:

• Build on the strengths
• Address our Weaknesses
• Exploit Emerging Opportunities
• Manage the risk of threats

These strategies will be the backbone of the Workshop Report. Facilitators will have a full 1.5 hours to work through suggested strategies.

In addition, we can ask each group to summarise the key actions that need to be undertaken for the strategies to be realised (could be summarised by group responsible, ie researchers, policy makers, extension services etc).

The final report back on these key strategies and actions will represent the Workshop Report Summary.