Case Study Committee Workplan

What should the case study STC do before, at, and after the November meeting?

Here are some ideas for your feedback:

• Plan the Nov 2011 activities
• Develop two (or more) documents for the Nov meeting:
  • Case Study Guidelines: the basic framework we want people to build on at the Nov meeting (most important points for discussion)
  • Case Study Notes by Research Phase: further background information to consider in developing the guidelines
• Gather further information on case studies
  • Existing forest DSS case study literature
  • Other relevant literature (methods, etc)
• At Nov meeting
  • Give case study introductory presentation
  • Lead each subgroup on assigned task
• After Nov meeting
  • Synthesize information into case study guidelines
  • Distribute the guidelines to the Forsys network
  • Track progress of countries in Forsys network
  • Answer questions, resolve issues

How to maneuver the November meeting discussions/work if we are something like 35 persons with 2 rather big rooms at our disposal (and perhaps smaller groups can find some space in the surroundings as well)? Having a common discussion all along might be difficult (or not so productive). Depending on how we divide the sessions, one may start thinking about how to compose the guidelines out of your material.

Here are some ideas for your feedback:

• [30 minutes] begin with a brief common presentation and discussion on progress to date. Outline tasks for meeting subgroups (overall task is to build more details on framework for conducting case studies). Answer any general questions.
• [1.5 hours] Break into ~4 subgroups with ~8 people each, trying to get even representation from each WG in each, including one of us in each (because it looks like case studies have already been discussed by each WG in Greece, now we could try to synthesize across WGs). All groups would have the same assignment: to review the current state of the case study framework, provide feedback, and develop more detail.
• [30 min] Groups would report a summary of their suggestions back to whole group
• [30 min] Synthesis discussion