Reflecting Remotely: Stories of Virtual Engagement, Capacity Building, and Collaboration

Reflection is an integral part of learning, and also of giving back. Our project was an exercise of reflection, in which we set out to learn from, summarize, and then share findings from the collected experiences in virtual engagement and capacity building during the COVID-19 pandemic, which were presented over a series of 3 sessions at the AGU 2020 Fall Meeting. During these sessions a diverse group of people involved in engagement and capacity building activities met to share stories of challenge and success adapting to the virtual realm to accomplish their work. When the conference ended, the conversation did not stop; we continued to explore the collective findings through a follow-on survey and extended analysis to gather and map tools, methods and approaches that can help ensure success when in-person formats go virtual. These reflections were then compiled into an interactive StoryMap, which will be used to invite further insights as we collectively create a future narrative for virtual engagement and capacity building. Additionally, our StoryMap provides a new repository of tools and best-practices, which are directly applicable for Earth Observation engagement and capacity building. With these reflections, we hope to give back to those who shared their insights and help build our community of virtual engagement and capacity building practitioners. This presentation will not only share the resulting StoryMap, but also our process for developing it. In the style of Participatory Action Research, this entirely virtual, highly collaborative process has centered around iterative cycles of action, observation and reflection. Our process has been highly emergent using collaborative online tools and highlights the potential to strengthen communities of practice through creative processes and exploratory conversations. We want to continue building on this generative and ongoing process. Therefore, attendee contributions will fuel our discussion and guide next steps in this exploratory journey.