July 2023 Monthly Collaboration Meeting Report

The meeting brought together representatives from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the FEWS NET Early Warning team, the Learning and Data Hub team, the Food, Nutrition, and Livelihood Security team, and the Science team. The meeting focused on collaboration activities and a card sorting activity to reorganize the FEWS NET Exchange website navigation. The Hub and Science teams are working together to operationalize the Seasonal Monitoring and Probability Generator dashboard to make it widely available to additional users across more countries. The Hub and Early Warning teams collaborated on loading historic Food Assistance Outlook Brief (FAOB) data into the FEWS NET Data Warehouse (FDW) and expanding the use of Kobo for primary data collection. The Hub, Science, and Early Warning teams continued to work together as part of the crop production working group and refined FEWS NET documentation templates to ensure ease of use. The Hub worked closely with all FEWS NET teams to move forward with communications work to highlight project achievements and innovations. The Hub and Early Warning team collaborated to produce a new FAOB landing page on the fews.net website and reviewed product description language as part of the development of a new Learn About Our Services landing page. The Early Warning team supported the Hub by reviewing a draft newsletter prototype for an internal USAID audience, and both teams began discussing the development of a process for upcoming Alert communications. The Science team worked closely with the Hub to develop an Agrilinks blog about fallout from the Ukraine dam breach and helped the Hub understand flood monitoring processes and fine-tune language regarding expected outcomes. The Hub also collaborated with Science team CHC colleagues to prepare a press release and related blog to promote a new Earth's Future article about long-lead forecasts of droughts and floods and how climate change is affecting such forecasts. The FEWS NET Exchange serves as the project's intranet where internal resources are housed. The Hub manages the Exchange and is continually working to ensure ease of use and access to a variety of resources related to ongoing FEWS NET projects, data-related work, brand guidance and templates, and more. The Hub led a card sorting activity to reorganize the Exchange navigation menu, during which collaboration meeting participants were able to sort various FEWS NET resources into categories they felt best represented the subject matter or content type. Following the card sorting activity, discussion centered on the need for more technical subjects to be incorporated into an updated navigation menu. Other participants noted that several resources could fall under multiple categories, depending on the context of use. The Hub concluded its presentation by sharing plans to review feedback gathered during the card sorting activity, after which the Exchange navigation will be updated for test use. The next FEWS NET monthly Collaboration meeting is planned for Thursday, August 17, 2023. The meeting will provide an opportunity for FEWS NET team members to continue working together to advance the project's goals and objectives.