Old faces, new times at the International Riversymposium 2018

A meeting room is filled with people. Some are walking in between tables and chairs, some are sitting in rows of chairs facing the camera, and some are writing at an easel to the left. One man holds a camera with a large lens to his eye from the right of IAN attended the 21st International Riversymposium, a meeting on river science and management. Bill Dennison, Heath Kelsey, Simon Costanzo partnered with Declan Hearne from the International Water Center to run an interactive workshop on stakeholder engagement theory and techniques which was far more popular than anticipated. Each participant was assigned an avatar representing an imaginary stakeholder in a river basin and were required to develop river basin indicators and scores in isolation, and then as a group, to demonstrate how broad stakeholder involvement improves the legitimacy of report cards and builds relationships. We were joined by two IAN alumni Ben Longstaff (Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority in Canada) and Jane Thomas (NESP Northern Australia Environmental Resources Hub) who helped facilitate the workshop.