FabToolkit

Our collection of tools for tech capacity building. This includes exercises for use in trainings and facilitation.

What follows is a collection of learnings gained from practising facilitation since the late 90s. Thanks to Gunner at Aspiration for his ongoing contributions and those who have joined me in learning about facilitation at places like MozFest, RightsCon and The Session Design Lab. A facilitator aims to surface the unique knowledge and experience of the individuals […]

The Session Design Canvas V 1.0

For use with The Session Design Canvas. Before the session Questions to ask of your participants About their comfortability with tech: To inform your session design Consider the Roles you’ll need More than likely, you will need more than one host for your session. Big thanks to Heather Leson, Laurent […]

Our Session Support Materials

The Virtual Session Design Canvas is out of Beta! Please use V1 The Virtual Session Design Canvas is for anyone who has attended the Virtual Session Design Lab, An Online Facilitator Coaching Session, or has read ‘Tips for Designing an Effective Workshop Session’. It assumes a familiarity with Malcolm S. […]

The Virtual Session Design Canvas (Beta)

On August 26th, 2020, we held an online discussion with members of our network of resource designers to compare notes, share challenges and solutions in engaging communities and networks in co-creating knowledge-assets. We were fortunate to have Chloé Mikolajczak from The Restart Project, as an anchor for the discussion, sharing […]

Best Practices for Co-Creating Network-Centric Resources

At Aspiration’s Non-Profit Developer Summit in November 2019, I attended a workshop on Facilitative Leadership run by Misty Avila. What struck me about the session was how Misty walked the walk, demonstrating the power of facilitative leadership through the session design, providing structure and scaffolding for participants to share and […]

Recipes for Facilitative Leadership – a workshop session design

Cette activité va: Donner de l’élan et stimulez l’interactivité au fur et à mesure que cet exercice commence par des paires, passe à des quatuors et se termine par une discussion en grand groupe. Aider les participants à faire connaissance les uns avec les autres et à savoir qui se […]

Atelier participatif pour la collecte d’indicateurs sur la prise de ...

I was first introduced to user personas participating in a design sprint by Aspiration in 2005. In that workshop, we were asked to imagine users of Social Source Commons, a website to share lists of software tools you already use, gain knowledge and support, and discover new tools. What stood […]

A Workshop Exercise on Creating User Personas

Esta actividad: • Ayudará a los participantes a conocerse entre sí. • Creará un espacio seguro y positivo invitando a los participantes a conocerse a través del diálogo y reforzando las habilidades de escucha activa. • Comenzará una discusión sobre la capacidad de los participantes para opinar o participar en los […]

Taller participativo para recopilar datos sobre la toma de decisiones ...

This draft module was intially designed for CIVICUS, to support their partners in the Speak! Campaign. We are thankful for the invaluable contributions of the team at CIVICUS: Hannah Wheatley, Frances Topham Smallwood, Soledad Gattoni and Stephanie Brancaforte. We are also grateful for all the guidance we’ve received on designing […]

A Draft Module on Listening and Learning for Event Design

Introduction This workshop was designed for CIVICUS and their partners to collect indicators to be used as part of a presentation at the United Nations High-Level Political Forum during its review of Sustainable Development Goal 16: Peace, justice and strong institutions in July 2019. Special thanks to Kinara for Youth […]

Participatory Workshop for Collecting SDG Indicators on Responsive and Inclusive ...

This workshop will help participants understand how to build compelling stories from datasets. We start with focusing on the ‘who’ we are telling the story to and how to craft a narrative that is compelling to them. We then explore the data that the participants are working with and draft […]

Data & Storytelling Workshop

For the last couple of months, FabRiders has been working with School of Data on the creation of a podcast series called ‘Data is a Team Sport’ and thought it would be worth sharing what we’ve learned. Why a podcast? The word podcast combines ‘iPod’ with ‘Broadcast’. Podcasts were initially […]

What we’ve learned about creating podcasts

On June 12th and June 13th, FabRiders collaborated with two doctoral researchers, Lydia Medland and Maria-Teresa Pinto, to design and deliver a workshop at the University of Bristol aimed at helping doctoral researchers strengthen their fieldwork practices and protect themselves and their research participants. To develop this participatory workshop, we […]

QAF’s and Resources to Mitigate Risks in Academic Research

We had a hangout on Data Tactics for a Post-Fact World We’re collaborating with Lucy Chambers from Tech to Human on a new workshop that will help you be assured evidence used in your social change campaign engages rather than alienates. We had a hangout on Tuesday, May 2nd at Noon […]

Hangout: Data Tactics for a Post-Fact World

We’re collaborating with Patrick Olszowski of Outrageous Impact on a workshop on Human Centred Design for Social Change and we had a hangout at Noon on Thursday, the 20th of April. During the hangout we talked about: What is Human Centred Design and why should you care. The importance of prototyping and iteration […]

Hangout: Human Centred Design for Social Change

Our journey learning about effective workshop session design began in the mid-90’s, when we were helping activists and community organisers in the United States understand how to harnass the potential of the Internet. What we’ve learned about session design has largely been achieved through a combination of trial and error (evaluating […]

Tips for designing an effective workshop session

This is a day-long training that we’ve run in at least a dozen countries for a variety of individuals involved in social change at various levels of ‘data literacy.’ Big thanks to all the participants that have provided feedback, along with: School of Data for all their curriculum on data literacy, […]

A Data Strategy Workshop Curriculum

As someone who has spent a good part of the last two decades developing trainings and workshop sessions and subsequently learning from those experiences, I’m often asked to help other trainers develop curriculum on a variety of topics. This module has been evolving over the years as a result of contributing […]

A training of trainers module on adult learning and ADIDS

During this webinar which took place on April 28th, 2016, and was cohosted by Dirk Slater, FabRiders and Nic Sera-Leyva, Internews, we discussed: Step Zero, what to consider before you even start planning a digital security training Setting Expectations, both with participants but also with organisers. Learn About Your Participants […]

LevelUp Webinar Notes: Preparing Your Digital Security Training

Introduction In 2015, FabRiders helped School of Data undertake its first research project to understand data literacy efforts around the world. We published a series of blog posts on the School of Data website to share our findings. This is a repost of the Introduction, the links below will take you […]

Data Literacy Research Findings

During this webinar taking place on February 23rd, We: Looked at the key challenges we face in evaluating digital security trainings Explored how we measure our effectiveness according to what our beneficiaries are trying to achieve Heard from our guest speakers: Natasha and Tawanda from Digital Society of Zimbabwe, and Erin from […]

LevelUp Webinar Notes: Evaluating DigiSec Trainings for Effectiveness

Our learnings never happen in isolation and we are always grateful to those who have helped inform us along the way. We learned a hell of a lot from Misty Avila and Allen Gunn (Gunner) at Aspiration, who shared their methodologies to get tool developers to focus on users’ needs. We […]

Hacking user centred design for social change efforts.

Data Advocacy Essentials

Understanding how any technology used in campaigning functions as a tactic to further your campaign strategy is essential. For every training session that Fabriders runs, whether it’s about utilising data effectively or social media, we’ve found it important to start with an exercise that gets participants to thinkabout the goals […]

A Quick Advocacy Strategy Exercise w/ Stakeholder Mapping & Power ...

[print_link] This is a list of resources prepared for Effective Data Strategies for Activist and Advocacy Campaigns and Data Tactics for a Post-Fact World workshops The Data Tactics Workshop Curriculum is a detailed plan for the workshop that has all the exercises we used plus timings. Hacking User Centred Design for Social Change Efforts has […]

Data Tactics Workshop Resources

This list of questions was derived during a session at the Responsible Data Forum in Oakland on March, 6th 2014. Our desire was to create a list of questions to ask yourself when working as an intermediary with marginalised communities. The answers you will come up with, might or might […]

Questions to Ask Frequently (QAFs) when working with Data and ...

A very special thanks to Lucy Chambers from Open Knowledge Foundation for inspiration, review and advice on this blog post. You can find Lucy on twitter @lucyfedia. Over the last two decades of helping advocates and activists use technologies more effectively, the use of data in campaigns has always been […]

What I’ve Learned about Data Advocacy

In November and December of 2012, I spent six weeks traveling to seven different countries on three different continents. During this time, I facilitated at six different training/workshop events. Since 1998, trainings have been a core part of what I do, but I am far from the perfect trainer (If […]

Facilitating Collective Power