Capacity Building

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 […]

Facilitation Essentials

Strengthen your abilities and facilitation practice to support the power of those you’ve convened. We are offering this Lab twice during the week of July 29th to accommodate a diversity of time zones During this two-day, three-hour-a-day online lab, we will explore the different power domains in which change-makers operate […]

The Facilitating Collective Power Lab

FabRiders and Aspiration co-organize an ongoing series of Capacity Builder Convergences. These community meetings are envisioned as a collaborative and supportive environment to connect the broad range of practitioners who enable other organizations and individuals to strengthen their strategies, principles, practices and sustainability. We aim to explore and promote open […]

Capacity Builders Convergence

With the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk and the slow erosion of trust that users are experiencing with Meta platforms (Facebook, Instagram, etc.), corporate social media is in decline. Not to mention the already existing social media graveyard that includes Friendster and Myspace. Our ultimate goal is to convene […]

Corporate Social Media is in Decay

My primary reflection on 2021: it was marginally less crap than 2020. Certainly not the magnitude of crap that was 2020, but with insurrections, revelations and mutations, it still seemed a year we were all happy to see come to an end. Perhaps if we keep our expectations low and […]

Learnings we will take from 2021 into 2022

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

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

FabRider marked its sixth anniversary this year. We continued our learnings integrating user-centred design and co-creation approaches, developing social learning curriculum, enabling data literacy and supporting the development of networks of practice, in service to improving social change efforts. We did this via collaborations with 360Giving, Aspiration, Centre for Economic and Social Rights, Civicus, the Democracy Club, Global Voices, Idea in a […]

What we learned in 2018

Outside, the air was thick with toxic smoke from the Camp Fire, with warnings to limit exposure.  Inside, it was Aspiration’s 15th Non-Profit Developer Summit and people were invested in being there.  It was the largest #NPDev yet, with over 150 registrants and it seems the smoke didn’t deter people […]

What We Learned at NPDev 2018

FabRiders’ Network-Centric Resources project helps resource developers understand how to develop people-powered and participatory resources and establish assets for networks and communities that share ownership, enable contribution and support collaboration.  A ‘build it and they will come’ approach is likely to end up with unused and unloved content. Being deliberate […]

Designing EFF’s Security Education Companion, Online Discussion Notes

The discipline of iteration and testing have been the most important processes to our work at FabRiders. A final product is never produced, whether it’s a how-to guide or a project plan, without distributing lots of drafts and incorporating lots of feedback. All our work is a prototype, as even […]

What We’ve Learned by Prototyping Workshops

Assuring the evidence used in your social change campaign engages rather than alienates. This training is for activists and advocates who want to integrate data into their campaign or improve the ability of their campaign data to engage their stakeholders. Overview Campaigns will only win when we capture the hearts […]

Effective Data Tactics in a Post-Fact World

2016 wasn’t all bad. Here at FabRiders, 2016 was a great year of learning. Every event and project that goes by we find ourselves building and sharing on a body of knowledge that is contributed to and enabled by a fantastic set of partners and allies. Despite all the setbacks faced last year, we are […]

Building a Better 2017

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

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

This article will help people working on social change efforts understand what they need to know before undertaking a technology project and how to communicate that to internal technology related staff or a potential external developer/consultant hire. This document was created with the input of several colleagues, including Tin Geber, […]

Tech Project Specifications and Social Change Efforts

Here at FabRiders, we benefit greatly from our ability to share expertise with a network of technology capacity builders through which we have developed solidarity and close friendships. Recently, LevelUp asked us to help them think about how to improve engagement with the people who are interacting with their resource […]

What are we building: communities or networks?

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

2015 was a banner year for FabRiders. Here is what our current projects have us positioned to learn in 2016: We’ve explored hacking user centred design for social change efforts with the help of Aspiration and the International Budget Partnership.  Look for our next post in the FabBlog on designing tech projects that will engage your stakeholders. We’ve been […]

What We Will Learn in 2016

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.

Anybody that gets within earshot of me during the months of October and November will hear me wax lyrical about this event (the only one I’ll cross the pond for!). Lasting three days during the third week of November, The NonProfit Developer (#npdev) Summit is Aspiration’s annual gathering that brings […]

What I learned at NPDev Summit 2015

What are effective ways of achieving data literacy in social change? Who is doing what and how? How is this work being sustained? How is impact being determined? FabRiders is pleased to announce a new research project we are implementing for School of Data, exploring the intersection of data literacy and social […]

We are learning about ‘data literacy’

This blog post is a collaboration amongst ‘technology capacity building’ practitioners, namely: Misty Avila, Beatrice Martini and Dirk Slater. We are thankful for comments and feedback from our gracious colleagues, including: Kristin Antin, Allen Gunn (Gunner), and Tom Longley. Over the last couple of decades there has been various efforts […]

What We’ve Learned About Tech Capacity Building

The Transparency and Accountability Initiative have published a guide to running technology mentorships, with the aim of improving an organisation’s impact and effectiveness.  FabRiders’ Dirk Slater was honoured to be able to act as a ‘Tech Mentor’ for the project, along with fellow mentors: Lucy Chambers, Sarah Schacht, Tunji Eleso, […]

Tech Mentorship Guide

Why we did it By Maya Ganesh, Beatrice Martini and Dirk Slater. If you haven’t, please read the introduction to this series. Tactical Tech’s initial goal was to learn how use of technology can impact and improve the advocacy efforts of marginalised communities.  In this section, we will define ‘marginalisation’, […]

Leave Your Potatoes at Home, Pt I

What we learned By Maya Ganesh, Beatrice Martini and Dirk Slater This series began with the post ‘Why We Did It‘, which provided background and context, including a definition of marginalisation, Tactical Tech’s objectives for the project and background on WNU and sex worker issues in Cambodia.  Our previous post […]

Leave Your Potatoes at Home, Pt. III

Or ‘how to work with marginalised communities on using data and technology in advocacy’ By Maya Ganesh, Beatrice Martini and Dirk Slater. “You are welcome anytime, you’re not like others who come with their own bag of potatoes” It’s with these words that the chair of Women’s Network for Unity (WNU), […]

Leave Your Potatoes At Home, Intro