Training

FabRiders’ Network-Centric Resources project supports the development of people-powered and participatory resources that establish assets for networks and communities. On Friday, December 14th, 2018, we held an online discussion with Heather Leson, Data Literacy Project Lead at the International Federation of the Red Cross Red Crescent (IFRC) Societies about collaborating with […]

Co-Creating IFRC’s Data Playbook, Online Discussion Notes

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

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

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

In this webinar for LevelUp, we will look at ways of preparing your training to help best ensure its quality, success, and safety. It will feature guest speakers who will share practical advice for learning about trainees and preparing trainings, including creative approaches for learning about participants’ needs, experience, and priorities […]

LevelUp Webinar: Preparing for Your DigiSec Training

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

Data Sources You have two options for finding data to use in your advocacy work: use existing data or collect it yourself.  Data that already exists has the benefit of not needing to be collected, but it may not be formatted, organised or aggregated in a way that is helpful.  […]

Data Advocacy Essentials Pt III: Data Sources

I recently spent two days facilitating a workshop on how to evaluate the impact of data training and learning endeavors for Open Knowledge, several School of Data chapters and like minded organisations including DataKind UK,  SocialTIC from Mexico City, Code4SA from South Africa, and Metamorphosis from Macedonia.  At the end […]

What I’ve Learned about Impact Assessment

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 ...

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 ...

I had the privilege of traveling to Cambodia last week to work closely with Allen Gunn (Gunner) and Misty Avila from Aspiration, running an event for the Open Institute called ‘Open Cambodia.’  We had over 100 participants from all over Cambodia, who were largely interested in using technology to support […]

What I learned at Open Cambodia

This blog post initially appeared on the  TABridge Blog at: http://tech.transparency-initiative.org/notes-by-graphic-recorders-capture-the-moment/.  Special thanks to Jed Miller for editing. I recently traveled to Jakarta for “Matchmaking Budget Transparency & Technology,” a three-day event convened by The Southeast Asia Technology and Transparency Initiative (SEATTI). The meeting was facilitated by Aspiration’s Allen “Gunner” […]

Forget written notes, try graphic recording!

As I mentioned in my post, Lessons from the Road one of my favorite training exercises is the spectrogram, and no one runs it better than Gunner from Aspiration.  You can find a detailed description of how he does it here: http://facilitation.aspirationtech.org/index.php?title=Facilitation:Spectrogram_Facilitator_Notes (Note on both those links – you will get […]

Rocking the Spectrogram

I was recently in Kiev, for Tactical Studios, running a training on Social Media for the Eurasian Harm Reduction Network, GIZ and Deutsche AIDS-Hilfe. To be fair, not everyone in the training was a drug user – there were advocates from a variety of different marginalised communities that were being […]

What I Learned from Drug Users

Please note: a new version of this exercise is now available: Using the Spectrogram for Stakeholder Mapping and Power Analysis. Click here for Step 1: Stakeholders  or here for Step 2: The Half Wheel Now it’s time to build a pyramid using the post-it notes along with the annotations showing […]

The Half Wheel & The Pyramid: The Pyramid (Step 3 ...

Please note: a new version of this exercise is now available: Using the Spectrogram for Stakeholder Mapping and Power Analysis. Step 2. The Half Wheel See also: Step 1: Stake-holders or Step 3: The Pyramid Next, the participants should take a big piece of paper and draw a half wheel […]

The Half Wheel & The Pyramid: The Half Wheel (Step ...

Please note: a new version of this exercise is now available: Using the Spectrogram for Stakeholder Mapping and Power Analysis. Or Using Power Analysis to Identify Technology Tactics for your Campaign in Three Easy Steps. Background: Understanding how any technology that you use in campaigning functions as a tactic to […]

The Half Wheel & The Pyramid (Step 1 of 3)

Greenpeace is at a very interesting cross-roads, as it restructures to more nimbly shift resources to support campaigns in the global south.  The Digital Mobilisation Skill-share, which took place in the mountains outside of Barcelona and was run by Greenpeace’s Mobilisation Lab , exemplified an organisation that is trying to […]

What I learned at the Greenpeace Digital Mobilisation Skill-share #GPDMS

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 […]

Lessons from the Road: Six Things I learned about Training

The Transparency and Accountability Initiative (T/A Initiative) is a ‘donor collaborative committed to strengthening democracy and development through empowering citizens to hold their governing institutions to account.’ The Bridge Meeting is part of their ‘New Technologies’ programme and is designed to foster collaborations between organisations working on transparency and accountability […]

What I learned at the Transparency & Accountability Initiative’s Bridge ...

Six years ago I left the US non profit tech scene and had swore never to return (more about that in an upcoming blog post – stay tuned). There’s only one person who could possibly persuade me to come back to attend a non-profit techie event, and that is Gunner […]

What I Learned at NPDev Summit 2012