Here’s what I accomplished this week:
- Hosted discussions with researchers on improving methodologies for collecting Egyptian Social Progress Indicators
- Facilitated CESR’s Annual Board Meeting
- Designed and facilitated a workshop on Building Data Culture in Grantmaking Institutions for 360Giving’s Data Champion’s Programme
- Started interviewing stakeholders of IFRC’s Data Playbook (Beta) to build a baseline to understand the state of data literacy efforts as we develop a Data Playbook V1
- Trained a set of interpreters on using Zoom for a meeting organised by the European Centre for Non-Profit Law
- Ran another session of The Virtual Event Design Lab for the MozFest Team.
As a result of all of the above, I interacted with over 50 people last week, without leaving the house. I’m now realising the amount of productivity that working online actually affords me. If we weren’t in a pandemic, a considerable chunk of my time would have been travelling, and I would have done a fraction of the above. And I’d still be just as exhausted, if not more so.
Here’s more of what I learned:
- Never assume people know and are comfortable with the tech. I had a significant fail during one meeting when I realised that a couple of participants weren’t comfortable or prepared to use a google doc.
- “Culture drives capacity”
- Data Culture is a Learning Culture. If your organisation is using data effectively, staff and stakeholders are learning about how to improve the ability to have an impact and reach long-term goals
- “What is a group effort that inspires you in your work? This can be a collective action, work by an organisation or team” is my new favourite go-round question.
- Now and then teams need an opportunity to check in on assumptions they are making on each other. Particularly on definitions of commonly used terms like “movement building.”
- Despite having a full-time job at the age of 79, my mom still makes time to read my weeknotes.
What do you think about my weeknotes?
Back in February of 2020, I started experimenting with weeknotes. It’s given me a rhythm for an output and an opportunity to reflect. Every week I test ways to organise my thoughts so that I can write them quickly. Another way I hope to experiment is to see what works better for the reader, but of course, I can only gauge this with feedback. If this weeknote is any more readable or enjoyable for you then others, please drop me a note and let me know.