Articulating the Big Picture
In my rich fantasy life, everyone who works for a social change organisation can map every task in front of them on a journey to achieving a vision of success. This implies that every social change has a vision of success, and their strategies and tactics are supporting a theory of change. IMHO, unless a Theory of Change is cocreated with a diverse group of stakeholders (who are not the staff), it is nothing more than a hypothesis, and you’ll have a lot of road blocks on your journey.
I mention this primarily because it’s come into play in running the Virtual Event Design Lab. As I wrap up a Lab with the RightsCon Team, it’s more evident how connecting the event to the big picture is critical. We spend the first session identifying a vision of success for the event. What would the world need to look like for the event not to need to exist? Establishing the vision of success at the beginning of the Lab means that by the end, each member of the team can map their tasks to get to that vision. We also take a good look at the organisation’s Theory of Change and make sure the team can articulate how the event supports it. More inquiries and opportunities to run this Lab are forthcoming, and we’re looking forward to learning more on how to modify the Lab to meet the needs of unique event teams.
Reflecting on the Climate:Red Summit
At the beginning of September, we were part of the Solferino Academy production team for the Climate:Red Summit and have also contributed to the report containing lots of learning “How to Host a Virtual Summit, and get away with it.” It’s well worth a read.
The Session Design Canvas
It’s been a long-standing cocreation work in progress, and we have finally published a beta version of The Virtual Session Design Canvas. Last spring, we were engaged by The European Centre for Not for Profit Law to help them build their capacity to run effective virtual sessions. As the Virtual Session Design Labs were starting to take off, we knew that we had a group of people that could give us some valuable inputs on a list of questions to ask when thinking about designing a virtual session. We’d also been working on a Data Strategy Canvas with Mor Rubinstein at 360Giving that gave us a lot of inspiration. We know it’s not perfect, so we are hoping that by releasing a beta version widely, we can continue to get feedback and inputs. If you use it and want to give us feedback, please send an email to canvas (at) fabriders.net, we’d appreciate it.
