Of course, COVID-19 dominated everything this week.
There was a coronavirus tech handbook page which a bunch of helpful links that Ed Saperia from Newspeak House shared on the Network-Centric Resources List. I found the Data in the Worldometer particularly helpful in gaining perpective
The week started with write a ‘how to run productive virtual meetings‘ blog post on the top of my todo list. Given light of all the cancelled face-to-face meetings, I was hearing about. Instead, Heather Leson asked me to attend a couple of skill-share sessions on running virtual events she’d set up at the IFRC which in hindsight was much more rewarding. The advice I found giving, again and again:
- have clear goals that participants understand and share,
- be prepared, know what will happen, have clear instructions
- test the tech, make sure it will do what you want it to do.
- Use a collaborative live doc to make sure everyone is on the same page.
Also – Rachel Rank pointed this out:
On Wednesday, I ran what will likely be the last face to face workshop for awhile with UK Grantmaking Institutions participating in 360Giving’s Data Champions Programme on Building Data Culture. The main point is that building a data culture is building a learning culture. So we did a deep dive on adult learning and then created User Personas to understand better people in our organisations who are critical in building a data project. One of the main aha’s during the day, for grant reporting: the question ‘what have you learned’ might get better data than ‘what have you done’.
As part of the Data Literacy Consortium, we ran an online discussion on Adapting Existing Materials. Bob Gradek from the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center talked about how MIT’s Civic Tech participatory approach inspired them. Then Lisa Peterson from Centre for Humanitarian Data spoke about how their data literacy curriculum was inspired by the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Centre’s approach. Don’t ever forget: we stand on each other’s shoulders. Always. Blog post forthcoming.
And then on Thursday, as part of our network-centric resources project, we discussed indicators for success. What was apparent is that there’s not a lot of easy ways to measure the success of a resource that shares ownership, enables contribution and supports collaboration. The indicators that are easy to get are quantifiable, but these are the least valuable. Most of the participants concluded that you need to take time to talk and interact with users throughout the resources life-cycle, so you can hear the stories about how it’s used and also hopefully discover unintended usage. Blog cost forthcoming.