Virtual Workshops

Our next convergence will take place on Tuesday. 28th of February from 16:00 to 18:00 UTC and the theme will be “All Things Facilitation”. Across nonprofit and civil society ecosystems, a range of organizations and practitioners self-identify as “capacity builders”, working to strengthen the sustainability and resilience of individuals and […]

Capacity Builders Convergence

Which format is best for your next convening? On March 24th, 2022, Six session designers convened virtually to talk about the pros and cons of the different session formats we now have to choose from: virtual, in real life (IRL) and hybrids (a mixture of both).  The session included Tanya […]

Virtual vs IRL vs Hybrid

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

The Session Design Canvas is for anyone who has attended the Virtual Session Design Lab, An Online Facilitator Coaching Session, or has read ‘Tips for Designing an Effective Workshop Session’. It assumes a familiarity with Malcolm S. Knowles Adult Learning Theories and ADIDS as a workshop format.  This canvas has […]

The Session Design Canvas V 1.0

Since the start of the pandemic, I’ve run over one hundred virtual sessions, and dozens of virtual events, interacting with thousands of participants. Here are six things I’ve learned along the way. Three things I’ve learned about tech: Keep the tech simple. Only use the tools you need. For example, […]

Six things I’ve learned about virtual sessions

Before diving into 2021, I’m taking a moment to reflect and capture what happened in the world of FabRiders in 2020. What I did In 2020, I supported over 80 virtual convenings, collaborating with more than a dozen organisations in 2020. I led over 60 of those, meaning I designed […]

FabRiders’ 2020

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 […]

Weeknotes for December 11th, 2020

The Virtual Session Design Canvas is out of Beta! Please use V1 The Virtual Session Design Canvas is for anyone who has attended the Virtual Session Design Lab, An Online Facilitator Coaching Session, or has read ‘Tips for Designing an Effective Workshop Session’. It assumes a familiarity with Malcolm S. […]

The Virtual Session Design Canvas (Beta)

I have this vague recollection that August is supposed to be quiet as everyone goes on holiday. Lots happened this week and am bracing for a busy September. Working as part of The Solferino Academy team, along with Virtually Amazing, we’ve been running a series of online coaching sessions for […]

Weeknotes for August 28th, 2020

This week we started a series of four workshop sessions with the Institute for Economic Justice to help them strategise on how to bring the Rethinking Economics for Africa Festival online. It’s bringing together several pieces of expertise that I’ve developed through self-funded projects like the Network-Centric Resources Project and […]

Weeknotes for July 17th, 2020

Things I was grateful for this week. Heather Leson sharing this article on teams. It’s been great to be part of The Solferino Digital Team, with Heather, Laurent Fernandez and Shaun Hazeldene. these past few months, and I wholeheartedly agree with a lot of whats in the article. When you […]

Weeknotes for July 3rd, 2020

Breathing again with a focus on reflecting and planning. Reflecting Mor Rubinstein and I hosted a ‘social lunch’ for members of this 360Giving Data Champions Cohort as we wrap up this year’s programme. We also did a reflection on this year’s cohort with Mor getting us to respond to four […]

Weeknotes for June 19th, 2020

Every week I seem to push new boundaries in terms of intensity, capacities and activities. Work with IFRC’s Solferino Academy is providing lots of meaningful learning opportunities for our team, Laurent Fernandez, Shaun Hazeldene & HeatherLeson, and I’m grateful. On Wednesday, we ran a virtual event on Health Innovation & […]

Weeknotes for May 29th, 2020

Thanks to Heather Leson, I managed to join a meeting to share our experiences running large virtual workshops for IFRC’s Solferino Academy with staff from Zoom. The Zoom representatives explained how they have frozen developing features for the app for the last 90 days as they focused on improving security. […]

Weeknotes for May 1st, 2020

The top three pieces of advice I’d give anyone looking to run a large online meeting. Test, test, test and then do an additional test. The focus of the week was prep for an online digital volunteer gathering for the Red Cross Red Crescent Societies and co-hosting with Shaun Hazeldine […]

Weeknotes for April 10th, 2020

As the new normal becomes not so new and this might be our normal for quite some time ahead… Monday starts with more inquiries on helping to design and facilitate virtual meetings that were meant to be face to face. The tone ‘can we do this?’ is changing to ‘we […]

Weeknotes for April 3rd, 2020

I reached capacity this week. I don’t think I have ever worked so hard. And the remarkable bit was that I did it all from home. Monday started with an online discussion with UK Grantmaker Data Champions on ‘Getting and Finding Quality Data‘ for 360 Giving. A significant point of […]

Weeknotes for March 27th, 2020

Virtual – that word dominated this week. With the question: how do we shift what we are doing to virtual? The new normal, we start the week with no idea where it will end. Over the previous weekend, I had decided to cancel Better Bankside, the excellent venue I had […]

Weeknotes for March 20th, 2020

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 […]

Weeknotes for March 13th, 2020