Collective Power Playbook

A collection of group/social learning exercises designed to empower participants

In 2023, we started offering a new workshop called “Facilitating Collective Power” and have been surprised by the diversity of participants and how they work with communities, groups and networks to build power—those building collective power with those who don’t have it but should especially inspire us. Why focus on […]

Join us in using collective power to build The Collective ...

What follows is a collection of learnings gained from practising facilitation since the late 90s. Thanks to Gunner at Aspiration for his ongoing contributions and those who have joined me in learning about facilitation at places like MozFest, RightsCon and The Session Design Lab.  A facilitator aims to surface the unique knowledge and experience of the individuals […]

Facilitation Essentials

This online workshop will take place on Thursday, Dec 7th at 3 pm UTC (Check Your Time Zone) This three-hour online workshop is for people who facilitate charities, advocates, activists, and other movement-builders. By the end of the workshop, you will have greater expertise in developing community-centric strategies to build […]

Facilitating Collective Power

Improve your training and facilitation skills. FabRiders’ next Session Design Lab will take place online over two days, Wednesday, December 13th & Thursday, December 14th from 3pm to 6pm UTC (check your time zone) During this workshop, you will get a grounding in designing and facilitating participatory and interactive sessions […]

The Session Design Lab

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

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

At Aspiration’s Non-Profit Developer Summit in November 2019, I attended a workshop on Facilitative Leadership run by Misty Avila. What struck me about the session was how Misty walked the walk, demonstrating the power of facilitative leadership through the session design, providing structure and scaffolding for participants to share and […]

Recipes for Facilitative Leadership – a workshop session design

Cette activité va: Donner de l’élan et stimulez l’interactivité au fur et à mesure que cet exercice commence par des paires, passe à des quatuors et se termine par une discussion en grand groupe. Aider les participants à faire connaissance les uns avec les autres et à savoir qui se […]

Atelier participatif pour la collecte d’indicateurs sur la prise de ...

I was first introduced to user personas participating in a design sprint by Aspiration in 2005. In that workshop, we were asked to imagine users of Social Source Commons, a website to share lists of software tools you already use, gain knowledge and support, and discover new tools. What stood […]

A Workshop Exercise on Creating User Personas

FabRiders’ Network-Centric Resources Project supports the development of people-powered and participatory resources that establish assets for networks and communities. Our past online discussions have focused on developing content with and for communities and network’s, such as Heather Leson on curating data-literacy social learning curriculum with Humanitarians in IFRC’s Data Playbook, Greg Bloom on co-creating Data Standards with Health and […]

Gunner on Facilitative Leadership, Online Discussion Notes

Esta actividad: • Ayudará a los participantes a conocerse entre sí. • Creará un espacio seguro y positivo invitando a los participantes a conocerse a través del diálogo y reforzando las habilidades de escucha activa. • Comenzará una discusión sobre la capacidad de los participantes para opinar o participar en los […]

Taller participativo para recopilar datos sobre la toma de decisiones ...

This draft module was intially designed for CIVICUS, to support their partners in the Speak! Campaign. We are thankful for the invaluable contributions of the team at CIVICUS: Hannah Wheatley, Frances Topham Smallwood, Soledad Gattoni and Stephanie Brancaforte. We are also grateful for all the guidance we’ve received on designing […]

A Draft Module on Listening and Learning for Event Design

FabRiders’ Network-Centric Resources Project supports the development of people-powered and participatory resources that establish assets for networks and communities. Our past online discussions have focused on developing content with and for communities and network’s, such as Heather Leson on co-creating data-literacy curriculum with Humanitarians in IFRC’s Data Playbook, Greg Bloom on creating Data Standards […]

Mor Rubinstein, on co-creating a governance structure for Open Heroines. ...

This workshop will help participants understand how to build compelling stories from datasets. We start with focusing on the ‘who’ we are telling the story to and how to craft a narrative that is compelling to them. We then explore the data that the participants are working with and draft […]

Data & Storytelling Workshop

FabRiders’ Network-Centric Resources Project supports the development of people-powered and participatory resources that establish assets for networks and communities. Our past online discussions have focused on developing content with and for communities and network’s, such as Soraya Okuda and EFF’s Security Education Companion and Heather Leson with IFRC’s Data Playbook, or building an event in collaboration with 2000 individuals […]

Greg Bloom, Open Referral, on co-creating data standards.

FabRiders’ Network-Centric Resources Project supports the development of people-powered and participatory resources that establish assets for networks and communities. Our past online discussions have focused on developing content with and for communities and network’s, such as Soraya Okuda and EFF’s Security Education Companion and Heather Leson with IFRC’s Data Playbook, or around collaboration […]

Sarah Allen, MozFest Director, on how to collaborate with 2,000 ...

A network-centric resource is a knowledge asset that supports interaction and strengthens the ability of a community or network to exist. They can be collection of curriculum such as IFRC’s Data Playbook, EFF’s Security Education Companion, or events like MozFest. We’ve chosen to describe the method of developing and sustaining […]

The Lifecycle of a Network-Centric Resource

FabRiders’ Network-Centric Resources supports the development of participatory resources, building assets for networks and communities that share ownership, enable contribution and support collaboration. In this online discussion, Adam Hyde shared his lessons learned in enabling collaborative content creation. Note that this is a redo of an online recording which we […]

Enabling Collaborative Content Creation with Adam Hyde, 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. In this online discussion, Amnesty International’s Milena Marin shared wisdom and lessons learned about enabling thousands of digital volunteers to […]

Crowdsourcing Human Rights Research with Amnesty’s Decoder Project, Online Discussion ...

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

Here at FabRiders, we benefit greatly from our ability to share expertise with a network of technology capacity builders through which we have developed solidarity and close friendships. Recently, LevelUp asked us to help them think about how to improve engagement with the people who are interacting with their resource […]

What are we building: communities or networks?

Our learnings never happen in isolation and we are always grateful to those who have helped inform us along the way. We learned a hell of a lot from Misty Avila and Allen Gunn (Gunner) at Aspiration, who shared their methodologies to get tool developers to focus on users’ needs.  We […]

Hacking user centred design for social change efforts.

Or ‘how to work with marginalised communities on using data and technology in advocacy’ By Maya Ganesh, Beatrice Martini and Dirk Slater. “You are welcome anytime, you’re not like others who come with their own bag of potatoes” It’s with these words that the chair of Women’s Network for Unity (WNU), […]

Leave Your Potatoes At Home, Intro

Data Advocacy Essentials FabRiders provides workshops, webinars and advice on how to use data effectively for advocacy, social change and social justice. This series of blog posts consolidates the information and advice we use. Much of this knowledge has been openly shared by many others, such as School of Data, Tactical […]

Data Advocacy Essentials

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