Workshops

We will be offering this workshop twice in May to accommodate a diversity of time zones: We highly recommend that you participate in Designing Sessions That Harness Collective Power (formerly The Session Design Lab) before Facilitating Collective Power. This three-hour online workshop is for people who facilitate charities, advocates, activists, […]

Facilitating Collective Power Recently updated !

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

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

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

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

This week has been about coordinating, planning and scheduling events and online discussions. During a planning meeting for the Data Literacy Consortium with Heather Leson from IFRC and Katelyn Rogers and Lisa Petersen from The Centre for Humanitarian Data, we scheduled the next check-in meeting for March 10th. During the […]

Weeknotes for Feb 21st, 2020

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

On Wednesday, May 29th, 2019, FabRiders will lead the Open Government Partnership Summit Unconference on Making Data Work for Open Government. This document will help you understand how the Unconference will be conducted and how to get the most out of it. To paraphrase US President John F Kennedy: ‘Ask not […]

How to get the most out of an Unconference

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 ...

At the beginning of December, I facilitated a four-day meeting for the Core Team of Global Voices, a platform that makes the world’s citizen media available to everyone. As an American living full-time in the United Kingdom, for most of 2018, I’ve been absorbed by stories that are consuming the […]

Reasons to be cheerful about 2018

Co-Creating IFRC’s Data Playbook, Online Discussion Notes

Outside, the air was thick with toxic smoke from the Camp Fire, with warnings to limit exposure. Inside, it was Aspiration’s 15th Non-Profit Developer Summit and people were invested in being there. It was the largest #NPDev yet, with over 150 registrants and it seems the smoke didn’t deter people […]

What We Learned at NPDev 2018

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. A ‘build it and they will come’ approach is likely to end up with unused and unloved content. Being deliberate […]

Designing EFF’s Security Education Companion, Online Discussion Notes

WE HAVE A NEW VERSION! In the last half of 2017, we ran several workshops in places like MozFest and Aspiration’s NPDev Summit to get better insights into the steps needed to develop Network-Centric Resources. Initially, we discussed it regarding ‘workflows’ but realised we needed a better metaphor to get […]

Network-Centric Resources LifeCycles Draft

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

THIS WORKSHOP TOOK PLACE ON Thursday, May 4th, Check out our next workshop, Data Tactics for a Post-Fact World, or sign up for FabUpdates to get more information on upcoming workshops. Build stronger campaigns using design methodologies Learn how to design stronger campaigns that make a bigger impact sooner. You […]

Workshop: Hacking human centred design for social change

Assuring the evidence used in your social change campaign engages rather than alienates. This training is for activists and advocates who want to integrate data into their campaign or improve the ability of their campaign data to engage their stakeholders. Overview Campaigns will only win when we capture the hearts […]

Effective Data Tactics in a Post-Fact World

2016 wasn’t all bad. Here at FabRiders, 2016 was a great year of learning. Every event and project that goes by we find ourselves building and sharing on a body of knowledge that is contributed to and enabled by a fantastic set of partners and allies. Despite all the setbacks faced last year, we are […]

Building a Better 2017

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 upcoming event, which is one of many being held in Madrid prior to the International Open Data Conference, is an opportunity for those of us involved in the open data movement to come together to focus on the change and impact we are trying to create. FabRiders is honoured […]

Why We’re Excited About The Open Exchange for Social Change

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

Anybody that gets within earshot of me during the months of October and November will hear me wax lyrical about this event (the only one I’ll cross the pond for!). Lasting three days during the third week of November, The NonProfit Developer (#npdev) Summit is Aspiration’s annual gathering that brings […]

What I learned at NPDev Summit 2015

Data Sources You have two options for finding data to use in your advocacy work: use existing data or collect it yourself. Data that already exists has the benefit of not needing to be collected, but it may not be formatted, organised or aggregated in a way that is helpful. […]

Data Advocacy Essentials Pt III: Data Sources

The data pipeline We are very grateful to the School of Data for their clear explanation on how the data pipeline works! Once you have a clear understanding of your data action cycle, stakeholders and targets, you can begin manipulating data. The process of working with data can be broken […]

Data Advocacy Essentials, Pt II: The Data Pipeline

What is data? How can we use it for advocacy? Advocacy is a process by which people, groups, networks and coalitions seek to bring about positive change by influencing policies, as well as the actions and opinions of others. In evidence based advocacy, facts in the form of data are […]

Data Advocacy Essentials, Pt I: Action Cycles and Stakeholders

Understanding how any technology used in campaigning functions as a tactic to further your campaign strategy is essential. For every training session that Fabriders runs, whether it’s about utilising data effectively or social media, we’ve found it important to start with an exercise that gets participants to thinkabout the goals […]

A Quick Advocacy Strategy Exercise w/ Stakeholder Mapping & Power ...

During a training session I recently did in Jakarta for SEATTI – the South East Asian Transparency and Technology Initiative, I had a lot of fun working with the participants on using a party metaphor to talk about open-data. Transparency and accountability advocates often struggle with how to engage citizens […]

Throw an Open-Data party!

Six years ago I left the US non profit tech scene and had swore never to return (more about that in an upcoming blog post – stay tuned). There’s only one person who could possibly persuade me to come back to attend a non-profit techie event, and that is Gunner […]

Facilitating Capacity & Movement Building