OKFestival '14 report

[Robert Lehmann]

[bcc: team.berlin]

Dear all,

I have attended this week's Open Knowledge Festival in Berlin (Jul 15–17, 2014) and spoke on behalf of the OpenTechSchool in the How To Teach Open Data session.  The notes can be found online and also attached to this mail.  It was especially insightful on feedback surveying and facilitation tips.

It was a World Café-style event, which means a couple of experts talking to groups of people in a speed dating fashion.  I spoke about "How to organise tech and data workshops," the other groups focussed on "Building effective curriculum and accreditation," "Type of education activities: a blended offline, online," and "Designing passion driven communities."

I co-facilicated the session with Emma Prest from DataKind UK.  A big round of applause also go to Ramin and Alessandro who represented Physical Computing Club and Bea for organizing OKFest!

Cheers,

Robert

Key lessons learned about the topic

• Dream ratio of trainers to participants is 1:3
  
• Lava keyboard — don't touch a participant's keyboard
  
• Actively go and ask how participants are getting on, don't wait for questions
  
• Tell a story — explain what they are going to learn, what they have accomplished and how it fits into a bigger picture of their work
  
• Parking lot — create a place to put thoughts and questions not included in the agenda or curriculum to come back to at the end
  
• Make sure participants leave knowing what’s possible, where to look for help and are armed with a problem-solving mentality                          

Don't

• Run installation parties
  
• Expect honest feedback
  
• Be too static: adapt and make the material relevant to your participants 

Key resources

• OpenTechSchool Coaching Guide
  
• OpenTechSchool Workshop Organiser Schedule
  
• Aspiration Tech’s Facilitation Wiki
  
• New Organising Institute’s Resources for Trainers

Discussion

• Before the workshop you can ask participants to do some reading or exercises to familiarise themselves with a concept or tool.
  
• Survey participants in advance to establish what tools people have used and their skill level.  For example, open-form surveys (do you work with technology X [_] once a week [_] every day [_] never?) help set expectations of participants and gather realistic self-assessment.
  
• Have progress reports and demos — even in-between — to keep participants on a deadline.
  
• Use sign language (a wave for "slow down," a rabbit for "going down a rabbit hole," etc.), especially good if you have big groups who speak different languages and they want to communicate with the facilitator without interrupting.
  

[giorgia sambrotta]

Nice, thanks fro sharing.

Can you explain why: Don't run installation parties?

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            Giorgia Sambrotta     

                                  Web Design

                                

       

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[Robert Lehmann]

Sure, that's a point I've added.  In Zurich, we have made the experience that while installation parties are nice and good for a chat and a beer, they don't guarantee everyone is set up the day of the workshop.  Their declared goal — avoiding any and all installation issues for the workshop — is often missed.

The resources spent on such a event can, IMO, be used much more fruitful.  If you just want to meet up with the community it's still a nice idea to have some event before the actual workshops.

While I didn't hear that point expressed by someone else that strongly, nobody seemed to disagree.

Cheers,

Robert