Digital Connections for Meaningful Collaboration

||For the Creative, Cultural and Changemaking Sectors

Hi there! This article is a part of a series titled ‘Changemaking Culture’, which showcases best practices and learnings regarding growing networks, community building and the values of collaboration in the digital age.

Today, let’s take a closer look at collaboration: why is it so important and how can tech help us get better at it?

It’s important to think of tech as something that hasn’t simply aided in collaboration, but that has also made it a must: as the means at our disposal evolve, so too do professional roles run the risk of becoming ever more specialized. This leads to the risk of “silofication”, which is what happens when we become highly skilled at one task, but owing to our narrow focus, find ourselves out of depth when dealing with it’s adjacencies. It can feel a bit like being in a kitchen full of master chefs, without a single waiter in sight!

Collaboration is especially important for folks working in the creative, cultural and changemaking sectors, as by the very nature of our work, we often find ourselves intertwined with artists, designers, fabricators, festival organizers and a whole host of other professionals; each equally critical in ensuring that things move smoothly. And that’s to say nothing of the daily communication between geographically diffused team members.

Factoring in things like time-zones and cultural differences, or even simply keeping communications channels focused can get quite maddening. So, that brings us to the burning question…

How do we activate tech in order to improve collaboration?

For sectors that are closely intertwined with their communities, collaboration needs to be approached holistically: external communication and engagement needs to be as much of a priority as internal, team-centric cohesion. This allows new ideas to flow in and new connections to be made, all while the day-to-day functioning of an org occurs smoothly in the background.

While there’s already a fair bit of discourse out there on the best ways to activate tech in order to improve collaboration, here are four things that Dara’s team likes to keep in mind when we think through this topic:

• Time zones are critical. In fact, as events move online, being clear about time zones has become the difference between showing up on time and being two hours late. Organizations need to be keenly aware of where their members, partners and audiences are, and what the time difference is.
• There is no collaboration without cohesion. Whether it’s small work groups or communities that bring professionals closer, a noisy space can often cause more harm than good. Chat rooms and message boards need to be defined clearly and monitored regularly to ensure that they don’t get discursive.
• Make it personal. When you’re engaging with folks from all over the world, there’s always one language you can turn to in order to improve communication: the language of the smile. It’s important for organizations to take advantage of video messaging in order to make conversations feel more personal and human.
• Simplify, simplify, simplify. No one likes looking at walls of text in order to find application dates, remuneration and the like. Wherever possible, tech should simplify and organize information, such that it can be transmitted at a glance.

There’s certainly a lot more to remember when thinking about digital technology and collaboration, but this should serve well as a primer to get you or your organization building valuable connections across the internet.

If you’re wondering where you might find a great platform for entities in the creative, cultural and changemaking worlds to communicate with each other, their partners and their audiences, why not come give Dara a try at https://www.dara.network/. We’re building her with a lot of love, and we try and speak to the points listed above in everything we do. If you’re unsure, and you’d like to know more about us, have a look at our other Medium articles here.

Don’t hesitate to reach out to support@dara.network if you have any questions or suggestions. Or, you can message Dara’s team directly on Dara here.

Written by Manu Sharma,

Former Communications Lead at Dara