5 things that happened this week — DDC weeknotes 2
- I’m back at work!
I missed the past 2 weeks to look after my daughter in hospital who got sepsis. She’s on the mend and back at home, the sun is shining — life is good again. I can also run a ‘Lunch & Learn’ on micro-biology if anyone is interested?! And resume Weeknotes of course.
2. Setting up personalised support resources for DDC digital leads
Well, Joe did most of it! But it was a really rewarding bit of collaborative and agile work as we realised that this being a non-linear programme (i.e. lots of digital leads with different needs and levels of experience, working on different projects), we needed to rethink how we would provide participants with some self-serve support. So we had a huddle (i.e. a dedicated Zoom chat on the back of our weekly stand-up), devised a plan to test out a solution or two and delivered it in the space of a few days. No faffing! It’s at ‘good enough’ stage but we hope it will help programme participants find more bespoke support during phase 2 of the programme. We plan to get some feedback from them in the next check-in calls which will then help us refine this support offer. It was really great working with Joe, who brought a content designer’s lens and reuse expertise to the fore. Looking forward to finding out if this is helpful or not for participants!
3. Matching digital leads with volunteers
Alongside Jess from Deloitte, I’ve been immersed in Airtable matching lots of needs for digital leads from charities with support offers from Deloitte volunteers. We’ve come up with matches for each digital lead and have been testing out the following workflow — part automation (through common tags and filtering), part human/relational touch (reviewing Routefinders, notes from calls and what volunteers are interested in doing). We’ll find out soon if these matches are a good fit as I hand over the ‘matching baton’ to Jess!
4. Thinking about community building and engagement
I had an inspiring call with Liam from Hubbub who updated me on his DDC project (with a community-building focus). While he was walking me through his user journey mapping, two things came to mind: 1) wow, such great progress; 2) there are other organisations doing similar work (including us at CAST) who would benefit from Hubbub’s learnings. We had a good chat about community building needs and platforms and shared resources. It really highlighted for me the value of peer learning; reuse; and 1:1 connector chats. And that we’re all in this together!
5. Reconnecting with the Digital Poverty Alliance
I caught up with Tristan who is the Head of Strategy at the Digital Poverty Alliance (DPA). I’m a DPA Community Board Member with CAST/Catalyst and they’re about to publish an evidence review with a set of new recommendations to tackle the digital divide. I’m looking forward to exploring how our work can carry on contributing to their agenda, while also feeding into CAST and Catalyst strategies.
That’s enough reflecting for now. Time to start wrapping up the week and catch a late sunset on the seafront. See you next week ;)
