Good busy, but bad weeknotes
We’ve been a bit slow getting these weeknotes published because we’ve been busy in ProMo, Cwmpas and WCVA. But, we need to get used to sharing, especially when we are busy. So here we go…
DesYIgning Digital Youth Services Course
At ProMo, we’ve been equally busy recruiting for our course and designing it. We’ve had 45 people registered for the first session, representing 24 youth involving third sector organisations. We were thrilled with this; we had to cap sign up numbers because they exceeded our initial predictions. If you missed out, don’t worry, there will be a larger course starting in May which will be open to all third sector organisations.
This course acts as a prototype (for us) in online cohort learning. It is a bit different to the standard Zoom or Teams based training session. We’re working in small groups — helping organisations define their challenges and develop working prototypes to address real needs. Most organisations work as teams; we’re encouraging two people per organisation to replicate this — to give people the opportunity to do real practical work in a familiar way. We’re spreading the course over eight weeks, for a chance to reflect, time to absorb new knowledge and put ideas into practice/work on a real challenge their organisation is facing
Shared Language
With the rush to deliver, it has become apparent that we also need to work on a defined shared language in the partnership to establish what good digital practice looks like. There are various terms used across the third and public sectors linked to digital. In ProMo, we refer to a Service Design approach, others talk about agile, and CDPS Wales has created the 12 Digital Standards for Wales. Most third sector organisations in Wales are micro organisations (below £50k annual turnover) for whom learning new terminology or standards might not be high on their agenda (however excited we are about it!). Crucially we need to grow the sectors understanding of the underlying principles of working with people and conducting research to identify need. This will be our biggest challenge.
Prototyping a website
After discussion in the partnership, ProMo will be designing a website explaining more about Newid as delivery gets underway. This is to help organisations find out more about the work and how to access support. However, we’re looking to do something a bit different with this website. From our initial discovery, we found that cost is often a barrier to the third sector getting better at digital. So, we’re trying to build it on a budget of less than £50 and in under three days. We’ll be sharing how we did it and templates so other organisations (if they need to) can do something similar in the future.
The website won’t be all singing and dancing but will allow us to prototype and then iterate to a better resource. It also allows us to avoid duplication as we can share what we are doing, get feedback on existing resources, and understand where we can best support.
More weeknotes to follow from WCVA and Cwmpas.
