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Welcome to the Aspiration Facilitation wiki! We invite you to have a look around, leave a comment or three, and check back soon for more content! This wiki describes processes, details, considerations, and logistics for organizing and facilitating Aspiration Style events. For more background, see About This Wiki. You can also check out the event documentation work we are doing with Mozilla at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Drumbeat/events/kit |
ALERT: Due to ongoing spam problems, we have had to disable anonymous editing and self-service account creation. We ABSOLUTELY welcome contributions to this wiki; please contact info@aspirationtech.org to request an account. We apologize for the hassle! |
Event Design Agenda addresses the various options and trade-offs extant in building structure into live events. NEW: Agenda Hacking explains how to dynamically generate well-curated agenda topics. Session Design offers guidelines on how to design and structure individual sessions at an event. See our paper on Participatory Events, commissioned by the Shuttleworth Foundation. |
Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing Collaboration discusses the potential and tradeoffs of using wikis and other online tools to enhance the event and document the proceedings for posterity and those unable to attend. |
Facilitation and Participant Engagement Facilitation details facilitation tools, structure of the elements of an event (group exercises, plenary sessions, break-outs) and offers guidelines to facilitation. Participants details the participant guidelines as well as Pre-Event Engagement Questions. |
Logistics and Event Planning Logistics details the little things that make a big difference, including the Venue Checklist and Internet Access Best Practices. Documenting at Events Documentation covers how to capture the proceedings, including Videographer Best Practices. |
Acknowledgments
The foregoing facilitation and agenda ideas have been collected and developed over years of working with various organizations who convene technology gatherings for the non-profit community. Particular thanks are extended to:
- FabRiders (Stroud, UK, https://www.fabriders.net), who provide us with ongoing joy, inspiration and insight as our closest and longest-term co-conspirator;
- The Ruckus Society (Oakland, California US, https://www.ruckus.org), whose Action Camp model, facilitation techniques and agenda structure have inspired many of the ideas in this document, and where we learned "Spectrograms" and "Strong Wind Blows";
- Mozilla (Mountain View, California, US, https://www.mozilla.org/) and Mark Surman whose Drumbeat program has provided diverse new contexts and scaling opportunities for our models and techniques.
- Blue Oxen Associates (Menlo Park, California, US, https://www.blueoxen.org) and Eugene Eric Kim, for guidance and mentoring in the use of wikis and other collaborative tools for both live events and virtual communities;
- IDRC's Telecentre.org program (Ottawa, Ontario Canada, https://www.telecentre.org) for serving both as a primary reviewer and catalyst of these documents as well as an early and frequent contributor to the development of the Aspiration model.
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