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Conceived and Conducted by: LINC Project, Media Jumpstart and Progressive Technology Project

In January of 2001, the LINC Project teamed up with Media Jumpstart to conduct a day long workshop for New York Foundation grantees on using technology to increase organizational capacity. The workshop was very well received, and we got great feedback about how the workshop could have been better. Much of that feedback had to do with the participants wanting less of the "talking-head" presenters, and more of hearing from other peer organization about the "real-world" experience of using technology in their organizations.

Over the course of the next year, the LINC Project, Media Jumpstart, Progressive Technology Project, and other Nonprofit Technology Assistance Providers participated in ongoing dialogue about ways to make our trainings and workshops more effective, more participatory and more fun. Many of us realized that the traditional model for workshops and trainings set up a dichotomy between presenters and participants in which the presenters were viewed as being in control of technical knowledge and holding power over how that knowledge would be shared and used. For many of us, this was in total contradiction of how and why we do the work that we do -- if our whole purpose is to expand technological knowledge, and through doing so, empower people, then we couldn't use training models that expressed a contradictory model of power relations.

To that end, we have started to try to rethink how to approach technology training. We realized early on in this process that we faced two major obstacles: first, participants in workshop frequently buy into the idea that technology is hard, complicated, mysterious, and a bit beyond the grasp of mere mortals -- either that or they just don't care enough to be bothered -- in either case, they're frequently in the room wanting to be told what they need to know about technology; second, we faced our own comfort with the 'talking-head' model of training -- it was easy, we'd grown up learning that way, so it was natural that we teach that way, and last but certainly not least, it was the model that required the least amount of effort on our part. The process itself was and continues to be a long and difficult one, as it's frequently hard to balance the desires that our audience has for 'technical' information with the fact that we see technology as working effectively only when it's backed by good, sound, strategic thinking and planning -- none of which is even remotely technical.

In any event, when we sat down to try to plan out the New York Foundation workshop for January, 2002, we were clear that weren't going to do much, if any 'talking-head' presentations. Our goal was to create a workshop in which the participants would build upon the technical knowledge that they already had and engage in a process with us, that would bring them to a place, at the end of the day, from which they could move forward on better use of technology in their organizations.

What follows is the agenda that we created for the workshop along with trainer notes. In our ongoing efforts to practice "non-territoriality" in the tools and expertise we produce, we have created this online version of the agenda of the workshop. If anyone uses this agenda or any portion of it, we simply ask that you let us know how it went, and if there were any substantive changes that improved the quality of the exercises or discussions. Please email any comments directly to Dirk Slater

This was a day-long workshop given on January 16, 2002 at the New York Foundation offices with over 15 organizations participating. Our goal was to get three major points across:

1. In order to use technology you must plan.
2. You must have support for your technology
3. You need to assess resources available to you for your technology use

The registration form we used is a short technology assessment form to better understand the capacity of the registrant's organizations. Click here to download. We used this form to assess what folks interests were and the order in which we conducted exercises and discussions. It may be relevant to change order or delete sections based on who is coming to your workshop in order to keep the interest and energy levels up.

The Workshop Facilitators

It's Important to note that we were able to equally distribute facilitating responsibilities fairly evenly through out the day. This kept the flow fresh. Also - though it's implied in the nature of the exercises and facilitated discussion described, it's worth restating - we focused on the work of the organization's attending an how technology can support and enhance that work.