Catalyst working groups and communities of practice

Working groups & communities of practice

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Working groups & communities of practice

A small number of experimental groups are currently testing different forms of organising across Catalyst. Each have a specific task, term, team and things to test. This page is an ongoing work in progress to share what's happening.

Ellie Hale

Stewards for the next phase of Catalyst

Groups

Groups

Network Engagement

Design how best to openly communicate how Catalyst is evolving and how people can get involved. This is also an open experiment in decentralisation that can help inform future Catalyst strategy/model/ways of working.

Agencies for Good Slack working group

Define the purpose, identity, audience & next steps of the Slack space used by digital agencies/ consultants to connect & share. Then, manage onboarding of new members and recruitment of a community manager from Collaborative Future work placement programme.

Network Meetup group

Design monthly sharing and networking events with and for digital partners

Collective conversations on Development briefs

Digital partners come together to share knowledge and insight around the themes of two Catalyst-funded ‘Development 2D’ projects: • Hyde Housing: https://www.loom.com/share/8f9e146667504da39c143cf516526958 •VONNE: https://www.loom.com/share/9cc6acbb513b4630aaa9b59762334c16

UK Tech for Good Network (now launched)

Build a community of organisers across the UK and Ireland supporting each other to fuel the tech for good movement

Stewards for the next phase of Catalyst

Initially in the first phase (until new dedicated team is in place), act as a recruitment steering committee, in collaboration with the Network Engagement Working Group. One new team is in place, stewards will support, advise and connect them with the network and key stakeholders.

Initiative leads

Collectively identify priorities for maintaining continuation and momentum of core Catalyst services for the next 12 months, to inform and design conversations with founding funders and subsequent Catalyst continuation/momentum budgets.

LERP: Learning, evaluation, research practices

Establish a learning group/network to explore and understand what LERP we currently do/share across Catalyst and how, and design an approach for embedding individual and collective LERP.

Name

Network Engagement

Task

Design how best to openly communicate how Catalyst is evolving and how people can get involved.

This is also an open experiment in decentralisation that can help inform future Catalyst strategy/model/ways of working.

Workspace

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Miro

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Suggested questions/ things to test

What is the best approach to open working for the new team and stewards?

What infrastructure and rituals are needed for information to flow usefully between different decentralised groups?

How we might avoid a centralised sense-making and move towards a more distributed, collective approach?

What is people’s appetite for autonomous self-organising involvement as Catalyst, without being paid

Understand who this excludes and how we might proactively counter it

Suggested outcomes

Understand what questions people would want shared when, in what format and how

Establish and test processes for engaging the wider network, beyond the working group, in the most equitable way

Establish what content needs to be on the website (or this Coda, or elsewhere) to support two way communication between the network and the stewards group and how this should be kept updated

Deliver input from the wider network, beyond the working group, on the future team and steward qualities

Work in the open so that the wider network can see and input into what they’re working on (and in doing so, model and test the recommended approach).

Who?

Initiated by freelancers Roz Sutton (formerly employed by CAST) and Joe Roberson (also working with Catalyst through the OWLs and Learning Partner). Supported by Tess Cooper (Collaborative Future).

Working with a diverse group of people interested in shaping the next phase of Catalyst:

Ben Holt, British Red Cross

Beth Mukushi, SCVO

Charlotte Newman, Carefree

Dalia Abu Yassien, Comic Relief

Deepum Bhatia, Henry Smith Charity

Doug Belshaw, We Are Open

Gregor Thomson, Founders & Coders

Joe Roberson, freelance

Kate White, Superhighways

Marie Wilson, Salford CVS

Megan Gray, freelance

Nana Parry, Tectonic

Nathan Williams, ProMo-Cymru

Stephen Hawkes, DEV Society

Roz Sutton, freelance

Tessa Cooper, Collaborative Future

Term

4 meetings over 5 weeks

Thu 27th May 9.30-11.30

Break for half term

Thu 10th June 9.30-11.30

Thu 17th June 9.30-11.30

Thu 24th June 9.30-11.30

Time commitment

2 hrs per week, voluntary

Find out more

Contact: roz@thecatalyst.org.uk

This working group’s initial 4 weeks is now complete. You can read about what they did and achieved in

this blog from Doug at We Are Open

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, and some of the

key takeaways in this summary.

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