In this New Tactics community of practice, we host tactic-focused online conversations about once a month. We call these conversations, Tactical Dialogues. We have a basic formula (that we try to stick to) for each Tactical Dialogue topic: Doing x to achieve y. This formula helps us stay focused on the human rights actions as opposed to discussing the issue. These topics are meant to span many human rights issues, regions and contexts. The idea is that human rights defenders will have an opportunity to connect to peers that are using similar tactics (but not necessarily working on the same issue or in the same context) so that these participants can learn from each others' experiences.
We have hosted over 60 online conversations so far, engaging over 1200 human rights defenders.
To ensure that this community and its online discussions are useful and relevant - we need your help to identify what topics you would like to discuss! What kinds of tactics would you like to learn more about? What kinds of tactics have you mastered that you are eager to share with others? What are you struggling with in your work that this community could help you with?
Share your ideas and feedback by adding comments below. Thank you!
Hello all,
I wanted to start this off by sharing the outcomes of the some of the efforts we've already done to get ideas for topics from the community. Back in late 2012, I put together a survey with a list of 19 topics and asked people to rate them in terms of which topics they would be most relevant and useful for their work. The highest rated tactic-focused conversation topics were:
So here's what I'm thinking...
(Note: we will not be hosting conversations in July or December this year)
What do you think of these topics? Are there other topic ideas that would be more useful to you? Are there topics (these or others) that you would be willing to facilitate? Please share your feedback and ideas by adding a comment below!
If you do like these topics, we still need to find conversation facilitators and leaders for these topics so please let me know if you're interested!
Another idea we've been exploring is having a theme for 3 months (or longer) and having all of the conversations during that time period, relate to that theme. Ideas for themes:
Or, the themes could be connected to our tactical goal categories. Having conversations that relate closely to each other over the span of 3 (or more) months might encourage community members to participate in a series of conversations, as opposed to just one or two a year.
Thoughts?
- Kristin Antin, New Tactics Online Community Builder
Thanks Kristin for these great ideas!
I particuarly think that "Visualizing data to harness the power of information" is an interesting topic for future exploration. We recently released a report detailing the scope and landscape of global human rights grantmaking, which utilized infographics, charts, and other graphics to convey the current state of the field. http://foundationcenter.org/gainknowledge/humanrights/
Moving forward, we are exploring other ways to visualize data in order to show changes and trends in human rights philanthropy over time.
Looking forward to future conversation about this and other topics.
Christen Dobson, International Human Rights Funders Group
Thanks for your feedback, Christen! The 'Visualizing Data' conversation topic is part of a series of discussions from September to November around 'Building Awareness'. There is more information on these series here.
We would be thrilled to have you and your colleagues from the International Human Rights Funders Group in this conversation in November! Do you know of other organizations that we should invite?
Thanks again for sharing your input on this topic. So glad it piqued your interest!
- Kristin Antin, New Tactics Online Community Builder
We just wrapped up our online conversation on Visualizing Information for Advocacy - be sure to check out the summary!
-- Kristin Antin, New Tactics Online Community Builder