Weeknotes feels over-ambitious but I’m determined to keep things moving — this is a summary of the last three weeks. Some was written two weeks ago, so it’s a bit of a hodgepodge.

What I’ve been up to

Lots of group sessions and events, some of which I experimented turning into Twitter threads (click the captions for the full story).

There were retro-style learning workshops on some of the Catalyst programmes, with my excellent Capacity team colleagues:

A hack day to design the future of a Slack group for…

Values shape our decisions. They help us ‘be the change we want to see in the world’, if we’re paying attention and truly living them. They’re also the lens through which we interpret all sorts of data, whether we realise it or not. So it’s good to know what that lens is and how it’s shaping us.

As a life-long vegetarian, I’ve felt the impact of my values on everyday decision making for as long as I can remember. Scanning food labels, checking brand names against a mental boycott list of organisations with poor animal welfare or environmental records. Nonetheless…

This piece is a public ‘note to self’. More cathartic diary entry than useful blog, but given the subject matter I thought it fitting to publish to hold myself accountable. Thanks to the ever-excellent Dama (my Tech for Good London Meetup co-organiser) for giving me the nudge I needed and kindly giving it a read-through. It’s also turned into something of a ‘confessions of a former PR’, which was unexpected.

I’m making a commitment to ‘work out loud’ more. I’ve been inspired by Catalyst’s Open Working Lineup (OWL) team, which has helped hundreds of charities and digital partners to share…

We are working hard to ensure these different efforts are co-ordinated effectively where possible, but in the meantime we wanted to share what we know, to help others looking to help.

Here’s an overview of the current opportunities we’re aware of to deploy those digital teams and skills…

Catalyst Digital Teams

• What is it: Deploying the best-matched capacity to support the most urgent, common/collective needs of the sector.
• Who is it for: Agencies and individuals (but not sole traders) from the digital, data and design community.
• Whose needs is it addressing: Voluntary sector organisations that identify as an anchor organisation, infrastructure body or…

A collective agreement by and for social tech/tech for good agencies.

We are living through an unprecedented global crisis. As the COVID-19 virus spreads and the pandemic unfolds, we are uncertain about the future. Extraordinary challenges require extraordinary responses and all of us need to put our talents, skills, and experience into service.

Civil society has a huge role to play in the coming weeks and months, providing lifesaving services and the leadership to help us come together to make change. Technology, data and digital tools offer organisations, volunteers, and our communities powerful and effective ways to help those affected…

To mark today’s Global Climate Strike, a few civil society community organisers (me, Ab Brightman, Cassie Robinson and Dama Sathianathan) have put together the beginnings of a rough compilation of resources and links around climate-relevant tech for good:

bit.ly/TechForGoodResponsesToClimateCrisis

It seems there are several disparate efforts going on to map this space but no one place to find or keep track of everything.

Collating existing efforts and challenges seems timely given the urgency of the climate/ecological crisis, and the amount of activity going on to address it that people just haven’t heard about because they don’t know where to look.

The…