Events and Trainings

Events

Please contact us at scherthan@openmindsev.org if you would like to register or find out more information about any of our upcoming events.
These events are for groups that specialize in using digital tools to facilitate large-scale education of the public about how they can effectively participate in democratic decision making.

Upcoming Events
​Startup Summit - Paris, France September 3-7, 2018  - This event will be for groups that are just starting their journey and want to learn the basics of building an organisation that can help citizens in their region participate in their communities as well as train new staff on the best tools, including new tech, currently available to them.
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Past Events

• Tech & Organising Summit - Cluj, Romania April 23-27, 2018, The agenda will involve a lot of training on tech practices and tools, organising models that NGOs can use and plan programs  to run with a big focus on using the best tools that they will need to do effective organising and learn from each other on best approaches that have been already tried by others in the past.
• Open Minds Summit - Bangalore, India Feb 5-9, 2018, This meeting, similar to the summits before it, will be an important step in creating a culture of trust. This has been vital for any collaboration, enhancement, and growing among groups. By exchanging their experiences, the participants realise how much they share in terms of similarities. They also realise how much they can learn from each other as some groups solve challenges that others are facing.
• ​Startup Summit - Berlin, Germany November 20-24, 2017,  This event will be for groups that are just starting their journey and want to learn the basics of building an organisation that can help citizens in their region participate in their communities as well as train new staff on the best tools, including new tech, currently available to them.
• Tech Summit & Hackathon 2017 - Berlin, Germany In June 2017, technology staff from NGO’s all over the world gathered in Berlin/ Germany to share and create tools, models, innovations, and best practices. This year tech-adjacent staff was also invited to help build new technology to ensure that citizens could use this tech to be more engaged with and informed about their governments.​
• Learning Tour 2017 - Verden, Germany From July 11-14  Open Minds hosted a “Learning Tour” - Open Minds is a valuable partner for on-boarding and training all your new staff - with attendance by senior staff as well to facilitate training.
• Executive Directors Summit in Verden, Germany 2016 - The 3-day event brought together the Executive Directors of organisations from Sweden, Ireland, Canada, Austria, Poland, Romania, Italy, Netherlands, Israel. It also included WeMove.EU, a pan European organisation. The focus was on leadership education and development in a changing world. Our educative initiatives included sessions on management practices, sustainable organisational growth, mental health and financial management. We also brought several experts in organisational development together; including Dr. Phil Ireland and Ben Brandzel to conduct 1:1 coaching sessions with attendees.

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Trainings

We provide regular monthly virtual trainings on operational issues such as email-writing, social media, and activity evaluation. To bridge and narrow the knowledge gap, younger groups in particular receive regular hands-on 1:1 coaching on themes including email writing, rapid response, growth campaigning, campaign evaluation, fundraising, accounting and project management. Depending on the experience, topic and breadth of understanding from the part of the participants, each training session usually takes up to one hour.

Our staff, Stephanie Roth has a rich experience in designing strategic communications, organising and setting up organisations. 

The fundraising and accounting trainings are given by Ranjani S. Rajashekaran, a consultant with experience in designing and developing reports on approaching the donors and the community for the fundraising needs of the organisations. 

The other trainings are developed and carried out by Rebecca Jarvis, a consultant with long-standing experience in organisational development on the one hand and facilitating common strategies, goals and priorities among diverse groups on the other hand.

​Other Trainings

OPEN Lives

• May 10, 2018: How to build effective microsites w/ Sarah Knutson. Microsites are an increasingly used tactic for big campaigns and this training will give you all the tools to build one yourself. 

• March 29, 2018: Keeping Campaigning Fresh. What are the biggest tool trends and how to utilise them for maximum impact.
• March 22, 2018: Intro to systems mapping and choosing systemic leverage points. How to identify, map and connect stakeholders and get results.

• February 21, 2018: Using Whatsapp w/ Nelson Carr and Benjy Cook. How to use Whatsapp as a channel, organising and sharing to receive maximum results from campaigns.
• November 15, 2017: Facebook Bots w/ Rowan Pereira. Learn about Facebook messenger and how to use it effectively. 
• ​October 26, 2017: General Data Protection Regulation w/ Michael Snook. This is a really important opportunity for all NGOs to understand what is GDPR, what you need to be doing right now and what you need to be doing in the next few months. 
• August 10, 2017: How MoveOn helped stop Trump from repealing Obamacare: Ben Wikler who led MoveOn's work on health care and helped shape the broader movement's strategy, will describe how the campaign worked and what's next. 
• May 9, 2017: Member-Led Campaigns @ MoveOn + 38 Degrees w/ Robin Priestley & Corinne Ball: Listen to Corinne (MoveOn) & Robin (38 Degrees) discuss and compare how they have supported millions of people to start, sign and win powerful petitions.
• May 9, 2017: Running a great hiring process: Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman's recent session on best practice recruitment to help you find brilliant new staff.
• May 10, 2017 Wielding Test Results (for beginners) w/ Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman: A crash course on A/B testing and harnessing experiment results to improve your digital campaigns. The beginner version of "Choosing Metrics Wisely"
• May 11, 2017 Effective Metrics (advanced) w/ Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman: An advanced session with Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman discussing what metrics you should focus on and how to avoid vanity metrics.
• March 25, 2017: Involving members in campaign planning: ActionStation walks us through their stellar strategy for engaging and empowering their members – ensuring their actions are as member-driven as possible.
• March 3, 2017: Corporate Campaigning 101, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman. Learn the essentials of corporatecampaigning, and how it differs from political campaigns.
• February 21, 2017: Psychographic Targeting & Advertising: Henny Smith. How GetUp used psychographic targeting and Facebook ads in the 2016 election to influence swing voters and kick multiple fascists out of parliament.
• January 17, 2017: Media Training with Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Committee and generally regarded as one of the best media people in the business!
• November 3, 2016: Texting the revolution: Text for Bernie director Daniel Souweine talks through the volunteer texting program that sent 10 million individualised messages in the 2016 election.

To attend an upcoming webinar or see a recording of past webinars please contact: scherthan@openmindsev.org.