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
​Coming soon!

Past Events

• Tech Summit 2021 - Virtual July 12-23 - Annual focus for this important part of OPEN, a tradition, and particularly an engagement point. A good space for learning and engagement, share ideas, innovation, inspiration from around the network in the field of technology  A place to provide deeper dives into some content (workshops, trainings) that includes respect for diversity of place, language etc.
• 2021 Executive Director's Summit - Virtual March 15-19 2021 - A safe space to connect, discuss the organisational and leadership challenges, learn new leadership approaches and discuss the emerging challenges of Covid in their teams as well as in strategy. Overarching purpose of all our Summits is to build relationships and increase collaboration.

OPEN Academy

The OPEN Academy strengthens and emboldens NGO's and their staff by
offering specialised trainings, networking and knowledge sharing
opportunities.
​The purpose of the OPEN Academy is to build a centralised hub for shared learning experiences via trainings, workshops and secondments. The OPEN Academy develops tailor made professional learning opportunities for NGO's as well as providing a space for collaboration around the world.

Upcoming Workshops
OPEN is offering all staff from our CEE (central Eastern European) cohort a professional training on ‘giving and receiving feedback’ in September 2021. If successful, the training will be offered to the wider Network in 2022.This half day training will provide practical tools for healthy feedback loops in organisations as well as give participants opportunities to experiment with different ways of framing challenges and communicating with each other.Participants will learn the differences between feedback, criticism and judgement and practice a range of different feedback styles with their work colleagues.

Current Workshop

• Climate Strategy Training - Virtual July 27 - to August 4. As climate change has taken a backseat in the public eye given the Covid-19 pandemic, the earth continues to heat up, and the climate crisis is worsening by the day. It is vital that campaigners have the latest strategy insights and tools to influence how we reinvest and reimagine our world going forward. Throughout this course, participants will learn how to assess and develop strategic interventions and how to create powerful counter narratives addressing the core causes of the climate crisis. Each week will involve two training 3-hour sessions with MobLab covering systems mapping, strategy development, case studies, and storytelling. An in-depth agenda of the course will be shared with registered participants.

Past Workshops

• Digital Campaigns Training - Virtual June -July 2021. The Digital Campaigns training was a one day equivalent course in digital campaigning covering strategy and power, tactics, email, fundraising and testing. This training was delivered online over the course of two weeks. The course was attended by 20 Network staff from 12 member organizations.The course consisted of a series of workshops on campaign development and email writing based around a campaign scenario. Small groups were given guidance and feedback to create their own campaigns. - more info here

 

• Housing Strategy Lab - Virtual May 2021. The housing lab was a 4 hour (over 2 days) workshop focused on housing issues aimed at building groups’ strategic analysis.The lab was attended by 17 staff from 10 organisations across the Network.The workshop included external speakers from housing movements around the world & campaign planning workshops. - more info here

 

• Far Right Round Table - Virtual: April 21 2021. The Far right roundtable was a 2 hour workshop exploring the Network’s campaigns tackling conspiracy theories, disinformation and the rise of the Far Right in the wake of the pandemic.  The session explored our role in the movement against the far right and built upon and interrogated our strategies. The session hosted 18 participants from 6 different organisations.

 

• Peer to Peer Program - Virtual: 13 April - 20 May. The peer to peer program is a 6 week professional development opportunity offered exclusively to staff from OPEN member organisations currently being delivered. Graduates came out of this program with the necessary tools & techniques to professionally coach staff or volunteers, encouraging development, problem solving & goal setting. Participants learned how to structure difficult conversations, asked the right questions and support their colleague’s professional development. This program had 41 participants from 18 organisations.

 

• Recurring Donor Strategy Lab - Virtual: 30 March & 13 April. The Recurring donor strategy lab was delivered In March 2021, drawing on Skiftet, Campact & 38Degrees’ expertise to develop the training. The lab was created to support OPEN Fund recipients specifically Campax, DGZ, Zazim, Leadnow, ActionStation, aHang and Le Mouvement. The purpose of the workshop was to support groups to develop their own potential pathways to a more successful recurring donor program. The lab was delivered to 22 participants from 7 organisations

   

• Economics mini-series - Virtual: Feb 9, March 2, 2021. The mini-series was a four part series on economics, linking to other socio-economic rights/concerns. It came about during a time when the Network was doing some budget work - national/federal budgets were being tabled; groups were working on macroeconomic and spending campaigns and most were asking their governments to fund new budget related services, including basic income grants that have budget implications. These sessions have been watched over 120 times since uploaded at the time of writing (April 2021).

OPEN Lives

For the OPEN live format, we get experts from all over the world to give
us input on a wide range of topics for 1.5 hours. We design the content
of the program according to the needs that arise in trainings and
conferences.

• August 3, 2021: Uplift | Covid messaging. This session will equip participants with the skills and language needed to persuade people who are hesitant about getting the COVID-19 vaccine. Emily will cover the research, recommendations and how Uplift created a powerful member campaign to start hundreds of community conversations with vaccine hesitant people.

• June 30, 2021: MoveOn | Analytics & experiments from MoveOn’s US election campaign.Senior data scientists Eric Castillo and Allison Kelly will take us through their peer to peer fundraising modeling & message testing program exploring their approach and learnings along the way.

 

• June 23, 2021: DeGoedeZaak recently developed a universal, user friendly and accessible toolkit, which internet users can use to arm and organize themselves against online hate and intimidation: www.eerstehulpbijonlinehaat.nl (First Aid for Online Hate). The DGZ team is looking at the possibility to translate the toolkit and make it accessible for other orgs, so come along if you’re interested in potentially accessing this toolkit for your organisation. DGZ also hopes to spark an interest in combining Network forces to combat the increase of online hatred and intimidation. So come ready to discuss!

 

• June 15, 2021: Restart: Climate - an online hackathon for innovative campaign tactics from Campact! Want to hear more about how Campact turned the upcoming federal elections into a vote for the climate? Come hear Susanne present their main challenges and learnings in an OPEN Live next week!

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

• June 30, 2021: MoveOn | Analytics & experiments from MoveOn’s US election campaign.Senior data scientists Eric Castillo and Allison Kelly will take us through their peer to peer fundraising modeling & message testing program exploring their approach and learnings along the way.