Embedded evaluation - how are we doing?
At the beginning of 2023 we committed to an ‘embedded evaluation’ of how the core Community Tech team - Promising Trouble, Power to Change and our freelance comms lead Jen - are working together. What’s going well, what do we want to change, how could we make improvements to our processes to support the programme better?
We’re halfway through the year now, believe it or not, so earlier this week we had a longer reflection session than usual to think about the bigger picture.
We’ve been trying to get better at keeping track of the changes we make in response to our regular reflection sessions - every fortnight we use our trusty Miro board to record what we think is going well, what not so well, and new ideas. In our mid-year session we took stock of the most significant or favourite things that have changed since January:
Interestingly to me, most of these relate to how we are doing in our outward-facing activity: growing the field of people and organisations interested in Community Tech, building more and deeper engagement, and doing more things face to face. One of the goals for this year was to bring more people into the conversation about Community Tech, so it’s great to feel like we’re doing this successfully.
Of course, we haven’t fixed everything or resolved every challenge. We also spent time thinking about what we need to focus on for the second half of the year:
Some of these are about how we work with each other in the core team: improving communication and building more trust, being more joined up in our research and comms work. Others continue the outward-facing theme: how do we keep encouraging and supporting partners to get involved, how do we make sure that what we offer is of benefit to our partners and co-travellers. And as odd as it feels at the end of a very hot June, we need to think about 2024: where does the programme need to be? Who else do we want to be involved by then?
We finished with our positive visions for the rest of the year:
There’s a lot here to be hopeful about, but we are also conscious that much of the world we’re working in feels quite uncertain right now, particularly financially and politically. We’re going to continue reflecting on our partnership, how we work together, and what we’re learning, and we will keep sharing our thoughts with you as we navigate the rest of 2023.