Soledad Magnone and I ran a session at MozFest House Amsterdam on June 13th, 2024. We aimed to get Mozillians involved in the network behind developing The Collective Power Playbook. Here we share with you resources from the session, key findings and a final invitation to take part!
What do WE want to achieve?
The Collective Power Playbook is a resource (in progress) for anyone who wants to start organizing or already works on social change efforts. The Playbook provides exercises for you to use when you convene, while the ‘Collective Power’ network, which is growing behind its development, will help you strengthen your facilitation expertise.
This Collective Power Playbook session happened on the second day of the Mozilla Festival. We were expecting just a handful of participants and were pleasantly surprised to have upwards of 30.
We had a reasonably simple session design. We started with an opening round, asking participants to provide three pieces of data: their name, where they were from, and one sentence on why they came to the session. Responses on why they came ranged from curiosity to general interest in the playbook to wanting to attend an interactive and participatory session.
We then asked people to break into groups of three and interview each other using the prompts on a handout we’d provided to people. The prompts were based on the Turning Individual Experiences into Community Solutions exercise. Here’s the text of the Handout:
The Collective Power Playbook is a work in progress; your input is needed to strengthen it! Before you start, you’ll need to find a partner in the room, whoever you know the least, and take turns interviewing each other.
- This Handout is for you to take notes of the interviews at the beginning of the session. Notes can be keywords, paraphrased sentences, transcriptions, doodles, or drawings. You can also use the back of the sheet if needed.
- As the interviewer, your objective is to capture the interviewee’s response clearly
- Remember to ask for consent if names or personal information are included in this document.
- As the interviewee, your objective is to convey your experience as clearly as possible.
- Please provide as specific answers as you can and avoid being vague.
- Capture responses below. Use one sheet per person.
- At the end of the session, we’ll ask for your permission to take a picture of this Handout.
- How confident are you in your own ability to harness collective power?
❏ Not at all confident
❏ A little confident
❏ Moderately confident
❏ Very confident
❏ Completely confident
What is the reason for your level of confidence in harnessing collective power?
- Can you describe a time when you felt most able to contribute to collective power?
Access the printable handout HERE.
What do THEY want to achieve?
‘After people interviewed each other for about 15 minutes, we brought them back into the large group and asked for any ‘aha’ they had had in the interviews.
We then spent about five minutes describing The Collective Power Playbook, noting that its main purpose is to help strengthen facilitation skills and people’s ability to build solidarity amongst the individuals they are convening. We stressed that they were ‘soaking’ in what the playbook is. It’s about a network of people sharing knowledge and supporting each other.
We then asked people to break into small groups and identify the outcomes they hope to achieve when they convene people. Some responses:
- What are the outcomes YOU are hoping to achieve?
- community
- mutual understanding
- sincere exchange of ideas
- make the world a better place
- giving voice to everyone in the room
- What are the outcomes THEY are hoping to achieve?
- visibility
- awareness
- alignment
- purpose & intentionality
- new connections
We finished with the large group in front of all the post-it notes they’d gathered, sharing reflections. Some comments of note:
- It’s hard to differentiate between what I want and what the group I’m convening wants
- Despite the different work people do, we have many commonalities in what we hope to accomplish.
In the end we invited people to get involved in the playbook by coming to The online Contributors’ Session on June 27th.
What do YOU hope to achieve?
> Take part in building the playbook at The Contributors’ Session on June 27th. Register here.
> Use the resources to replicate the Collective Power session.
> Share your insights on #CollectivePower on social media: Mastodon, X (twitter) and LinkedIn.