Fellowship Digital Services: Alpha Phase Sprint notes 3

Two-weeks ago we hosted our first Show & Ask. 55 Fellows attended across two sessions from Finland, Japan, Scotland, Australia, Hong Kong, US, Poland, England and Colombia.

These monthly sessions are an informal opportunity for the project team to share our progress and learning with Fellows, and ask for feedback. We are committed to working in the open and taking an iterative experimentation approach to learn what works and what doesn't.

A reminder of the project’s focus:

What does the digital ecosystem look like that improves the ease and frequency of opportunity for Fellows to engage with the RSA and with other Fellows, and meets the diverse needs of the Fellowship?

• For more background read Sprint 1-2 notes

Working in the open

We had some great challenge, feedback and some pointers about things to think about, which was exactly what we wanted from the sessions.

The project team also asked for feedback after the session and we heard:

What worked well:

• the space to ask questions and interact, transparency of plans, the agile mechanisms being used
• the focus on better understanding the needs of Fellows

What could be improved:

• more time for comments from Fellows to share experiences of what has/hasn’t worked
• maintaining a positive space for sharing and keeping feedback on topic

Responding to feedback

In response to the feedback we received, we will experiment with two things in the next session:

Discussion principles

This is a new way of working for the RSA and there is more we need to do to ensure that these sessions feel positive and inclusive – the success of the work relies on hearing diverse voices from across the Fellowship.

In the next Show & Ask we will experiment with the discussion principles:

• bring care to listening to each other
• honour differences and speak from your experience
• and to take space and make space

Sharing success stories

Although we know there are key problems to solve with the current digital experience, we also want to focus on success stories and building on what we know works already and the strengths of the RSA.

We have been collating examples of brilliant Fellowship engagement and stories of change from Fellows - and will share a few of these at the beginning of each upcoming Show & Ask.

Areas of focus

During the Show & Ask we invited attendees to rate which problem areas resonated most in their experience. These areas had been directly translated from learning from last year’s Fellowship engagement research and Digital Summit.

Both morning and afternoon session rated the same top three: Sense of community, Discoverability and Communication.