The DigitalASO Bootcamp is designed for individuals and organizations pursuing project ideas that are digital and collective in their nature.
This is a great opportunity to get quickly up to speed about key knowledge gaps that are needed to maximize your project’s reach and impact. It is also an effective way to connect with peers who are on the same journey, and meet experts who understands your world and speaks your language.
Building on the foundation of the inaugural Digital Arts Services Symposium in 2017, the content will focus on developing skills around design thinking, business models, digital project management, and how to bring these understandings together in a practical way that prepares you for leading a digital initiatives from ideation, execution, and beyond.
[su_button url=”https://digitalaso.ca/dassan19-bootcamp-form/” target=”blank” background=”#A3C144″]REGISTER NOW[/su_button]
Venue TBA (downtown Toronto). Registration fees will be processed in January 2019.
Bootcamp activities will be presented in English. Given the intensive nature of the content, we are unfortunately unable to offer translation services for these activities, including ASL and French.
Module 1: Design-Thinking Strategy & Research (3 hours)
Cultivating a Design-Thinking Mindset
Asking the Right Questions, Solving the Right Problem, Developing Solutions in the Right Context
Featured Skill Set: User Story Mapping
In this three hour session, the participants will learn key concepts and the fundamentals of “User Story Mapping” with an everyday scenario that will be mapped out as a group exercise.
- Sample Practical Exercise: Audience data abound, but we are not always using it well, or even know how to start tackling it. By applying User Story Mapping techinques, let’s explore the story of your organization’s “audiences”, and how that story looks like across different organizations
Key concepts and takeaways
- Storytelling as a skill with broad applications in digital project development
- Who are the characters? What perspective is the story being told? Why?
- What parts of the story are missing? How can we find out what’s there?
- User story mapping as a way to generate common understanding
- Are there common activities between characters? Maybe in different words?
- Is there a shared/mis- understanding of how everyone’s activities fit together?
- Using analysis insights to inform digital project planning
- What activities are dropped when time/resources are limited?
- Which characters must be present for the story to unfold?
Module 2: Business & Organization Modelling (3 hours)
Cultivating a Business Modelling Mindset:
Imagine achieving your mission and vision under a different Business and Organizational Models
Featured Skill Set: Business Model Canvas
In this three hour session, the participants will learn key concepts and the fundamentals of the “Business Model Canvas”, and use it as a tool to explore alternative business and organizational models. Case studies from different sectors will offer a broad overview of emerging practices.
- Sample Practical Exercise: Participants will partner up to work on a Business Model Canvas for an arts organization they are not familiar with. Their task is to reassess the operating assumptions, without the historical baggage of knowing “how things have always been done”.
Key concepts and takeaways:
- Assess the external and environmental factors in adjacent sectors
- Does your work overlap with organizations or businesses from adjacent sectors?
- How is their business/organizational model structured differently from yours?
- Explore your Mission and Vision under a different model
- What are your assumptions about alternative models? Are there exceptions?
- Would your mission and vision change if you adopted a different model? How?
- Consider how operational priorities might change (or not)
- What traditional aspects of your work would you (dis)continue? Why?
- What new aspects of work would you introduce? Why?
Module 3: Digital Project Planning (3 hours)
Cultivating a Digital Project Management Mindset
Approaches to Project Scoping, Critical Path Planning and Resource Management
Featured Skill Set: Software Engineering Process / Development Cycle
In this this three hour session, common approaches used to manage multi-phased digital project and the common pitfalls that lead to bloated timelines and budgets will be addressed. Participants will engage in role-playing exercises, alternately playing the role of a technical lead and the client, and analyzing the results.
- Sample Practical Exercise: Mock scenarios and personas will be developed for the purpose of role playing. Participants will take on the roles of “Arts Executive” and “Tech Project Manager”, in the context of a meeting to decide how the projects should move forward. The “Arts Executive” will have strategic direction, and available financial, human and time resources defined. The “Tech Project Manager” will have to develop two different approaches to move the project forward.
Key concepts and takeaways
- Understanding the principles of cost vs. Price in terms of trade offs
- Understanding the development cycle and it’s impact on project management
- Understanding what questions are important to ask at the early stage
Module 4: Getting to “Minimal Viable” (3 hours)
Cultivating an Iterative Mindset
Articulate and test your assumptions to avoid sunk cost fallacy
Featured Topic: Minimal Viable Product/Service
In this three hour session, case studies from different sectors will be presented to offer a broad understanding of what constitutes an MVP/S (Minimal Viable Product/Service). Participants, with the support of facilitators, will apply knowledge accumulated from the previous modules of user story mapping, business model canvas, and software development cycle to articulate their own MVP/S.
- Sample Practical Exercise: The content of this workshop will be driven by the projects and visions that the participants bring to the session.
Key concepts and takeaways
- Identify the key users that makes your product/service viable
- Who are the early adopters that you need to recruit and engage?
- What meaningful experience/outcome do they need from your MVP/S?
- Select an appropriate business and/or organizational model
- How formal does your organization have to be in order to start?
- What model gives you the most flexibility for growth and change?
- Evaluate digital and non-digital approaches to execute MVP/S
- What is the best way to delivery this product/service to the key users?
- Will this approach allow you to /learn/iterate quickly?