Interactive Workshops to Build Digital Capabilities

ABA Members have access to workshops in key areas of digital such as: understanding arts audience needs in digital, setting digital objectives, building a test & learn plan, and more.  Explore the workshop agendas and descriptions below (or click the download button at the bottom of the page for a powerpoint version) then contact your member advisor to schedule a workshop for your team.

Digital Workshop #1: Creating Effective Digital Objectives

This workshop helps arts and culture organizations focus their digital initiatives on what is most likely to fulfill audience needs and advance organizational goals. Through a combination of teaching, discussion, group exercises, and breakout exercises, we delve into the primary components of digital objectives and develop draft digital objectives screened for organizational fit. 

DESCRIPTION: In this workshop we deconstruct the three primary components of an effective digital objective

• The WHO: Target audience (e.g. donors, subscribers)

• The WHAT: Immediate focus of digital effort (e.g. keep top of mind, demonstrate community impact)

• The WHY: Longer term goal of digital effort (e.g. accelerate return, increase donations)

PARTICIPANTS: Cross-functional audience including strategy, marketing, development, community engagement, education, and digital teams

TIMING: 2.5-hour interactive virtual session

OUTPUT:

• Draft digital objective(s) and screening criteria

• Next steps and tools for audience insight-gathering

WORKSHOP AGENDA:

• Digital Objectives Overview (30 minutes)

• Three Elements of Effective Digital Objectives – Who, What, and Why (20 minutes)

• Group Brainstorm – Who is our Who? (15 minutes)

• Breakout Groups – What and Why: The Immediate Focus and Long Term Goal of Digital (30 minutes)

• Selecting the Best Objectives (10 minutes)

• Review and Next Steps (15 minutes)

Digital Workshop #2: Designing a Digital Experience

DESCRIPTION: In this workshop we will learn and apply on the three main components of design thinking and apply them to digital

• Empathy: Gaining a new perspective on audience needs, challenges, emotions, and experiences

• Ideation: Challenging assumptions and brainstorming innovative, outside-the-box solutions

• Experimentation: Designing minimally-viable tests, setting metrics, and iterating on ideas

PARTICIPANTS: Cross-functional audience including strategy, marketing, development, community engagement, education, and digital teams

TIMING: 3-hour interactive virtual session

OUTPUT:

• Understanding of Design Thinking and how to apply it to digital

• Draft list of potential digital experiments and framework to evaluate them

WORKSHOP AGENDA:

• Digital Experiment Overview (35 minutes)

• Introduction to Design Thinking: Empathy, Ideation, and Experimentation (15 minutes)

• Deep Dive into Empathy and Ideation (20 minutes)

• Breakout Groups: Brainstorming Digital Experiments (30 minutes)

• Deep Dive into Experimentation (15 minutes)

• Group Exercise: Evaluating and Prioritizing Experiments (25 minutes)

• Group Brainstorm – Who is our Who? (15 minutes)

• Review and Next Steps (15 minutes)

Digital Workshop #3: Building a Test & Learn Capability

This workshop helps arts and culture organizations learn how to experiment, iterate, and learn in digital effectively and efficiently. Through a combination of teaching, discussion, group exercises, and breakout exercises, we will examine how to bring a repeatable process to digital initiatives to help organizations focus their digital activities for long-term organizational success. 

DESCRIPTION: In this workshop we’ll breakdown the process of planning and executing digital initiatives into four key components for learning: 

• Objectives: The overarching goal of the organization’s digital efforts

• Hypotheses: Specific ideas for how we think the target audience will react

• Experiments: Minimally-viable tests that allow us to test hypotheses

• Metrics: Measures to understand both experimental success and connect to overall organizational success

PARTICIPANTS: Cross-functional audience including strategy, marketing, development, community engagement, education, and digital teams

TIMING: 2-hour interactive virtual session

OUTPUT:

• Understanding of Test and Learn Processes

• Draft Digital Testing Plan

WORKSHOP AGENDA:

• Introductions and Test and Learn Overview (20 minutes)

• Review of Objective-Hypothesis-Experiment-Metrics Framework (20 minutes)

• Group Sharing: Current Metrics, Past Experiments, Culture of Trial and Error (20 minutes)

• Breakout Groups: Building a Testing Plan (30 minutes)

• Review and Next Steps (15 minutes)

Virtual Learning Module: Jobs to be Done  (Coming Soon!)

What do audiences want from the arts organizations? What needs are they trying to fulfill in their lives that arts organizations can help them with?  Now more than ever, arts organizations must have a deep and nuanced understanding of the answers to these questions in order to deliver value to audiences. The Jobs to be Done framework is a different way of answering these questions that puts audiences at the center.  

DESCRIPTION: This self-paced learning module combines webinars, articles, case studies, tools, and templates to equip arts organizations to understand the Jobs to be Done approach to audience understanding.

PARTICIPANTS: Cross-functional audience including strategy, marketing, development, community engagement, education, and digital teams

FORMAT:

• Five 10-15 minute pre-recorded webinars

• Reading list

• Audience research tools and templates

OUTPUT:

• Understanding of Jobs to be Done framework and its application in the arts

• Understanding of audience research techniques and how to apply them

MODULES:

• Introduction to Jobs to be Done

• Jobs in the Arts

• Surfacing Audience Jobs

• Understanding Audience Context

• Mapping Audience Experiences