IBPOC Digital Strategy – Phase II: Digital Tools Professional Development Series 
 October 2020 – March 2021  via Zoom 

Essential Digital Tools – Schedule update
Presented by Jessa Agilo Founder, ArtsPond
Friday, October 2, 2020 | 1pm-4:30pm EST
Friday, October 9, 2020 | 1pm-4:30pm EST (postponed)
Friday, October 23, 2020 | 1pm-4:30pm EST – now Day 2
Friday, October 30, 2020 | 1pm-4:30pm EST – now Day 3
Thursday, November 5, 2020 | 1pm-4:30pm EST – now Day 4 Digital

Accessibility in the Arts
Presented by Victoria Anne Warner and Sean Lee, Tangled Arts
Thursday, November 19, 2020 | 11am-2:30pm EST
Thursday, November 26, 2020 | 11am-2:30pm EST
Thursday, December 3, 2020 |1pm-4:30pm EST
Thursday, December 10, 2020 | 1pm-4:30pm EST

Culture Brew’s IBPOC Artists Database
Presented by Anju Singh and Valerie Sing Turner, Culture Brew
Tuesday, January 19, 2021 | 12pm-4:00pm EST
Thursday, January 28, 2021 | 12pm-4:00pm EST
Thursday, February 19, 2021 | 12pm-4:00pm EST
Thursday, February 25, 2021 | 12pm-4:00pm EST

Digital Engagement with Large Arts Organizations
Presented by Amy Mushinski, The Canadian Opera Company and Christopher Sonnemann, The National Ballet of Canada.
Thursday, March 4, 2021 | 1pm-4:30pm EST
Thursday, March 11, 2021 | 1pm-4:30pm EST
Thursday, March 18, 2021 | 1pm-4:30pm EST
Thursday, March 25, 2021 | 1pm-4:30pm EST

Registration for the Essential Digital Tools is now open!
Registration for other sessions will open shortly!
Register on Eventbrite: https://digital-tools.eventbrite.ca


About the session: 

Essential Digital Tools
Presented by Jessa Agilo Founder, ArtsPond
October 2, October 9,  October  23 and October 30, 2020  

Producer Jessa Agilo (Founder, ArtsPond) provides a whirlwind but fun and informative introduction to the essential digital tools and software in her front and back pockets for managing time, money, people, building creative programming, and engaging community. Learn from her 30 years of experience combining free, open source, and low-cost tools and applications to manage small to large teams from home on a tight budget.

 
DAY 1 

Compare the benefits and challenges of popular productivity suites including Microsoft Office365 E2 for Nonprofits, Google for Nonprofits, Open Office, and other alternatives for free/low-cost internal and remote back-office admin. Receive tips on other helpful free, open source, and low cost tools for managing internal digital assets, time, people, and money in demanding cross-platform environments for OS/iOS and Windows/Android. See examples of ArtsPond’s growing remote national digital office in action and learn about the factors that influenced its design and implementation. Explore strategies and templates for using spreadsheets like Excel and Google Sheets as viable alternatives to expensive databases and business enterprise software. Explore browser extensions/add-on’s, security, and syncing of devices and profiles across multiple domains.

 
Day 2

Compare the benefits and challenges of popular design and communications suites like Adobe with open source, free/low-cost alternatives to amplify your public outreach, accessibility, and interactivity on-the-ground and in-the-cloud. Explore CPanel and WordPress website hosting for non-developers without breaking your brain or emptying the bank. Look at free and open source constituency relationship management (CRM) options with CiviCRM, SuiteCRM, and MailChimp, livestreaming to Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, Instagram and other services with OBS Studio and YellowDuck, accessibility services with Otter.ai and other alternatives, research support with Zotero, strategies for sharing remote desktops, cloud and onsite digital asset backups, best practices for Zoom video conferencing and other alternatives.

 
DAY 3

Become a power Quickbooks and spreadsheet user for managing people, time, and money. See examples and learn how to build all the tools that you need. Explore how just a few spreadsheet features (filters, pivot tables, mail merges) and functions (VLOOKUP, SUMIF, IFS and more) can boost efficiency and automation of everyday business activities. Gain access to sample financial, HR, and activity reporting templates from ArtsPond’s office and learn how to build them on your own. Ask questions about financial and project management challenges and received thoughts or recommendations on how to improve or do things differently.

 
DAY 4

A hand’s on workshop for non-developers to learn how to install and powerup a multi-user Office365 environment and a new WordPress website on a custom domain with CPanel hosting (or hosted by WordPress). For Office365, setup and use SharePoint, Teams, Planner, Yammer, OneNote, OneDrive, and more.  On WordPress, learn how to install themes, create and update content, address site SEO settings, backup and keep it secure, migrate content to another location, set up a testing server on your local machine for play before launch, choosing between the best of free and paid plugins to extend functionality, examining options for hosting ecommerce or social networking functionality, setting up multiple user accounts with permissions, syncing up content and contact lists with Mailchimp and social media. Explore SSL certificates, hosting other open source software solutions to extend functionalities, and choose a hosting plan that works for you for the future.  

For this workshop, if you do not already have access, participants from nonprofit organizations in Canada are encouraged to request accounts for Microsoft Office365 E2 for Nonprofits from TechSoup Canada. Approval process can take 10 days. For those that are unable to do so, a temporary account will be provided to participants by ArtsPond for 90 days to explore the platform.

Bio:
 

Jessa Agilo is an integrated arts producer with a three-decade career boosting social, economic, spatial, and digital justice for equity-seeking groups in Canadian arts and culture.  As Founder of ArtsPond, since 2014 Jessa has led ground-breaking efforts including de-gentrification (Groundstory), digital transformation of arts services (DigitalASO), open source software (Hatch Open), platform cooperatives (Artse United), creative land trusts (Groundtrust), shared charitable platforms (Arts Working Group), COVID-19 pandemic (I Lost My Gig Canada), and more. As a consultant, Jessa has helped grow such diverse companies as Creative Users Projects, Roseneath Theatre, Ontario Culture Days, Workman Arts, Queer Arts Festival, Dreamwalker Dance, and many more. Jessa is a mentor to young spatial and digital justice changemakers from Humber College, University of Toronto, Ryerson University, and Cultural Human Resource Council’s Talent2Lead. She was recognized with the Humberto Santos Award in Business and Administration in 2006 and Toronto Arts Council’s Leaders Lab in 2019.

DigitalASO + Artse United are two digital strategy initiatives led by ArtsPond with the support of Canada Council for the Arts’ Digital Strategy Fund. Artse United is an emerging platform cooperative providing open source arts management and impact investing digital tools for small creators and producers in arts and culture. Phase 1 prioritizes the financial management needs of equity-seeking groups in the visual, performing, and disability arts. DigitalASO is a national strategic effort to bolster digital justice and foster an inclusive ecosystem for shared digital innovation in Canadian arts and culture. Phase 2 explores the scope and design of a Digital Arts Services Alliance to help break down traditional silos and steward a shared national strategy for the transformation of Canadian arts and culture to the digital world with a focus on underserved, equity-seeking groups. Through digital meetups and public consultations across Canada, the project will help connect national champions, strengthen literacy and regional advantages across the country, boost cross-disciplinary and cross-regional collaborations, and foster shared human-digital infrastructure and resources.