External-facing webinars will invite not just people from within Pathfinder institutions and those affiliated with DSWB but also the general public to widen the reach of ideas and share knowledge more broadly. They allow for new perspectives, attract potential collaborators, and help raise awareness about important topics. These sessions also create room for feedback and dialogue from a more diverse audience, which is critical when trying to promote open and inclusive practices like Open Science.
External-facing webinars are projected to be held once every month.
Schedule¶
| Date | Topic | Host |
|---|---|---|
| July 10, 2025 | Understanding Data Protection – Framework for Decision Making | BHKi |
| August 7, 2025 | Federation and Synthetic Data Generation | BHKi |
| September 4, 2025 | Cancelled | BHKi |
| October 2, 2025 | FAIR Data Sharing and Federated Analysis | BHKi |
| October 30, 2025 | Did not hold | BHKi |
| November 27, 2025 | TBD | BHKi |
1. Planning the Call (Begin up to 3 Months Before the Call)¶
Time commitment: Unestimated
Speaker Outreach¶
Review the DSWB participant needs assessment to understand the session’s objectives and participant expectations.
Identify and shortlist potential speakers based on expertise and relevance to the topic. Use a Google Sheet to keep track of the potential speakers (you can share this with others for suggestions).
Draft and send formal invitation emails to selected speakers.
Once the speaker is confirmed, send a calendar invite to lock in the date on their end.
Confirm that the speaker received a calendar invite that coincides with the time slotted for the call and on a predetermined platform that aligns with the organization’s infrastructure.
Send email letting them know the honorarium package, and the caveats around canceling the call, and receiving online payments from us - we do not cover international banking or transaction fees.
Ensure speaker confirmations are received early enough to activate contingency plans if needed (2 weeks before the call).
Collaborate with the call coordinator to align on key logistics and outreach (meeting links, calendar invites to speakers).
Social Media and Comms Planning¶
Collaborate with the communications team to design promotional materials (i.e., social media posters for LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), and Instagram).
Draft and schedule social media posts to be uploaded on socials around the session.
Setup Zoom registration - remember to link privacy policy, and ask registrants if they’d like reminders for future sessions. Also include option for interpreters.
Request for Translators.
Registration¶
Add a section in the form requesting consent to collect name and email to ask for feedback after the event. This should link to our privacy policy.
2. Before the Call (One Week)¶
Time commitment: 10–20 minutes
Double-check with speakers and the session coordinator to ensure they will be present at the call. Inform the speaker that there is a need to have one or two breakout rooms to ensure engagement during the session.
Prepare the session Etherpad for the call, ensuring links and sections are correctly formatted (main call and breakout sessions).
Ensure that participants have been reminded — either via Slack, email, or socials — about the call.
3. During the Call (Join 10 Minutes Before)¶
Time commitment: 60 minutes (or as adjusted) per call. The call coordinator and call lead should arrive 10 minutes early to be assigned as co-hosts.
Ask the call coordinator for co-host rights and check if the call will be recorded on the cloud, as these are external-facing webinars and may be made available to the larger public.
Ensure interpreters are added and given interpreting access.
Chair the call; introduce the organizations involved and responsible for planning the event (DSWB, APHRC, OSPO Now, etc.), introduce the agenda and speaker, and coordinate with the session coordinator to ensure participants have access to the Etherpad and Q&A. Coordinate the breakout rooms.
Remind participants to ensure the names reflected in their accounts joining the call are accurate.
On the Framapad, add a note letting participants know that records will be archived. It can take this format:
“Remember that this is a public document. These notes will be archived on The DSWB GitHub repository and will include your name and answer. You can use a pseudonym if you’d prefer. Use the 🤫 emoji if you would not like to be included in our public archive. You can always request to remove your information at precious@osponow
.com.”
Call Format¶
The external-facing webinar can have one or more speakers. In the case of more than one speaker, one of them should be affiliated with Africa and one should be more global (to bring both perspectives to the topic).
The call will start with housekeeping rules followed by a breakout session. The breakout session will set participant expectations. A prompt will be created by the call leads in collaboration with the speakers and recorded on the Etherpad/Framapad. This will acquaint participants with each other and with the topic.
After the breakout session, the participant expectations will be discussed briefly before Speaker 1. Speaker 1 can choose to have a breakout session at the end of their session, or have Speaker 2 conduct one before their session. This will be a breakout session between the two speakers.
4. After the Call¶
Send a thank-you email to speakers. If slides were used, ask them to please upload them on the DSWB Zenodo Community page using this guide.
Send a thank-you email to participants — if a consent form was added to the registration form for the event. Ask for their feedback and invite them to join the DSWB community via the Discord server (attach the link). The email should include:
Link to the survey
Link to the recording
Link to join Discord