Hosting Your First Data Party
Who doesn’t love a great party? For your next big event, may we suggest that you plan a DATA PARTY?!
A what, you ask?
A data party! Curious to learn more about this participatory evaluation approach? Grab some streamers and read on. Before you know it, you’ll have the confidence to host your first one!
Seriously, what IS a data party?
A data party is simply a gathering to explore your quantitative and/or qualitative data in a group setting. It’s a fantastic way to engage your community, spark curiosity, dig into your data, and build excitement about your programming and your impact.
Keep in mind that data parties are ideally run when you have data in organized, usable formats (charts, graphs) but you don’t have all the answers; you host these events so your colleagues, partners, and community members can help find patterns, raise questions, suggest more analyses, and explore new ways of looking at the data together.
When do you have one?
Data parties can be held at any time you have meaningful data to deeply explore. However, we recommend you host the party before writing a final report or sharing a final presentation. This way, your colleagues, partners, and community members can play a substantive role in identifying key findings, shaping additional analyses, and contributing to recommendations.
Data parties can run from 60-90 minutes (recommended for virtual events) to longer, in-person events. If it’s a longer, in person event, please don’t forget the food!
What do you need to host a data party?
The short answer: data. The longer answer is: 1) data in bite-size, usable formats such as charts or graphs, 2) discussion questions, 3) a way to capture feedback, and if you can, 4) something free and fun to give away (e.g., food, coffee cards, organization SWAG)… after all, it’s a party!
Who do you invite?
Data parties can range in size from just a few team members to dozens! While that varies from project to project, common guests include coworkers, partners, and community members. When thinking about who to invite, consider: Who provided data? Whose buy-in do you need? Who will be impacted by the results?
Data parties are well-known in the participatory evaluation space because they provide fantastic opportunities to increase the diversity of perspectives on your organization’s work. We recommend putting careful thought into an inclusive invite list so that your community can benefit the most from this experience.
What’s on the agenda?
With “party” in its name, a data party typically includes ample opportunity to mingle and “talk data” with other guests at the event. At the start of the event, be sure to welcome your guests, introduce each other around the (virtual) room, and share that the purpose of the event is to explore data, learn together, and generate new ideas.
Often, data parties will have something of a “gallery walk” to kick off the data conversation. This is where posters are placed around a physical room or, if virtual, breakout room moderators share snapshots of data with smaller groups. If your organization uses an open-source dashboard, this is a phenomenal time to open that up for exploration and discussion.
After time to explore data, spread out your participants, physically or in virtual breakout rooms, so that smaller group data conversations can occur. Common data party questions for discussion include:
Looking over the data…
What stands out?
What surprises you? What doesn’t?
What’s behind the data? What’s driving these results?
What else do you want to know or learn?
What action steps can come from these data?
As you can see, data parties have the power to generate essential ideas. For your next project (or your current one!), try experimenting with hosting your first data party and let us know how it goes! Need some help along the way? Just reach out -- we’d love to help!