Client:

National Government of Ireland (Congress) – Joint Committee on Communications, Climate Action and the Environment

Project Summary:

Connect the Dots was asked to develop a high level stakeholder engagement process (culminating in a forum) to respond to the challenges facing the public broadcasting sector, including challenges arising from the digitisation of media across the board and news sources becoming increasingly more complex. The goal of the engagement was to bring together a diversity of voices on the subject to inform future policy.

• Design and manage a public forum for over 200 people
• Create a report to feed into updating of policies and development of new policies
• Manage diverse factions to come to a shared agreement

Methods:

In order to get a deeper understanding of the topic and stakeholders involved, we held a focus group at the outset with a cross section of attendees representing all sides of the topic. Attendees included RTE, Facebook, leading academics on the subject, and 15 others. The focus group was designed to give stakeholders a say in the upcoming process and enable them to help shape it so that it could respond to their needs and concerns. Connect the Dots completed research of the current state and policies, potential gaps and areas of consultation, mapped all relevant people to invite to ensure diversity and then surveyed the attendees beforehand to refine the format and content based on their depth of knowledge on the subject and how comfortable or familiar they were with a workshop setting. Using the insights gathered from the focus group and survey, Connect the Dots then strategically designed the forum (from the materials to the activities to the facilitation to the format and more) in ensure it was as productive and engaging as possible for all involved.

Results:

200 Strategically targeted attendees

15+ diverse sectors

Risk and expectation management

Final report on the future funding of PSB and key legislative changes: http://bit.ly/2i7WAuC