Bar Camps at the City Hall

The 2^nd day of the conference explored a range of themes in the bar camp format. Bar camp served as an open space for discussions, demonstrations and peer learning across a variety of topics. We had the opportunity to pitch an idea, initiative, challenge etc to the group. They will then be offered a time-slot to join a fruitful conversation for discussion. A couple of interesting ones were

1. How can technological platforms be used to scale the impact of probono
2. How can pro bono be integrated into talent development programs effectively
3. Pros & Cons of the different pro bono formats.
4. In the CSR 3.0 Purpose & Services
5. Difference between Pro Bono Marathons and Pro Bono Hackathons
6. Quality Criteria of Pro Bono services
7. How to build good relations between Pro bono intermediares and Corporate Networks

Sitting in on various session brought interesting insights across a board range of topics:

• In building a pro bono tech platform, build it ground up i.e. build the process and user experience first before building the technology that will enable that. Be prepared to do all the work manually while you are building the processes and always always handhold your users through the different facets of the process. Half the battle is in convincing NPOs to trust the system and showing them the value of actively engaging on such a platform.
• Weaving pro bono into talent development programs requires a standardization of experiences across multiple participants and projects. It is a natural fit but intermediaries looking to build such a program will need to pay extra attention (or get creative) about how to meet both the social aims and the learning and development goals of such a program.
• In the CSR 3.0 Purpose & Services, we talked about the evolution of CSR from CSR 1.0 (employee engagement by painting walls) via CSR 2.0 (pro bono or skilled based corporate volunteering) and CSR 3.0 (about purpose)
• etc.