MERL Tech DC 2018

Over the last 10 years, Root Change has learned that trust and relationships are at the heart of social change. While we know achieving and sustaining development outcomes depends on the contributions of multiple actors embedded in thick webs of social relationships and interactions, traditional MEL approaches have failed to help us understand those complex dynamics. A new theory of measurement built around ways to measure trust, relationships, and accountability between development actors is essential.

We have designed Pando, a technology platform, to help development actors visualize, learn from and engage with the social systems where they work. Grounded in social network analysis (SNA), Pando users collect relationship data to visualize their social systems in real-time. Pando is also integrated with Keystone Accountability’s Feedback Commons, an online tool that allows users to collect and analyze qualitative feedback from system actors about levels of trust and relationship quality. Key features of Pando include network mapping, feedback surveys, visualizations, and dashboards on changing levels of trust, social capital and influence among development actors, their partners and constituents.

Our participatory session will explore this new approach. We will invite conference attendees to map their relationships on Pando by email invitation prior to the session. Mapping will also be possible at our Pando demo booth. During our 1.5 hour session we will dive deeper into the MERL Tech ecosystem and prominent use cases from past Root Change work to explore how ONA metrics and feedback are revolutionizing our thinking around the measurement of social capital and complex systems.

Attendees should plan to bring their laptops to the session.