My Volunteer Experience - Chris Baldwin
Welcome Chris!
Chris Baldwin joined our SAcommunity Information Team as a volunteer, beginning with the team this year on the 13 September 2023. He is a recently retired senior Naval Officer who has served in the Royal Australian Navy for 45 years.
He attends for ~4 hours a week onsite at the Connecting Up Office, joining several of our team members in the SAcommunity program with extensive work/life experience: Rex Porter, Flavia, David Webb, Malcolm and Stathis Avramis.
Chris has joined our Customer Service Team, as well as our Media & Communications Team with his SAcommunity published articles found >>here.
Total Hours 53 Joined 13 September 2023 Last Check-in 22 February 2024
Volunteering with SAcommunity
"Since joining the SAcommunity Information Team it has been a steep learning curve in terms of understanding how to use the database and associated software platforms to capacity build for selected not-for-profit and charity organisations. I came from having served in the Royal Australian Navy as a Training Systems Staff Officer for 45 years. In that capacity I had to adapt and be versatile in both my staff skills and ability to apply myself to tasks that were not familiar to me or necessarily in my skill set."
Digital Skills Training and Development
One of the SAcommunity Volunteer benefits is access to the Connecting Up Digital Learning Platform for online training and development, with a selection of relevant live webinars and recorded webinars, workshops and webcons for life-long learning from a series of subject matter experts.
Connecting Up Digital Learning Platform webinars Chris has recently accessed include:
Digital Marketing Webcon 2022
Session 2 : Facebook and LinkedIn as cause community building platform
– Kate VanderVoort from Social Mediology – 90 mins
In relation to the first webcon, I found the session interesting from the point of view that it delivered inciteful points about what organisations need to be thinking about and addressing if they want to build an online community.
Whilst there was a lot of talking and numerous dot points put up on the screen, the approach was logical and thorough. It addressed how to construct a Community Plan and how to gather information about what type of community is required. What I found most useful was the focus on how to decide what digital online content you want from the community, how it is to be hosted and how it is to reflect the single biggest challenge, problem or frustration the organisation has. The presenter recommended the use of Admin Assist as the AI that can best manage posts and participation in the online community, and Trelo as the best free Content Calendar.
Session 3 : Learn how to design with Canva – Yvette Adams from Creative Collective - 60 mins
The second webcon, on use of Canva, was informative, but there was a lot of presenter talking and demonstrating the use of Canva to design. This was done in such a way that you would have difficulty following the presenter unless you already had a good idea as to how to use the tools on Canva. The presenter assumed you were already proficient in managing and manipulating such software.
The presenter covered quite thoroughly how to open Canva and start using it, as well as the key considerations when you are seeking to design, categorise and file data and images that you use. The Design Criteria were covered well and a key point was that the Premium edition of Canva, with all its additional features and tools, is free to all NFP organisations. There were a couple of instances when the presenter, whilst talking about how to use a particular feature, was unsuccessful in opening the feature, with the result you were left with an incomplete idea as to how to use those features. Time constraints on the presentation were clearly having the impact of rushing the presenter at the end.
