TRAINING PROGRAM

Training

Applying Jewish Insights to Digital Innovation

The Need

Barely a generation into the digital era, and we’ve already made a mess of it. Digital heritage projects suffer from short-termism, with outputs disappearing a few years after completion. Software and content are often lost, leading to ‘Digital Neglect’ and abandoned data silos. Project sustainability is not taken seriously by funders or teams. It’s not about poor technology and project management but about our mindset toward digital heritage and its importance.

The Program

The resilience and continuity of Jewish heritage should be an inspiration for our approach to digital. Together with its partners, JHN is developing a training program for future Jewish heritage leaders. Our program works to broaden their perspective beyond current technologies, viewing technology as a means to an end. We focus on understanding and integrating the digital dimension of heritage work to ensure long-term results. We train how to innovate without being misled by technology, ensuring continuity and community involvement, using accessible language to talk to and about digital technologies.

What You Will Learn About

To master today’s digital environment, we first need to understand what makes up a digital project. Anything can be a digital project: a social media account, new website, digital infrastructure, or a digitization project. Every project has its entities (What), processes (How), stakeholders (Who), and timeframes (When). A clear understanding of all these elements is essential for building projects that deliver but also continue beyond the funding period.

  • Entities
    What
    Digital heritage projects are about creating digital items (digitization) from physical ones (book, postcard, synagogue) and working with them. While the physical laws are known, the digital ones are less clear: Can there be two digital copies of the same postcard?
  • Processes
    How
    Through digital processes, we create, enhance, provide access to, and dispose of digital objects. Each software represents a set of these processes. It’s crucial to distinguish between entities and processes to analyse existing systems—and what they get wrong, and think
  • Stakeholders
    Who
    At the end of the day, processes are implemented by and for people, aimed at specific objectives. Clearly identifying the stakeholders—individuals, organisations, projects—that are involved in, contribute to, and benefit from our projects is vital. Without this clarity, we cannot
  • Continuity
    When
    Time reveals the shortcomings in today's approaches to digital projects. Can you imagine a building designed to last less than 100 years? Similarly, why should our digital projects be so short-lived? We must not be blinded by technology, nor should we hesitate to challenge it with
  • Practice
    There is no cookbook for a successful digital project. We are writing it together for our sake and future generations. Every project is a unique learning experience. We've seen hundreds of digital heritage projects and help participants learn from our and their experiences. Together, we will examine digital projects from your and our practice, analyse them using the entities we've discussed, and propose  ways to enhance their sustainability. By the end of this training, you'll gain a new perspective on what makes digital projects endure.

Get in Touch

Are you interested in developing or supporting a unique training program for your organisation focused on innovation with a critical outlook? Integrating a new module into an existing program?

CONTACT OUR TEAM