Making CommunitySense

Social Innovation Meetup: “Exploring Labs for Social Change” – presentation notes

Aldo de Moor — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 21:17:41 +0000

On April 25, Social Innovation Meetup #4, organized by Hivos and Kennisland, was held in Amsterdam. Theme: “Exploring Labs for Social Change”. Social innovation labs are very popular as instruments for “changing the system”. However, what actually happens in these labs? How do they help accomplish social change? What’s in “the black box”?

Keynote speakers sharing innovation stories from Kenya, Finland, and Canada were Daudi Were of Ushahidi, Marco Steinberg of the Helsinki Design Lab and Vanessa Timmer of One Earth. In the two days prior to the meetup, representatives of living labs (hubs, experimental learning spaces, etc.) from all over the world gathered in “Lab2“. Together, these people in the vanguard explored new examples and solutions for system change, some of which were reported at the meetup. There was also supposed to be a panel discussion to see how their lessons learnt might apply to the Dutch context, but unfortunately that part was cancelled.

The presentations were brief and intense, relaying a flurry of interesting ideas and references. Like at the “Designing Social Cities of Tomorrow” workshop last year, I took presentation notes. They are rough, and only minimally edited, although I have added some links and excerpts from the sites linked to. Together, I think these notes give a nice overview of the many dimensions experienced at the international front lines of real social innovation.

Introduction

A brief introductory speech was given by Remco Berkhout of Hivos. There are many tough global problems, like climate change, for which there are no clearcut solutions. Hivos believes that citizen action is key to addressing these problems. People from all over the world are involved in such processes of social innovation. There are many interpretations of what is social innnovation: any idea that makes the world better, creativity of communities to make things better, popukar participation, with resources going to the communities, and so on. The silos need to go. Cities in the south can be great sources of inspiration. Given the pressing problems, labs there are often much more advanced than here in the West!

Daude Were (Ushahidi, Kenya)

In 2007, all hell broke loose after the Kenyan elections, resulting in many riots and murders. Many stories were un(der)reported. We needed to find stories of what was happening, curate them, map them, and archive them. Ushahidi was born, very quickly, in a couple of days. Ushahidi means “witness” or “testimony”. It really is a platform + community + movement. The basic idea: from people in need to people who help. Does it work? Yes, it’s use has spread way beyond Kenya, e.g. during the Haiti earthquake and the Japanese tsunami the platform was used as an emergency platform. By now, it has got many other uses, including mapping harassments, oil spills, social revolutions (Arab Spring, Occupy), and monitoring elections (Tanzania and Zambia), mapping the different reasons why people voted in the Canadian elections, and so on. It is changing the way info flows in the world. How? We meet you where you are (in creating a great diversity of interfaces for sending to and receiving info from the platform). Both high-end applications (for decision makers) and low-end applications (to reach the masses) are important. In an emergency, you can have it set up in only a few minutes (via crowdmap.com). It’s “Made in Africa”: “if it works here, it will work anywhere in the world “.

We created iHub. Nairobi’s Innovation Hub for the technology community is an open space for the technologists, investors, tech companies and hackers in the area. This space is a tech community facility with a focus on young entrepreneurs, web and mobile phone programmers, designers and researchers. It is a place to physically meet, partner up, share ideas, get exposure and support. We have over 9,000 members. It’s much more than just another cybercafe: over 40 companies have come out of it in the past few years. We also have a number of initiatives designed to build an ecosystem around the Kenyan tech entrepreneur: Hub Research, iHub Consulting, iHub Supercomputing Cluster, and the iHub User Experience (UX) Lab. iHubs are started all over the country.

Lessons learned in Lab 2:

Focus on people, not spaces.
Promote restlessness, not scariness.Scary would be if everybody thinks the same thing. Instead, people should be itchy in their seats, get started doing things, like setting up companies. Get them thinking, innovating and doing.
Start with what you have. Every starting group has some resources, trust, whatever. Don’t wait for money, stable energy supply etc. before you get going!

Questions:

What to do if you’re faster than the rest? “If you want to go quickly, walk alone, if you want to go far, join others”. Find people who want to go at a similar speed.
Social change really takes time, but the problems don’t allow time. As Ushahidi shows, sometimes things CAN move quickly when they have to.
The elections in South Sudan showed that you can have a mapping project even though there’s a situation of high conflict and low resources. Most important are the partnerships, technology is only 10%: outreach, training, credibility are what really matters. We’re beyond just the technology, our priorities now are conversations about strategies and methodologies.
In crisis situations there’s often an information overload, or “filter failure”. The Swiftriver platform helps people to make sense of a lot of information in a short amount of time by filtering and verifying real-time data from many different channels like Twitter, SMS, e-mail, and RSS feeds.

Marco Steinberg (Helsinki Design Lab, Finland)

We’re trying to innovate within a “dominant culture”. We can no longer understand our society, are enabled and at the same time imprisoned. How do we change values, etc. when we’re in bureaucratic organizations that don’t want to change? Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund, has an endowment to innovate government. It focuses on “strategic design“: “Our idea is to shift it right to the beginning of the process. Our concept of design is much broader too, and we want to apply our expertise across traditional boundaries to problems of health care, transport and the ageing population, for example.” One of Sitra’s activities is the Helsinki Design Lab.

The Helsinki Design Lab aims to bring innovators together, provide a community development platform, codify practices, do experiments, etc. One output is Brickstarter, which ”is about 21st century social services. We are sketching a system that would enable everyday people, using everyday technology and culture, to articulate and progress sustainable ideas about their community”. Another initiative are their Helsinki Design Lab Studios.

There are many, large, interconnected crises. We are aware of many of the issues, but don’t know how to think about them. We need different perspectives and logics. Politicians create visions, while technicians and experts help realize the visions. Many of their ideas are fundamentally flawed. For example, at the beginning of the financial crisis, President Bush gave shape to decisions about problems he didn’t understand. Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan had relied on financial data and models for over 40 years, only to then have to admit how flawed these constructs from “the dominant culture” were.

The mission of innovation has gone from “things” to “systems”, like health and the environment. However, we (as government) are not set up to deal with this. We need to understand the interconnected nature – the “architecture” – of issues, solutions, and decisions. Innovations begin by asking the right questions. Strategic design is just as much about the problem as about the solution space. If only focusing on problem space, we stay in the abstract, if only dealing with the solution space we risk optimizing bad designs. Interconnectedness is key, however, disciplines and bureaucracies like ministries have “anti-interconnectedness” mechanisms.

It’s not really a purely technical, but a deeply cultural problem, sometimes even requiring the rediscovering of practices lost. A Helsinki Design Lab Studio provides an environment for people to think differently from the dominant culture. How do we speed up innovation? We start with an in-depth brief. We bring in eight people for “deep collaboration”. We use a “Noah’s Ark” approach: you can’t talk to everybody. We choose experts that provide the critical eight perspectives. Six of them are foreigners, so that they will touch taboos and bring in different frameworks. Two designers help bring about synthesis. What are the Top 10 things to do NOW? A session lasts a week, with day 2 being a field day, and at the end of the week a review session with policy people, concluded by an informal dinner. This way, government officials get a “strategic conversation”, instead of the usual report tomes. Afterwards, the results need to be shared with people in other forums, through publications, etc.

Integrated approaches are key, and an HDL Studio is a good way to start. How to deliver this? It should happen from within government, which can then use its muscle to move quickly. However, is it big and fast enough?

Questions:

One of the biggest challenges in social innovation are not the creative ideas, but how to scale their implementation in society. How does the HDL Studio approach help accomplish this, it seems very top-down? We’re a government agency. All we can do is lower the barriers, show that new stuff is not so scary, select the key players at conception who can take it forward
Doesn’t this lead to overly prescriptive/constrained approaches? We need to codify the right things: the preconditions for making the studio process work.

Vanessa Timmer (One Earth, Canada)

Bill Rees has shown that our ecological footprint is key. Instead of looking at symptoms, we need to look at the system as a whole, working better together at understanding and changing production and consumption patterns. We need new mapping tools, be smarter, not just work harder, in order to release new energy.

We’re working on a “systemic change initiative”. The RE-AMP Midwest Energy network was the inspiration. This is an active network of nearly 160 nonprofits and foundations across eight Midwestern states working on climate change and energy policy with the goal of reducing global warming pollution economy-wide 80% by 2050. It uses systems mapping to decide where to put their energy in, and has scored lots of successes.

Interesting related things happening in North America are the Stanford Social Innovation Review, the Academy for Systemic Change, the Change Lab, and the Sustainable Food Lab.

We’re working on a knowledge hub with a combination of the best of present social innovation labs. Four ways of thinking are combined to create such a lab:

Complex systems theory
Design approaches
Group process design
Visualizations

Social innovation is to experiment with new ways of seeing the world, new relationships, power dynamics and practices. We need new spaces: visible spaces, conversation spaces, temporal spaces (sequences of events over time), laying the ground for new relationships and actions.

Lessons learned in Lab 2:

When prototyping, do at least 3/4 pilots. This keeps the motivation to keep exploring when one pilot fails.
Two types of scaling: scaling out (replicating) and scaling up (reaching different levels of systems or policies). Scaling out requires a different skill set from scaling up. Scaling out is about taking the essence and bringing it out to the broader community. Scaling up is about dealing with vested interests, making new connections, new things possible at a higher level.

We need to build a range of skills and capacities:

The power is in the invitation (framing is a key part of social innovation)
Keep your models light, don’t get stuck in models and processes and make them too solid over time. The reality is messy, be flexible and adaptive.
Use 3/4 people when modeling, with more it becomes messy.
In the implementation stage, many people get lost in the details, keep getting them back to “the dream”.
“Dance with the system” when facilitating social innovation.

Filed under: e-campaigning, ICT4D, social innovation, sustainable development, Uncategorized

New publication: Towards Sheltered Communication Systems Design – A Socio-Technical Perspective

Aldo de Moor — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 19:05:59 +0000

The proceedings were just published containing my paper: A. de Moor (2012). Towards Sheltered Communication Systems Design: A Socio-Technical Perspective. In Proc. of the 9th Community Informatics Research Network Conference, Prato, Italy, November 7-9, 2012.

Abstract

Social media are powerful conversation technologies. However, exactly how social media afford and constrain complex social requirements in collaborative communities is still ill-understood. One of these requirements concerns the need for sheltered communication systems: systems that support and interlink spheres of stakeholder communication with different required degrees of opacity. We introduce our Socio-Technical Conversation Context Framework as a way to analyze and design such complex socio-technical communication systems. We use collaboration patterns grounded in this framework as conceptual building blocks to capture design lessons learnt about matching community requirements with enabling tool functionalities. We illustrate the approach with the “sheltered communications” lessons learnt in a Dutch case of developing an e-learning tool system for students with physical and mental limitations.

Filed under: collaboration patterns, communication, design, instances, privacy, socio-technical systems

My first MOOC: diary of 1 of 24,000 students following a truly “Massive Open Online Course”

Aldo de Moor — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 16:03:30 +0000

Massive Open Online Courses are all the rage. A truly exciting and massive one (over 24,000 students enrolled!) is the Learn Creative Learning MOOC organized by MIT Media Lab, which will run from February- May 2013 . Since MOOCs are so new, still much ground needs to be broken about what they are, what they mean, and how to organize them. Having enrolled in this course which is so close to my heart, I decided to keep a diary of observations as “an average MOOC student”. I hope they help myself and others make better sense of what this phenomenon means, what deep impact it could have on learning in a globalizing society, but also how to practically organize and “tinker” such courses to realize the vision. Would be interested to hear your own experiences and comments!

6-8 February 2013

Registration was difficult. No confirmation mail received. Amazing how much stress this generated. Even though all materials are open, also for non-enrolled, the sense of risking “not belonging” was strong. Is this one of the secrets of courses, and continued reasons of existence for physical universities?
Managed after 5 times to enroll through an Android client, of all devices! Really experienced a thrill when I finally received that confirmation mail!

10 February 2013

Got an e-mail from an assistant to an earlier mail from me to the team that my application would be processed manually this weekend. No longer necessary, but nice to receive this human touch. They must be overwhelmed.

11 February 2013

Over 24,000 people enrolled! This is truly a Massive Open Online Course..
A bot subdivides the masses into learning groups, clever! The bot mail didn’t say how large our group is or who my peer members are. Would be nice to get that sense of awareness. There is “the mother of all Google+” communities supporting the whole course. Each group has its own “mini mailing list” (ours is lcl-849@lcl.mechanicalmooc.org) and is advised to start its own G+ community as well. Wonder if anybody will take the initiative? Normally, I set up these things myself, but now really too busy with too many deadlines…
Many introduction mails from fellow group members coming in. I’ve also sent mine. Would be nice to have a mailing list archive for future reference, but also to check whether your own mails have actually been distributed, as I often do when sending mails to the Community Informatics Researchers mailing list .
My introduction mail to the group bounced! Instructions in the bot mail said to “hit the reply button”, which I did, but apparently didn’t work. Now how do I introduce myself to my coursemates?
I posted my problem on the general course G+ forum. Immediately got lots of encouraging comments. Nice to feel the buzz!
Also a second attempt to introduce myself failed. More people seem to have that same problem of recurring bounces. It made me lament: “ Team: please help! Even though I have been admitted to the course, I know feel like an inivisible ghost, not worthy to be seen by my course mates…”
One of the replies to my Google+ post helped: turns out the reply address was wrong. My introduction mail has been received. Feel so much belonging now
(4 pm, Dutch time) Getting ready for our 1st live lecture, with 1080 classmates from all over the world, and counting…
(4:05 pm) Yes, we’ve got live video, but I can hear no sound!
(4:20 pm) I hate computers! Checked everything before start of class, YouTube worked fine. When the live stream started, I could see the video, but no sound! Spent a full 15 minutes checking the d..mn PC, finally having to restart it. So, virtually late for class even though physically I was in time!
Getting introduced by the speakers to the main course ideas & team, really feel excited! Highly interesting speakers and themes ahead in weeks to come
Student 2.0: switching from Google+ for video via Twitter for backchannel comments to Evernote for note-taking, and back!
This course big experiment: how to move in #MOOCs from massive, one-way video presentations to small group interactions?

12 February 2013

Yes, fellow course member Alex was so kind to set up a Google+ group. Proud to belong to “LCL-849 (Learn Creative Learning Course Group 849)”
Still no idea who our all the members in our group. To me, it feels like “walking in fog”. Would really be something to pay attention to in the next version of this course.

13 February 2013

Got a mail from “Oliver”, our friendly course bot, suggesting our learning tasks for the week ahead. The general idea is to do some readings, and share your reflections with your group. Oh, and we are also asked to upload an introduction video of ourselves to YouTube or Vimeo.

19 February 2013

2nd lecture about to begin. Way behind in my reading and didn’t do my homework. Flu, deadlines, and so on, but still feeling guilty, if only to my own little corner of this MOOC’s universe, working group LCL-849. Should catch up by next week!
Hard to find the link to the livestream! Didn’t have the bot-mail ready at hand, and there’s no link to the stream in the obvious place, the home page of the website: http://learn.media.mit.edu/, nor on the Google+ main community home page. I had to dig up the mail to find the link to the Google+ community event under “Register here”. Course navigation requires some rethinking.
Again, no sound, although, again, I checked my settings by playing an ordinary YouTube movie prior to the event! There really should be some test setting, because this way I am going to be virtually late for class every week!
Apparently, something was wrong with the “Media Lab encoding machine”. Must have had something to do with my sound problem of last week. After another 15 minutes last because of restarting my machine, I now get very stuttering sound, of very low quality. Impossible to follow the lecture. Too bad, will try to watch the replay later.
Really weird to see all the tweets passing by of a lecture I can’t see myself. Feel excluded!

25 February 2013

Way behind in everything, somewhat caught up today by reading a selection of the materials and watching a few of the videos. There’s so much to read and do! Still have to watch Lecture 2.
Lecture 3 is almost about to start. Still haven’t watched Lecture 2. Probably go ahead watching Lecture 3 first, catch up on Lecture 2 later. That sense of actually “being there”, at least in time, is worth a lot. I also like to see the backchannel comments on Twitter as the lecture proceeds.
Ah, Oliver The Bot sends a List of all the G+ Groups. Unfortunately wrong link (leads to Session 3 home page). Our own LCL-849 group still only has 13 members with minimal activity (shame on myself as well!)
Apparently, there’s a dedicated MIT backchannel. Not sure I really like it. It leads you to a non-informative login screen (a login screen?! Oh, only a username needed, probably just to recognize who you are when chatting, but why then call it a username instead of “your name”, “nickname” and not give some instructions? Also, isn’t the great thing about the Twitter feed that it attracts many people who are not participating in the course? Is this supposed to be used instead of or complementary to the Twitter #medialabcourse conversation?
(4.10 pm Dutch time) I’m all set up for the third lecture. Coffee ready at hand, tested the YouTube streams (sound working fine). They’ve also announced that sound problems would finally be over, let’s keep fingers crossed that this time I will finally be able to follow the lecture from the beginning!
(4.15 pm) Yes, I have sound, in one go. Hurray!!
Interesting how this superrich “learning environment” of so many learning materials, videos, lectures, Google Communities, tweets, assignments, etc creates so many degrees of freedom for individual learning paths: doing things on your own, in “the wrong order”, reading a bit here, watching a bit there, interacting in your subgroup, one-on-one via backchannels and e-mail, etc., etc.
The video connection was great today, contrary to last week’s disaster. Interestingly, the long-distance connection with one of the speakers (“Is Leah frozen again?”) was lost several times. Weird recursion: I have a perfect video connection through which I see the video connection with the speaker being lost!
Reading the tweets of the last half hour of the lecture. Although I was sure that I could parallel process (publish this blog and follow the lecture), there are many topics I missed. Will re-view that part of the lecture later (that flexibility being one of the good things about such totally digital courses).

26 February 2013

Had a cool little exchange on our little team Google+ with Alex on how Lego changed our life. Our team workspace is still fledgling, it seems the momentum is lost. Should we then post our musings on this small team site or on the big course site? The advantage of the team site is that there is still the chance of building a real community with people you get to know. However, the essence of community building is conversation, and if that’s not there, then there will be no community after all. However, on the main course site too many conversations take place. Oliver the BOT advises “Check out the big G+ community if your group is a little slow, or focus on your cohort if the community is too noisy.” However, it seems that we still lack some natural “meso-level” conversation activity that would actually lead to people interacting sufficiently for some kind of community of practice to spontaneously emerge. However, especially with such massive MOOCs that meso-level can of course not be planned, only evolve. Perhaps we need new socio-technical ways of looking and designing for these kinds of viable communities to come about?
Oliver says “All these readings, and activities, and sessions might feel a little overwhelming sometimes. But don’t be overwhelmed. And certainly don’t feel like you are falling behind. Rather feel free to pick and choose, work on things that catch your interest, and skip others.” I like that, it fits in with the idea of the course being a “meta-tinkering” kind of place.

4 March 2013

[4:30pm Dutch time] A bit late because of a meeting. Again lost, where’s that link to the video feed again? It really should feature prominently on the general and Google+ sites (and I should really have bookmarked it ) Via Syllabus, “All videos are available on our YouTube channel” then? Yes! Please, dear MOOC developers, there could be multiple roads that lead to the Rome of this course, the weekly video!
Mitch Resnick is referring to the discussion in the community in his video discussion with Alan Kay. Great to have such feedback loops!
Questions being asked from the backchannel. Logged on to it for the first time, 178 people participating. Much more detailed interaction than Twitter. Too much for my liking, though, about one chat message posted per second, sometimes many, many more. That high frequency really distracts from what the speaker is saying. Furthermore, many posts are not too informative (“hi!”, “bye!”, “me too!”, “thanks!”). The Twitter feed contains more distilled ideas, easier to cope with while concentrating on the speaker’s contributions. Should there be a maximum number of active participants / number of messages posted per time unit for it to become more manageable?
Wednesday March 6 7-8 pm Boston time there’s going to be a “midweek” backchannel Q&A chat. Perhaps that’s going to be more useful, as you won’t have to parallel process like during the lecture?

To be continued…

Filed under: e-learning, learning communities, MOOCs

New publication: “It’s the Conversation, Stupid!” – Social Media Systems Design for Open Innovation Communities

Aldo de Moor — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 21:00:25 +0000

My joint book chapter with Mark Aakhus, “It’s the Conversation, Stupid!” Social Media Systems Design for Open Innovation Communities was just published in J.E. Lundström et al. (eds.), Managing Open Innovation Technologies, Springer, Berlin. ISBN 978-3-642-31649-4.

Abstract

Open innovation is about crossing boundaries to create networked synergies in/across collaborative communities. Conversations are the lifeblood of communities, building the common ground of shared meanings, beliefs, interests, norms, goals, trust and social capital. A fundamental challenge for open innovation lies in the successful crafting of the social media systems supporting the community conversations. Innovation communities (which are not limited to business interests but also include public and civic organizations and communities) therefore need to continuously make sense of the conversation context of the tools they use. We provide a conceptual lens with which to examine this socio-technical conversation context. We illustrate the use of this lens with a plausible scenario of open innovation in the societal stakeholder networks around climate change research.

Filed under: design, innovation, open innovation, social media, socio-technical systems

New publication: Creativity Meets Rationale – Collaboration Patterns for Social Innovation

Aldo de Moor — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 11:21:00 +0000

My book chapter “Creativity Meets Rationale – Collaboration Patterns for Social Innovation” was recently published in J. Carroll (ed.), Creativity and Rationale: Enhancing Human Experience by Design, Springer, Berlin. ISBN 978-1-4471-4110-5.

Abstract

Collaborative communities require a wide range of face-to-face and online communication tools. Their socio-technical systems continuously grow, driven by evolving stakeholder requirements and newly available technologies. Designing tool systems that (continue to) match authentic community needs is not trivial. Collaboration patterns can help community members specify customized systems that capture their unique requirements, while reusing lessons learnt by other communnities. Such patterns are an excellent example of combining the strengths of creativity and rationale. In this chapter, we explore the role that collaboration patterns can play in designing the socio-technical infrastructure for collaborative communities. We do so via a cross-case analysis of three Dutch social innovation communities simultaneously being set-up. Our goal with this case study is two-fold: (1) understanding what social innovation is from a socio-technical lens and (2) exploring how the rationale of collaboration patterns can be used to develop creative socio-technical solutions for working communities.

Filed under: collaboration patterns, publications, social innovation

LinkedIn Maps: art or science?

Aldo de Moor — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 22:56:36 +0000

LinkedIn is a great resource for exploring professional profiles. However, when your personal social network starts to grow into the hundreds of contacts, it becomes very hard to – quite literally – still see the bigger picture. One feature that can help you visualize your network is LinkedIn Maps. It both shows the links between your connections and color-codes major clusters that are rough approximations of the various professional and personal worlds you move around in. You can zoom in and out, and select individual contacts to see which persons you know they are also connected to.

Of course, it makes for pretty art. However, the maps can also be useful. First, they give you a quick sense of the roles you play in your social world, through the colored sub-networks. Another use is to find out which people who you think don’t know one another, in fact are acquainted.

My LinkedIn Map – Overview

To give you an idea of what LinkedIn Maps is about in practice, here are some of my own maps. First, the total overview, showing the “regions of my personal world map” (click on the figures to see the details). For instance, one big region is formed by my local Tilburg connections, other regions by my Tilburg University research contacts, my international Community Informatics research connections, etc.

Zooming in on my personal network

The closer the regions are to my own node, and the more densely connected they are, the more they represent my “daily social circles”. When zooming in, the names of individual connections become visible. The bigger the dots depicting my contacts, the more they are connected to my own contacts, and the more likely we have something in common, if only by knowing the same people.

Zooming in on a close “general connector” who is well connected to many of the people I know across many of my social circles

Finally, by selecting particular contacts, you can quickly explore which of your contacts in the various regions you share. This can be very valuable information, in, for example, setting up joint projects, selecting network coordinators or community managers who need to act as “spiders in your webs”, and so on. In this figure, I have selected one of my close contacts, and immediately see he is quite evenly connected to all of my “daily networks”. If I were to set up a project involving those networks, he would be a good candidate to ask for assistance.

Zooming in on a “specialized connector” who is well connected to many of the people I know in one particular circle

On the other hand, the contact I selected in this example, is very much connected to many of the people in my subnetwork that I have dubbed my “Tilburg University research network”. So, if I were to set up a joint research project with my former colleagues, he would be one of the persons to talk to first!

Filed under: social networks, visualization

“Designing Social Cities of Tomorrow” workshop – presentation notes

Aldo de Moor — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 13:30:15 +0000

On February 17, the international “Social Cities of Tomorrow” conference was held in Amsterdam. Prior to this conference, a three-day “Designing Social Cities of Tomorrow” workshop was held in which international participants from various professional backgrounds collaborated with local stakeholder organisations on 4 real-world urban cases: Urban Pioneers Zeeburgereiland (Amsterdam), Haagse Havens (The Hague), Strijp-S (Eindhoven), and Amsterdam Civic Innovator Network. On February 16, the results of this workshop were presented in a sold-out hall. Fortunately, I managed to get one of the last tickets. I was particularly interested in this workshop, as I thought it might generate some concrete ideas to help us co-create the new Tilburg Spoorzone. I was not disappointed, and really very pleased with the overall quality, originality, and feasibility of the ideas.

For the first three cases, quite detailed “how to do it” plans were unfolded, the presentation of the fourth case focused on the theoretical underpinnings of a civic innovator network. A good summary by Laurent Hubeek of the presentations of case 1 & 2 can be found here, that of case 3 & 4 here. I took detailed notes during the case presentations. They’re rather rough, but I include them here to capture the atmosphere and as an additional recording of the insights presented. Hopefully they help to inspire further thinking.

Introduction

Hi-tech is increasingly influencing life in today’s cities. ”Smart Cities” are hot. The main problem with these visions: where are the people?! Can we use the same hi-tech to make the cities more social instead of (just) smart? The key question therefore is: How can we use digital technologies to make our cities more social, rather than just more hi-tech?

Social cities: it’s not about a blueprint, but a design approach. It’s a way of thinking about cities that are highly technological, but which is not about the technology itself, but about the people. Now, how do you design for social cities? How do you engage and empower publics (groups of people) to act on communally shared issues?

The digital element leads to a qualitative shift:

There’s a new resource: the data the city is generating
Name issues in new ways, discover patterns, bring up/visualize new issues in ways you couldn’t do before
Engage people, give them a new sense of place (e.g. storytelling, urban gaming)
Ways how we organize ourselves: peer-to-peer organization around issues

Taking this into account, the questions posed to the teams were:

How can we get citizens to feel they belong and feel that the city belongs to them as well?
How do we design for ‘ownership’?

Case 1: TEMPLoT (= temporary plot)

Municipalities are plagued by having many unused vacant parcels. Zeeburgereiland Amsterdam is a typical case. However, most of Europe is dealing with same issues. Key idea: “temporary” could become the stimulus.

Nothing is happening on Zeeburgereiland, it is literally a no go zone. The city idea was to make it available as a 10 year-lease for 1 euro. Why not make it much more temporary: what if the urban pioneer was only given the land for 365 days instead of 10 years? The temp architecture initiative wants experts to meet some place to advise new urban pioneers to do something “tomorrow”. These expert roles are: owner, developer, designer, manager. However, what if the urban pioneers are the experts? Individuals could start playing those roles themselves. To do so, maybe these urban pioneers don’t need a place but a platform? This system consisting of a website plus apps could be TEMPLoT.

Zeeburgereiland = 3,6 ha plot minus 15% infrastructure. Possible uses: Recreation? Entertainment, Amusement, Do Nothing? As the area is sandwiched between superdense neighbourhoods: what if its main use were a garden? It could provide a temp infrastructure consisting of private parcels, plus an area for a larger community “Contribution Zone”. Flex spaces would be adjacent to private spaces, which can help in the building of mini communities. Manage the collective usage online via TEMPLoT.

Follow the seasonal life cycle: in December, start planning the temp infrastructure, in January, do the bidding process, after that the building and planting etc., use summer for enjoying festivals, then in October/November, do the clean up process. Coordination can happen online. The flex space is the negotiation space (through bidding) between the neighbours. Contribution zone: everybody has to contribute something there (time, energy, skills & knowledge, teaching, network, etc.). These contributions are visible in your online profile, so your neighbors know your involvement. Potential individual uses: relaxation, family plot, artist studio, etc.

Stakeholder organization response:

It for sure is possible. It could become a way of “citymaking”. Should not only be gardens, however, the area could also be used in another way. A potential problem is that people like it so much that they don’t want to leave? Also, the app used in the plotting process should be simple. What if it would also allow pioneers to change plot? Would be great if it could also help to increase the skills of participants.

Impressed by the “back to basics” approach. This is refreshing, as city design has become so (unnecessarily) complex these days. Nice it’s so hands-on.

Commitment: the tender for Zeeburgereiland is already out, we could add this digital approach. Every city in Europe has such a map of vacant plots. Many other cities could also apply this approach: investigate how other cities can be involved?

Audience response:

There’s a similar project in Ghent, Belgium. It’s about gardens, people could buy it with invented city currency, so that everybody could afford a plot, also those without money. You put in your effort and got the virtual currency. However, what was the duration of the lease? The temp focus is very important.

Case 2: Haagse Havens

This concerns a rough, industrial area in The Hague. The last master plan was in 2005. Due to the crisis there is no money: they now want to give more “power to the people”. Questions include: how can we map the cultural and economic values of the area? How can we build on local values to improve the public space?

The locals love the area. It’s not so much a problem of mapping, but of how to make the qualities shine through. Why are the qualities not shining?

A main problem is the lack of trust: locals don’t trust the municipality, the municipality does not see the qualities. There’s a pressing need for a better system of communication. The locals have good communication based on face-to-face, offline. Build on this. How to improve the system of two-way communication between locals and municipality?

Stage 1: “First meeting/first engagement”. Get commitment from municipality and locals. Start with two people from the city, three business owners community, plus a facilitator. Make a video trailer of locals interviewing locals “Love/Hate the Neighborhood”. Then present the trailer to community.
Stage 2: “Choose your neighbor/Meet your neighbor”. Continue and expand the collaboration, both online + offline. Lots of locals are not involved with online media, and they have no incentives to become digitized. Build on those local face-to-face, strong social network values.
- The first step is to create a community website for fostering co-creation. Before, plans always came from one stakeholder (municipality, couple of business owners), but were never co-created by all stakeholders together. The online platform would be centered around an evolving online map co-created by all stakeholders. There could be many different kind of inputs (e.g. ideas for the area, e.g. businesses that could come into a vacant spot; communication about events, etc.). There should be an online record of present and past ideas, in order to create continuity.
- Also create a loop back to “analog people”. Create a lunch-bus! This would serve as a mobile restaurant to bring stakeholders together (including a municipality representative) and to foster storytelling. People eat and discuss. A “table cloth map” would show the online map to the people around the table through a facilitator. The recorded discussions would be fed back into online website. It’s a very practical way to foster co-creation.

Such an approach would lead to improved communication, trust, co-creation and would help in boosting identity.

Stakeholder organization response:

The analysis picks up on all the issues. The loop between online and offline through the lunch bus is very interesting. It’s a very simple tool that may work, also since there are not many lunch facilities around there. Connecting the conversation in the bus with digital tools also is very interesting, the approach could indeed help to build trust.

We are currently in a very open process. The ideas might be used in the Architecture Biennale Rotterdam project presentation. They should also be introduced in planmaking in coming years.

Audience response:

No questions from the audience.

Case 3: Zone-S

Strijp-S in Eindhoven is a cross-over between virtual media and physical space. How can new media contribute to the urban atmosphere of Strijp-S? In answering this question, the approach should:

Connect to the DNA of the area
Increase the experience
Inspire people
Be interactive

It’s not the new media, but the people who are going to change the atmosphere. Starting from here, the team decided to “go to extremes”: make a social city with the help of new media.

There’s a lot of vacant space around the buildings. Housing corporation Trudo’s ambition: to create a new creative cultural heart of Eindhoven:

High density
Mixed activites
Vibrancy 24/7
Attractive facilities

How are you going to build a community? There are no people living there now. There’s a huge gap between now and future. Right now, Strijp-S is very popular for huge festivals. There are some peaks in attendance, but in between the public space is abandoned. How do you expand the amount of time that people spend there? How do you have peope stay longer and contribute to the area? People working there see it as a “living lab”. Because there are no people there you have the freedom for “extreme experimentation”: see Strijp-S as a temporary social experimental zone.

What if we were to consider Strijp-S as a game zone (metaphor, not actually)? We want to get social engagement, using the game metaphor can help in achieving this. In such a community you’re not just a visitor, but a player. You can choose the amount of involvement you’re up to. However, you need to get support from the community. You start as a novice but can end as a “professional community member”. You can enter project proposals on the online community site. Propose a project, then if you have enough support by deadline, you can go to next level of realization. The game offers you a territory, you can predesign the project on the online interface, if you get the support you can build/realize the project. People vote for you, but also say whether they will attend/assist. This awards you points, which you can use to reach the next level. One example could be a “Trash2Fuel” project, an extreme project area where you’re going to burn/compost waste.

For this to succeed, many details still need to be worked out: who are the community players, what are the rules, who would be the “game master”, what resources are needed? However, it would be a way to generate the sustained and expanding kind of social engagement needed to make the area work.

Stakeholder organization response:

The approach appeals, but it might apply mostly to the current young population and many events. Later “normal inhabitants” will come. How to involve them in such a game metaphor? One way could be to have many different levels of the game, different zones, different interfaces (e.g. a cafe).

Trudo is really interested and will explore this idea more deeply with the team. As developers “we should no longer think in buildings”!

Audience response:

Great idea, use “lunch bus-like” ideas to make novices get used to the idea. Also create (physical) playgrounds to introduce people to the whole concept. Use a real space to play the initial stage of the game, then go online.

Case 4: Amsterdam Civic Innovators Network

How can we increase citizens’ participation in civic innovation? Currently, there is often a website, some questions, a contest/prize, resulting in lots of feedback. Once the contest over, however, there is no sustainability. The city really wants its citizens to be involved. However, collectives like Hack de Overheid think the government needs to do even more to open up and really share power. There’s a lot of tension between the two parties.

To get a true “Civic Innovators Network”, we should not think in terms of tools, apps, websites. A much more holistic approach is needed. Such a network is all around us. Its goals would include stimulating economic growth, social value, environmental sustainability, making city operations more efficient. The people must be able to associate themselves with such goals. To do so, use a digital infrastructure/environment that connects all that – an intelligent infrastructure that improves feedback loops. The city should not want to it to be top-down, but a flat infrastructure in which city is only one of the participants.

Infrastructure prerequisites:

Open data
Free to access and use
Intelligent and connected
Scalable

The role of city:

Smart regulations: how to deregulate?
Generate trust
Power shift
Distributed ownership

How is it going to work?

Focus on mutual benefits: money should be minimum motivation
New business model is key
Open the data, but do something with it, e.g. improve public services
If it saves a certain type of costs, some of the money could go to funds to stimulate more innovation. A percentage could give to person/community who came up with the idea.

Roadmap:

Connect existing communities & platforms.
Open and flatten internal organization.
Let civic innovators network grow.

Stakeholder organization response:

No stakeholder representative was present.

Audience response:

Theoretically it sounds okay, but how do you actually make it work?

If you work with many stakeholders, sometimes you need a more directive role. Who should play that role if municipality is just one of many actors? Should be the city after all.

Get out of the money discussion, talk ideas!

Filed under: cities, conferences, social innovation

De Tilburgse Spoorzone als “Laboratorium voor de Maatschappij van de Toekomst”

Aldo de Moor — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:08:15 +0000

De Tilburgse Spoorzone (zie ook Co-Creatie Kerngebied Spoorzone, De:Werkplaats, Spoorzone site Brabants Dagblad en de Spoorzone Facebook groep) staat in het centrum van de belangstelling. Ruim 2,5 kilometer lang met een oppervlakte van 75 hectare ligt deze voormalige NS werkplaats bijna volledig braak, maar met een geweldige potentie in deze stad van creatievelingen, makers, doeners en denkers.

Het is de bedoeling dat de Spoorzone een “Kennis Plus Profiel” gaat krijgen. Om dit in te vullen wordt onder meer gedacht aan het realiseren van een bibliotheek van de toekomst, een leer- en kennisomgeving en een “social innovation kenniscampus”. O.a. Fontys Hogescholen, Tilburg University en TiasNimbas worden hierbij betrokken. Fontys heeft onlangs bekend gemaakt over te gaan met haar opleidingen Creative Industries en Journalistiek, op weg naar een “campus 3.0″. Maar ook cultuur ontbreekt niet in deze mix, zo is als voorhoede de Hall of Fame sinds kort in dit gebied gehuisvest en wordt het gerenoveerde Deprez-gebouw al geruime tijd gebruikt als huisvesting voor maatschappelijke organisaties en voor het organiseren van allerlei presentaties, debatten en manifestaties. Koppel hier nog allerlei toekomstige bedrijvigheid van creatieve en andere ondernemers aan en er is sprake van een uniek gebied dat op allerlei manieren kan gaan bruisen.

Hoewel de potentie enorm is, is de verwarring dat ook. Zoveel betrokkenen, zoveel belangen, zoveel mogelijke invullingen, zoveel tekorten… Hoe zo’n enorm gebied in te richten, zodanig dat het recht doet aan de diversiteit van alle belanghebbenden, maar dat er tegelijkertijd de verbinding tussen zoveel mogelijk bewoners wordt gelegd? Wat is de “eenheid in verscheidenheid”, wat is het “grote verhaal” dat verteld kan worden over dit gebied? Een verhaal wat Tilburg op de kaart zet, niet alleen provinciaal of nationaal, maar internationaal? Een verbindend idee dat ervoor zorgt dat mensen naar Tilburg willen komen om dit gebied met eigen ogen te zien en te beleven, maar ook om mee te doen, of in de taal van vandaag de dag, de Spoorzone te helpen “co-creëren”?

Vorig jaar vond er in Noord-Brabant een bijzonder interessante exercitie plaats, georganiseerd door BrabantBrein, om zoveel mogelijk concrete ideeën te verzamelen om te komen tot een letterlijk betere samenleving. In de hele provincie werden bijeenkomsten georganiseerd, waarin door een groot aantal teams ideeën werden gegenereerd, gepresenteerd, geselecteerd en steeds verder verfijnd. Een van de geselecteerde ideëen betrof het beschouwen van Noord-Brabant als laboratorium van de “Maatschappij van de Toekomst”:

Noord-Brabant als laboratorium van de “Maatschappij van de Toekomst” waarin volop wordt geëxperimenteerd met oplossingen voor complexe, organisatie-overstijgende problemen als vergrijzing, milieuvervuiling, integratie enz. Brabant heeft hiervoor uitstekende “faciliteiten”: een groot aantal verschillende stakeholders met veel verschillende expertise, een zeer gevarieerde economie, een informele cultuur, bereidheid tot samenwerken, enz. Geleerde lessen zouden vervolgens als voorbeeld kunnen dienen voor andere provincies en regio’s in Europa.

Ooit stond het “Huis van de Toekomst” in Rosmalen. Tilburg ligt in het hart van Midden-Brabant. De Spoorzone ligt in het centrum van Tilburg. Wat nu als we de Spoorzone (als “hart van het Hart van Brabant”) maken tot het provinciale “laboratorium voor de Maatschappij van de Toekomst”? Het betreft hier een speciaal soort laboratorium: een “living lab”. Een living lab is een ecosysteem van de private en de publieke sector, waarin het leggen van verbindingen en het aanjagen van innovatie centraal staat. Zo’n living lab gedachte sluit ook uitstekend aan op “social innovation” als het centrale thema van de regio Midden-Brabant, zoals deze reeds uitvoerig gestalte krijgt in het samenwerkingsverband Midpoint Brabant.

Vanuit deze gedachte bezien wordt de Spoorzone een enorm spannend ecosysteem van innovaties waar bedrijfsleven, overheid, onderwijs, culturele instellingen, creatieve ondernemers en burgers samen laten zien hoe onze maatschappij er over zoveel jaar uit zou kunnen en moeten zien. Technische en sociale innovaties, nieuwe kunst-, cultuur-, onderwijs- en onderzoeksconcepten, maatschappelijke scenario’s, een uitdijend web van steeds veranderende en met elkaar verbonden ideëen waarmee de maatschappij van de toekomst wordt vormgegeven. Allerlei kruisbestuivingen van goede ideëen die plaatsvinden in gebouwen en installaties maar vooral ook door middel van nieuwe media, presentaties en debatten, workshops en conferenties, onderzoeksprojecten, samenwerkingsverbanden tussen de meest onwaarschijnlijke partners, netwerken van overlappende communities…

Enkele voorbeelden van hoe die kruisbestuivingen eruit zouden kunnen zien:

Grote zorginstellingen als De Wever laten (samen met grote verzekeraars als Interpolis of CZ) in een tentoonstellingszaal zien hoe mantelzorgers en professionals om zouden kunnen gaan met mensen met dementie in de Dementie Experience. Ernaast wordt een congres voor verzekeraars en zorgverleners uit heel Europa gehouden in de Koepelhal over hoe deze innovatieve aanpakken een bijdrage zouden kunnen leveren aan het verbeteren van de levenskwaliteit en het terugdringen van de zorgkosten.
Studenten Journalistiek van Fontys werken samen met uitgeverijen als Zwijsen o.a. op basis van toekomstscenario’s van het Tilburg Social Innovation Lab aan het vertellen van het “Maatschappij van de Toekomst” verhaal in een digital storytelling project. In dit project worden allerlei crossmediale vormen uitgewerkt, o.a. bestaande uit een groot aantal installaties verspreid over het hele Spoorzone terrein, maar ook met digitale koppelingen naar gerelateerde projecten en discussiefora over de hele wereld. De “buzz” die daardoor ontstaat trekt weer allerlei bezoekers van heinde en verre naar het gebied.
Het Science Centre werkt samen met de Bibliotheek van de Toekomst en het Wetenschapsknooppunt Tilburg aan het ontwikkelen van digitale en fysieke leerlijnen om kinderen van de basisschoolleeftijd al te enthousiasmeren voor de wetenschap. Via een online “kinderkennisbank” bereiden kinderen uit de hele regio en zelfs de rest van het land zich voor op een lesthema om dan met het openbaar vervoer af te reizen naar de Spoorzone. Hier zien ze een hele dag wetenschap & techniek in actie in een “Exploratorium“-achtige setting in verschillende gebouwen in de Spoorzone.
Een consortium van bedrijven, kennisinstellingen en overheden, omgeven door een web van culturele instellingen en creatieve ZZP-ers gaan met elkaar een langdurig samenwerkingsverband aan om te komen tot een nationaal Master Plan om de vergrijzing in 2040 het hoofd te bieden. Het Master plan bestaat uit creatieve interpretaties van wat de effecten van vergrijzing op het dagelijks leven zullen zijn, maar ook ideëen voor heel praktische zorgproducten, voorstellen voor nieuwe zorgprocessen en innovatieve financieringsmodellen. Elk van deze partijen heeft een “ambassade” in de Spoorzone, variërend van een heel gebouw voor de grote organisaties tot een kamer in een verzamelgebouw voor een “community van senioren” die als ervaringsdeskundigen mee willen denken over wat er nodig is. Een vleugel van een van de (functioneel gerenoveerde) karakteristieke NS-gebouwen wordt door Seats2Meet ingericht als permanente “kruisbestuivingsruimte” waarin prototypes worden getoond, vergaderingen en presentaties worden gehouden en de vertegenwoordigers van alle betrokken partijen elkaar voortdurend op allerlei verrassende, inspirerende en informele wijze tegenkomen.

In ons recent verschenen artikel ”De openbare bibliotheek als stadslab” schetsen Emmeken van der Heijden en ikzelf een scenario voor hoe de bibliotheek van de toekomst eruit zou kunnen zien door het leggen van allerlei slimme verbindingen tussen de fysieke en online wereld. Cruciaal hierbij is dat in eerste instantie gekeken moet worden naar gewenste functies, verbindingen en interacties tussen allerlei (on)mogelijke partijen, samen met die partijen, voordat er geïnvesteerd wordt in fysieke infrastructuur. Voor de Spoorzone als geheel geldt dat zo mogelijk nog meer. Keuzes die nu gemaakt worden bepalen het innovatieve DNA van het gebied voor vele toekomstige generaties. Wordt de Spoorzone een gebied als zoveel andere kwakkelende stedelijke zones, met veel schitterende (en dure) gebouwen, maar veel te weinig leven en “vibe”? Of durven we echt hier met zijn allen samen iets neer te zetten wat Tilburg op de kaart zet bij de provincie, het land en Europa?

Natuurlijk moeten de enorme investeringen gedaan in de aankoop van de Spoorzone worden terugverdiend, zeker gezien de zware financiële tijden die de stad nu doormaakt. Het een hoeft het ander echter niet uit te sluiten. Een simpele voetgangerstunnel onder het station moet als “deur naar het gebied” zo spoedig mogelijk en tegen geringe kosten kunnen worden aangelegd. Veel bestaande gebouwen kunnen op sobere wijze worden gerenoveerd, zodat deze voldoen aan minimale functionele en veiligheidseisen. Als ze zich nieuwbouw (nog) niet kunnen veroorloven, kunnen speciale contractvormen mogelijke bewoners (van ZZP-ers tot grote organisaties) aantrekken om in die gebouwen een tijdelijke “innovatie-ambassade” te openen. Op deze manier begint ongebruikt terrein al op korte termijn inkomsten te genereren voor de gemeente en kunnen de pioniers per direct beginnen het living lab ecosysteem te ontwikkelen. Tevens wordt zo tijd gewonnen om tot goed afgewogen plannen te komen in een transparent proces van consultatie, samen met huidige en toekomstige belanghebbenden en bewoners van het gebied, met projectontwikkelaars en gemeente, met mee- en tegendenkers, offline en online.

Tilburg heeft zichzelf al vele malen opnieuw uitgevonden. We hebben nu nog de kans om iets groots te realiseren. Laten we die kans grijpen.

PS: Oorspronkelijk heette deze blog “De Tilburgse Spoorzone als “Living Lab voor de Maatschappij van de Toekomst”. “Living lab” is echter jargon dat gebruikt kan (en moet) worden in beleidsstukken, omdat het een specifiek soort (sociaal-maatschappelijk i.p.v. een technisch) laboratorium betreft. Om het idee duidelijk te maken aan de gemiddelde leek, is het naar mijn mening beter om gewoon de term “laboratorium” te gebruiken. Zo kan het verhaal beter verteld worden en blijven hangen.

Filed under: business, digital libraries, innovation, science, social innovation

Weaving the Web: Launch of the Tilburg University Science Junction

Aldo de Moor — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 13:53:27 +0000

Today, Tilburg University’s Science Junction was launched:

The Children’s University aims to work together with regional schools to develop curriculums and teaching materials for more gifted primary school students from groups 7 and 8 (age 10 to 12). The goal: making knowledge available to primary school students, and to show how much fun science is.

Weaving the Web

The opening ceremony consisted of weaving a giant web between the participants, by having them throw around loads of balls of wool. Besides it being superbly funny and engaging, it also resulted (both in terms of process and product) in one of the best visual metaphors of The Web I have come across! See the weaving of the web in action at this photo stream.

Filed under: academia, science, Uncategorized, universities

Meebouwen aan de Creatieve Piramide van Brabant Brein

Aldo de Moor — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 06:11:31 +0000

Vorige week heb ik meegedaan met een avond van Brabant Brein in Breda. Uit “de folder“:

Brabant Brein is een unieke denktank die de creativiteit, kennis en denkkracht van Brabantse topspecialisten uit 11 sectoren en vanuit alle denkbare disciplines bundelt. Dwars tegen de huidige hokjesgeest in, worden hier bruggen geslagen tussen alfa- en bètawetenschappen, de kunsten, het bedrijfsleven, de overheid, onderwijs en wetenschap. Doel van dit alles? Te komen tot een betere provincie, een betere stad, dorp, buurt, straat en huis. Kortom: om te komen tot een betere samenleving. Brabant Brein is te zien als het netwerk waarmee we ‘De Kunst van het Samenleven’ tot grote hoogte kunnen opstuwen. De structuur van dit netwerk wordt gevormd door een Brabantse vinding: de Creatieve Piramide.

Eindresultaat van een avond hard werken

Het concept van Brabant Brein om het genereren en schiften van ideeën te schalen is erg interessant. Elke deelnemer was toegewezen aan een expert groep. Ik was lid van het Team Sociale Innovatie (zie ook verslag van collega-teamlid Sjaak Evers). Eerst schreven alle deelnemers individueel een aantal ideeën op. Aan het eind kreeg iedereen 5 stickers om op de voor hen meest interessante ideeën te plakken. De 3 ideeën met de meeste stickers gingen door naar de volgende ronde.

In Ronde 2 ging men door naar een andere groep, waarin verschillende expertises waren gemixt. Zo zaten in mijn groep vertegenwoordigers van de groep “Muziek”, “Allochtonen” en “Ambtenaren”. Iedereen presenteerde kort de ideeën uit de vorige ronde, waarna weer een sessie van individueel ideeën genereren en stickeren volgde.

In Ronde 3 ging iedereen terug naar zijn of haar oorspronkelijke groep, in mijn geval dus het Team Sociale Innovatie. Nu stond de vraag “Wat zijn de beste bijdragen voor de kunst van het samenleven vanuit de expertise van de groep?” centraal. Weer volgde een sessie van individueel ideeën genereren en stickeren.

De avond werd besloten met een plenaire sessie, waarin alle groepen hun beste ideeën presenteerden.

Na een serie van deze basisbijeenkomsten, komen weer follow-ups, waarin de teamleiders verder gaan met de verzamelde ideeën. Uiteindelijk komt er een boek en zullen alle ideeën via een website beschikbaar worden gesteld.

Een vraag die een aantal van ons zich wel stelden was dat het geheel nogal hiërarchish is. Is er wel zoiets als “het beste idee”? Het is logisch dat er een schifting van ideeën moet plaatsvinden om bijvoorbeeld provinciaal beleid op te kunnen baseren. Het zou echter ook nuttig zijn als er een soortgelijk proces wordt opgezet dat inspeelt op de inherente “Wikipedia” netwerkstructuur van de verzamelde rijkdom aan suggesties. Dit zou kunnen door provincie-breed communities van belanghebbenden te formeren die bepaalde ideeën “adopteren”. Als er genoeg van dergelijke communities ontstaan – die met elkaar in contact komen door de vele verbindingen tussen de ideeën – kan het “maatschappelijk weefsel” van de provincie behoorlijk versterkt worden.

Via de Brabantse Innovatie Kwartiermakerscommunity (BRINK) proberen we een stukje van dat weefsel te maken. Een van de aan BRINK gerelateerde ideeën over de kunst van het samenleven werd trouwens verkozen om door te mogen gaan “in de volgende ronde”:

Noord-Brabant als laboratorium van de “Maatschappij van de Toekomst” waarin volop wordt geëxperimenteerd met oplossingen voor complexe, organisatie-overstijgende problemen als vergrijzing, milieuvervuiling, integratie enz. Brabant heeft hiervoor uitstekende “faciliteiten”: een groot aantal verschillende stakeholders met veel verschillende expertise, een zeer gevarieerde economie, een informele cultuur, bereidheid tot samenwerken, enz. Geleerde lessen zouden vervolgens als voorbeeld kunnen dienen voor andere provincies en regio’s in Europa.

Filed under: social innovation