Technoculture(s)

A new challenge: connecting UL09 with UrbanLabs010

The concept of UrbanLabs originated from our perception that there was an opportunity to accelerate change in the city by gathering stakeholders in urban phenomena under the digital culture umbrella . We set ourselves to the goals of awakening the civic conscience of those with technological capability, bringing together urban managers and new digital urban designers and promoting  practical outcomes by letting them work on projects, not just listening to talks.

However, we didn't reject the traditional conference format. This time talks were more focused on the potentiality of the digital discourse about the city. Dave Harte, Juan Freire, Adam Greenfield, Ben Cerveny, Laura Forlano, Dana Spiegel and Antonina Simeti, each one in his or her own way and from their own perspectives and experiences, shared concepts, methods, projects and results. They helped us understand  how to drive the complexity of urban (re)design from the digital culture standpoint.


In comparison with UrbanLabs08, we attracted more professionals from architecture and city management who were responsive to the "call of the digital".

We also tested a first specialized workshop format, Fabien Girardin's LIFT workshop on urban computing.

The method of work we first tried in UrbanLabs08 was intensified thanks to the "broths" managed by Platoniq who also introduced some humor. In addition to creatives, technologists, architects and activists  I  saw plain citizens joining the project tables. Still, they were  a minority This is something  we must consider seriously  if we want UrbanLabs to generate projects of real interest to citizens.

We still have to work hard so that participants leave UrbanLabs with something more than an endorphine surge.

Fortunately, a very enthusiastic community is emerging around UrbanLabs. It can evolve into a good mix of all these types of people. The UrbanLabs Club or UrbanLabs Rebooted  may start in the form of a regular meeting format. Sure Chris, and  the Citilab entire staff will put all our best to make it successful and to improve continuity between one UrbanLabs and the next one.

Meanwhile, it is good to share criticisms, suggestions and new ideas for the the next UrbanLabs010 here.

Sunday quote: "New technologies condemn us to be intelligent"

I do not know how,  but I found this conference by Michel Serres as part of the celebrations of the 40th anniversary  of INRIA in Lille on  December 11th 2007 (day and month of my birthday, incidentally).

A  philosopher celebrating new technologies. Enjoy the word

Citilab-Digital Birmingham: considerations on the social context

Yesterday Dave Harte gave an excellent opening keybote speech at Urbanlabs09.  Here you have it on SlideShare. He explained at length the different dimensions along which Birmingham has evolved as a Digital City. 

It is difficult to summarize all the aspects he talked about. However, I think he very clearly showed that for him (and not only form him!) a Digital City is not just a city that uses digital technology for accessing and distributing information. A Digital City, as the different examples from Birmingham that Dave gave showed us, is a city where technology is also an opportunity for citizens to cooperate together and innovate in different spheres of civic activity. Possibly, the most spectacular example he gave was the hacking of the City Council website by a group of citizens that got together and set up a different website with all the services and information they really wanted ("BCC DIY").

He also showed how behind this type of initiatives there is a concept of innovation that is open. Not only it is open in terms of access to public data but also in the final goal and expected results and evolution of the innovation process itself. That is, it is an open-ended process that helps in learning new things, innovate and how this has social and economic impact.

He identified several key aspects to develop this type of initiatives:

1. The interest of citizens to get together and discuss

2. A culture of civic engagement and a culture of contributors

3. There should be public data available and a will  from individual citizens to share their own data (he showed what he did with his own home energy data or his jogging data)

4. Some big trigger that sparks the reaction of citizens  (in the case of Birmingham the cost of the City Council website was identified as such: 2,8 Milion Pounds were thought too expensive and started the whole hacking project)

This made me think on another conference by Ethan Zuckermann that I got to know (thru Ismael López Peña) about the key factors to trigger social innovation projects from and around technology. This connection made me think about where do we stand here as current state and possibilities for social innovation and what we can do here.  And by "here" I think on the community that is physically close to Citilab but I think I could extend this consideration to Spain.

 

I could elaborate on the relationship between both types of "key factors" about social innovation. I will try to go through all f them in the future.

For today I'll just mention that, in my view,  one of the main differences between Birmingham and our closest environment is not just how different the proportion of citizens with technological knowledge is but specially the different attitudes in terms of "contributor culture".

I think that the former (extent of digital knowledge) is correlated with the latter (contributor culture).  So,  to be successful in spreading digital social innovation here, and if Zuckermann is right, one urgent task for Citilab is to understand very clearly which are them main traits of local culture here.  Having this this in mind we have to devise better ways to contact with the leading citizen contributors and how to adapt our digital culture programmes to their context. We are putting  a lot of effort to get to know better (through ethnographies, workshops and other means) and we are rethinking our current formats. As a next step I'd love to see citizens codesigning  Citilab activities.

Sunday quote: "Geeks are citizens too"

My colleague at Citilab, Chris Pinchen, was beaming after his intense days in Birmingham. There he attended an event sponsored by Digital Birmingham "Developing Digital Birmingham District". He presented Citilab as a possible component of a wider urban innovation strategy.

He poured on me a lot of impressions. He was radiating good vibes.  Got very positive appreciation from the people that attended the conference  (follow their conversations and QA on Twitter here and here) and explained me about how to reinforce some initial cooperation we are starting as well as many others that he was able to initiate while there. Then we started to review his presentation on SlideShare. It has a lot of humour. Specially about current (mis?)conceptions abroad on the relationship between Barcelona and innovation. Then I saw this slide:

which, Chris told me, started a round of applause among the attendants.

Which is understandable. There is a strong Birmingham civic activism that is led by tech-savvy citizens  I'll comment sometime in the future about several initiatives in Birmingham that illustrate perfectly well how and in which imaginative ways a critical mass of "geek citizens" can make a difference to the city's present and future.

In other words, I think some Birmingham examples will help me show some possible pathways to citizen-led innovation that couldn't happen at all without their knowledge of the digital culture.  It might also be that they took these steps because they thought as digital design thinkers, not just as digital wizards (which some of them definitely are!). This is what Citilab is all about: letting people innovate in whatever sphere they want by using the strategies, practices and tools of the digital world.

In a way, it is a matter of turning citizens into geeks, too.

And this parallelism is what we will explore further during UrbanLabs09. Don't forget that the motto for Urbanlabs  (a contribution of one of its founders, Enric Senabre)  is:

"Technocitizenship" (geeks with civic conscience and citizens with digital abilities)

and

"Socioinnovation"  (let technocitizens invent their collective future).

Dusk after Breakout and a new beginning

(Sunset today from Cornella on my ride back to Citilab, when Breakout finished)

I was cycling back to Citilab after an exhilarating BreakOut Session at WTC Almeda Park and tried to draw some lessons from the whole set of views, experiences, feelings, questions and answers that were zig zagging in my mind as I avoided cars and pedestrians. On top of that I almost got too distracted by the setting sun, a perfect counterpart to this morning's sunrise. So, I stopped, shot and wrote down some notes for a while. Still in a big need for further elaboration here are some thoughts on today's experience.

The format(s)

We explored today two Breakout formats simultaneously :

- A Hackathon: Smalltalkers met developers of FluidDB to work out together doubts and details about how to proceed on towards their goal to create a connection for FluidDB in Smalltalk. They advanced enormously. In this format you start with a plan and use the Hackathon to go as fast as you can together.
- A Jelly, this is a "get together and see what we can learn from each other" format, so to speak. So, first thing in the morning was to put together on the spot a  To-Do list that participants tried to cover. However, the main goal is to (a) get to know each other and (b) find new partners and projects. 

 From what I could gather today both formats worked well and participants were happy with what they achieved. Scheduled five-minute "lightning talks" helped to catch up with the interests and projects of others.

A possible general lesson, for those still prisoners of the business networking frame of mind: "networking while doing" works faster and better than cocktails and business card exchange: you really get to know people!. And this is a lesson that can be used in other settings, not necessarily outdoors.

I liked one comment from one Smalltalker " I wonder why we haven't done this before"  (i.e., "why we haven't met before in this way"). Let's change meetings for "work-togethers".

The message

People got several ideas here: "coworking is important", "work can be done in better spaces than current offices", "open space is as good as any office to do work", "... and it is more fun", "technology and digital culture bring in new ways of working", "wireless in public spaces is really important", "urban spaces should be designed to accommodate new ways of working" , "meeting face to face is important", "we need other types of urban space", were some of the ones that I heard. There were many more. We will see what comes out of the survey that was prepared on the spot by our friends of the University of Barcelona

Interestingly enough, the media (plenty of them showed up) stressed the relation of what we were doing with the existence and access to an information infrastructure. It was this more than stressing the fact that we were showing that new ways of working were possible ... if the access was already there or that the ways of working that stem from digital culture can be used in many other settings and influence how urban public space or office space is designed. 

Some of them even interpreted the Breakout session just as an event to demand free open municipal wifi (which is great but was never expressed explicitly as our main goal) . Not all media, stressed our interesed in using the forms of collaboration of digital culture in public spaces, and, our goal to use the event to spark reflection and debate  in those concerned (from citizens to urban designers) and, yes, advocating the place of information infrastructure in the wider setting of the city  ... but we tried hard to convey other ideas also:

- Breakout is a research project as much as it is a mobilization initiative

- Breakout is an international collaboration

- The knowledge that comes out of it is useful for business, coworkers, urban designers and administration (City Councils) as well as the general citizen.

And, on the funny side, we have evidence that there is a lesson even for technology designers too!: sun was so bright today that the shade of trees was not enough, neither the tarpaulin that we used. So, some people proved themselves to be great tinkerers and solved the problem with what they had at hand ;-)

The people

It was enjoyable to see how people shared a common space on a sunny autumn day. I had to say that everyone was really enthusiastic and cooperative. Some people from the offices around WTC expressed their interest in joining on their way to or back from the coffee or lunch break. There were two types of companies: those that invited their employees to go down to the square... and those who resisted it or forbid it completely. So there were two types of employees´ reaction´s:  "great! Here I am!" and "If only my boss would allow ....". A lot to investigate here.

Backgrounds, professions and interests were diverse but dialogue was possible: architects, computer programmers, translators, web designers, community managers, sociologists, university professors, ...

It is not so difficult to get people working together then.

Citilab volunteers where great and enjoyed a lot the experience. 

The process

What probably interested me most was the kind of processes that the formats allowed. Mostly they boiled down to an acceleration of ongoing collaborations. We are trying to see what interventions can facilitate or  stop altogether this possibility. In due time we hope to evolve a "methodology" that can be exported to other settings and cooperation goals.

What has started here

Well, the next Breakout Session date will be decided tomorrow.

And there are a lot of new possibilities to explore at UrbanLabs09 around what we have learned today

Finally we also have in Breakout a reference, an experience that makes it easier to show what we try to do in and around Citilab: changing the city and the patterns that evolve on it by spreading the ways of digital technology practice. 

But this is just a fast account. More about it soon.All in all a beautiful day and not only for the simple reason that we could se the sun rise and set beautifully and in good company.

The Break Out of a new day

 

(today's dawn as seen from my home)

I've just folded my bike and put in on my car. I'll park at Citilab, and then I'll pedal my way to WTC Cornellà. I also packed my standard mobile work equipment: laptop, 3G net modem, notepad, cell phone, crayons, ...

Today's is the day of our Breakout Session in Cornellà which is a way to show and explore together new ways and spaces for working.

This is a collaboration of Citilab with the Breakout Festival in New York City. There, Laura Forlano, Anthony Townsend, Dana Spiegel, Tony Bacigulapo and others got support from the "Situated Technologies" programme to do research and development around he implications of coworking for urban design. That is, how the new patterns of cooperation hint at new ways of devising public and work spaces. Or, how to redesign public spaces to accommodate work "outside of the office" (or the atelier, or workshop or classroom, or, you name it).

Citilab is supporting Laura Forlano's  research on the dynamics of coworking, technology and urban spaces. We are happy that Laura's past and present efforts and her dedication to user-driven design (at Parsons School) as well as  her PhD work in the comparison of coworking patterns around the world has been instrumental in her joining Cornell University (http://www.hci.cornell.edu/). In relation to Breakout we also support research by University of Barcelona Sociology Department, led by Dr. Jordi Colobrans.

We are also supporting the development of software for holding Breakout Sessions. This connects with our own work at Citilab in relationship to the City, namely the "Perceived City" project (with Juan Freire, Jose Luis de Vicente and Paco González) as well as the project led by a group of citizens in Cornellà to develop a local variant of FixMyStreet, named Alertas Urbanas (more info soon). These activities mix together users, events, developments and, more importantly, research on the connection of it all in terms of urban design, working dynamics, technology, user-driven research. From research we expect to obtain more knowledge about urban dynamics, new services by and for citizens, and new ways to interconnect space, people, and code (if you follow the link you'll end up with a very interesting interview with Mark Shepard, one of the ideators of Sentient City). 

There are many threads knot together here, as you can see, and lot of effort by many people. Staff at Citilab (Enric, MJou, Jordi, the other Jordi, Chris, Laia, Isi, Jose "sin oficina"  Galaso and many others) have worked a lot to make this happen.

Let's see what we learn today and, specially how we get to know each other better. To start with I am happy to have met some Citilabers (citizens that are members of Citilab) that I hadn't had the chance to know before and who are very happy to volunteer with what they know and can do: Joaquín Jiménez, Pedro Rodes, Maria Ripoll, David Noguera, Antonio Sevillano, José Caballero, Pedro Caparrós  and Víctor Casat are a new breed of Citilabers who are bringing in their knowledge in computing, networks, CB radio (yes, they are going to broadcast it the old way too!) and people skills. I hope that they also will learn from other people coming from other places. I'll try to twitt and blog live (on Breakout's Blog http://boc.citilabblog.com/).

To start with, I am interested in the format of Breakout not only for the urban design reasons I already mentioned here, but also as a method to work together and get new things done where the space is more convenient. I want to know if it works as  a codesigners format, for example. In any case, I wish we could get rid of meetings and start "breakouting" more!.

Some of the things that we discover or that the NYC discovered their will be shared and discussed at Urbanlabs'09! Don't miss it either!. 

Sunday quote: What Picasso didn't know

Google's Gmail "quote of the day" bar surprised me with this some days ago:

Pablo Picasso - "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."

(click to see the ZKM video)

Picasso died in 1973.

It is unfortunate that he didn't see what became of computing after his death. Personal computing, graphic interfaces, the internet turned computing into something else than just answer-oriented number crunching. At that time, however, even his genius couldn't help him imagine computing's current possibilities or its pervasiveness, either.

More than number crunchers or gateways to information, computers are an excellent way to explore ideas, to get to know better what the problem that nags you really is. 

One way of doing that is by simulation, i.e., using computers to simulate what you don't understand. The other way is just by diving into programming to get deeper into your problem. In the process you start questioning yourself more and more.

My friend Jordi Delgado keeps on saying at every single change he has that programming is another way of inquiring. Basically you can start programming with a fuzzy idea of what your problem, you set out from an ill-defined problem, and in the process you get a better understanding of it, not just a closed answer. Talking with Jordi I found nice connections of this way of learning and inquiring with the ways of craftsmen, who explore knowledge while building objects. This is an aspect of computing that Alan Kay has championed for at least 30 years. It is extensively described in Howard Rheingold's  book "Tools for Thought". There he explored the goals and motivations of some not-so-well-known geniuses that anticipated in the 60s and 70s what Picasso couldn't see: Licklider, Engelbart and, again, Alan Kay.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/oaspetele_de_piatra/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Instead of giving answers, then, computers may help spark new questions.

So, it is important that when talking about "ICT Literacy" or "Computing Literacy" we think about this other way of looking at computers. These initiatives should be seen and devised as an effort to let people appropriate themselves of another big strategy for thinking and exploring creatively the problems they are concerned with.

However many people think otherwise, being as ignorant about computers as Picasso was in his time. They still look at computers as a means of getting asnwers either as a closed calculation or as the result of a search on the Internet.  They even take pride in appearing as ignorant about computers as Picasso, but without the excuse of not having seen what Picasso wasn't able to see (for the simple reason that he died before big things in computing and communications become more evident).  

Curiously enough Picasso also knew and practiced every single day of his life this other exploratory aspect. As he said:

I don't seek, I find.

Maybe he found more questions than answers when he did that. And started again from these new questions. One more time, his own words:

“Others have seen what is and asked why. (a side effect of a given answer?)

I have seen what could be and asked why not.”

Wouldn't be great to use computers to let ourselves keep asking "Why not?".

Citilab, The Fun Palace of the (post) digital era?

I was browsing through the interesting issue of Wired UK on Digital Cities. Being busy at Citilab, a place where the city intersects with citizens, innovation, and digital technology I am specially interested in getting to know other views on how innovation and digital technology impact on citizens, cities and urban design. Moreover, as we are here preparing Urbanlabs 09, I couldn't resist reading some pieces, specially as one of the writers, Adam Greenfield, will be a guest speaker at Citilab.

It was, however, an interesting piece by Carlo Ratti, the director of MIT Senseable city Lab that I want to comment here. He discusses how the new possibilities of networked cities could impact on architecture and points to a possible return to rigidity in buildings. Read the article to know why. 

What grabbed my attention in Ratti's article was a reference to Fun Palace.

In 1963, the British architect Cedric Price created the idea of a Fun Palace. "Every town should have a space... where the latest discoverings of engineering and science can provide an environment for pleasure and discovery," he said. We need Fun Palaces for the post-digital era.

As you can see in this 1963 vision, in the idea of the Fun Palace there was a mix of Science or Technology Center with and Exhibiton Hall, somewhat close to an Exploratorium of Technology and Enginerring. It also put a  strong emphasis on interaction and transformability. The work of architect Cedric Price and ciberneticist Gordon Pask inspired by actress and activitst Joan Littlewood resulted in a building that never got built but inspired other centers that never attained the degree of interaction and fluidity that Fun Palace championed.

So it might be helpful for me to use this comparison in the future when I am asked "What is Citilab?" or "What is the Citilab model?". The fact that "every city should have one Fun Palace" reminded me of one of our goals when we created Citilab: citilabbing. That is Citilab doesn't start and finish with the current Citilab, we are currently cooperating with other cities in defining their own citilabs. As Dr. Jordi Colobrans of the University of Barcelona will explain in his upcoming conference, "citilab is a common noun not a proper noun". That is, there will be citilabs not just a Citilab. Every city should have one citilab. 

There is one point that Citilab also shared from the beginining with some of the ideas of Fun Palace: to be a place where the "latest discoveries" of digital technology "provided an environment for fun and discovery". In our case, this environment tries to foster the appropriation of technology by citizens and a strong bias towards selflearning.

We are currently exploring how to include another important aspect of this vision, namely, how to create and exhibition program to convey what is going on and learned by people at Citilab. Not the usual exhibition I guess, but stay tuned!.