Ed Mitchell: Platform neutral

Media Sandbox event report

December 10, 2007 – 12:43 pm

This is a brief write up of the Media Sandbox launch event on Thursday 29th November in Watershed, Bristol.The event was the beginning of newly formed iShed’s ‘Pervasive Media Sandbox’ commissioning scheme (which you can read more of on the Media Sandbox site).

I designed and facilitated it, working closely with Clare Reddington and Emma Scott of iShed from the beginning, and Jack Martin Leith mentored me through the process; thanks to them all for being excellent partners.

The attendees were fantastic; from a wide range of public and private sector enterprises, services and community groups; from technical gurus to totally non-technical artists, all of them came willing to work and learn together - thanks all!

Event agenda: anchor links to descriptions

1. Welcome and introduction
2. Knowledge Networking
3. Pervasive domain definition
4. Ideas marketplace
5. Criteria definition
6. Idea development
7. The P Factor panel
8. References/further reading
9. Some feedback

The event was to inform potential ‘idea proposers’ about the proposal process, assist them with their proposal development, involve them with the process itself, and do some purposeful networking.

Naturally we couldn’t focus on all the ideas individually (approximately 30 potential ideas came on the day), so we had to do some pretty tough market-style selection to choose which ideas to work on as a group in order to really explore the concepts, criteria etc. However, our goal was to work in as open a manner as possible in order to share as many of the findings as possible - based on the theory that learning (and group knowledge transformation) is a social process. Thus the ideas we worked on were illustrations for everyone and meant to help them hone their own proposals afterwards.

The event was also firmly rooted in a bigger picture involving the later stages of the commissioning process, when we will be using ‘blended’ facilitation techniques in a distributed community model around the pilot projects to share their experiences with those who didn’t get the money.

This is because we are very keen for as many people as possible to learn as much about all this stuff as they can; the internet offers us some brilliant and free social tools which we can stitch together in order to enable as much sharing and involvement as possible from as wide a range of people as possible (continuing in the theme of learning as a social process, not something that should be kept in the dark, all alone). And we will only use free tools that anyone else can use, and publish our findings at the end. But more on that later.

The event:

We kicked off with clear blue skies and sunlight pouring through the windows. It couldn’t have been better. After an introduction from Clare and myself, Tom from HP Labs Bristol gave us an inspiring insight into what ‘Pervasive Media’ is to set the scene.

Introductions and agenda

Knowledge Networking

Following the introductions, we pressed on with some ‘knowledge networking’. This is informed by work done around the research events we ran for KnowledgeBoard in 2006; briefly, networking is best done when it has a clear purpose and you put people together who really want to meet. You can read a chapter about how to do Knowledge Networking in the second KnowledgeBoard community book (login required).

Everyone who came to the event filled in a pre-event survey asking them to choose from a list the 5 ‘things’ they could do and 5 ‘things’ they would be looking for. We printed out everyone’s result sheets with this data and put them on the wall (as well as giving them a copy on arrival). Then we asked them to find a person they hadn’t met before, swap their result sheets, and find this person at least two people for them to meet. Then they had to swap back and try to find the recommended people (name badges are a must for this session).

This results in a variety of good conversations based on people’s needs, and everyone has looked at all the sheets on the wall so they have an idea of who is in the room. We also left some space on the sheets to add comments or email addresses for contact after the event.

English people aren’t really known for their networking skills, or for willingly talking to strangers, but the attendees took to it like a duck to water and there were some brilliant and useful conversations going on. Some people had made 5 or 6 recommendations for their partner, and people continued to look for them as the day progressed.

Knowledge networking in action

Group mind map

With 85 people in the room, reaching consensus on what an emergent domain (Pervasive Media) looks like and consists of is tricky but it had to be done. After all - how can we know if our ideas are suitable if we all have a different concept of the domain?

The attendees were asked to think up some keywords that represented the domain, and stick them on the boards at the front, where they would be grouped to give us all an idea of ‘Pervasive Media’. There were a lot of words.

Dan Dixon (Senior Lecturer, UWE) and Peter Ferne (CTO of a new start-up, Jiva) did an excellent job of grouping the words into some shape in a very tight timeline with lots of people adding words continuously. Here they are in action:

Dan and Peter hard at work

Following this brisk exercise, they re-presented the mindmap back to the group for discussion. The mindmap is available for download as a .pdf file: download it here.

The group then had a break, but not for those people wanting to share their ideas with the group…

The idea marketplace

As written above, the event was really about the ideas people had, and how to help them write proposals for the commissioning scheme. In order to do this, we needed a manageable number of ideas to use as illustrations for the group during the day to get a clearer understanding of how to work the idea over. But we wanted to give everyone an equal chance.

We couldn’t focus on all the ideas, so hosted a marketplace where the idea people could propose their idea to the group for later work in a dedicated sessions in the afternoon and appearance at ‘The P Factor’ panel at the end of the day.

The group hear the ideas pitches
(photo from Media Sandbox flickr account)

The idea people prepared an A1 sheet each and then had one minute to stand up in front of the group and ‘pitch’ the idea. There was much hard work as the idea people gathered their thoughts and prepared their sheets. We had 16 ideas (it wasn’t compulsory) and they were all different and stimulating (it’s great fun working with interested people).

An idea being pitched

The group then voted with sticky dots (marked with 4,3,2,1) upon which 9 ideas they wanted to focus on in the afternoon. This was tough love for the idea people - who took it all in good spirit. Then we had lunch.

Setting the criteria for the decision making panel

A key part of our work was to de-mystify the decision-making process that the commissioning panel would use to select the pilot projects, and the criteria upon which they make their decisions is an important element of this. So we defined them as a group on the day.

That way, everyone knows that they have had some say in this; not only does this democratise the process as a whole, but helps everyone understand the criteria, hence improving their proposals unilaterally.

The commissioning panel (with one exception) were in the room, involved in these conversations as they took place. This was important; we didn’t want this panel to seem high and mighty (because they aren’t), and they are making their decision for the good of the group and the wider commissioning remit to support a range of R&D projects which will benefit as many people as possible.

The room was split into four groups (approx 20 each) who were given 15 minutes to produce 5 key criteria each. The 20 criteria were added to a board and I grouped them into relevant groupings, to see if we could identify 5 criteria for the panel.

This is no laughing matter - it’s a really tight timeline, 20 people working together for the first time, new domain to pilot things in, and then how to get 85 people to agree on such nebulous but important matters?

Criteria being discussed at one of the tables
(Photo from Media Sandbox flickr account)

It worked a treat. The groups approached the breakout sessions differently (some voted, some had leaders, some did it unstructuredly), produced their 5 criteria, and then discussed the whole lot together (as 85 people) how it all fitted together. Everyone was reasonable without being over-compensating (if you know what I mean); one of the risks of ‘collaboration’ is that people will seek consensus without robust discussion, but we avoided that and produced the criteria for the panel.

The Criteria we produced are online on the Media Sandbox site.

Idea Development

Having counted the votes during lunch, we identified the ideas to be worked on in the afternoon.

After the criteria session, the idea people sat at one of the 9 tables and hosted a one hour conversation around their idea. They were advised to use the criteria we had just created to guide their sessions. They were briefed clearly to remember that this was illustrative only - and that as well as helping them clarify their own ideas, the session was to help everyone.

Idea development at the tables
(Photo from Media Sandbox flickr account)

I expected that some of these tables would reach a natural end before one hour had passed, but they were all in full conversation when I had to break them up for a break before the final session.

If I haven’t said this before, the attendees were thoroughly excellent.

The P Factor

This session was to give the attendees a glimpse into the decision-making panel and some way of helping them understand how to hone their proposals for the real commissioning process (e.g. what sort of questions will they ask?). So we decided to set up a situation which was similar, but not quite so serious.

Four volunteers (Tom Price, Vicky Brophy, Tom Burton, Will Wellesley-Davies) sat on a pretend panel in a gameshow-styled format, and the 9 idea people had 3 minutes to pitch their ideas to the panel before 3 minutes of brisk questions revolving around the criteria. It had dashes of Improv in it to say the least. The group watched. There was quite a lot of note-taking in the group as issues came up which is a good sign.

The P Factor was the trickiest session as the room’s acoustics made it hard for those at the back to hear, and having 9 mini-dragons’ den re-enactments in a row is tough on the concentration. I was rather critical of it myself, but heard that it was entertaining, informative and useful. So there you go; I still think we can improve on it next time.

And that was the end.

Which is only the beginning…

of:

• a wider free to access Community of Interest in Pervasive Media
• longer discussions and idea development with more people around the subject
• six pilot schemes sharing their experiences with the wider world using free software
• anyone being encouraged to engage with the pilots through the CoI forum or comments on the blog

Some references/further reading

• Media Sandbox website
• Group mindmap: produced on the day
• Proposal criteria: produced on the day
• Open discussion mail list: for wider discussion around Pervasive Media
• Flickr Group: for photo-sharing
• KnowledgeBoard Community book 2: facilitation techniques book for free

Some feedback

“… I enjoyed myself last Thursday and found it really useful.”

“Many thanks for a very useful day last Thursday - I found it really good, and met a load of very useful contacts.”

“I thought it was a very stimulating and successful day, and well organised.”

“Many thanks… Excellent event I thought.”

“…thanks for putting on a really great day with Ed last Thursday. I felt like it was well organised and fully geared to getting the most out of your audience/delegates/professionals. It clearly wasn’t your first one that you’ve hosted.”

“thanks for a good event last week, very well organised, good spread of people.”

“Just wanted to say thanks for a great day last week. It really felt like a big children’s party for grown ups. I got very excited and ended up having tonsilitis all week afterwards but feeling better today. Thanks again for the event, very useful.”