Space for everyone
Ben, the concept note is an evolution of this, posted publicly about a month ago. It targets a programme called CAPS, centered not on health, but on collective intelligence. Edgeryders is possibly a good match for it, given platform, OpenEthnographer, Edgesense etc. etc. This programme wants (1) research (2) on methods (and maybe tech) to elicit, gather and process individual contribution into collective intelligence, whatever that is. Care is a “case study”; it makes obvious sense because it is an interesting issue, and many people are passionate about it, but in the end your delivery for CAPS is a method, instantiated. I speak as a minor co-author of a successful last-round CAPS proposal (this); that project was 70 pages of collective intelligence literature survey, added value of the proposed approach, and all the bells and whistles. The heavy lifting was done by a guy who works at MIT’s Collective Intelligence Lab. It’s academia, computer science department.
A project about rethinking health care in a decentralized way (without a “big guns” academic approach) is not going to make the cut for CAPS, so it’s unlikely that whatever you are cooking in the UK enters in zero-sum competition with a CAPS project. On the contrary, it might be advantageous to have loosely coupled projects in the field: projects can share human resources, coordinate to achieve critical mass at events etc. It may also be a form of risk management. Suppose, for example, you have an org that can perform well on both a CAPS-style project and a more production-oriented social innovation style/NESTA Public Service Lab style project: that org can both join the CAPS consortium (assuming we can put it together) AND apply for production-oriented funding elsewhere.
Also, the issue is out there, it is big and interesting, and very many smart people are looking at it. This is not to say your own research contribution is not important or novel, but people have been working on it for years now, and they are not letting it go. NESTA interviewed me for a job directing a project called People Powered Health in 2011; when we went to Milano a couple of weeks ago we met a visually impaired guy working away in Costantino's makerspace at building personalized aids for himself. The national health service is quite liberal when it comes to buying products (white canes etc.), but all such products are proprietary. He cannot get components and help to make his own aids – unless with his own money, and maybe even breaking safety regulations. Costantino is intrigued, and Costantino means also Arduino etc. You get the idea: it is likely that people we don’t even know are negotiating projects in this space with all major funding agencies. Good luck trying to ringfence it.
And finally, the reason why we posted that thing well ahead of time and in a part of the website visible to all is exactly to throw the doors wide open to anybody who wants to be part of it. Do you have something you would like to do? A partner you would like to work with? Just step forward, like others have done: all options are being considered at the moment. And notice that, as of now, ER LBG is (as usual) doing the homework to give everyone access: researching the call, attending the CAPS Infoday on December 16th to get a better sense of what that crowd is about, calling universities and what have you. We use community reflections as a source of inspiration, but then we give back in the form of an open invitation. For full transparency: no decision has been made yet. We are in preliminary discussion with the Design department of Politecnico di Milano, notably Stefano Maffei. The idea is to ask his mentor Ezio Manzini, the dean of service design and a very cool guy, to be the scientific coordinator (but he may refuse). We will be talking to SCIMpulse Foundation too – I have been wanting to work with Marco for a while now, if this does not work we will do something else. If we fail to find or build a solid partnership, with at least two top-notch universities, we will not apply. Edgeryders can only be a minor partner in a CAPS project.
Ok, this takes care of the case in question. Then there are a few loose ends in the background; I’d like to discuss them with you. How about a call next week? Tentative agenda:
- Appropriation of research material is a pretty serious allegation. I don't see it (in fact, I was not even aware you have written research material). In her note, Nadia references a LOTE4 session and the session documentation, proposed by Remy, which you and I and others attended. It should be OK for anyone in the Edgeryders community to reference LOTE sessions; do you find this reasonable? Or are we having a rerun of the discussion on openness – speaking of unacknowledged comments?
- The LOTE4 budget was discussed with you – as per your suggestion, we beefed up Lauren's grant to acknowledge the work she did in Istanbul and elsewhere. A month ago we published the wrapup, including the numbers. No one made any observations. Did we do anything wrong? Is there some loose end to pick up? We can still do it, of course.
- Case Study Adventures for me boils down to this: we observe that some people (Natalia and Lauren come to mind) want to lead adventurous lives. So we look for clients and projects that would pay them to do so. Doing this is the very reason Edgeryders exists! I get very confused by you, of all people, casting it in a negative light, especially seen as we do not prevent anyone from doing the same. On the contrary, we would only be happy if more people did it. Or do you object not to the thing itself, but to being called with a name that you invented? Or what, in general, would you like to happen?
- I am not aware of anything going on with Annemarie, even at the idea stage – but then our projects dashboard is still young, and maybe it slipped through the radar. Would you like to explain what exactly you are being cut out of?