It’s finally happened. We’ve got a final version of the OpenVillage program.
As you can see, it’s pretty packed. And there are still many more proposals that were published that we were not able to add to the formal program. But there will be two specific times for what we call “Freestyling”. Each morning, we’ll have a short discussion where people can present a brief overview of what they’d like to talk about at the freestyle. They can be formal presentations, discussion sessions, or maybe just brainstorming sessions around a certain topic. If you have something you had proposed, please come prepared to speak about it. If you feel last minute you’d like to talk about something, please be ready to discuss. We also expect people to come up with new ideas and projects as they meet all the wonderful people at the festival. So this can be a space to sit and talk about them as a community. It’ll be a bit chaotic, but as they say, “chaos always comes with the beautiful”.
@matteo_uguzzoni is working hard on the Urban Game which will be a great way to start visualizing the city as a place of potential care.
@nadia and the rest of the OpenVillage team will share their experiences with the MENA project and thinking of ways to implement care and to use care to create new worlds.
So in this way, lets be chaotic and beautiful together!
Yes, equipment needs will probably be collected in one message if possible where we send the brief + maybe ask everyone to fill out logistics in the spreadsheet with the program ? I see some already there.
We have a problem with the Ethnography session which has been rescheduled from Day 1 to Day 3: @amelia only able to make it on Sunday, and @melancon only able to make it (until?) Friday?? Guys, please find a compromise and let us know.
I am confused, I had first noted that the event was running from Thursday Oct 19 until Saturday Oct 21. Also, as we have exchanged over mail, I had organised to be there for a session on Friday and not Saturday as it is now planned so I could travel back home on Friday evening. That being said, I understand why you had to do so. Amelia’s presence is crucial for this ethno-session to be fruitful.
So here is how we fix things. That October week is a hectic one for me. I have to be on a PhD jury in Paris, and I give an invited talk in La Rochelle two days later. Being in Brussels until Saturday is just not possible (not mentioning until Sunday!).
Consequently, we have decided with Jason that he would be the one running the show with Amelia. I’ll simply skip the event and travel back home earlier. This will also save me to cancel courses and reschedule them later – this is always quite a hassle, because of schedule clashes between mine and that of students and lack of available classrooms …
Before I get into a more public musing on the subject, let me do a brief reality check. My specialty, if you want to call it that, is community building, nurturing and sustenance. This is for online and offline environments, and in our case, hybrids of the two. The WB is more interested in the online part of that, but much of our interaction in the OV/MENA/Reef universe has to do with the generally more complicated and, frankly, difficult offline live/work realities. In service of our overall goals, I split my presentations into one that emphasizes the offline environment and one that really focuses on online community management.
As we select out Fellows and do the actual building of the OV scenes in the respective countries, am I correct in thinking that Fellows, or someone designated for the online role, will be responsible for managing the online community aspects of their particular OV/Reef? And if so, will some subset of the people who are likely to be interested in my overall community talk need to understand the finer points of online community management? Because I suspect that if, during the 1.5 hour “Building Healthy and Productive Online/Offline Communities,”I spend too much time on the online aspects, some will think, “why do I need to know all this?”
So perhaps, a second session during the Freestyle section would be useful for those who really need to know more about how to handle themselves when they are in an online community management position. Or does that apply to all of them? I am unclear on this part. We have two Fellows so far, both super talented and bright and capable who are already quite worldly. And we have decided to sort of size up others when we are there together.
So, what do you think about the first session touching on important themes of online community, and having a second session for those (probably few) who really want and need to dig deeper into it?
It is correct to frame it as “community management, online and off”.
We hold the line on online. Online is key. Not because a client says so, but because online unlocks scale and fractality (local communities within global communities, intersected with vertical communities of practice at multiple scales). So people need to resign to the idea that a good community manager needs to hold the online and the offline together.
In the end, this is your course, and ours. We take responsibility for passing on useful knowledge, and for making a call on what counts as “useful” in this context. Don’t worry, do your thing. You have the wisdom and the experience, and people will be glad for your leadership.
So people need to resign to the idea that a good community manager needs to hold the online and the offline together.
Right, and if that is well understood then a whole class of potential issues is avoided. But 90 mins is not a lot of time. Maybe get it all in during the session and hold open the time for those who want to dig deeper.
