The Messina Advanced Social District is a cluster of companies, non-profit, research and art organisations. It consists of 120 local enterprises, spanning from breweries to construction, from social cooperatives to research centers, from energy production to a contemporary art museum. They were all created or consolidated in the last 20 years in or near the city of Messina and employ more than 400 people, about a 100 of them coming from socially fragile situations. It supports, directly or indirectly, cultural production, tech innovation such as immersive environments for learning and therapy or energy production from marine currents. Its alternative economic approach which focuses on expanding the local communities’ and citizen liberties is coordinated by a community foundation, Fondazione di Comunità di Messina.
@ivan, @joriam, @nadia it would be good if someone can revisit the ideas that we gathered from the last webinar and cluster them by how connected they are to each other. That would IMO:
a) show us the shape of other Distrikts that we have not foreseen here, and helps people with related ideas cluster together
b) also shows that we have not been ignoring the budding community
I’d do it myself, but my energy meter is effectively redlined right now.
Also, if possible, please change my photo to this (mildly less sinister, and more me in my natural habitat
Yudhanjaya Wijeratne is a Nebula-nominated science fiction author and data scientist from Colombo, Sri Lanka. His fiction includes NUMBERCASTE, THE STATE MACHINE and THE SALVAGE CREW. He is researcher for Data, Algorithms and Policy team at LIRNEasia, a think tank working across the Global South; and the co-founder and editor of Watchdog Sri Lanka, a fact checker.
The rest of the time, Yudhanjaya argues with the cat, tinkers with OSUN, a series of AI+human experiments in creativity, and builds imaginary floating cities.
A couple of updates and some proposals before our webinar on 9 March:
The project has raised some curious eyebrows and produced some enthusiastic reactions. Hopefully we will not disappoint the mini-hype it has created.
UNDP has invited Nadia and Yudhanjaya with whom they worked in the past to present the Lab and the Project Witness during the Istanbul Innovation Days – with Nadia presenting the research of the Lab and Yudhanjaya giving a brief on its speculative aspects and its collaborative nature. This event will introduce the project to the public interested in climate challenges and solutions such as small island states etc. I will keep you posted on developments.
Giuseppe from Europarama has invited us to record the podcasts on the history of Witness and we should define the dates this week.
Alberto and I had a very nice chat with some of the former ER partners from The Futures Forum who would like to publish in the Human Futures magazine an essay written by us on the use of Science Fiction to explore economic futures (500-1500 words). Their next publishing deadline is 7 March, but if it is too close we could cook it later.
The pitch @yudhanjaya made for After Progress was succesful and they have invited him to produce a story.
The interest of FEBEA continues and they will follow the webinar and see how they can fit.
The Messina residency will not be happening before June – July. No one can tell how the measures will afflict the travelling, but if the last year’s pattern repeats this summer, we can assume it will be easier to travel in that period.
We should have a Zoom meeting to set the stage for the webinar. I propose this Friday at 14 CET but would love to hear from you.
In the meantime, it is nice to see both economists and authors enter the thread below the post. One last push on our social media channels would be very good and could bring some more participants – we use this post which funnels them to the registration page.
With the Zoom registration link I will then send them the volume with the works done till now.
Fun part: it would be pretty if the hosts of the webinar could use the same Zoom background - personally I like the 3d perspective tunnels (with stars, lights and stuff) but would love to hear your thoughts and preferences. Here Webinar 9 March.pptx.pdf (1.5 MB) is a brutally ripped off set of technical indications and suggestions for the meeting.
thanks
