After the first post about UrbanLabs, and the second one with the slideshow I presented there, I’m going to talk now about the methodology we adopted within the groups, and how they self-organized.

01. Methodology: Open Space Technology

We adopted the Open Space Technology:

Open Space Technology (OST) offers a method to run meetings of groups of any size. (“Technology” in this case means tool — a process; a method.) OST represents a self-organising process; participants construct the agenda and schedule during the meeting itself.
[...]
OST meetings have a single facilitator who initiates and concludes the meeting and explains the general method. The facilitator has no other role in the meeting and does not control the actual gathering in any way.

Here you can find more resources about Open Space Technology:

• http://www.openspaceworld.com/users_guide.htm
• http://www.openingspace.net/openSpaceTechnology_method.shtml
• http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/does-open-facilitation-favour-groupthink/2008/10/06

It is therefore a design methodology based on self-organizing groups, and we can consider it as a real participative design methodology. And as I was the facilitator (or enabler) of the Group A about Collaborative Activities and Open Innovation, I hade the chance to test it and learn a lot about such participative dynamics.

I’ve already said that the event was a collective experimentation that goes on in the future, a collective learning process about designing collaborative projects. It was an event where really everyone learnt so much: organizers, facilitators, participants. Maybe because it was its first edition, or perhaps because social systems always generate new networks and situations every time. In fact, with this methodology UrbanLabs became a self-organizing Community with open and peer-to-peer processes: an Open P2P Community with a marketplace participation. What we tried to do was facilitate the participants self-organize in groups in order to start designing projects and building new networks.

I’ve already explained the methodology within the slideshow I presented, here I suggest you some videos in order to understand it more easily.
What’s important about Open Space Technology and its roles and laws, is that it is a tool to make the most of the workshop groups’ scarce resources (time and participants) in order to let all the participants find their own way to participate and enjoy the event.

Here’s a video of an Open Space unconference described in three minutes:

Here are two timelapse videos of two Open Space unconference (unfortunately they’re not from UrbanLabs): with these videos it is easy to understand how participants self-organize in space and time in such events.

Open Space – Theatre Bristol 19th July from metadaptive on Vimeo.

We have jut one video from UrbanLabs and my group so far:

02. Methodology: a source code for the projects

In order to facilitate the participants designing collaborative activities, I prepared some pages with a structure, some questions and tools useful to analyse a Community/Locality. When the participants fill in the questions of the guide, they produce a first source code of the Collaborative Activity project.
As we had so little time, I brought at the event a reduced version (00 and 01 sections), leaving the complete version aside for the period after the event, for who is interested in using it. It’s the first version (0.1) of an how-to or guide how to analyse (and therefore understand and later design) Open Innovation projects and more generally Collaborative Activities for a Community/Locality.

Within these pages I resumed and divided in four sections the Open P2P Design methodology I propose, in order to give it a modular architecture for an easier and more flexible application.
Furthermore, I published it under a Creative Commons license, so it can be modified and adapted for each new project. At the end of each section there is a blank space for comments, in order to facilitate the participant’s feedback for a collective development.
You can fin the complete version (in Spanish) in the UrbanLabs wiki or in Scribd (see the links below).

This is the structure of the guide:

• 00. Mapear los recursos de los participantes del grupo de trabajo
  This section helps the facilitator to know the participants and to map the resources of the group as a design community;
• 01. Diseñar una Actividad Colaborativa para una Comunidad/Localidad
  This section is an introduction to the methodology and proposes the first questions participants should ask themselves in order to go on with the design process;
• 02. Analizar una Comunidad/Localidad y su Actividad
  This section proposes a way to analyse a Community/Locality with which/for we design a Collaborative project. It brings some useful questions to analyse a Communityh/Locality through its Activity: it is a way to understand and design activities too (something we are going to do with the final project);
• 03. Describir el proyecto de una Actividad Colaborativa para una Comunidad/Localidad
  This section is useful to describe in a brief way a Collaborative Activity project for a Community/Locality;
• 04. Organizar el proceso de diseño de una Actividad Colaborativa para una Comunidad/Localidad
  This section helps the designer organize the design process and its steps, according to where and when they meet and the Community/Locality participation levels.

03. Positive results of UrbanLabs

• UrbanLabs is the first event to propose not only debate and networking about Collaborative Activities and Open Innovation, but also the development of real projects;
• it is the the first event about Collaborative Activities and Open Innovation with focus on cities too, and therefore Community/Locality Systems;
• the importance UrbanLabs gave to facilitation: it is not just about the presence of the facilitators, it’s about the enabling nature of the whole event that fostered the building of projects and social networks; UrbanLabs avoided top-down projects and favoured bottom-up projects instead. Facilitators were just one of the tools and resources of the event, an enabling event;
• the collective learning nature of the event (for organizers, facilitators and participants), thanks to the debate and project-centered structure;
• the building of social networks for present and future projects;
• the organization of space with different kinds of event (keynote speakers, unconference and workshops) for more diversity and flexibility
• the presence of many participants belonging to national and local government, as noted by Esteve Almirall too.

Talking about the outcomes, here you can find the projects that the group started to develop. In the Group A, we went from 40-50 participant (what a success!) the first day to 30 participants the second day. Therefore we had proposals for 12 projects the first day, but just three ended with a proper development the second day (Cartografías urbanas y plataformas participativas, Redes internacionales de ONGs, P2P LivingLab).
In the wiki there are now just notes about each project, let’s wait for the participants to fill in the details and further develop them in the next months, here in the wiki or even just with direct contacts between them.
What’s important is that with the Wiki UrbanLabs goes on in giving a space to the participants in order to facilitate them self-organize in designing collaborative projects.

04. What can be better in the next UrbanLabs

• As Michel Bauwens suggested us, it would be better to have an English track (workshop or barcamp), in order to build longer and greater networks and have a more international audience (there were already some foreigners at the event and they would have preferred to speak English);
• the presence of the national and local government was a success (and it was one of the goals), the lack of companies makes us think about how to involve them more in this kind of projects;
• while space was perfectly organized, the organization of time is the only thing that could be really modified in the next edition: there was too much fragmentation dividing the workshop groups in two days and too little time for them to form and work properly (there also some participants’ posts that address this problem here and here). There was then too little time for the participants to know each other (talking directly and even with the question I organized in the first section of the guide I prepared for the event) and to talk about the projects (especially in my group, where the first day there were almost 50 participants); furthermore, many participants took the two-day division as an opportunity and shifted from one group to another (knowing more people and ideas, of course, but also loosing the opportunity to continue with the projects);
• the number of the participants: 40/50 are too many for a working group, 30 could be a more appropriate number but the best thing would be to have about 20-30 participants; of course, the number of participants becomes not a success but a problem only in relation to the time available.

With this considerations in mind we can formulate the following questions/suggestions:

As a conclusion, I think that UrbanLabs have been a very important event that reached its goals with success; let’s follow the development of the networks and the projects of the participants, waiting for the next UrbanLabs.
If you would like to leave a comment or a suggestion for the next UrbanLabs, just leave a comment here or in the event feedback page in the UrbanLabs wiki, or in the Google Group.