Short report from Council@Picnic session

The two hour session of Council@Picnic (pictures by Slava Kozlov) on new ways of decisionmaking that are more suitable to the network was a very productive mix of short to the point but diverse presentations by Council members with as a first respondent Constantijn van Oranje-Nassau,  a quick and dirty introduction by Usman Haque on his format for gaining participatory rapport in a diverse group, a 25 minute group effort with this format (4 groups of about 7 to 8 participants), and a one minute pitch to Picnic co-founder Marleen Stikker and Morelab member Inaki Vazquez.

The format aims in its simplest form wants you to quickly identify the dilemma, the stakeholders, the incentives for the stakeholders to participate in possible solutions to the dilemma you want to propose, the evidence you have prepared and researched to underly your  suggestion that there is a dilemma in the first place and that this dilemma is the most urgent one and most importantly 'tools for evidence'; that is tools that allow the stakeholders to construct evidentiary rationales for themselves. In short if you do not give people in current times tools (ranging from apps, to experiences in installations, software..) to construct their own evidence, you will have a very difficult time in trying to underline the importance of your dilemma. Here is some raw material from the different groups:

Dilemma

No real life solutions for real people
Low value in understanding

Stakeholders

people
government
2 types of companies:start ups and big corporations

Incentives

How do we communicate the solution
values respect
tools of evidence become an incentive
tangible feedback on effect of your participation

decentralize how to connect to the global?
manage through decentralized feedback
earn respect- source of value
take role of enabled to engage the less digitally enabled

evidence

role of IoT in relation to participation of complex system
accessibility for all
trust in information through personal networks
how much trust do we already have

tools for evidence

gatalyser: filter
openness of conflicts of interest
indications of trust aspects
new future for newspapapers wikipedia aggregate

The one minute pitches of the different groups were very much related. The first group identified initiatives such as fix my street that allow citizens to quickly identify problems in the neighbourhood and pass them on to city services. The second group seconded this but also said that facilitation should be made now to go from 'you fix this' to 'we could fix this' if only we would have more trust in our immediate neighbours, surroundings and basically our on resilience in dealing with this practical issues that cause so much psychological distress. The third group came up with a variety of evidence and the fourth group had been thinking about the issue in legal terms framing the new term 'wikilaw' to highlight the fact that not one layer of discourse will be immune from the growing transparancies that collaboration and sharing practices in the network are fostering.

This led to a provisionary framework in which government officials, designers, activists and philosophers can all agree on the need for a seamless as possible change of decision making models towards collaborative principles that are informed by old and new notions of quality of data and information. As such the workshop session while being a tool to evidence the dilemma, also contributed more evidence to the urgency of making tools for all the above stakeholders to construct their own reasons for changing their most intuitive role.

See also (in Italian) OLTRE L'INTERNET DELLE COSE, by Francesca Bria