Framing Talks

Michel BAUWENS, Peer to Peer Foundation, Chiang Mai, Thailand
An integrative approach to enabling open infrastructures

Gone is the time where can just focus on technology, or political change, or personal change. The challenge of the times require tackling all aspects of change simultaneously: while we build new infrastructures for value-driven social practices, we need to change ourselves, as well as our ability to cooperate in groups. In this presentation, we will offer a synthetic mindmap, based on three years of research at the P2P Foundation, showing an integrated vision of the open infrastructures that humanity is already building, in which all enablers could find their place, thereby contributing to the construction of a new civilization that will protect the earth, share cultural and scientific advances with the whole of humanity, and radically augment the level of justice in our peer to peer relationships.

Florian BRODY, Cimbal Inc., USA
Enabling the Right Mindset

In a world of hyperactivity, we need to find back to a pace that allows us to take our time to reflect, focus on the essentials, and actually do less in order to enable us to think the next step. Acting “now” on the issue at hand with the right mindset creates the foundation necessary for the next step. The right mindset is no special state of mind but the complete focus on one effort. Over the last 25 years we experienced an exponentially growing input of data and information. Yet the information age turned out to be mostly an age of noise. Connectivity and the ubiquity of the Worldwide Web enable permanent multitasking and thus get in the way of a single clear thought.
When we are thinking about innovation we are busy waiting for the “boom” sound of the next idea "breaking through", that we overlook the small changes that define a new direction a new development, that we recognize only later as truly innovative, when it has become part of everyday life, when it is no longer new. As long as we try to think outside the box, we think about the box. There is no box. This is hard to accept as the box in our mind provides a sense of security and comfort. When we stop trying to think outside the box, the box disappears and we can move to the next level. Different types of rigorous research on one side or meditation on the other help dealing with the box.
People like Luther, Kepler, da Vinci, Darwin, Beethoven, van Gogh, Einstein, Gödel, Turing, or the Dalai Lama are known for their unwillingness to accept things “as they are”. This is the first step. We all have the inherent ability to do something radically new that is not only “changing the game” but also significantly contributing to the next step forward. Is there a special way to identify the “potential” of people to enable them to take this step? We don’t need to worry about this potential – it is right there but we need to unlearn what we’ve been told for too many years in school and beyond, to learn, to add, to do more and to follow the rules. Game-changers are always also a risk factor – they may come up with some radically new ideas, which is great but sometimes initially not well received – it requires others to think too.
Enabling people to re-discover “Beginner’s Mind” is a valuable practice to enable game-changing thinking and acting as it has so many more possibilities that the set and structured mind of an expert.

Silja GRAUPE, Philosophy and Economics, Alanus University of Arts and Social Sciences, Alfter bei Bonn, Germany

             And the Ruler of the Central Sea was “Chaos” – Cherishing Chaos from Asian Perspectives

Today we live in chaotic times. Honestly, doesn’t that insight break bad news to us? Surely, this is not without reason. Throughout the history of Western thought the notion of “chaos” has carried a strong negative connotation. Both the humanistic and scientific traditions consistently put this notion on the same level with confusion and disarray and, consequently, considered its overcoming as their most fundamental goal. As we find ourselves trained and educated into these traditions, it seems hard for us to imagine that the aim of our reasoning might not be to seek the order of things beyond the chaos of appearances.
In turning to Chinese and Japanese thought, my presentation seeks to challenge this tacit basis of our thought in an effort to radically alter our understanding of chaos and its relationship to order. It explores some key Asian metaphors and narratives, well-known to the Chinese and the Japanese alike, so as to a) theoretically appreciate chaos as the key indeterminant element that guarantees genuine novelty and uniqueness in our live and b) to discover how we can practically uncover chaos’ rich potential for new possibilities. Against this background we then explore the concept of “enabling” in its specific Japanese context: what does it really mean for the Japanese to create ba, a term that often has been translated as “field,” “(work)place” or “locus” but nevertheless does not correspond to any well-defined concept in any of the European languages?

Stefan WILTSCHNIG, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
Enabling creative processes as framing between openness and rigidity

In this talk I want to share my fascination and my struggles with the concept of “enabling” in respect to knowledge creation and gaining new insights in the pursuit for profound innovations. I´ll perform some archaeology how “enabling” could be distinguished, which levels of meaning the term draws together and which promises resp. challenges it might contain.
At the core of my presentation I´ll position “enabling” within an aporia between opening and constraining – thereby framing – creative processes, trying to avoid the shadows of getting “lost in space” or paralysed by rigidity. Some implications for the creation and holding of “enabling spaces”, as well as managing and facilitating in an “enabling mindset” will be discussed.
My perspective is informed by knowledge and innovation management, systems thinking, cognitive science, and most recently designerly ways of knowing. The general impetus is based on longing to reach beyond (post-)modernistic shortcomings. How can we get to an integrative, responsible, “designerly” way of being and acting in-between the world, related to things and one-another when venturing for innovative and sustainable solutions to complex issues and concerns.

Workshops | Deep-dive session

Roland ALTON-SCHEIDL, Austria
Co-operative Settings that enable IT, Media and Social Businesses

I am a passionate enabler. When studying Computer Science and Media Art, I started collaborating on the creation of enabling spaces in 1988 with the first exhibition on electronic art in Vienna ("Zwischen Null und Eins"). Unit 4 was another open space for media art in the "Werkstätten- und Kulturhaus", which we established in 1990. The PUBLIC VOICE Lab grew from 1994 up to 20 people in 2000, working on various research projects, mainly for public authorities. We had supported a number of cultural institutions and artists launching their first web site or transmitting pictures and sound, for example with a surveillance apparatus at the Austrian Ministery of Inner Affairs. Having moved to a small city in the Alps, I organized Intermedia Labs for students of the Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences. And in 2007 and 2008 we had the chance to run two net culture labs, sponsored by Telekom Austria, supporting people with bright ideas. Various businesses evolved, and some of them are gathered within a co-operative, which today is being owned by more than 40 IT, innovations and media professionals under the umbrella of the osAlliance.

Enabling spaces are easy to set up: provide a spacy and centrally located room, pay for the heating, electricity and coffee, verbose a set of simple rules, wire up a fat Internet line and keep the doors open for anybody, who is interested to join. Schedule events, parties and presentations and people will start loving the place. We have developed some supporting service, which makes it easier for interested participants to establish their business. I would like to highlight "Creativdepot.at", a service which we had developed with the Austrian Chamber of Commerce for securing creative work. A digital timestamp provides a proof in case of an abuse of your licensing terms, no matter if it has been published under full copyright, under a Creative Commons license or to the public domain. What we need in the creative sector are models for co-operation. Bigger customers usually prefer a one-stop-shop for IT solutions, design, usability and support. We are running a co-operative ("Genossenschaft") since 2003 to handle projects under a professional and strong umbrella, using the common brand name osAlliance. I hope to be able to share some of our experiences.

Florian BRODY, Cimbal Inc., USA
For a change – take a risk

"When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin." (German original: "Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt.") The biggest concern Gregor Samsa has upon discovering the change that happened to him was that he would be late for work and not able to deliver as expected by his employer, by his family. The whole story ends somewhat tragically as nobody in his surroundings recognizes the uniqueness of this opportunity, nor did Gregor Samsa himself realize – as Vladimir Nabokov points out – that he may actually be able to fly. So what do you do when you have someone in your immediate surroundings who may be different but may have unique qualities and capabilities (and this may be you yourself or someone you know) – do you support or do you kill?

Now in most cases when we find out that nobody likes us as a huge insect (Ungeziefer) with the mental potential of a human and the ability to fly and do other interesting, yet uncommon things we change back into an office worker or traveling sales wo/man. We all have the ability to change – we need to take risks and we need to learn to use and navigate with our new abilities. We need to take responsibility and we need to enable new processes for ourselves and others, thus creating an environment that is less driven by rules, regulations and a legal system than by dynamic interdependencies. This is about as close as we may get to the Golden Age that P. Ovidius Naso described 2002 years ago.

Violeta BULC, Vibacom, Slovenia
Innovation Ecosystem, a possible platform for sustainable growth

We have often heard over the past months that the world will never be the same again. That is true. As it has and will been true in every moment in our lives, each time we have uttered or will utter these words. But it is also true that we are co-creating the world and acting according to our own conceptions and perceptions of the space and time we are living in. Why should we be concerned with innovation, its communication and creating conditions for it to flourish?

At the current development phase of evolution of the society as a whole we have identified innovation as the key factor for generating added value and the latter as a precondition for creating the necessary resources for development. And development means excitement, dynamics, joy, inner satisfaction and realisation, a decent life. Not that people were not innovative in the past. Quite the opposite, creativity as the source of innovation is as old as humanity. It is just that the modern state-of-the-art technology has created conditions for regarding productivity and quality as entry factors of success, while the role of the essential factor with respect to market success was taken over by innovation (variety, solutions adapted to people’s habits and needs). We will remain in this evolution phase for years to come. Therefore, our understanding of innovation, innovation processes and innovation environments, e.g. innovation ecosystem, will become increasingly important to sustainable development and effective cohabitation. That is what motivates me to continue exploring the concept of innovation ecosystem and developing tools and models for it.

At the conference I would like to address the following questions: How to make a transiton from knowleadge based society to a innovation based society? What could be the most effective tools, methodologies? Which are the key elements that we need to address? How do we go about it? Who are the stakeholders needed to enable innovation ecosystem? etc, and offer some of my thoughts, models, experiences gained in diversified environments and organizations over the last 10 years.

Stefan CAMENZIND, Camenzind Evolution, Architecture - Design - Technology, Switzerland
Enabling Workplace Design  - How would you love to work?

In today’s world of wireless connectivity and working in the cloud, going physically to work and assembling in a building to do what could be done from home or from the local café seems pretty pointless. This is because most offices have been designed around hierarchy, control and the functionality of passing on files. So how do we encourage people to come back into the office and why?
As impossible it is to predict the future, one thing we know; change will be continuous and therefore in a knowledge society like ours it will be the ability to innovate and adapt which will determine our success or failure in the future. Working together in a physical space must therefore be an enabling environment for innovation and change, supporting  you to interact, exchange, communicate and collaborate. Foremost the working space needs to be an environment where we would love to work and in which we can feel how much better we are at what we do because we are supported by an enabling infrastructure. 
This deep dive session will explore the work environments of the future and the new processes needed to create enabling spaces.  On built examples like the Google Zurich office we will look at how personal values and motivational factors are far more crucial then functional or organisational factors for the design of enabling spaces.

Christoph CHORHERR, Die Grünen, Austria
Ithuba-European students build schools in Southafrica --- how a social network grows on a gobal scale

Sava DALBOKOV, good.bee Holding, Austria
Cross-pollinate! Financial and Support Platforms for Social Development – the good.bee View

good.bee is an initiative launched in 2008 by ERSTE Foundation (40%) and Erste Group Bank AG (60%) aiming to increase the accessibility of financial services to economically or socially disadvantaged people. Taking this objective further, good.bee is set to support “social entre¬preneurs” by developing market-based business models and financing solutions to advance social development on a community level. This is not about charity, but providing viable business solutions to social challenges. good.bee’s strategic approach is to promote economic development and social integration of individuals and communities through:

•  microfinance: financial services that support and improve the quality of life of individuals and entrepreneurs who currently have no or limited access to financial services.
•  capacity building: helping individuals and entrepreneurs to acquire the knowledge and skills they need to be more successful in their ventures.
•  community solutions: teaming up with like-minded partners from the commercial or public / non-governmental sector to improve the situation of entire communities or population groups which are  economically or socially disadvantaged.

The presentation of good.bee’s activities will deal with the strategic approaches, business models and first concrete experiences in enabling initiatives for positive social change, especially at the
micro / grassroots level.

Laurent HAUG, lift Conference, Switzerland
Enabling networking and inspiration design conferences.

It happened by accident and I never expected it to become my full time job. But my passion has always been to put people together, and try to create the best possible setting for them to collaborate and connect. I want my presentation to be a brainstorm about the following:

Jutta KLEEDORFER, Austria
Indeed: Future and urban developement need visions, radical ideas, new positions... but also continuity, caution, care...

Did you ever hear of: "einfach-mehrfach", a so called strategic project of the city of Vienna administration? As the coordinator of this program with the aim to support individuals or groups in getting more space (mentally and physically) in a world  / city of increasing density I see myself in the role of an enabler, though I am (and like to be!) part of the administration, that sometimes disturbs, prevents, bothers... As an input to this conference I would  like to bring a short overview on project-examples of the last ten years, starting as social project and moving more and more to cultural temporary uses and "urban catalysts" - tasks... as invitation to a constructive discussion how to create enabling structures as part of the urban development strategy.

Oliver MARLOW, UK
Talking about 'enabling' spaces. How design is being used to transform the way people interact with each and their environment

The practice background to this includes collaborative design and make processes, participation focused methods and 'live' workshop based research to identify both needs and their solutions. The key to this for me is a true cross-over, or trans-disciplinarian approach, incorporating practices from live art, theatre, product design, psychology and image-making to name a few. Overall the approach is rooted in my belief in needing to challenge 'top down' thinking, to engage with and solve real world problems, and to continually critique any seemingly 'professional' or associated received wisdom about what it is that is wanted and how best to deliver it.

Jean-Henry MORIN, University of Geneva, Dept. of Information Systems, Switzerland
Social-Micro-Innovation : Leveraging the Crowds as co-Innovation Enabler

Combining thoughts and approaches from various fields such as economics with micro-credit financing, innovation with now popular prize approaches, and ICT with social networks and crowd sourcing, we argue there is a tremendous potential in leveraging the crowds to re-visit some age-old practices hampering value co-creation in our knowledge and service society. Assuming increased wisdom of crowds over an elite few, with this initiative we stress the importance of diversity, independence and decentralization as enabling factors for mutually positive sum games.

To illustrate this, three examples are considered in areas such as scholarly publishing, research funding and innovation marketplaces.

Franz NAHRADA,  Labor GIVE, Austria
Global Villages as Enabling Environments

Global Villages are a Meta - Pattern that connects various subtexts of our present transformational period. The emphasis is on physical places that intentionally and creatively approximate the domains of life, work and fun - not only reducing mobility and cost of life stress, but really rooting our life in resilient communities providing their own capacity to maintain and produce locally. The intervention will point out why this radical manifestation of the hyperlocal is a strong enabling paradigm and that it naturally and organically comprises complementing paradigms - like open innovation, cooperation, commons, self-fullfillment, wholeness, effectiveness, optimum health and limitless couriosity. Bottomline: the Virtual will unfold best if its strongly balanced, anchored and founded in the Real.

Kerstin SAILER, University College London, UK
The Social Function of Buildings

The function of buildings cannot be reduced to their practical and physical organisation, for example that they provide shelter from the environment, or offer space to specific societal requirements like educating people in schools, celebrating the arts in museums, catering for our daily needs through manufacturing and retail facilities, creating value in offices, healing the ill in hospitals, or enforcing the law through prisons.

Buildings also have an inherent social logic and function: 1) they bring people together or keep them apart, and 2) they create an interface between inhabitants and visitors. These generic properties of buildings has been systematically investigated by Space Syntax research over the last decades, aiming at understanding the spatial configurations of buildings and the social life they afford.
This presentation will give an introduction to the idea of the social functions of buildings; it will outline the fundamental concepts common in Space Syntax; and it will finally discuss ways in which the spatial configuration of buildings, specifically in workplace environments can act as enabling features to the generation of new ideas, new contacts, and new ways of thinking.

Leo SAUERMANN, gnowsis.com, Austria
We can start the tradition of Personal Semantic Information Management

The Millenials/Generation Y will have, as the first generation, the technology to store and use all knowledge they encounter during a lifetime. Personal skills and tools are evolving for them to manage their information, and we can establish a tradition of "personal semantic information management" which can be learned, improved, and passed on. This talk is about the hard scientific facts underlying this change and the "Semantic Desktop" standards that are in place as a starting point.

Melinda SIPOS, Kitchen Budapest, Hungary
Cooking at KIBU (Kitchen Budapest insight 2010)

Kitchen Budapest (KIBU) opened in June 2007 and is a new media lab for young researchers interested in the convergence of mobile communication, online communities and urban space. The team at Kitchen Budapest is passionate about creating experimental projects in cross-disciplinary teams, rethinking and remixing the possibilities of new media in our everyday lives and generating novel connections between new technologies and our society. On the occasion of the LIFT@austria | Enable! I would like to give an insight into our working method, institutional structure and current research directions. Also, speak about our motivations, goals and give some examples to enlighten how we explore the in-between (disciplines) as a productive space and take advantage of digital technologies to accelarate border-crossing processes.