Building collaboration through web 2.0
March 15, 2008
Posted by Clare in: Innovation | Technology | Evaluation | Add a commentEd Mitchell and I have given a few talks recently about how we are using free web 2.0 tools to foster and support collaboration and community building in Media Sandbox. Read Ed's overview of our presentation here.
Sharing Knowledge
October 12, 2007
Posted by Clare in: Ideas | Evaluation | Add a commentOver the last few weeks we have been talking to Ed Mitchell about the structure of Pervasive Media Sandbox and how we can help facilitate a collaborative community which will support participants and help them to create the most value from their involvement. Ed is a Bristol-based 'professional community advisor and multi-domain ‘facilitator’' which means he helps groups of people exchange knowledge between themselves.
He has also recently been involved in writing and publishing the second KnowledgeBoard community book, looking at hands-on methods and techniques for knowledge co-creation and sharing within collaborative settings. A free book of ideas, tips and tricks about how to share and co-create knowledge between people, it was written by the KnowledgeBoard community members based on their actual experiences.
Read more and download the book at Ed's site.
Unusual Common Ground
October 9, 2007
Posted by Clare in: Watershed | Technology | Evaluation | Add a commentUnusual Common ground, a report on the Watershed/HP Labs relationship, has been published by HP Labs this week. The paper, by Clare Reddington, Erik Geelhoed and David Drake, updates Under Blue Skies: The Watershed/HP Labs Partnership which was written by David Drake in November 2005.
Watershed and Hewlett- Packard Research Laboratories Bristol have been involved in research collaborations since the mid 1990's. The report describes the benefits for The Watershed and for HP labs and lists a number of joint projects and programmes such as Mobile Bristol (the precursor of MediaScapes), SE3D, MeiGeist and CommunicationWear.
Download the full report here.
Artist placement report published
June 6, 2007
Posted by Clare in: Watershed | Innovation | Technology | Gaming | Evaluation | Mobile | Add a comment“Bringing together the arts, technology and social sciences has given us an opportunity to explore how emerging and online and mobile communication technologies can be used to create engaging new experiences outside their original purpose. The work has been inspirational and thought provoking for us and its influence will extend further than the current project.”
Kenton O’Hara, HP Labs, Artist Placement Host, 2007
In 2006, Hazel Grian spent six months in HP Labs in Bristol in the Mobile and Media Systems Lab. With an open brief to collaborate with Labs researchers around video on mobile devices, Hazel focussed on Alternative Reality Games, which use interactive narrative across many different platforms to tell a story.
Measuring Value
January 23, 2007
Posted by Clare in: Events | Innovation | Evaluation | Add a commentI attended a two day conference in Cambridge last week at Crassh on Evidence of Value: ICT in the Arts and Humanities. There was a lot of emphasis on archives, but thankfully some very good speakers too:
Cambridge Anthropologist James Leach was speaking in the session: Knowledge on the Move: What is transferable about 'knowledge' and what does this imply?. His thoughts on the value of relationships, stemming from his long-term field research on the Rai Coast in Papua New Guinea had particular resonance for iShed:
In relationships/networks, the source of value is not the objects produced - the generation of value is somewhere else (the relationships).
Knowledge transfer is not a straightforward appropriation, but the value is in the specificity of the skills each partners brings. Are we transferring knowledge or information - both are subject to the disciplinary contexts of where you are coming from.
The value of ICT is in what sense it serves to make relationships possible.
We should not perhaps think of value but values. The role of a translator is bridging between what is of value to X and what is of value to Y. This is a long process and often has uninrended outcomes.
