Open Innovation Studios Cape Town

A lot of exciting projects are going on in Cape Town. I will visit the Open Innovation Studio, started by by Neels van der Westhuizen and Dirk Visser
who also are behind Dendrite Studios, a Cape Town based company.

Dendrite Studios does consulting, content development and training in the fields of education, technology, innovation and sustainable development.

Brightest Young Minds is an incubator for social entrepreneurship.
Our vision is: To help anyone learn anything they desire for the benefit of society. It does this on two levels:
1. Through developing young leaders and equipping them to affect social change wherever they are

Brightest Young Minds seeks to inspire, develop, train young people through several initiatives. Of these, the annual Brightest Young Minds summit is our flagship project. Other spaces created for fresh dialogue throughout the year are the Think Tanks, and Playshops.

Read more about the summit here.

Read more about the Think Tanks and Playshops here.

2. Through designing, developing and supporting projects that have a positive social impact.
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(Un)limited Design Conference (1)

Premsela Forum (Un)limited Design.

With Paul Atkinson, Ronen Kadushin, Claire Warnier & Dries Verbruggen.

Managed to reach this event last week in Amsterdam, so I will keep on posting about the 3 presentations I saw.
First things first 🙂 ->

Paul Atkinson

The subject of his discourse was ‘The changing Role of Design in a Post-Professional Era’.
A very compelling plead for design as the converging point of disciplines, that would eventually dismantle the regular way we conceive ‘professionals’ and their work.
This thinking shift is triggered by the fact that ‘Designer – User’ became two facets of one kind: users are also now the agents of design.
The starting question was a quote from P. Pacey’s writing (1992) ‘Anyone Designing Anything?’:
‘Has the professionalization of design deskilled us or disempowered us?’

(The question reminds me of the Sherry Turkle (2009) debate on how digital instruments change the practices of architects)
The question is finger pointing at how Technologies, instruments, and, in this case, the socio-cultural effects (like the production shift they caused by over posing users and designers) are removing from the public sphere certain categories of skills and knowledge.

Paul Atkinson claims that this removal is actually part of a process that reminds me of North’s concept of ‘creative destruction’: boundaries need to be transgressed, and de-skilling is necessary for being a professional. As far as I got the idea, I see this as no longer a dichotomy between expertise and non-expertise, but between 2 types of expertise. Maybe Mode 1 and Mode 2? 

Looking closer to design, the status of this discipline has clearly changed. For making things so easy to do, we have devalued some of our professions. For the best or for the worst?
One argument against the raising amateurish culture comes from the professionals: what will happen with their credibility and authority? If they get lost, won’t they loosen further on other value structures that hold on our society and keeps it from falling apart?
Well, Atkinson answers that this fear is not justified: credibility should not come from the elitist status of professional designer; instead, it should come from the universality of design.
(Reading Yaneva, Verbeek & Sterling I took notice of how design itself is being politicized, encountering terms like ‘social design’, ‘democratic design’ or ‘representative design’. One thing is sure: the entire debate on ‘keep design for the elite’ vs. ‘give design to the masses’ brings me a nostalgic taste of John Locke readings. Dear expert designers and amateurish fans, please sign a social contract.’

For P. Atkinson, Design is a decision. A joint one between 3 actors: the ones with assumed roles of users and designers, and, of course, the technological tools.
Giving the example of Rapid Prototyping, P. Atkinson showed the effects of suddenly realizing the fact that outcomes do not have to be identical in design, nor ideal or perfect. RepRap are printers of objects (see below)

Even more, they print parts not only for creating objects, but also for re-creating themselves. Up to now, the most advances RepRap (and fablab Amsterdam has a similar one) can replicate itself up to 60%. (just think of the consequences regarding using these cloning machines for sustainability…). The presenter explained how he sees their existence proves the altruistic attempt behind design, and machines that are capable of much more are not that ‘science-fictionally’ far away.
If you want one, you can get started here:
Fab@Home project.

Of course, there would be a lot to say about the disruptive consequences of such technologies used in design. They just change the established order of things, shifting the producing methods. This is what Atkinson calls the ‘post-industrial manufacturing’ that goes back to crafting, but now with the empowerment of new technologies.
Just like in the saying: ‘New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common’.
— John Locke,’Dedicatory Epistle.’ Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690).

If this sounds interesting, maybe you can also check the Rapid Manufacturing Leads to New Design Processes in the Work of Assa Ashuach and Lionel Theodore Dean, the project was mentioned during the presentation.

I liked the rhetoric question of whether we shall place different values on the products created by 10.000 people and the ones created individually.
(Makes me wonder, are there different criteria of valuing them?
I need to get clear what are we comparing? What is different, in fact?
The process of design, its effects, the hard , touchable outcome, the consequences of these outcomes, the applicability of the objects created, or their ‘successful’ come into practice?
Are all these determined solely by the one-production or open production differences?

Or are they just too different processes to be compared, just because the producing style is different?
Shall we think of their outcomes as the result of two different species of design, leading to two species of designed objects, or would we be able to mingle the hybrids?
If we would think of ‘species’, it means that I just need to take a look at a designed object and instantly utter if it’s the outcome of many or of only one…)

According to Paul Atkinson, technologies applied in design helps in transcending the expectations and limitations of the mass production. Literally, it ‘liberates’ the designer and the consumer from an ossifying thinking, with rewarding results for both sides.
The example given for the empowerment feeling described how visitors of creative production sites bring on friends to show them what they have done, proudly saying ‘I’ve never been creative! But, hey!LOOK! I’ve done this!’. 🙂

So, until now, we have 2 axes of debate and 4 design possibilities of analysis:
Experts vs. Amateur
Individualist vs. Collective design production

So, who is the designer?
(I would say, WHAT is a designer?)
Where does design start and end?
Are the amateurish designs just craft or do they have commercial potential? If they do, how shall they be promoted?
How are we going to educate expert designers? Atkinson is looking forward the times when universities will enable designers to develop systems where the end result is to some extent unknown, rather then a multiple replication on an ideal model.
These radical new ways of approaching design could lead to a post-professional era.
As far as I could follow his thinking, I understood that this does not mean an eradication of the notion of ‘expertise’. Yet, this concept won’t remain safe & the same, but will undergo a process of creative destruction, will be split, changed, re-molded and, for sure, removed from the current 1st position of authority.
A quite comfortable thought for any Open Philosophy preacher 😉

From Gangster to Twitter

‘South Africa’s Cape Town is one of the world’s most violent places. The area of Athlone on the Cape Flats is dominated by the so-called “American Gang,” whose ruthless members work with international cartels and control South Africa’s drugs trade. Out of this crime ridden world a social media revolution is taking place in which former gang leaders have banded together to use social media to help their community. Its called RLabs and this is the story of one of its members, Clinton Liederman (@Clinton316), a drug addicted gangster for nine years and is now a social media entrepreneur’. Clinton Liederman’s journey is documented in this video by Leonard Doyle . Clinton is a member of RLab, as a gangmember he used to have followers, this is also the case on twitter.
Watch the video here: From Gangster to Twitter – Clinton Liederman’s journey

Reconstructing Living Lab Cape Town

RLab and Marlon Parker a social entrepreneur working with the idea of Open Innovation and the Living lab approach with focus on community innovation; driven by the community, building on their stories, and responding to their immediate needs. Using social networking, social media and ICT they have been independent and sustainable for three years, and the idea of bringing actors together in a collaborative interaction space where technology is used to empower a community in tensions. RLab is based in Athlone an area known for gangsterism, drugs and violence. Recently they started the project Social Media Factory. RLab was represented at the World bank Innovation fair, where they were also responsible for covering the event in social media.

I had the great opportunity to meet Marlon Parker for an interview and we had a very interesting talk. It is amazing to see that this Open Innovation and Living lab approach driven entirely by the community actually can come up with innovation and opportunities responding to peoples needs. This approach is very different from most of the Living Labs where the focus is mainly about testing products and services on the business premises. So this was an exciting and inspiring meeting!

Updates from Cape Town will come soon…. I hope to hear from you ESST guys what you are up to in Maastricht and different parts of the world. It would be nice to share some thoughts regarding fieldwork etc…. so far this is my second interview, and the first I managed to record. I struggled to get appointments with the very busy FLOSS people traveling all over the globe… But finally I managed to schedule some interviews and will go to Pretoria and Johannesburg where I will also meet with IBM Linux Lab.

Greetings from Cape Town

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