Last Saturday I joined an open discussion on the values of community skill-sharing in Picnic. I didn’t know what to expect, but as soon as I entered the room I understood from the friendly atmosphere what this ‘visionary brainstorm’ was all about!

The space was cleared from tables, only some chairs were left in a small circle in the middle of the big room, which made me feel a lot more comfortable in taking a seat and starting to chat with the rest of the group. The white board on one side of the room had a beautiful drawing of a tree. And I must admit that the table in the corner, with lots of interesting snacks, also caught my attention. 

The tree you see below represents different components of Picnic. The roots stand for the values our community is based on, the trunk indicates different roles of involvement   in what we do and the branches full of fruits signify the different skills and interests shared by the community. We started out with an empty tree and defined its content as we went along.

Values

In order to better define the values of Picnic and collaboratively fill in the empty tree, we all first shared our personal views on the community, pointing out what we think makes it special compared to other initiatives. What emerged as the most important value to be preserved and nurtured, are the people involved in the initiative. What makes this organisation different from any other is the genuine atmosphere created by us, imaginative individuals interested in learning by doing together. The variety of the “fruits” of our tree depends on the variety of our interests and skills, and our need to share them, learn more and have fun!

Another characteristic of the group is the flexibility of the organisational structure. Because the workshops are crowd- or rather community-sourced, the workshop schedule and the space allocation are tailored on the group’s needs. It also makes the format robust, as we do not rely on a fixed location or set of timeslots. This specific point was questioned during the group discussion: in order to support the growth of the community, does the somewhat organic framework need to be maintained or revisited?

We proposed two models of possible future approaches. On the one hand, we could look for a permanent headquarter where to host workshops, an option that implies a more rigid structure. This could mean either connecting Picnic to Goldsmiths University, or, plugging it in existing open-education initiatives. An example of an initiative that functions with a model like this is Trade School, a learning platform initiated in New York City, that lets people exchange skills for barter items.

On the other hand, we can keep a more dispersed and flexible approach. In this way, the mailing list becomes a virtual headquarter, facilitating interaction between members enabling the physical organisation of the workshops. This second model might benefit from a network of partner locations interested in hosting workshops. We proposed local bars and cafes, as well as Goldsmiths’ facilities, as possible venues. What emerged from the meeting is that the distributed organisation is currently one of Picnic’s appealing features and we should promote this open approach and see how we can further define it.

Involvement

As we moved on to the next topic, we used a visual metaphor of the community as trunk of the Picnic tree. Each member of the group takes a position in relation to the centre of the tree. People who take a more active role in the organisation of Picnic form the outer, more rigid circle of the tree’s cross-section, whereas the people who are mostly interested in taking part in workshops are the more dynamic core of the trunk. 

We left our seats and repositioned ourselves in the room, depending on how we each see our involvement in the near future. We shared our ideas on the type of contribution we would like to offer to sustain Picnic as a community. 

Action Groups

In the latter part of the brain-storm two specific ‘action groups’ devoted to imagining new strategies were formed. We focused on two areas of development, one more involved in the redesign of the current tools of internal communication between existing members, and another engaged in reaching new members. 

The first group analysed the present structure of our online activities, currently spread over google group, facebook page, twitter account, blog and google docs. The group proposed to concentrate on the blog as a primary tool for getting updates out into the world. 

A need for more online documentation of the physical workshops was also raised and the group came up with the idea of getting people involved as 'media associates’.  People already taking part in the workshops would contribute by capturing part of the magic of the real life event and sharing it online. Some by taking pictures and short videos during the sessions, others by writing a blog post or tweeting about the experience. Everyone involved this way could be featured on an 'associates page’ on the website to credit them for their contribution

The second group laid out a plan for promoting Picnic outside of the current community. The members analysed the present network of connections and proposed to contact like-minded people and initiatives. In order to create new partnerships we should look for organisations who have facilities to offer and would benefit from Picnic using their space. 

By reaching a wider public, more efficient mechanisms can be put in place. This allows for workshops to be offered on a more regular basis and clusters of interest to develop. Picnic’s branches are burgeoning and ready to grow.

[by Francesca]

Yesterday Ricardo and Frederico organised number three in a series of discussions centered round the topic of creative collaboration. Together with some 15 people we formed a nicely diverse group, something essential for effective collaboration. We started off with a very open discussion about the different meanings of ‘creative collaboration’ that were present. We broke down the main topic is its literal constituents 'co’ (together) and 'labor’ (work) signalling the need for joint effort, indicated the divergent aspect of 'creative’ versus the convergent character of 'collaboration’, spotted the trend of collaboration fuelled by online connectivity and touched upon the idea 'centralisation in decentralisation’ put forward by James Surowiecki in his book the Wisdom of Crowds.

Our group struggled with two different approaches that seem very related. The first examplified by Lars von Trier’s Gesamt, where one director sets the rules and indiviuals are invited to send in their footage to be filled in this skeleton structure. The second based on real life interaction, mutual feedback and collective decision making, much like the current event itself. The first one doesn’t require contributors to ever meet in person, yet in my eyes clearly shows creativity by shared effort. Perhaps crowd-sourced projects like this (life in a day, a day, the Johnny Cash project) are more accurately described by 'collective creativity’?

The opening discussion went far and wide, so it was good to focuss slightly on the topic of leadership in creative collaboration, while the other part of the group was biting into ownership in the same setting. Leadership flows, as we noticed by the way our conversation was steered in different directions in our initially leaderless group. For me it shows how leadership can be an emergent property arising from the local interactions within a group. Apart from that, it is also context-dependent, as leaders can step up when the setting is right for their expertise. A final important conclusion we came to was that much leadership lies in the structure that determines the interaction within a group. Leadership can then be embodied by a single police officer (or benevolent dictator for that matter) making everyone stick to the structure or it could be dispersed over every member of the group.

In the third part of the session I pitched Picnic. It was a good excercise to share the idea with people outside of the direct surrounding our network that is still mainly based around Goldsmiths. During the brainstorm that followed we tried to identify the next steps necessary for a sustainable growth of the community that we have already. Critical questions involved “Why do we want more people to join?” and “Who is Picnic for?”. Besides these fundamentals we were a bit future-oriented for the goal of identifying next actions while we focussed on features of the online platfrom to support our activity.

When we left the centre for creative collaboration, about an hour after the scheduled time, I tought it was great to see how we matched up form and content.  We used the aggregation of each other’s skills to learn more about the very process we were involved with. More of this soon please! Read more details of the Picnic brainstorm here.