During the March 2010 Innovation Workshop, we arranged several ‘excursions’ for small groups so they could see what the Engine was intended for. This approach worked well, and we subsequently fine-tuned our thoughts about the Engine and the role it could play, using the stories and ideas that emerged from the February/March workshops to guide us. But how best to show this? We asked Derek to re-create his famous tour of the Engine for all to see. Here it is!
Some history and background:
The original design for the Engine was written on a napkin (well, nearly!) thus
This was right from the start set within the social and community processes of development
.
As we approached the Open Innovation Process, thinking about the architecture developed further, as you will be able to see from this presentation (slide 45 onwards) and from the series of posts about how the Engine could relate to original sources, which starts here.
At the March workshop, we asked groups to think about what they would need from the Engine, for their ideas to work in practice, and also what they could give to the Engine. They were given templates to note this information on.
During the first afternoon, Lauren went quietly round with long lengths of wool, and connected each group workspace with the Engine area (what did participants think of this at the time?!?).
Then, as groups began to generate their requests and offerings, the facilitation team collected these and attached then to the wool where the strings entered the engine space.
Here are Sarah and Katy discussing the results…
Although the emphasis on finding people, rather than activities, clubs, and places to go, was unexpected, the design of the Engine could accommodate this, we found – the strategy of keeping things really simple for as long as you can paid off – and the screencast above, shows our current (May 2010) thinking.
