Library of Things

I originally met the founders of the Library of Things at a Platform Co-ops conference a few months ago, and was really inspired by the enterprise they had set up. For me it’s in the sweet spot of my interests: community oriented, a mashup of physical/digital, technology for good, and of course a social enterprise solving real problems.

Their social start-up had generated (and still does) a significant amount of interest from organisations and individuals wishing to do the same or similar. In response, the team decided to organise a boot camp, inviting those serious with the concept to work though their ideas amongst friends and experts. As the bootcamp was conversationally oriented, the team asked if I would help capture some of the thinking that emerged.

The bootcamp looked at different lending models, and the ideation of a back-end platform, as well as looking at the similarities and differences of each interested party’s circumstance, environment and available resources.

As always, I came away having learned a thing or two. Here’s a selection of the final artwork:

If you’re interested in finding out more, then check out the Library of Things website, or subscribe to their podcast for a more personal perspective.

UNEA4

Activism, Conversations, Message

Creative Commons

Identity, Visual Language

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Made with Creative Commons

“So tell me what this book is all about…”

I had pinned down Paul Stacey and Sarah Pearson, authors of the Made with Creative Commons book, for a transatlantic online meeting. I was playing the role of the grand inquisitor (well – a friendly, enthusiastic, grand inquisitor maybe…)

And they talked. And I listened; and asked some questions. I was recording our 2-hour conversation so that I could go back through it hunting for clues to an idea: a turn of phrase; a metaphor used; or something that resonated with my own journeys in business.

The name of the game is to sketch up as many ideas as possible – to see which ideas resonate. Having listened to Ed Sheeran on Desert Island Discs recently, he talks about a similar approach to making his music – he picks up his guitar and gets on with writing 4-5 songs in a day, and maybe 100 for an album – selecting the best ten for the album itself and putting the other ninety on the shelf. Go wide; see what resonates.

The more I learn about the Commons, the more I see myself as a commoner. With software businesses, I’d grown up with only one way to do business: start-up, get investment, scale up, exit. Of course, an Open Source model turns this on it’s head. Try to explain this to business executives, and they’ll look at you like you’re speaking a foreign language…

Here’s some of the final artwork created for the book:

Pre-industrialised - Market, Commons, State

You can order a print copy or download a free digital copy of the book by going to the Made with Creative Commons page.

As for me, I couldn’t resist bringing the cover to life…

CMALT Principles

Conversations, Visual Language

Made with Creative Commons

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ALT – A visual strategy

CTRL-ALT-CREATE

No-one would set out to create a visual strategy. But now that I’ve facilitated the creation of one, it seems such an obvious way of engaging the troops and gathering alignment, creating something that is both of the people and for the people.

Values
Maren Deepwell, CEO of ALT invited me along to a meeting of the trustees in order to visually explore the organisation’s values. Now, many of us have been exposed to values in the corporate sense – culture targets inflicted from above intended to gel an organisation together. It’s of little surprise that such a values manifesto is treated with scorn by those who are supposed to live it out, even if they hold those very values in spades.

As is the way with charities, the trustees of ALT are not paid, so each trustee has a bunch of reasons why they give of their precious time. Some perhaps are obvious, but some are much less so, regardless of which, once a trustee, no-one ever asks. So in this case, the values we explored were more character alignments – and so where better to start than asking: why are you a trustee of ALT?

The Thinkathon
Capturing this facilitated discussion live using pen, paper, document camera and projector, allowed us to see the gems as each was uncovered, some of which resonated deeply with the group. Being external, I could contain the extroverted voices and bring out the introverted ones, as well as sidestepping any politics in the room. And as people talked, they got excited…

The Ideas Dark Room
Capturing a conversation leaves no time for taking ideas further – so I am always keen to drag the remnants from a Thinkathon into the Ideas Dark Room (my shed) and progress them further. The richer the conversation, the easier this part of the process is – but ideas can come from anywhere: a funny thing you notice, a subconscious metaphor with a hand gesture, an off-the-cuff comment after the session… There are questions to ask the page, and puzzles that are asking to be solved.

Bringing it to Life

I gathered up the sketches and sent them through to Maren and later we talked them through with some of her team. The ALT team had been working with their membership on the organisation’s draft 3-year strategy. Maren asked whether we could use the visuals from the Trustee conversations to give the strategy a feel – an aesthetic. What’s the format that will engage most members? It’s probably the same format that will engage the most yet-to-be members too…

ALT Strategy: Greater than the sum of our parts

Telling a Story
And so, this becomes the primary challenge for visual thinkery; can we:

ENGAGE: create something that people can get the gist of quickly
SHARE: create something that people can make some noise with
OWN: create something that people will tattoo on their laptop…

What we ended up creating really resonated with both members and non-members alike – but if you ask me, it was always going to. This is not magic – it’s artwork and aesthetic that’s rooted in a collaborative conversation.

If you want to have a closer look, here’s the published version in a presentation format designed to be delivered by any member.

DRS Manifesto

Activism, Aesthetic, Identity

UNEA4

Activism, Conversations, Message

Creative Commons

Identity, Visual Language

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Open University

Open University

The team at the Open University got in touch to ask if I’d create some thinkery for a couple of different projects. Firstly, to celebrate the 10th birthday of the OpenLearn platform, the OU’s flagship open access learning platform, some thinkery was needed to articulate it’s achievements.

Secondly, the language learning team wanted to explore if thinkery could be used to explore some of the more tricky areas of their badged open course.

I travelled up to Milton Keynes for a day of conversations, and armed with my pen, A3 paper and a document camera, I met the team and dived headlong into rich conversation.

Here are some of the initial sketches following our thinkery session (click to scroll through).

Language Learning: Understanding everything

As always, I came away having learned a thing or two. Here’s a selection of the final artwork:

Language Learning: Intercultural knowledge

CMALT Principles

Conversations, Visual Language

Made with Creative Commons

Aesthetic, Message

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Hack Education

I’d been following Audrey Watters’ Hack Education for a while, mainly because the things that Audrey was pointing out in and around Edtech weren’t very popular with some – but her ability to explore the (or silicon valley’s) narrative of the future with the litter of the past I found to be extremely insightful.

Audrey asked me help explore a new aesthetic for Hack Education, and as always it started with a conversation to capture what it is in her own words.

Here are some thinkery sketches from our conversation:

At the end of our conversation, I can still remember asking Audrey What is your message? In a sentence, what do you want to say to your readers? Straight off the bat, Audrey replied Be less pigeon…

You can read more about Audrey’s take on the thinkery process in this blog post, Losing our Pigeons.

Here’s some of the final artwork (click to view gallery):