about networked publics
From September 2005 to June 2006 a team of thirteen scholars at the The University of Southern California's Annenberg Center for Communication explored how new and maturing networking technologies are transforming the way in which we interact with content, media sources, other individuals and groups, and the world that surrounds us.
This site documents the process and the results.
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alternatives to panelism
my hope in writing this this blog entry is to get some debate going amongst theis site's readership about approriate conference models for netpublics. i've thown in my two cents from the experiences i've had in organizing events, i hope others can do the same. after its last meeting, the netpublics group started looking at lovink and scholtz's description of their experiences in putting on the free-cooperation event in theit text the abc's of conferencing. lovink and scholtz's critique on panelism rings true to experiences i have also had in organizing events.
geert dicussed his panlism theory with me about a year and a half ago when i was organizing the seventh art+communication festival in latvia, and i wish i had listened to him. in retrospect, i've never done much of a post mortem on that or any of the many other locative events i've been involved with planning. in briefly revisiting the experience i'm struck by how we might have worked at coming up with a more inventive model than that of simple panelism to help encourage exchange between the diverse set of actors we had gathered. regretably, the better part of the event was wasted in slideshow expositions of work that was well documented online, rather than using the opportunity for a genuine exchange of ideas (this in part had to do with the fact that the hosts and producers had developed a formula over the years, and as latvians, they were by nature averse to risk-taking). i had a similar experience with the sampling the spectrum event in montreal another insterdisciplinary get together of locative media types in which i was centrally involved with structing the discourse. when it became clear to me that the event was destined to repeat the panelist i withdrew from anymore involvement in the event. i would like to try and avoid these stale formats for the netpublics event, but i'm still not sure what would work best.
kazys suggested the architect's charette, where small groups are given problems to solve and report back to the larger conference at the end. some of the more spontaneous locative events, like RAM5, for example, used this form successfully. but, in my experience, the approach doesn't work without a clear problem to be solves, and some sort of motivation to collaborate and learn from each other (in the case of RAM 5 it was bricks and mortar architects and locative media artists and information architects sharing their approches to authoring space).
coming from the game department of usc, i'm currently thinking of ways to transform panels into games. lovink and scholtz's apparently tried staging a kind of game show where the invitees played characters i wasn't there but i imaging it might have turned out something like a satirical debate. why not make it entertaining? on that note, my experience has generally the best part of the conference usually takes place over a meal or a drink in a pub or a club, when these people who only knew one another as isolated project finally get a chance to come together and for a moment dream of what it might be like to work together. for the netpublics conference, i would like to perhaps propose putting on a netpublics party, curated with some relevant interactive art, and perhaps interspersed with some discursive performances on stage. basically a netpublics salon.
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Organizing interdisciplinary conversations
I think the critique of panelism is valid to the extent that it has been misapplied to contexts where it is not appropriate. Coming from a "scientific" discpline myself, I find that panels really work for certain kinds of gatherings, like annual meetings in your discipline. It is a recognizable genre of participation, expectations and fomats are clear, etc. etc. The goal is to publicize and learn about new work and to do social networking and get jobs for yourself or your students. For this, the panel structure works well and there is a good reason why it has been reproduced with pretty good fidelity across different scientific disciplines, even social scientific ones.
But this is not the goal of the netpublics event as I see it at least. In contrast to established professional societies, what we are trying to do here is develop an emergent and interdisiplinary intellectual conversation. For that, "presentations of research" is the wrong format. Yes, it needs to be dialogic, and it has to be driven by a collective agenda rather than individual research and career making. These days I mostly find myself at events billed as "workshops" rather than conferences with panels. I'm not going to recap all the differnet formats I've played with, but I think for interdisciplinary and new field building exercises I've learned the following. I'd be curious to hear how much it converges or diverges from the experiences of others.
1. The topics must be very focused, and ideally around clear controversies or problem areas. Because people attending will have very different frameworks, the focus of attention needs to be crystal clear. So not "networking education" but something more like "Wikis and blogs v. Blackboard" as a session topic.
2. The format and expectations for participation also have to be spelled out very clearly. People will revert to their disciplinary genres of presentation unless you are clear that that's not what they should do. I think in the netpublics case a format that is pitched as collaborative analysis and debate of a pivotal issue would be attractive.
3. There needs to be avenues for participation from the floor designed explicitly into the format beyond a simple "question and answer" type format. Backchannel and shared note taking are all good things to occupy idle fingers. If we go with a smaller workshop format of under 30 people, good moderation is what will determine success or failure.
4. Outcomes, which I think we want in this case, must be doable and specified, with a responsible party identified in advance to do the follow-through. Setting up a mailing list or a wiki for "conference follow-up" will get you nothing.
Other key elements:
- have participants document what they got out of the event either in on-site writing or spot interviews
- and have LOTS of informal time over meals and a great party
exhibits
Great post and great comment! I've created a category on conferences and pedagogy so that future posts like this can be found together.
Coming from a perspective of architecture and the arts, I've found that exhibits can be a great means of getting people to discuss topics. They entice interest, incite reaction, inspire informal conversation and instigate discussion.
Exhibits, as I have largely encountered them, have historically come out of two realms: a kind of science fair, engineering expo approach and the art gallery. Today, however, these fields are blurring in new ways, treading into each other's territory. On the one hand, this is the result of art reaching out into IT to find new ways of doing things, on the other hand, it is the result of researchers in IT finding it necessary to turn to art to expand their horizons or to test ideas. If it'd be natural for Lev Manovich to curate a show, it'd be less natural for Bruno Latour to do so. But Latour has done so with Iconoclash and Making Things. In the project brief for the latter, Latour states:
bq. "Things" are controversial assemblages of entangled issues, and not simply objects sitting apart from our political passions. The entanglements of things and politics engage activists, artists, politicians, and intellectuals. To assemble this parliament, rhetoric is not enough and nor is eloquence; it requires the use of all the technologies -- especially information technology -- and the possibility for the arts to re-present anew what are the common stakes.
more here
With this in mind, I'd suggest we draw on our own connections and indeed, on the fact that a number of the members of netPublics have been involved in exhibitionism and either have projects to contribute or connections to exploit. If we were, say, to organize the conference around the themes of place, infrastructure, politics, and culture, I might imagine that we might bring in both wifi bedouin and the wireless MC3 blimp for place, Ether for infrastructure, The Yes Men for politics, and Issue Crawler for culture.
Such an event would draw in people to our physical site and spill out into the outside world as well.
research is the new art
great comments. first to mimi, i have never been sufficiently disciplined or a disciplinarian to have a field of expertise to fit into the scientific model of panelism. something i often regret as this is the kind of place where one would go job hunting (as you mention). to kazys, i am very much in favour of the exhibition. having in fact produced several installations for latours last exhibit i feel like i was involved in something new, a kind of mash-up of a new media exhibition with the science centre. 'making things public' was, for me, and in my opinion symptomatic of a paradigm shift in "exhibitionism" as kazys just called it. neither the arts or the sciences escape unscathed from these project where powerpoint presentatayions can sit side-by-side with works of conceptual art along with video installations and architectural maquettes. other examples of this type of new exhitionism might include bruce mau's massive change exhibition and work at the Gallery of Research who state:
bq. Science and research today, more than ever before, must justify their work, intentions and goals, their background and the potential effects of their activities to the public. Sometimes they have to defend and assert their interests against those of others. Yet politically determined scientific policy and journalism do not adequately meet this challenge, this need to communicate. It is up to science and research to take on this responsibility themselves. In the consumer and information society of the 21st century, they must position themselves, what they stand for and what they intend to produce, as a brand.
bq. The GALLERY OF RESEARCH, this arena in a public space and the public sphere, consists of various areas intended to link aspects and issues of the history of science and of research traditions with those of modern-day research activity and technology planning in Austria. It will create interfaces between eras, personalities, institutions, topics and fields of knowledge, interfaces that in the interests of discovery should not be constrained by the borders of disciplines or nations."
perhaps this is a model that the Annenberg Centre might consider for its own future development.
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