DoES Liverpool Future gazing

What: A session open to the entire DoES Liverpool community to get together and ponder how we could/should/might develop in the future. So anyone who has ever taken part in a meetup or group or used a machine welcome to contribute.

When: Friday 26th July 2019 6pm to allow day-time members to chip in before heading home, and let those with day-jobs call in after work

How: Led by @amcewen and @cheapjack, as they ran through a similar process a while back at a workshop run by Hannah Stewart and Liz Corbin and we've stolen their idea (with their permission of course) and hacked it for our own purposes.

Next Steps: People can respond to the notes from the meeting here

Building Blocks

We will be using a set of classic toy building blocks to make a map of ideas that also partly represents the space of DoES, the fabric district and the city. Because everyone likes building stuff at DoES it makes sense we have some kind of physical map of the future rather than just post it notes; but really it's a thing we can make together and have a conversation around.

The blocks are labelled to represent a series of 'categories', 'sets', 'ideas' or 'things' that emerged from research into UK makerspaces and their potential impact on manufacturing by @freerange_inc that @amcewen, Andy Goodwin and @cheapjack contributed to back in about 2016. They aren't necessarily representative of the current landscape or DoES' particular situation now but they don't come from nowhere or a generic tech innovation toolkit, so some things might resonate with DoES and some might not.

Any ideas we write down on a series of blank ideas playing cards then get placed in and around the blocks or we use tape to connect ideas to blocks far away. That way you get to think about what a cool idea could relate to.

Why bother with the blocks?

We took part in a similar workshop with Hannah and Liz and it did make us think usefully what DoES might be like in the future. We think the blocks might be useful to think about how what happens at DoES already might relate to broader shifts culturally. By culture we mean technical and maker culture but also co-working, business, city, social, arts and our local and non-local civic society. Thinking about what we might want to happen in the future within or outside these sets or categories can mean we don't just write a list of epic stuff down, but have to articulate a bit more what any cool future ideas could mean or relate to.

We don't want people to think only in terms of these blocks, we might even want to make up more locally relevant ones later; it is just a way to generate but also constrain ideas instead of just asking for 'anything'. The idea is that by constraining things you think creatively either to fit the categories or even fight against them or change them. Many of us may object to some categories and that's fine; we want to generate discussion and ideas and/or block hacking. Also when you see something 'built' by someone else it takes a bit of negotiating to move things around without destroying other peoples blocks, so that way, we can explain our ideas and their relations to each other more.

The final result we hope for is a physical embodiment of where we might want to be which we can add to, refer back to or take apart. We can decide how we 'write up' what the map might generate. People can explain to each other how the map works, e.g. how they relate an idea say about DoES having a 'trade counter' to big categories like policy or material component or supply chain or how beekeeping classes relate to IoT Education and Research Centres.

How it might work

• We'll introduce the map and the blocks and see what people think.
• We'll get people into pairs so any ideas have to be explained to each other.
• We'll get everyone to find blocks they might relate to or think relates to DoES and place on the map to describe what sort of things are already happening
• We'll then get people to write ideas about a future at DoES on special blank playing cards.
  • These things for the future could just be developing something already happening at DoES, or something we've never done.
  • We then ask people to place their card close to a block it might relate to. If it relates to more than one we can either use coloured tape to connect across the map to it or start to move blocks around if many ideas start to relate to it
• We'll then take a break and get pairs to describe briefly their ideas and the relations to everyone and get some feedback.
• Then we'll repeat the process one or two times.
• As people build up ideas and start to map relationships between them they'll need to negotiate sharing blocks so maybe if alot of ideas fit education we might want to move blocks and cards into a whole education section
• We'll make notes and take pictures and video of different parts of the model. If it works well we might want to keep it somewhere where the community can look at it (if there's some space for it.)

Setup:

• Get some wooden building blocks

• Get a load of Sharpies, in assorted colours

• Get some thin masking tape

• Crop a set of topic-area stickers that Hannah created and put them somewhere-safe

• Print out a set (or two?) of the topic-area stickers that Hannah created & stick to the blocks

• Print an A3 copy of the DoES floorplan and stick that in the centre of the red tables in the events space

• Draw a circle around that in masking tape, labelled "Fabric District"

• Draw a circle around that in masking tape, labelled "Liverpool"

• Draw a circle around that in masking tape, labelled "Everywhere else"

• Leave some blank blocks for people to add 'categories' or 'things' or 'sets' that include individual ideas or plans

• Write specific ideas about specific topics onto the building blocks with the Sharpies, with a topic sticker on, and then place the blocks in suitable formations on the plan/circles

Workshop Planning Notes

• Should we have a "wall of the past" to stick post-its up under each of the headings explaining how we've done things in the past (as lots of people won't be aware of the policy-related stuff, etc. that we've previously done)?
• Does as trade union for freelancers?
• DoES does rebellion hosting
• DoES as advocates of no-more-business-as-usual