Meeting at de Waag (23 June 2006)

Present: Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Katherine Moriwaki, Kristina Andersen, Sher Doruff, Janine Huizinga, Anne Nigten, Michel van Dartel

Overview: Anne and Michel open with a short introduction on the planned event. Thereafter a brainstorm takes place on related projects and people, the concept, and the format in which the event should take place. Finally, some agreements were made on how to take things further.

Short notes on related projects and people:
Bean growing – Rachel
nextnature.net
Transmaterials book
Yens Hauser (Tissue Culture)
Nathan martin / CAE /
Yesmen (?)
Anne Gallaway (culture in research labs)
Makers / Make magazine (combining professionals and hobbyists)
Ecological projects like ‘wind-up radio’ or ‘portable lights’, or those involving biometric generated energy.
Wear me UK

Short notes on the concept:
Critical theory
Ethnographic discourse
A mix of scientists, designers, and artists
Material research
Social impact
Ecology
Hands on experience
Critical design
DIY approach
Army research
‘Unpacking of technology’ (the actual technology should be explained in order to debate the projects)
Intellectual property issues

Short notes on the format of the event:
Critical reflection on projects
Not too supervised
Informative – risk – dyi equivalent
Innovation comes from others than the proprietary companies, so let’s focus on DIY and making, encourage a world of makers.
Audience should represent the various disciplines in successful projects
Audience – presenters – involvement – peer audience - by invitation
Live blogging
Keynote speakers and parallel sessions
Day 1 themes conference; Day 2 results
Parallel sessions forming small communities?
If split up in small discussion groups (with lots of diversity), then the quality of conversations should count instead of the presentation of the outcomes. Plus there should be multiple outcomes.
Various materials available
Facilitators (rather than leaders) of the discussion groups (possibly the persons present at this meeting?)
Hands-on demos with an open weblog

Agreements:
- A follow-up meeting will be held soon with Virtual Platform present, so their wishes concerning the event will become more clear.
- Michel will make a weblog for news and discussion on the event.
- Janine will have a look at the financial contribution of de Waag and communicates this to Anne.
- Michel and Anne will work on the Mondriaan Stichting proposal and hope to submit it by the end of next week.