CeBeta – Coworking at Europe’s Biggest Tech Fair

CeBIT is Europe’s biggest consumer technology fair. Over 5 days and across 26 halls, big-name businesses, middle players and startup companies showcase their products, drawing crowds in their hundreds of thousands. The annual expo, held in the Hannover Fair Grounds, usually attracts a certain attendee: buyers, distributors and company representatives, suited and corporate, come together to compete against one another, showcasing products that have been created in firms with closed-house policies. In essence, it represents the antithesis of the coworking movement, which is based on principles of collaboration, co-creation, and openness.

This is partly the reason why, this year, betahaus was invited to CeBIT to introduce the concept of working collaboratively to the corporate world. The space that was created was in every way different to the other stands populating the expo, and came into being with the help of dozens of individuals from different professional backgrounds. Together, we created an environment which reflected the betahaus philosophy.

JAY – core group, project coordinator/catalyst/facilitator: We went to CeBIT with the objective to bring our culture – the Spirit of Betahaus and Coworking communities in general – into the CeBit Global Conference. For those familiar with the conference this is no small task as the environment is somewhat formal, austere, tightly scheduled, organized and controlled. Coworking, by contrast, is distinctly informal, chaotic, and evolving. Ironically, in order to create an open space of engagement, we had to create our own walls, and build an environment where our participants felt at home.

SESSION XIV – Open tools in the Urban Context

A collaboration between Enable Berlin and Open Source Ecology (Kansas City), Enable Session XIV: OPEN TOOLS IN THE URBAN CONTEXT is scheduled for Wednesday, February 8, and will be focusing on the combined topics of urban infrastructures and DIY. This will be the perfect occasion to understand how citizens and users interact with space, what are the tools available for them to do so, and how could they be perfected.

Open Source Ecology is a network of farmers and engineers running a factory farm in Kansas City. They have set out to develop a basic set of tools with which they can autonomously build an entire infrastructure, and have been disclosing their process as an open-source documentation, so that everybody else in the world can learn from them, and improve on the existing tools.
Nikolay Georgiev works as part of this network, and for the occasion of his coming to Berlin, Enable will be running a session dedicated to learning about his experiences and developing new solutions for the urban context.
As during every session, participants from various backgrounds will be invited to analyse and discuss their very needs, determine which are the key problems they encounter, imagine and prototype new solutions.
If you wish to join the event, please let us know by email at: info@enableberlin.org or by signing up on the facebook event.
Open Source Ecology: www.opensourceecology.org

Session XIII – New Deals, Future Money

As we are helplessly witnessing what may be the first steps towards the decline of our financial system, and along with it a complex set of morals and norms we hardly ever think – or dare – to question, next Enable Session will be doing just that.

We will be looking not at the system, but its medium. Money. It is symptomatic that most of this circulating in the world be virtual, being sold back before it’s even been paid for. The disconnection between citizens and their currency seems to be widening, as seems to prove every new anti-stock-market movement. Indignés, Wall Street occupiers, all of them are feeling confused and left aside by a financial system that ignores who it should be working for.

A few solutions already exist. Local and self-devaluating currencies have been introduced in various places of the world in the last 10 years. Microcredit has gained its place in the modern society. LETS allow citizens to exchange goods and services without using any monetary convention. Another interesting fact, internet banking will soon become the most popular payment system.
What do all those diverse, almost antinomic solutions lead to?
Participants to the next Enable Session will be challenged to see further than that, and to explore what other alternatives to money might be viable in the near future.

We would therefore like to invite participants to attend Enable Session XIII – New Deals, Future Money on December 1st, 7.30pm at Open-Design City/ Betahaus Berlin, Prinzessinnenstr. 19-20, U8 Moritzplat.

If you are coming, inform us vial email info@enableberlin.org.

Enable Berlin @CultureLab Newcastle

We were recently invited to present Enable Berlin at Newcastle University during last Connected Communities Symposium. This was an extremely interesting event, gathering creative minds from around the world to present and discuss their initiatives. The lectures were streamed live and ours can still be seen on ustream. For better quality we suggest you watch the first 16min and when the video starts, digress to our online version in HD.

We’d like to thank everyone involved in organising this wonderful event.

Openness: Community & Participation

There is a growing trend to use the term Open-, and the fields where this applies vary from programming, design and even data.
We see a huge opportunity to change the way we work together, how we consume (or prosume) things or even understand the social structures. Even though it is starting and we still do not know if it is an utopia or a plausible reality, we already see how we could create solutions for the every day life and for very complex challenges in a more collaborative, creative and effective manner.

In our research we wanted to find out the current situation in relation to this current trend of opening up. And we found several topics that people are discussing: community, participation, business models, copy and authorship, misuse of the term open-,…. To share our findings with the community, we started a series of episodes that gather these discussion insights and help others to understand what is going on and hopefully trigger some interesting discussions.

We have chosen to start with “Community and Participation”:

How do we create Open Culture?
How do we let the community take part in the process?
How do we structure collaboration?
How do we design complex things involving the user?

Openness is dependent on the community behind it and the content they create. It is a personal choice and a way of living.

Interviews: Pedro Pineda
Production: Hans Goedecke
Filmed at DMY Makerlab 2011.

Energy Street Fighter: Jetzt geht’s los!

A bit less than a year ago, we did a enable session for the Energy Street Fighter project. For us was a very good opportunity because was the inspiration for the working model that we have been developing since then. Now we are very happy to see that it has become a reallity, and we are very exited to see what are the results of such a ventures.
Join the fight, Samstag 25th June 2011: Stargarder Strasse,  Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin.

Energy Streetfight: Eine Strasse, zwei Seiten, ein Streetfight.

Die Revolution ist zurück in den Straßen Berlins – aber anders als 1848 oder 1989 geht es dieses Mal nicht um politische Kämpfe sondern den Einsatz für die Umwelt. Energy Streetfight – ein transformatives Strassenspiel von vicventures – ruft Berliner dazu auf, in einem achtwöchigen Spiel ihre Straßenseite zu verteidigen.

Das Auftaktspiel beginnt am 25.06.2011 und wird über einen Zeitraum von 8 Wochen in der Stargarder Strasse im Prenzlauer Berg gespielt.

Die Bewohner jedes Hauses versuchen gemeinsam ihren Stromverbrauch so niedrig wie möglich zu halten um ihrer Strassenseite in der Piratenspielewelt von Energy Streetfight zum Sieg zu verhelfen.

Jeden Sonntag werden die Messdaten der Stromzähler an einer Spielestation in der Straße abgegeben. Ein autarkes, mit Solarenergie betriebenes, Touchpad steht zu diesem Zweck und zur Abgabe der Spielentscheidungen zur Verfügung. Die Mitspieler können sich neben Tipps und Ideen zum Stromsparen über diese zentrale Anlaufstelle auch Nachrichten zukommen lassen und Strategien ausarbeiten, um die gesparte Energie in den Triumph über die andere Strassenseite zu verwandeln.

Ziel des Projektes ist es, die für die Entwicklung einer nachhaltigen Lebenskunst für das 21. Jahrunhunderts notwendigen Gewohnheiten spielerisch auszuprobieren.

vic ventures ist ein Kollektiv das durch die transformative Kraft unternehmerischer Initiative individuelle, kulturelle, und gesellschaftliche Enfaltung vorantreibt. vicventures ist gegenwärtig in Berlin, London, und Paris aktiv.

Das Projekt Energy Streetfight wird gefördert von ÜBER LEBENSKUNST, einem Initiativprojekt der Kulturstiftung des Bundes in Kooperation mit dem Haus der Kulturen der Welt.

Kontakt:

Benedikt Foit
ben@vic-ventures.com
+49 176 201 76 102

www.vic-ventures.com

Visions for Mobility: Review

Video from last session Visions for mobility.
A case study about the session is available for those who would like to learn more about it.

//Hack a bike.

Picture from heiwa4126 (via Flickr)

A bicycle, also known as a bike, pushbike or cycle, is a pedal-driven, human-powered, single-track vehicle, having two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A person who rides a bicycle is called a cyclist or a bicyclist.

We would like to expand on the Wikipedia definition of bike and continue to explore what can be done with the concept of bike.

Cargo bikes, bikes with integrated software, or a bike with legs? We are open to see what people would like to make out of it.
Next wednesday 15th of June at 19:00 we want to invite you to come along and hack bikes!

The idea is simple, get together with other people interested in the topic, have a big brainstorm to find some cool ideas. And then in teams start building prototypes (we got the workshop and the machines for it).
At the end of the evening we hope to have developed some interesting concepts to ride the city in a different way.

PS: You are welcome to bring your own unused tools, bike parts, or inspirational materials!!

Opening Up: Session Fees

We would to open up here the way we charge for our sessions.

The graphic displays how we use the money that we receive. (Session Design is 20.8%, -the top right bit-, then follow clockwise)

If you claim to be doing something social and fair, we believe that everything should be open and transparent.
Of course sometimes is scary to open up and show what is happening behind the curtain, but if we are sure that what we do is fair, why shouldn’t we do it?
It helps us to show that we believe in what and how we do it, but also other people to learn about the work that is behind the process.

So here is the first chart with the distribution of our fees* and a little explanation of each component.

• Session Design: Meeting with the client, Understanding the Challenge, Setting goals and background research, designing the creative process for the session and gather the participants.
• Session Hosting: Preparing space, tools and materials, visuals, hosting participants, leading session and documentation.
• Session Facilitators: Fees for facilitators.
• Space, Tools and Materials: Rental space, materials and tools for people to play with.
• Miscellaneous: Usage/rental of technical equipment.
• Catering: Food and drinks for participants.
• Kick Starter**: Kick starter for a team that would like to take ideas forwards as Start-up/ social business.
• Enable Berlin: Budget to continue developing Enable Berlin, legal issues, …

Further info:

* Fees: They are in percentages because they are not always the same amount, so we prefer to show how we distribute them rather than a final quantity.

**Kick Starter: This is our idea for Crowd sourcing. It was introduced at our last session (visions for Mobility). If we are earning something with a session we also want that the community gets something. At the same time we wanted to support locals to be proactive in solving social challenges. So we came up with this kick starter idea:

If any of the participants in the session is inspired to take further one/some of the concepts generated in the session in the form of social business or start-up, we will give them a small grant to help kick start the project.

We will welcome feedback about what you think about this step we are taking towards more transparent structures.

Visions for Mobility

Concept by Michel David ( Helixator )

Mobility is a major issues for the future of our cities. While policy makers, architects, urban planners, engineers and many others continuously try to invent future transport systems – from building new infrastructures and designing electrical vehicles to encourageing bike commuting and car sharing – we have the feeling that most companies and leaders still see the future transportation systems as an update or adaptation of current, state-of-the-art solutions. In order to get accurate insights on this complex topic,we need to find out how urban mobility is evolving, and in which way are paradigms shifting.

During our next session, we want to learn from Berlin’s citizens. What are our needs and our vision on mobility? What are our experiences and our wishes?

Being the future users, Berliners should be able to have a say in how to design and implement future mobility systems. We want to gather a group of people who want to share insights and visions to collaboratively address these issues and prototype possible solutions.

If you are interested in taking part at our next session write us few lines. And tell us a bit about yourself and what you do, so that we can build a diverse group for the session.

Enable session: Visions for Mobility, Wednesday 25th of May 2011 at 20:00.

Open Design City, Prinzessinnenstraße 19-20,10969 Berlin

Enable session Visions for Mobility is part of the research lead by InnoZ