We are very pleased to announce that our documentary received an invitation to be showed at the NOW festival in  Barcelona, at the CCCB (Centre de Cultura e Contemporània de Barcelona).

The festival is going on between 26-27/3, and Hello Africa is to be screened on Saturday 27 March, 19:00 in the main foyer, listed under the New Activism category.

The festival describes itself like this:

NOW is a reflection on the present based on the scientific, technological, artistic, social and spiritual transformations that are taking place at the start of the 21st century. It is a process of research, creation and dissemination that aims to bring together different local and international agents involved in the actions that are promoting a change of paradigm in the information and knowledge society and in globalised cultures.

If you want to follow the event on Twitter, the hashtag is #now10. There is also a live streaming of the ongoing events on their webpage.

Notes from the first Lift @ Austria conference from 19. to 20. March 2010 in Vienna, Austria.

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Information on all the groups and speakers can be found at the Lift @ Austria conference program page. Abstracts of all talks can be read at the Lift @ Austria speakers page.

Pictures of the speaker are either shot by myself or taken from the website of the conference.

Notes from the first day and second day afternoon:

• Lift @ Austria - Day 1, part 1
• Lift @ Austria - Day 1, part 2
• Lift @ Austria - Day 2, part 1

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After the workshop before noon on the second day the posters were exhibited and Kerstin Sailer presented the results of an analyze of the conference space which she carried out with the help of all participants during the conference.

Kerstin - Space syntax

Analysis of events that took place in different locations

• statistically, geographically
• configuration of spaces - how do they connect
• creating an alternative design out of that

Categorization works very well on a collective level

At this event

• While discussions took place mostly in formal settings (workshop area), learning and rethinking new ideas took place rather in informal settings (cafe, lounge)
• Learning took place potentially everywhere, whereas new ideas were quite limited to certain spaces

Q & A:

Any optimization ideas how to get more new ideas?

• How many new ideas can you get? maybe there are already a lot of new ideas

Did you do this in a permanent setting?

• Yes, in my PhD - it’s really interesting looking at organizations at different points of time

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Following this, the results of an interesting feedback mechanism were presented. The feedback mechanism allowed participants to give away plasticine balls to people who they thought were interesting. You could give away different coloured balls according to the following categories: [read the whole article]

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Roland Alton - osAlliance

Co-operative Settings that enable IT, Media and Social Businesses

Enabling spaces already created:

• Spaces, materials, tools for students enabling them to build furniture and make exhibitions
• Net Culture Lab - with Telekom Austria
• Enabling a space takes time - process is too complex
• Old Telekom building in Dornbirn

We need common values in these settings

• Ethify
• 8 virtues
• Testing these values in various settings and adapting them
• New value system - one answer to the “crisis”

Internationaler Medienverbund - Co-operative with the possibilities of running micro-co-operatives

• Reduces bureaucracy for small projects
• Splitting financial responsibility
• “Structural enabling space”

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Oliver Marlow - The Hub, Tilt

Talking about ‘enabling’ spaces. How design is being used to transform the way people interact with each and their environment

Enabling is connected to space - but also to the interface between people and space

12 principles for The Hub - constraints which are necessary

Co-design workshop for complex problems

• intuitive responses for questions that pop up
• for all sorts of problems
• individual vs. community

[read the whole article]

Notes from the first Lift @ Austria conference from 19. to 20. March 2010 in Vienna, Austria.

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After the framing talks (LIFT @ Austria, day 1 - part 1) and a delicious lunch, the participants of Lift @ Austria conference split in three groups to discuss certain aspects of “enabling” in depth. I joined the group on Enabling Structures meet Enabling Metamorphoses. The workshops were initiated by two short impulse talks. Information on all the groups and speakers can be found at the Lift @ Austria conference program page. Abstracts of all talks can be read at the Lift @ Austria speakers page.

Pictures of the speaker are either shot by myself or taken from the website of the conference.

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Sava Dalbokov - good.bee holding

Cross-pollinate! Financial and Support Platforms for Social Development

Good.bee holding:

• Banking the unbanked
• Microfinance (act), capacity building (teach & learn), community solution (orchestrate)
• Economic sustainability
• Changemaker initiative together with Ashoka
• Enabling capacity: f(freedom + leverage)

Important attributes for projects which are supported in the social entrepreneurship sector:

• Economically sustainable
• Hard to measure social impact - one approach: is it scalable?
• 20-50k support

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Jean-Henry Morin - University of Geneva, Dept. of Information Systems,
Switzerland

Social-Micro-Innovation : Leveraging the Crowds as co-Innovation Enabler

Wisdom of the tribes - Seth Godin

• self-organizing crowds gathering around a leader

[read the whole article]

Notes from the first Lift @ Austria conference from 19. to 20. March 2010 in Vienna, Austria.

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After a bus tour through various enabling and open spaces in Vienna at the day preceding the conference (detailed program at Lift @ Austria program page), the first day of the regular Lift @ Austria conference started with five framing talks to give impulses for thoughts and discussion about the topic “enable”.

The abstracts of all these talks can be read at the Lift @ Austria speakers page.

Pictures of the speaker are either shot by myself or taken from the website of the conference.

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Marcus F. Peschl - University of Vienna

Enabling - introduction

Trends to mechanise innovation and the desire to create new knowledge end up in a contradiction - as this just makes the implicit rules visible

Alternatives: enabling

• facilitating framework
• leave behind the “regime of control”
• only moderation - give up the control

Important for such an approach

• openness & the ability to reflect
• listening and observing (weak signals & details)
• wait & let come

Overall, a new humbleness and alternative attitudes and values with an application and mening for various contexts, domains and disciplines are required

The conference itself is an enabling space

• location
• design
• frame (bus tour, talks)
• concepts (workshops)
• documentation

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Stefan Wiltschnig - Copenhagen Business School, Denmark

Enabling creative processes as framing between openness and rigidity

Concept of enabling in the context of creative processes / profound innovation

• “insight” - seeing something and acting on it, new viewpoint
• European / Greek vs. Chinese perspective of innovation: forcing vs. non-interventionist

[read the whole article]

Hi there,

I came across this whilst listening to the BBC world service – it is a social experiment whereby the BBC puts a remote Nigerian community online, and takes a South Korean family offline. I havent looked into it in detail, but looks interesting http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/news/2010/01/100120_gitata_internet_wt_sl.shtml

Stan

From coming Thursday to Saturday a local version (Lift @ home) of the Lift conference will take place in Vienna. The theme is “Enable! Profound Innovation in Society, Economy & Knowledge”.

From the website:

Mechanistic models and a deterministic worldview may have worked well for the last centuries, but are not apt for the upcoming challenges we are facing today. Rather, we need completely different concepts and attitudes, accepting that the underlying processes escape our control and are unpredictable. It seems that the concept of “Enabling” is the key to this shift of thinking. Enabling is the art of carefully configuring adequate levers (physical space, networks, resources, etc.) that best support specific innovation processes, such as idea generation, prototyping, market entry, etc..

I think ICT4D, with “empowerment” as one of its big goals fits in here really perfect and I’m particularly looking forward to hear more from Franz Nahrada’s project GIVE where he linked up several villages around the globe with visions gathering around ecology and sustainability to share experiences with each other. Also I’m really curious to find our about amazing and innovative projects around Vienna I haven’t known about to share experiences and network with.

If you want to follow the conference on Twitter, watch out for the hashtag #enable.

May van Gent is an independent video journalist who initially put us in touch with the Zanzibits project - of which our web development school project Zanzicode developed.

She is also currently on Zanzibar, shooting at Sauti za Busara (Sounds of Wisdom) East African music festival and creating a short movie of Zanzicode.

On her blog mayworld she frequently publishes videos of her travels, right now:

You can follow the first steps in my life as a video journalist.

The journey starts in Tanzania, East Africa.
Where the road will take me I don’t know yet.

I just arrived in Zanzibar. After Sauti za Busara (Sounds of Wisdom) an international festival celebrating East African music from 11-16 February I will continue the trip. Probably I’ll go from Malawi to Mozambique to be in South Africa for the world cup 2010 .

You can see video’s on different events, people, days, party’s, mornings etc etc. [from May's blog mayworld]

She also has a Flickr account, so if you want to get some impressions on East Africa - and especially of the amazing music festival which just took place in Zanzibar, check her out.