The Making of Praktikum Lab

In August, Nadine Freischlad of collaborative ideation platform, Jovoto, invited me to submit an idea for a live, crowdsourced, crowdfunded installation that would include audience members as participants.

I almost swooned.

At Bottled City, we had long been probing the dynamics of participation. We think incessantly of how involve people in places, projects, cities and enterprises in a way that enriches both the environment and the people.

Most early Bottled City supporters were seasoned in the ways of design, civic engagement and social entrepreneurship. So they got it.

But others reacted to the concept with a sort of quizzical smile that suggested: ‘I like….. but can’t quite picture it.’ We were ripe for a format; something with picture-it power; a common-sense way to describe the kind of edifying, productive, inclusive and weirdly wonderful experience we want people to be able to tap into, anywhere.

The Art Made by the Crowd brief jolted us into ‘picture-it’ mode. Rhetoric and future visions aside, we had to face the simple question: how do we incite this sort of participatory dynamic at a specific event in a specific space?

The space turned out to be the prolific Planet Modulor, the event: Social Media Week Berlin, and the answer: Praktikum Lab, a live, improvised platform to teach or learn  anything.

True to its mandate, Art Made by the Crowd precipitated this breakthrough for us. We realised that the  participatory experience format we were trying so hard to invent, existed already: the apprenticeship, a well-understood mode of exchange in artisan and professional circles. Our mission was simply to extend the apprenticeship to any individual, venue or initiative that does anything worthwhile and has an flair for public engagement.

FTW!

Stirred by this conceptual win, I embarked on a practical one and submitted Praktikum Lab to the collabo/competition on Jovoto. The comments, questions and critical remarks it elicited were thoughtful and provocative. See for yourself.

After a week of frenzied online exchanges, Praktikum Lab banded together with two other submissions – one which explored the theme of public wishes and an other of public confessions. The crowd cast its vote, our extended team won the collab0/competition and we were invited to build the installation.

Anna Theil of the crowd funding platform Startnext brought our funding campaign into focus. We created this video together with 2010Lab.tv’s Mira Prgomet. Although regional payment settings probably got in the way of ultimately reaching our funding goal, MTV Networks, generously committed to sponsor the project.

To build!

In a speculative conversation with designer and researcher Yasmina Haryono that began “I’m doing a project that’s making me think of you,” she joined Praktikum Lab almost instantaneously. Yasmina brought novel, quirky and compelling ideas for microclasses to the mix. She conceived of a way for people to write knowledge wishes to the installation and her diligent tweeting and photodocumenting generated a stir. She memorably responded with the same care and attention to questions from individuals as to media publications about the project.

Praktikum Lab would be a platform to submit, in digital or analog form, something you always wanted to know. Prospective microteachers could gain inspiration to lead microclasses, and could in turn, submit their knowledge wishes.

On the analog side, the pond would became a calm place of meeting and focused bouts of reflection in the midst of the Social Media Week buzz. On the digital side, we would diffuse simply knowledge wishes and connect those who could grant them via Twitter (@praktikumlab.)

We constructed a pond out of fabric, stones, and drainage felt. In it swam little plastic-spheres, each containing a knowledge wish from the crowd and signed with a Twitter handle. Using an ingenious cloth-coated beer crate trick learned from the Social Media Week crew, we made stone-like perches for participants. SMW’s Julianne Becker pointed us toward a nearby fabric market, and Joel kindly dropped us of there. Nadine brought in stools borrowed from Jovoto’s office and some perfectly matched curtains from home which we used as a backdrop / bag-drop. In this way, even the bricolage build of Praktikum Lab was crowdsourced.

On day 1, the Praktikum Lab pond saw the exchange such nuggets of microwisdom as How to knit a scarf, How to spread a complex idea, and Networking for nerds.

As we huddled for a review at the end of the day, Neil Clavin’s architectural eye was scoping intently. Processing his early observations, he conceived resourceful solutions to improve circulation through the space, and eased some of the cognitive friction people were experiencing, most notably by designing a simple, instructional sign.

In the days that followed, participants answered wishes they picked up via Twitter or from the pond directly. Wishes to know how to find a CTO, or how to chop onions without crying were granted within hours. We tweeted and googlecalandered the schedule of microclasses as they streamed in. Oh, and they did.

Notable were the contributions of Stefan Weil, whose thoroughly developed microclass themes gave us gourmet food for thought throughout the entire week; Tyson Chihaya, whose gadgetry made livestreaming possible; Jazzvox who fittingly brought us up to speed on microformats; Julianne Becker for cheering us on and making the important observation not always visible from inside the pond, that we were terribly cute; the countless other participants who popped in and out for stimulating chat; and of course to MTV networks for making all of the above possible.

On a final note, a few quirks and oddities – some heartwarming, others mildly objectionable – are worthy of report:

In an unexpected bit of ingenuity, a kind of guerrilla advertising sprung up at the pond in which people used the Praktikum Lab scheduling board to promote their companies. While nodding to these folks’ craftiness in creating an exposure opportunity for themselves, I genuinely wonder why they weren’t tempted to engage with us in any way. I’m still trying to decide whether they were excluding Praktikum Lab by making adverts out of materials we painstakingly installed for the purpose of in-pond exchange? Or was Praktikum Lab somehow excluding them by failing to engage them into the microclass forum?

An other unexpected interaction with Praktikum Lab brought quiet smiles to our faces and a bit of spring to our steps all week. It happened as a result of two circumstances: 1) Social Media Week was relatively accessible to members of the Berlin public since its events were broadcast in paper media and because it was free. 2) The content of almost all the talks assumed familiarity with social media. As a result, a segment of attendees landed at the pond, drawn in by the accessibility of the event, but disoriented by its content. These inquiring souls were coming to learn – not about models of collaborative consumption, or how to overcome a time wasting impulse in the statusphere – they were coming to learn what Twitter was, or how to set up a Facebook account. In the downtime, with devices we had on hand, we showed them how.