Experiences of setting up a group...

In the true spirit of setting up an open space technology I thought I would fill people in on my initial experiences of the project. Firstly I must say it is not my brainchild. Lynsey of attic 2 and Simon from ecodesign centre Wales have been discussing the idea of staging an 'event' for the forthcoming Cardiff Design Festival. With the work I have recently been doing through my MA and also hopefully beyond that I kind of gatecrashed it (but in a good way I hope). Lynsey introduced us to the concept of Tuttle and the idea of an almost agendaless meeting.

Firstly the idea is that you get together once a week same place same time and each time you meet you try and bring someone to the meeting that wants to chat in the broadest sense of the word about 'eco', then that person can come again and hopefully invites another person and so on and so on, if anyone is reading this though and lives in the Cardiff area then the more the merrier, just drop me an email: julian.sykes@hoffi.com and I can send you the details.

Well that was the plan, but now coming up to the fourth week it is already apparent while the event and the idea of eco is hugely integral to the meetings it is the off shoots that really have taken the evening into different places and thinking. At first I was not really sure how a non-agenda event meeting would work. I also wanted to use the experience in developing my understanding of these type of events and to see how this type of open space technology networks can be setup. What has really surprised me from the first meeting is that in simple terms it really works. I have been trying to think about why it has and I think I have a reason for it. Firstly I would like to say I love going out for the odd drink but I hate the hangover. So how about you go out and instead of thinking I am going out to have a few drinks and see some people. I am instead going to go out have a few drinks and chat about somethings I really want to get better acquainted with. It kind of follows on from a quote in Martin Raymond's book The Tomorrow People where they identified a group of people who felt they were so busy that they had stopped drinking alcohol as they were too busy to have a hangover for the morning afterwards.

So far we have had few ideas about the Festival event, still not sure if it will be possible, but secondly the system has the potential to be the start of a much larger project that I am working on.