On Saturday November 27, 2010, Jay Cousins and Chris Doering from Open Design City (ODC) Berlin hosted the second Free Culture Incubator workshop entitled OPEN UP. Twenty-five participants from all walks of art, culture, design, fashion and advertising gathered at ODC to take part in a four hour workshop dedicated to the challenges and opportunities of the Open Design processes.

The workshop started with an overview of Open Design principles by Jay and Chris. The motto “Everyone can be a designer” was the basic motto to start discussions, reminiscent of Joseph Beuys’ notion “everyone is an artist”. Beuys, who died in 1986, suggested an extended definition of art, which focused on the citizen’s active participation in shaping social and political life. Many principles of Open Design dwell on this idea, but they are also rooted in digital culture. With the rise of the Open Source movement, a broad range of visions and concepts for open systems have arisen. Open Design basically means that a design pattern is published free of licence or under a creative commons license and all are invited to make use of that pattern, to amend it and to distribute it among private networks. But what if someone is using an existing design pattern in order to make money out of it? Just like with any other product or service from the realm of Open Culture, this is one of the first challenges we came across. There are many different approaches to the question of 'capitalisation of Open Design', as we dicussed over the course of the workshop.

Another important aspect of Open Design is collaboration: how can we work together without consensus? What happens if a group develops a project together and if someone steps out of the group and develops the work further on his or her own? What about all the legal aspects that come along with design production? Other questions were directly referred to the nature of design workflow such as whether the development of standards desirable? Jay and Chris pointed out that standards are a precondition for compatibility (not only in respect to technology, but also working modes), thus directly influencing the way that people collaborate.

Another topic discussed, one that often comes up in Open Design discussions, was that working collaboratively on a design project requires a specific mindset which is not focused on the single genius creator who gets all the credits and rewards, but on the evolutionary practice of a group. What is a real challenge for the creative ego can actually be a great help in improving a design product. In an organic group process everyone has a say in improving the object for their own needs, thus making it more effective. This refers to another important cornerstone of Open Design: a continuous beta-state, which facilitates constant flux and development. Open Design is not aiming at the “Endprodukt” (German for final product), but rather escapes from being finalised in a specific form or function, because each product has the inherent potential to become better and better.

Gabriel Shalom, Berlin-based American filmmaker, has found a title for this concept: “Delivered in beta”. Two videos he shot in 2010 are a great documentation of the Open Design scene in Berlin and touch upon many different aspects of Open Design. They can be seen below.

Chasing the buffalo:

Delivered in beta:

After the introduction, Jay and Chris gave a welcome to their guest Darius Haijani, the inventor of TUGGUS, an innovative bag for bicycle transportation. This is how TUGGUS works:

 
Darius told us about TUGGUS and the way he has tried to open it up to a worldwide community of users. This is of course an interesting balancing act between people who build their own bicycle panels just for fun and revenue models that come along with it. Darius is currently in the process of patenting TUGGUS, which is obviously not an easy thing, with only 7% of all patent applications being approved. Darius invited the workshop participants to engage in an open design process and to adapt his invention to their own personal needs. A group of five people started to work on their own TUGGUS variations, while the rest split up in five breakout groups. These groups were:
- legal issues (incl. patenting vs. open processes)
- collaborative processes
- monetary issues/financing models (where does the investment come from, venture capital and crowd funding)
- open design innovation platforms
- translating free cultrure into monetary value

Noémie Causse walked around and visited each of the groups to collect their ideas and findings. Here are some of the main aspects that have been discussed in each break out group:

1. The TUGGUS working group
This was not about discussion, but rather about 'doing'. It was incredible to see the myriad of creative approaches that this group developed in under 2 hours.

2. The Legal Issues Group
The central question for this group was: how do copyright paradigms apply to Open Design? What do we actually know about legal possibilities to protect our work? It seemed not many practitioners have an idea about copyright, patents and the like. What different levels of protection can be applied to our works? Copyright is protected by itself but all other models need registration, and the registered ones have a market value. Designright on the other hand is the protection of the 'look & feel'. All of these models are of course time-restricted. The legal framework just gives a structure, but we’re still free to agree on other things. However, this means that there must be an agreement between two or more parties on how to make an agreement between a designer and the outside world. It became clear through this discussion that the legal field is still under development and that it is hard to come up with general conclusions. At this point, we need to look at each design process and product individually in order to find the most feasible legal structure.

3. The Collaboration Process Group
In this group there were many different approaches towards collaborative work discussed, including Open Everything events, Unconvention and Nuits Blanches. One of the most debated aspects was the question of who-gets-what in a collaboration. This starts with credits, goes on with methods of annotations and amendments and ends with very practical things such as what to do if one of the members steps out of the collective and wants to take his or her work with them? The group stressed how important transparency and visibility are in Open Design processes. One example of this can be seen in transmediale.10's Collaborative Futures booksprint. This project reflected on collaboration models while the five core authors wrote a book together. The successful results can be seen here.

4. The Financing Group
This group presented some alternative funding models, many of them web-based. They included micropayment platforms such as Flattr, crowdsourcing platforms such as Wikipedia, crowdfunding such as Kickstarter.com (or the German variation Startnext) and in the field of software, the Blender example. It became clear that crowdsourcing can be a great form of financing Open Design projects, but the real challenge is to mobilise crowds. Here is a movie on crowdsourcing and how it works:

5. How to convert cultural values into money?- Group
This topic was very close to what the Financing Group discussed. However the focus here was more on the creation of values as a common ground for an alternative market. Crowdsourcing can only work if people share the same values. So the questions are how to identify common values and how to create them and spread them among our peers? Values are not easy to negotiate, as they don’t come with a specific pricetag. The value and price of a design product or process derives from something which is intangible, hard to measure and very often impossible to standardise. Other than that, Free Culture still doesn’t have alternative monetarian reference systems other than the traditional business plan. The logic of a business plan can’t always be applied 100% to open systems. An interesting endeavor would be to create a financial reference system in order to create prices for creative or cultural works.

This workshop has been also covered by our media partner Motor FM. Listen and enjoy here, including interviews with Jay Cousins and Darius Haijani as well as a report about the workshop.

Many other topics were discussed, which we unfortunately are not able to cover here. But please watch the videos, follow the links to external platforms, and listen to the audio streams in order to get an idea of what Open Design is and can be. If you have information to add or would like to get in touch with the Free Culture Incubator team or the people from the Open Design City please write a mail to: ek[at]transmediale.de. Thanks for your interest and looking forward to welcoming you to one of our workshops in the future!
 

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The next Free Culture Incubator workshop will be taking place on January 28, 2011. More info on this workshop and how to apply will be available very shortly.

Outlook on the workshops to come:

About the partners
We have invited diverse host institutions to take part in the workshop series, ranging from independent creative hubs to state institutions and larger organisations. We have sought host institutions with consistent ethics and goals to the topics we will pursue through the workshops. This decentralised organisational model offers participants the chance to increase their contact networks, familiarise themselves with different venues and institutions around Berlin, as well as connecting local players with international ones.
Partners and hosts of the workshops:

all2gethernow
betahaus
Creative Commons
Kompetenzzentrum Kultur- und Kreativwirtschaft des Bundes
Mozilla Drumbeat
Multiplicities
Open Design City
P2P University / School of Webcraft
Public Art Lab
Studio 70 / Hallenprojekt
Sourcefabric
transmediale Festival
Upgrade! Berlin

How will the workshops be structured?
Each host will offer a workshop theme which is related to the daily practice of the respective venue or institution. Rather than being solely theoretic, the workshops strive to be hands-on and results-oriented. In order to broaden the scope of the workshops and refrain from becoming too Berlin-centric, 1-2 international experts will be invited to each workshop.

Who can participate?
Anyone who has a profound interest in the workshop topics is invited to participate. The only two requirements are: a) an online participation application must be completed, and b) this application must include a description of professional practice and motivation for participation. A maximum number of participants will then be selected from the applications. Participation is free of charge, but each participant will be required to assist in the documentation of the workshop.

Documentation
Each workshop will be documented and made freely accessible online. In doing so, our aim is to create a centralised database of topical information, best practice projects, practical advice, as well as a list of institutions and professionals involved in the fields of free culture and the open web. This ever-growing online resource will become the content basis (i.e. 'toolkit') for future projects.
This workshop series is an initiative of transmediale / Free Culture Incubator, in partnership with

The Federal Government’s Centre of Excellence for the Cultural and Creative Industries

Mediapartner:
Motor FM