Junto

Creative communities, a selfish endeavor?! Certainly, shared individual aims are often achieved more easily through collaboration. These points go [somewhat] uncontested. Only a select few are capable of agape collaboration, the rest cling to like minds in order to delegate tasks appropriately. It is never without headaches, yet the rewards are unequivocal.

Our panelists came to us from varied creative backgrounds. Olive Prince, a dancer/choreographer working in a shared-space dance studio gets invaluable feedback and a pool of performers. Sara Selepouchin facilitates Etsy Teams, helping members band together geographically, aesthetically, philosophically. John Freeborn found a creative outlet and a marriage of convenience in the formation of Space 1026; the economic burden of a printmaking studio (and a miniramp) was (and still is, ten years and dozens of members later) displaced over a number of individuals.

The blade of our discussion channeled (pardon the lesson in group dynamics) Tuckerman’s four stages of group problem solving (eventually a fifth stage was added, an important stage indeed). Forming: people share a common problem or goal. Storming: they have varying ideas about the solution of said problem and politeness subsides as they become comfortable. Norming: developing work-arounds to problems, delegating tasks to appropriate members. Performing: members form Voltron and efficiently work toward their established goal. The fifth stage was added to help understand what happens after the goal is achieved. Adjourning/Mourning: founding members feel a sense of loss as the group dissolves or transcends its original purpose. To that end: new members with new perspectives joined Space 1026, founding members went on to do other projects, and came back, then went on to do other projects, then came back. Etsy teams became more and more autonomous, they have the support of the parent, but serve their own ends more and more.

There comes a time when the avant garde becomes the old guard. Then the old guard form new groups. It’s a cycle, but like child-rearing (Geoff’s analogy), “one must forget the pain of having the first child before having a second.”

Quoth moderator Dave Speers quoth Socrates, “An unexamined life is not worth living”.

Access to the modern extensions of man have made the reflexive deconstruction of the self unavoidable. Or something like that. We can be reached at all hours on mobile phones, by email, overnight Fedex, what have you. We are watched by security cameras with facial recognition software (so someone said). We can google and wikipedia any and all of the world’s collective knowledge.

Has this affected the human condition? Is that effect positive or negative? Can we even answer these questions with so little objective distance from modern technology?

Panelist Reed Gustow’s first awareness of technology’s irrevocable lien on our lives was the Sputnik launch. Fellow panelist Jason Tremblay lives deliberately with a featureless cellphone (he left it in the car during Junto).

Technology has shortened attention spans, it has also exponentially increased our access to information, be it for entertainment, be it for academics. It is the ultimate equalizer and the ultimate privilege. It has created the XO laptop initiative and cell yell. It has the entertainment industry scrambling, could technology afford us the ability to entertain ourselves!? Isn’t youtube great!?

A group discussion yielded consensual gridlock. I like my phone, but hate TV, he likes open wifi, but hates surveillance, she likes documentation, but hates myspace. We agreed that quality is better than quantity, but sometimes the quantity is quality (bandwidth? site traffic? rollover minutes?).

To editorialize, the cost/benefit analysis of increasing, enveloping technology is that it proliferates malevolence (cost) and it proliferates benevolence (benefit). But isn’t it cute to watch Lila navigate contextual menus?

Our latest gathering of informed individuals pertained to the past, present, and future of the infirm Music Industry. Some backstory: EMI is in the middle of a large-scale layoff. Madonna now has a multi-hundred million dollar 360 deal with Live Nation, furthering the trend of selling a horizontally integrated lifestyle product instead of records. Radiohead self-distributed “In Rainbows” for donation with a one dollar credit card transaction fee; this fee alone is nearly four times the traditional per-album net. New “music streaming” services offer songs for little or no money, something like on-demand radio, with no product to “own”. There are more independent bands sleeping on more floors than ever before, earning smaller and smaller slices of the door. The situation seems to be reaching critical mass for a musical cultural revolution of sorts.

Mike Kiley, of The Mural and the Mint and formerly Cordelane, along side Kristin Thompson, of the Future of Music Coalition, formerly of the band Tsunami and Simple Machines Records discussed with us this friction and avenues for its alleviation. Internet technology has opened the record industry modes of production up to the masses, and in turn, the masses have formed many new bands. The hardest working of this strata sometimes create and distribute a successful record, sometimes this record has a successful follow-up, albeit less frequently. The reduced barriers to entry (home recording equipment, myspace, a surplus of ‘88 Econoline vans) have brought with them fierce competition and a shorter shelf lives.

That said, there is a future in innovation. In 1919 D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, and friends formed United Artists to side-step the studio system. Of late it has become just another studio, owned in part by Tom Cruise, but it had a good run. In years past several cooperative music ventures have come and gone, none quite able to proliferate to a position of leverage, but the idea is sound. Eventful is a relatively new service, which allows fans to petition artists for shows. A tour can now be scheduled by demand, not faith. Metrics exist to help bands quantify and leverage their popularity before ever pressing a record (google analytics on the blog, myspace song plays, diggs, offers for places to crash). Licensing deals get songs placed on MTV docudramas, Apple commercials, in retail stores, and get bands much-needed money up front. Rapsody, Emusic, Amazon, etc. afford bands with a global distribution model even if they’ve never left Weehawkin. These all seem to be given.

Bands looking to transcend temporality must be slightly more agile. The tools to succeed are now readily available and often free. Recording, exposure, touring, and distribution are all aided by software. Making it in music has always been assisted by perseverance, and staying-power can get a booster shot from technology. The world still has room for musical boot-strappers and entrepreneurs, right?

A panel discussion on the future of music distribution.

Jan. 17, 2008 at 6pmMembers of the Panel:

• Mike Kiley, musician, The Mural and the Mint. He is giving his music away for free.
• Kristin Thomson, Education Director for the, Future of Music Coalition She co-founded the independent record label, Simple Machines, and was in the band Tsunami.

The panel discussion will begin at 6:30 followed by questions from the community. P’unk Avenue, 1168 E. Passyunk Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19147

There is an ongoing debate at P’unk Avenue, recently rekindled by a Design Observer article, regarding the value of giving a client “what they asked for” and giving a client “what’s best for them.” Sometimes the client wins, sometimes the designer wins, but most often there is some sort of harmony. The operative vocabulary: Empathy, Egotism, and Synthesis.

This Junto past featured our first panel discussion. This topic required a broader perspective, one found by combining the experience of an Industrial Designer, Tony Guido, an Architect, Collin Robinson, and an Urban Planner, Scott Page. I had hoped to wing the discussion, but Geoff thought wiser. Preparation was helpful, but brought with it some public engagement anxiety. Nonetheless, the knowledge of our panel and the inquisition of our audience made for a wonderful two hour discussion.

Assertions:

• A “broader view” is necessary to promote sustainability– transcending ego, empathy, designer, and client
• Frank Lloyd Wright was an egotist
• Empathists are oft forgotten
• In urban planning, “creating beauty is a collective responsibility”
• Style has yielded to Process and how you sell [your idea]
• Both empathy and egotism are all about the self

This meager recapitulation holds no candles to the quality of last week’s discussion. We appreciate the knowledge and courage of our panel and look forward to our next gathering in January, details to follow.

A  panel discussion regarding empathy and egotism and their respective roles in the design process.

Nov. 29, 2007 at 6pm

Members of the Panel:

• Scott Page, urban planner, Interface Studio
• Anthony Guido, industrial designer, grow-design
• Collin Robinson, architect, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson

Design Observer recently featured a short article by Adrian Shaughnessy entitled The Designer’s Virus, which discusses the contrast between empathetic and egotistic designers. Our topic will discuss these two points as they relate: can empathetic designers working with restraints better solve design problems (or better suit their clients’ needs) or will the egotistic designer prevail (with no limit to his or her thinking beyond personal expertise)?

The panel discussion will begin at 6:30 followed by questions from the community.

P’unk Avenue, 1168 E. Passyunk Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19147

Recently Alex (Gilbert) rediscovered this article by Malcolm Gladwell that Geoff had read when it was published in 2000. It recontextualizes the meat of Jane Jacobs’s seminal 1961 book, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” within today’s office architecture. When the neighborhood is “oriented toward the street” and the office is oriented toward the public space there is an intermingling of talents and ideas.

The Junto hosted this Thursday passed had a prerequisite reading assignment of the aforementioned article. After a brief overview of Gladwell’s tenets the group split in two— one championing the open workplace and one flouting it. After deliberating each chose a speaker and delivered a five minute argument then a three minute rebuttal.

Team Open Plan sang the praises of freedom and congregation for workers, that tearing down the cube liberates and energizes people, allowing for open collaboration, cutting hierarchical red tape, so on and so forth. Team Corner Office maintained the strength of structure, the scalability of a hierarchical pyramid. As a business grows the open plan becomes more chaotic and the larger-picture structure again becomes more traditional.

In synthesis these diametrics fall happily in love. As Gladwell Illustrates, ad giant TBWA\Chiat\Day recently moved into a staggering office compound near LAX basing its layout roughly on New York City. There is a main street, a central park, valuable employees and creative directors sit in hubs with their support staff radiating around them. This system solves issues of scale. As both Alex’s admitted, they sacrifice some of the productivity of seclusion for the warmth of socializing each and every day.

This discussion remains open, we encourage your perspectives and experiences in various workplace manifestations.

Further reading:
Business Week: Enabling Innovation Through Office Design

Also, member Vanja Buvac asked us to pass along the following:

• Here is some background information about the Patent Reform Act of 2007 for the Junto list. Here are the links to contact forms to our senators. I would encourage Junto members to write to our senators asking for their position on the Patent Reform Act of 2007. This is an important bill that could change the innovation landscape significantly.
  Arlen Specter, Bob Casey

Members Josh Kopel and John Romanski posed an interesting problem for group postulation: is there a better easier faster cheaper way to map a project? After a few warm-up laps groups were formed and writing implements were distributed. The groups were assigned the task of reverse engineering the user experience of Flickr and pulling a concise map from its vast non-linear interface. Approaches varied greatly.

• Boy posts picture of cat in costume, Girl likes costumes - searches for costumes - finds cat, Girl befriends Boy, Boy messages Girl, Girl and Boy meet at Flickr Meetup, Girl and Boy get married and share cat.
• Nouns: User, Photo, Group, Set, Comment, Message, Slideshow, Tag
  Verbs: View, Search, Read, Register, Upload, Browse, Tag, Note, Email, Comment, Print, Link, Group, Set, Slideshow, Befriend
• Mapping Software Idea: an application that takes a site plan and visualizes all possible connexions between pages, with smooth transitions to show where you are going and where you have been using pretty ghost bubbles for inactive pages.
• Flickr’s incorporation of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and interactive self-actualization. The overlap of community, function, personal documentation, with the encroachment of corporate lechery.
• Real-time white board scheming a la UPS, requesting Postal Service accompaniment.

A few other points of interest:

Josh Kopel and his Make:Philly collaborators are preparing workshops on the Arduino microcontroller and working with LEDs. More details to follow.
Update: Details can now be found at The Hacktory website.

Chris Matta will hack your iPhone and configure your ssh settings to allow instant access to your web server. Thanks go to Alex Hillman for introducing the iPhone hacking process to the group. Instructions coming soon.

Alex’s beautiful big clock screen saver can be downloaded here.

Photography credit goes to Roz Duffy. Video coming soon.

Junto now has a repository of Meeting Minutes and other corrillary Intellectual Property. We (a mix of Design Professionals, Developers, Architects, Journalists, and other Makers) continue to meet en mass to discuss issues of Technology, Usability, Aesthetics, and Collaboration. Conversation is garnished with food and drink. Employ your bookmarklets Citizens! Provide us your electronic mail addresses! The invitation is open.