Our expert panel included Andrew Suggs, director of the non-profit artist-run Vox Populi Gallery, Sid Sachs, director of the Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery and faculty at the University of the Arts, Libby Rosof and Roberta Fallon, founders of the Philadelphia Art Blog and the 0.1% For Art Commission, and was led by myself and Katie Murken, artist and Tyler faculty member.

A bit of background was discussed, from Richard Flood’s 1970’s publication Arts Exchange, the New Arts Examiner magazine, the cratering of the art market in the early 90’s, the start of Vox Populi (they are currently in their twenty-first year), the start of Space 1026 (eleven years ago), and the start of the Art Blog as a means of digesting through reviews a small part of the Philadelphia community.

The impetus for this Junto was my assumption that there is little being done—in Philadelphia and the larger art world—in the way of framing contemporary art practice with theory (or as Sid put it, philosophy). Sid further clarified that the distribution of criticism is a bell curve: pedestrian taste-oriented chatter on the left tail, a bulk of informed reviews generating exposure for work, and the academic right of art philosophy. It is not that we are lacking any one of those functions of criticism, but we need for all of them to expand and elevate. Artists and galleries need reviews for exposure, the audience needs reviews to help them find their way through a large and disparate art world. Artists and galleries also need the help of theorists to place their work in a larger context, providing a vocabulary for discussion, and challenging them to make work that is increasingly relevant.

There are currently a number of avenues for each of those critical functions—Libby and Roberta keep a somewhat comprehensive list of local and national art blogs on their site, Andrew and Vox continue to invite critics and curators to lead artist talks for each exhibition and have recently embraced a forum for group critique between members. Sid challenged us to fill in the gaps. There is a feeling that Philadelphia lacks the monetary base to sustain serious criticism, but what it does have is cheap rent and plenty of democratized technology. The circumstances that make our city ripe for the creation of art extend equally to criticism.

After this opportunity to blow off some steam and have sort of a group-hug, it seems there is a fervor and want for elevated conversation, and plenty of qualified practitioners. Start writing a book, start contributing to a blog, record artist talks, publish or perish.

Moderator Nate Hill is a blogger for the Public Library Association and a librarian for the Brooklyn Public Library. The Brooklyn library system has 58 very diverse branches, many in the wrong place. New communities have grown quickly in New York, finding themselves under-served by the library. He has been tossing around an idea for library outposts, small storefront sized branches with no local collection—only request pickup.

Panelists Sarah Murphy and Maria Falgoust are school librarians and founders of the Desk Set, a librarian social group that holds fund raisers, community events, and raises general awareness of biblioissues. Their upcoming Mardi Gras fundraiser is a book drive for A.P. Tureaud Elementary in New Orleans.

Jim Pecora rounded out the panel as Chief Technology Officer for the Philadelphia Free Library, overseeing all things technology, also acting as liaison for the ongoing main branch addition and other renovation projects. He started his career as a social worker and community organizer.

A brief survey of the library’s various hats:

• access point for information
• quiet space
• social institution / place for social work
• learning / research facility
• collaborative space
• archive for rare / obsolete objects
• romantic symbol of the larger pursuit of human advancement

A quick list of areas for improvement / areas of frustration:

• budget is always an issue
• vendor relationships with limited digital tools, don’t have the accessibility of a Facebook or Google
• privacy—lending records are deleted after books are returned, limitations to sharing information
• brick and mortar buildings cannot be moved as populations migrate, interior spaces in old buildings are less than flexible to ad hoc needs
• libraries serve demographics in vastly different ways (from job search and other internet access for the underprivileged to online access to research material for the higher ed set)
• and a million other issues experienced by large public institutions

Technology could help extend the library’s function with a user contributed recommendation system, with digital marginalia, with decentralizing the categorization process, and so forth. These things have already begun in parallel media (netflix, amazon, ebay, everything ever), and are starting to happen with worldcat, librarything, goodreads.

Forward thinking architecture can produce modern libraries with the flexibility to cater to such diverse communities. The Seattle public library central branch (OMA Rem Koolhaas) has a stacks-on-rails system to expand as more books enter their collection. Its functions as a community space, coffee depot, teen center, Nate mentioned there were talks of incorporating a hospital.

However, not every city has five hundred million left over dollars. Not everyone lives in a city. The aforementioned outpost proposal is an agile solution to serve sub communities. MoMA only displays ten or something percent of its collection, the rest is stored in warehouses in Queens. As information becomes more accessible digitally (ethereally), there still remains a need for public meeting space. The grand central library provides the romantic aura for the system, but the worker bee branches serve an invaluable function.

A million other great points were made and we are overwhelmingly excited by the interest showed. We hope this conversation continues, with fast/cheap/effective solutions coming out of the woodwork. There was interest in having the Free Library host a Junto at the main branch. We will keep you posted.

They shared their respective experiences with healthcare technology and its lack-thereof. Only a small percentage of medical practices digitize records. An even smaller number share records between offices. This is the product of a multi-headed monster:

Doctors prefer to spend time with patients, not with cumbersome computer systems. Those computer systems are currently proprietary, not widely adopted, and don’t play nice with each other. Radiology, for example, has always been on the forefront of medical technology, but digital medical images often employ the proprietary formats of Seimens, Phillips, GE, Toshiba, et al. There are also problems with privacy and bad information on the internet. Doctors often find themselves talking patients down from the ledge of misinformation scraped from message boards or webMD. Authorization poses another hurdle to existing healthcare web technology. Each medical service site has a separate username and password, different security requirements to remember.

There would be greater adoption of technology if the data was standardized. Standardization is cheaper, it makes more sense capitalistically, but twenty years of digital systems haven’t yielded that standard. The data is siloed instead of clouded.

Mint.com has been successful in gathering an index of all the disparate financial services websites, aggregating login information, and painting a fairly complete picture of one’s finances.

In medicine, we currently rely heavily on the interpretation of handwriting. While a quick way of codifying information, this is the industry that birthed the phrase “chicken scratch.” Codification of medical data into universal symbols could speed up diagnosis, reduce cost, and prevent mistakes. Iconography in all parts of the world seeks to remove semiotic ambiguity, trading it for safety. Hazard symbols, subway markings, visualized instructions for assembly all aim to bridge the pitfalls of language and interpretation. Whatever the interface, it must be ergonomic and easily digestible in order to get buy-in.

API’s into anonymous pools of medical data can provide instant compilation of statistics and trends, providing a base for enormous studies not previously possible. This is already happening with sites like Patients Like Me in a social network opt-in setting. Mark mentioned economies of the crowd. Getting buy-in from patients will lower the cost of implementation and somewhat reduce resistance and skepticism from healthcare practitioners.

Healthcare has long hovered in the realm .. in this way, the digitization of medical information and medical services could operate as a Long Tail like Amazon or Netflix, rather trading in the transmission of data without burdensome inventory. We all have unique medical situations requiring niche care. Our histories are individual, our diagnoses granular, as should be our records.

In the end, we want the same thing as our doctors, more face-time, less paperwork, cheaper insurance, better care.

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.”

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?

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?

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.

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

• 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.