PROVISIONAL SCHEDULE FOR SWARM COOPS JUNE 1st

“Swarm Coops” are groups that come together for mutual learning and problem solving. Examples include free schools, unconferences, hackathons, hack days, bar camps and stakeholder workshops. There will be talks from practitioners, plenty of time to learn, teach, think and brainstorm together, and time to produce some tangible output to share with everybody. We’re going to evolve the medium forward to create better events. We’ll also use what we learn in the upcoming five Big Picture Days.
#BIGPICTUREDAYS is the hash tag for the event. Edit/View our planning presentation.

11AM INTRODUCTION AND THOUGHT MENU

• Thomas Ermacora & Vinay Gupta introduce Big Picture Days.

  Next up, the Thought Menu – short talks on Swarm Coops. This will be the 6th Thought Menu event!

• Lloyd Davis on Tuttle Club, #riotcleanup & #wewillgather, public service hack days, #hackthebarbican
• Zaid Hassan (of Reos Partners, a high stakes stakeholder partnership consultancy) on why planning is killing us, and how prototyping will save us
• Alberto Cottica & Nadia El-Imam on Edgeryders, the Living on the Edge unconference series, and bottom-up policy making
• Mamading Ceesay will talk about London Creative Labs and asset based community development workshos for employment.
• We’re looking for one additional speaker on Crisis Camps / Crisis Mapping / H4D2 and other Humanitarian Hackathons – please get in touch with @leashless if that’s you!

12NOON SESSION PITCHES

We’ll take half an hour to figure out together what we want to do in the next two sessions, and what concrete deliverables we can make in the workshop period. Expect a grid with a number of work spaces & a lot of post-it notes as we try and schedule what’s going on. Please, please if you are thinking about coming, fill in your page on the Attendee’s Deck so we can all get a sense of common interests and themes!

12:30PM LUNCH

Eat, drink, maybe take a walk in the park, flesh out some ideas, and get ready.

WORKING SESSIONS

Topics may include

• Engineering effective code reuse / project continuation at hackathons
• Managing intellectual property / licensing issues including patent or invention rights
• Documenting unconferences
• Creative use of back / side channels
• Scheduling sessions / talks when there are too many great things to fit in
• Creating genuine participation

These are just some seed ideas – see the editable presentation above for more, and add your own ideas!

1:30PM FIRST SESSION

Four to six break out groups, some led by the speakers from the morning, to deep dive on specific areas of interest. Last 15 minutes will be for session reporting to the whole group.

2:30PM SECOND SESSION

Another set of breakout groups, heading towards some conclusions we hope! Last 15 minutes will be for session reporting to the whole group.

3:30PM REFRESHMENTS

Possibly coffee, probably beer (there’s a nice pub just outside!)

4:00PM MAKE SOMETHING

A two hour block to sit down in teams or on your own to deliver something concrete from the workshop. Things you might consider: doing a deep dive on a particular question and writing a blog post on what you have learned together, editing your pictures and notes from the day then uploading them, documenting the sessions you were part of from your notes, writing a specification for some software that expresses an important idea, or writing to people on projects you are involved in with insights you had today. Do some of the things you’d like to do later now while everybody is still here!

If you need a break to think about things, the park is just around the corner – take a stroll, walk with friends, but do please try and write up something before the end of the day.

6:00PM CONCLUSIONS

Plenary session. A chance to discuss the day with the group as a whole, and talk about next steps, subsequent projects, and canvas for support for any projects that have come out of our day.

7:00PM EVENING PROGRAMME 

We are investigating options. They include retiring to The Victory, the aforementioned nice pub, doing a Classic Album listening session in the main space, taking the whole show to the park for a late evening dinner picnic, etc. The answer may well be “all of the above depending on your mood” but I’ll have updates on our options later this week.