Although I'm no longer working for Citilab, I'm still involved in the Urban OS project which has grown out of UrbanLabs . I've previousy written about Urban Labs here

The main aims of the Urban OS project are to:

Conceive, develop, test, implement and distribute components of a new operating system for the city, which improves the processes of communication, participation and consumption under open, efficient and sustainable parameters. It will be necessary to design and/or reutilise different type of interactions and of networks between technologies and people in the urban space, like mechanisms of visualization, distribution and improvement of each one of the components of the system. UrbanLabs OS can be composed of different autonomous projects that follow these aims, which at the same time realize the potential of the OS

Besides working locally we've also had contact with Birmingham School of Media at Birmingham City University, FutureGov, and DIYCouncil

A great set of photos by Jordi Carrasco of Citilab

Around a year ago I went to Citilab-Cornellà for the first time to participate in UrbanLabs 08 – you can see my first impressions here. A year later I'm working at Citilab and taking part in the preparations for the event, which we will also be going to as cataspanglish. So here are some of the reasons cataspanglish will be attending:

1. UrbanLabs is a hands-on get down & dirty event which aims to have a real impact and not just be a talking shop although there are some…
2. Great keynote speakers – Adam Greenfield, Juan Freire, Ben Ceverny & Dave Harte. These are not your boring "circuit" speakers, but people with a real passion for what they're doing & thinking, people who get involved in things such as…
3. The Ideas Bank which Platoniq are coordinating – real ideas & projects will be presented and the participants of UrbanLabs will be voting on the "best" one to give some financial aid to from the (low) fee from the event because …
4. the motto for Urbanlabs  (a contribution of one of its founders, Enric Senabre)  is (read this post by Ramon Sangüesa): "Technocitizenship" (geeks with civic conscience and citizens with digital abilities) and "Socioinnovation"  (let technocitizens invent their collective future) – so come &
5. let's invent our collective future!

See you there…

Last week I was in Birmingham to talk about Citilab-Cornellà at Developing Birmingham’s Digital District. The aim of the event was:

… to  provide an early opportunity for policy makers and stakeholders from Birmingham and the West Midlands to quiz other major European cities that are further along the journey in developing their own digital district. This dialogue will inform Birmingham’s policy thinking and ideas as the city embarks upon developing its own digital district.

Here’s my “presentation” which doesn’t make much sense on it’s own but thanks to Rhubarb Radio, you can listen along by clicking on the button below:

Click here to listen to all the presentations

Paul Hadley filmed the panel session -

Birmingham’s Digital District Part 2- the Panel Session from Paul Hadley on Vimeo.

There was some pretty lively twitter stuff going on too: #bhamdd

I met Michel Bauwens, the founder of the P2P Foundation, at UrbanLabs which took place at Citilab in Cornellà, Barcelona. He kindly agreed to record an interview for the PodCamp Barcelona Podcast, but due to his hectic schedule it was impossible to do until recently. I finally caught up with Michel when he was in Amsterdam and we recorded this conversation over Skype from his hotel room. I think the recording provides a very good introduction to the work of the P2P Foundation and Michel’s vision.

About the P2P Foundation (from the P2P Foundation wiki)

We function as a clearinghouse for open/free, participatory/p2p and commons-oriented initiatives.

We aim to be a pluralist network to document, research, and promote peer to peer alternatives. Our political aims could be summarized under the following maxims:

1. ending the destruction of the biosphere by abandoning the dangerous conceptions of pseudo-abundance in the natural world (i.e. based on the assumption that natural resources are infinite);
2. promoting free cultural exchange by abandoning the innovation-inhibiting conceptions of pseudo-scarcity in the cultural world (i.e. based on the assumption that the free flow of culture needs to be restricted through excessive copyrights etc…).

For more information, or to get involved with the P2P Foundation, check out these sites:

p2pfoundation.net

blog.p2pfoundation.net

Michel Bauwen’s extensive collection of bookmarks http://delicious.com/mbauwens

Click on the image to watch

After visiting Citilab to attend UrbanLabs, I told Eugeni Catalán about some of the things they do there – including the project using Scratch to introduce programming to kids. Eugeni checked it out and is setting up a course in his town. Read more here (in Catalan).

photos by Enric Senabre

UrbanLabs has been a very ambitious project which has brought people together from all over Spain and beyond at Citilab-Cornellà to discuss and possibly construct a common vision of where we are going digitally and the crossover to an increasingly blurred “real” life. Unfortunately due to Ana being ill I had to return to Lleida after the first day and a morning spent poking around the magnificant space that is Citilab-Cornellà, thanks to the invitation of a very busy Enric Senabre who made me more than welcome. Since returning home, I’ve followed the rest of the event on the web and although I haven’t been able to participate directly, have been able to watch the streaming of the thought-provoking talk given by Michel Bauwens of the P2P Foundation as well the interesting presentation of David Cierco, the General Director of the Plan Avanza of the Spanish government. It also means that I was able to see this morning’s discussion of the future and organisation of UrbanLabs, and I want to say here that I would love to be involved.

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to speak with Michel Bauwens yesterday and he couldn’t praise Citilab-Cornellà highly enough. I certainly got the impression that the place is not the typical council-funded project filled with bureaucrats and powered by enchufes, but a genuine place full of imagination, ideas and the willingness and creativity to put them into action – as an old cynic I’m bloody shocked. If you have the opportunity, go and check the place out for yourself, I’m hoping to be able to go back and spend more time there soon.

As I had to leave early, I could ony participate in one session about Digital Education which was facilitated by Boris Mir. There were so many ideas and projects talked about that it would have taken weeks to discuss every pertinent point and it was hard to find a structure to encompass everything in the allotted time. As we found out at PodCamp Barcelona, it showed that there are many, many people out in the digital world trying to find the way to explore new avenues of communication and co-opereration and UrbanLabs has gone a long way towards finding a way to have that dialogue in both the “real” and digital worlds and demonstrates that for many of us, that separation is disappearing.

Minerva magazine just publised an interview with and an essay by Michel Bauwens (in Spanish).
Juan Freire blogged Urbanismo emergente: ideas para el grupo de trabajo de Urban Labs 08

Now that PodCamp Barcelona is over we have a lot of projects to work on including planning for the next PodCamp Barcelona, starting the PodCamp Barcelona podcast (with the objective of maintaing the community in contact and informed), a meeting with one of the main political parties of Catalunya (we’re not sure exactly what about yet) and some very exiting things withVirtualLingua.

This week we will be participating in UrbanLabs which we think will be fascinating.

Here’s the summary from the UrbanLabs website:

“Trae tu proyecto y encuentra más gente que participe en él. UrbanLabs son unas jornadas para presentar, compartir e incluso crear proyectos de acción ciudadana, innovación, comunicación, aprendizaje, que destaquen por tener un componente social y tecnológico.Tres días para intercambiar experiencias y conocimientos y hacer networking en CitiLab-Cornellà en torno a ideas y hechos concretos que muestren cómo la ciudadanía tiene mucho que decir sobre la realidad política, cultural y económica que vivimos, desde los territorios urbanos y digitales que marcan y marcarán aún más la sociedad del siglo XXI.Por ese motivo, y de la mano de destacados expertos en la participación electrónica y la innovación social, proponemos una serie de grupos de trabajo donde identificar y proponer nuevos proyectos, prácticas y usos al servicio de las ciudades y los ciudadanos.En ese sentido, las jornadas UrbanLabs pretenden: • Discutir desde lo digital la innovación social en entornos urbanos y, en particular, desde los procesos de apropiación de la tecnología por parte de la ciudadanía. • Activar nuevos proyectos concretos en los ámbitos de acción de los participantes, a partir del diálogo y de la incorporación de la cultura tecnológica digital. • Acercar las instituciones, los proyectos de empresa y las iniciativas ciudadanas, buscando un espacio común de reflexión, práctica y relación. • Explorar en todas sus consecuencias la dimensión hiperlocal.”

We will be attending Urban Labs 08:

Trae tu proyecto y encuentra más gente que participe en él. UrbanLabs son unas jornadas para presentar, compartir e incluso crear proyectos de acción ciudadana, innovación, comunicación, aprendizaje, que destaquen por tener un componente social y tecnológico.

Tres días para intercambiar experiencias y conocimientos y hacer networking en CitiLab-Cornellà en torno a ideas y hechos concretos que muestren cómo la ciudadanía tiene mucho que decir sobre la realidad política, cultural y económica que vivimos, desde los territorios urbanos y digitales que marcan y marcarán aún más la sociedad del siglo XXI.

Por ese motivo, y de la mano de destacados expertos en la participación electrónica y la innovación social, proponemos una serie de grupos de trabajo donde identificar y proponer nuevos proyectos, prácticas y usos al servicio de las ciudades y los ciudadanos.

En ese sentido, las jornadas UrbanLabs pretenden:

• Discutir desde lo digital la innovación social en entornos urbanos y, en particular, desde los procesos de apropiación de la tecnología por parte de la ciudadanía.
• Activar nuevos proyectos concretos en los ámbitos de acción de los participantes, a partir del diálogo y de la incorporación de la cultura tecnológica digital.
• Acercar las instituciones, los proyectos de empresa y las iniciativas ciudadanas, buscando un espacio común de reflexión, práctica y relación.
• Explorar en todas sus consecuencias la dimensión hiperlocal.