So one day way back last summer, my friend Pep tells me about this book he’s recently published, Un ball per la República, which is the story of the Spanish Civil War and the Republic in the village of Alcampell where he grew up. And so we get talking and I ask if he’s going to do an English version, but he says it’s impossible because it’s published by a small Catalan publisher, and I suggest blogging about the book and, you know, making it more than a “book”, with hyperlinks and maps & photos and all the sorts of stuff that a small publisher can’t afford to do, even if they had the vision. Pep loved the idea and A Dance for the Republic was born.

I’m sure “the author” will excuse me for saying that he had a very linear & chronological approach to writing and it took him a few meetings to get his read around the idea of using the blog structure as a platform, the use of categories etc. Check it out if you’re at all interested in the subject matter or how an “online book” can work.

#ict4rd

Ricard Espelt is well known to visitors of this blog for both his role as councillor for new technology in the village of Copons, as well as interviews & posts for TalkingAbout. Right now Ricard is doing a Phd on technology & rural communities and I’ve been helping him a little on his English language blog which he describes as:

“This blog is a platform to communicate with the rural communities and develop a research space for my Phd. My intention is to  use this blog to help my Personal Learning Environment to find more connections and more dialogues with the rural-local researchers.”

So here we have blog repurposed as a publicly available academic research document and communication vehicle. Check it out here

[gfa]

[gfa] is the working title of a blog which we are using to document the investigation into the fascinating and obscure of life of Ana’s grandfather, Gerardo Fernández Agüadero. Read the post about it here or go to the blog itself

Michel Bauwens, founder of the P2P Foundation was in Barcelona again last week to speak at the Universidad Nomada in the Sala Conservas and I went along with Ricard Espelt & Gemma Urgell to film this interview with him for their #talkingabout series. #talkingabout is a paltform which aims to create participation around things, people & ideas worth, well, talking about through a system of videos, votes, comments etc which is open to anyone. I previously wrote about #talkingabout here and will be recording an interview with Ricard & Gemma soon.

Here’s a video which presents #talkingabout :

I also recorded an interview with Michel for the Citilab blog:

Here’s Michel’s presentation from the Universidad Nomada:

Talkingabout is an interestering series of video interviews carried out by Ricard Espelt & Gemma Urgell (two of the most active & creative people around in Catalonia and Spain) in the language of the interviewee. They post the videos on their respective blogs and then "talk about" them, each from their own viewpoint. Right now they are working on building a platform around their idea so that anybody can post their own videos, talk about their own or others vids, or leave comments – the idea is to make the interviews a starting point for conversations so that everybody can Talkabout the ideas in the interviews. Below are some examples of their recent English language videos – you can find all the videos here Talkingabout: Joe Rospars from redall on Vimeo. Talkingabout: mySociety from redall on Vimeo.

It’s been a crazy, inspiring, tiring month or so with the Citilab presentation at the CCCB, my visit to Birmingham and then UrbanLabs – and a lot of time reflecting, analysing and plotting.

Something’s been bugging me for months now & I’m beginning to understand what it is – ever since my first visit to Birmingham I’ve been trying to put my finger on the “difference”, on what is happening there, what is (or isn’t) happening here, on the role of Citilab and on the part of Cataspanglish in all this.

It all seems to have gelled in the last 48 hours – the “difference” or “solution” is twofold, sharing & community.

The Birmingham scene is the way it is now after around two years of people getting together, doing things and having as much a relationship offline as on. Dave Harte showed in his UrbanLabs presentation how this had happened and backed up my own experience when speaking with peeps from Brum. Twitter seems to be the fabric that holds their community together and the other important point is the willingness in Birmingham of the people to come together and use their skills & knowledge to to participate in, criticise and construct a wider community (not just the geeks) throughout the city and now further afield.

Oh yes, and with a sense of humour.

So everything seems so deadly serious here (usually – thank you Platoniq for the construction of the Twittometer for the Grande Finale of UrbanLabs!) and often the concept of sharing seems like something from another planet. There can’t be community when people won’t share and there are clearly many in Spain (& elsewhere of course) who are using social media as just the latest tool on the block. While I was in Birmingham I spoke about social media in Spain to a group of students and lecturers from the Birmingham City University, talking about the difference between the way social media is usually used in Spain and a few inspiring projects such as Copons 2.0 (created by Ricard Espelt). A Spanish student said that he doubted anything would change as in his opinion his fellow countrymen & women are too entrenched in the status quo.

Ironically while I’ve been writing this, Ana has already posted a call to arms – and that’s what I want this to be. If we are to form communities amongst those of us who are doing or want to do, we cannot have just have these great, inspiring events once a year. So what I want to suggest is taking the spirit and PRACTICE of UrbanLabs and turn it into something more frequent. Let’s have some sort of follow up on a regular basis, a Saturday morning every couple of months and with participation through video-conference for those who can’t be there in public. Let’s get the UrbanLabs Club going and continue the narrative, the dialogue and the sharing. Let’s make the bloody community!

If you are interested in making an UrbanLabs “Club” please leave a comment.

click on the photo!

I talked recently with Ricard Espelt, councillor for new technology for Copons (a small village in Catalonia), about the project Copons 2.0 in episode 3 of  the PodCamp Barcelona Podcast. Click on the photo for the podcast (in Spanish).

During his talk yesterday at the Jornada Euroecom, Joost van Nispen mentioned that somebody (sorry, I don’t remember who) has said that what is happening on Internet is a return to a pre-industrial community in the sense that your reputation has become your “brand”. The net is also creating bespoke products which had previously been lost in the process of moving to mass-production. Any opinions???

Ricard Espelt has now posted an English language version of his rundown of the event.

Writing this on the iPhone on the way back to Lleida from the Jornada Euroecom organized by ACC1Ó, a new initiative by the Generalitat to promote innovation in business.
The event was aptly summed up by a question after one of the speeches when somebody asked for advice about a start-up instead of all the examples given about big companies. As usual the structure of the event was old school while talking about innovation and web 2.0. ACC1Ó should realize that events have to be 2.0 as well. The speakers had a wealth of experience, but the format was that of “experts” dispensing knowledge instead of getting down & dirty…

See The Plate is Hot for a rundown on the event by Ricard Espelt (in Catalan).

See L’Anella on Twitter