a pleasant walk along the West Highland Way
After a pleasant walk, went more or less straight along to the SI Camp in Glasgow, for some participant-observation – as well as because of the sheer interestingness of the whole process & concept.
We all (60-70 of us) gathered on the Friday evening and mingled a bit, as well as hearing a couple of minutes (max) pitch from each of the six bods who’d had the ideas for the projects we were going to work on. I’d previously formed an idea of the one I quite wanted to contribute to, but it helped to check out who was who and whether they’d variously be congenial to work with.
We adjourned to the pub…but it being the week-end that Glasgow was invaded by heavy-metal fans meant that the music was extra-loud…!
Then on Saturday morning over 9 a.m. coffee & croissants, we had a quick briefing on the intended timetable…and foregathered in our various teams. After that, it felt like jumping onto a train…and before you realised it, it was Saturday evening. We were booted out of the Saltire Centre at 8 p.m., and most of us went along to the Centre for Contemporary Arts. Quite what they made of this geek invasion (the photo here only shows about half of the laptops in use that evening) they were much too polite to say.
- a snapshot of one of the angelfish processes
Caught the last train back to Edinburgh…and the first train back again on Sunday morning, for further development right up until we were told to ‘stand back from our work’ and come along to the final show & tell session at 2p.m. This lasted till going on 5, when the judges announced the winners!
Here’s the organisers’ overall summary of the event.
- debriefing on the SI camp experience & process
Some days later, after a fevered attempt to debrief on the process overall (lead-in as well as the Camp itself) we had a very helpful meeting with the LTCAS about the principle of adapting the process to one that would better suit direct collaboration with people with long-term conditions.
We’re going to have a close look at potential nuts & bolts and other detail in early August, with the general intention of building steadily towards a form of camp-y innovation process later this year. Hope to provide an interactive (as in ‘cross-it-out-and-start-again’) timeline in the near future.
