OuiShare Fest: exploring the edges
This year’s Fest will look at all layers of the transformation: from a global, systemic point of view to organizations and institutions, down to yourself as an individual. The Fest aims to connect the dots at every layer, co-creating a new path to address questions such as: how are global changes in technology, expectations and desires influencing the roles and inner workings of our organizations? How could technology not only disrupt our institutions but also help us build new ones? What opportunities and challenges are you facing - as an employee, as an innovator, as a citizen, as a person - as a result of these digital disruptions?
A journey through the Matryoshka doll
Evolving Systems: Day 1 of OuiShare Fest will take a bird’s eye view on the role of our political and societal institutions in this shift, investigating how the digital revolution is crossing-borders, creating new nations and tribes. The debates will help us understand if and how the gatekeepers and trusted parties that ruled the modern world - such as states and banks - are losing their importance. Will they be gradually replaced by the power of multi-parties or decentralized systems where no one rules because everyone rules? Are we moving towards infrastructures that are common and shared?
Re-shaping Organisations: Day 2 will focus on organizations and innovation ecosystems. We will explore the changing nature of the digitally empowered firm; one that creates platforms to shape markets and society and through this new narratives and experiences. Where is society headed if it is driven by the pursuit of customer delight at all cost? How much are our expectations of desire fulfillment impacting the economic and production processes themselves? What are the potentials of the all-encompassing brand that can co-create and collaborate with citizens and peers? How could more cooperative and participative ownership and governance models make a comeback powered by digital technologies?
Transforming ourselves: OuiShare Fest is not only about connecting on an intellectual, but also on an emotional and personal level. Day 3 will be dedicated to better understanding how change can also come from within us and what our new superpowers as individuals might be. We’ll look at what challenges and pressures we face in a world of extremes: between those that feel empowered by technology and those that fail to cope with the superhuman expectations of the daily routine in a connected world… and who may lose themselves in the process. The post-industrial economic landscape is pushing us to transform our relationship with work. How can we switch perspectives from earning wages to producing value? And how is education changing in the process? Can we learn how to be intelligent in a way that makes us fit for the new challenges of automation and mass social collaboration?
Environmental and societal sustainability will be key topics throughout all three days of OuiShare Fest, because finding new models that have measurable impact are needed to start addressing the pressing issues we face as a society today.
Beyond the Collaborative Economy
Investigating the changes occurring within a digitally transformed society is not an easy task. I’ve been involved in the program design of OuiShare Fest from its first edition and have closely followed the staggering evolution of the debates surrounding the collaborative economy from 2013 onward. Beyond the buzz and fuss about sharing-not-being-sharing, the critiques of platform capitalism and the revolutionary dreams for the Commons, I can firmly say that: yes, the situation is far more complex, multi-faceted and debated than ever. It no longer makes sense to say that we’re just looking at the collaborative economy. When all this started, we still thought that we could make taxonomies, put fences between topics, define categories... but we quickly realized that rather than describing what’s happening, it’s far more important to experiment, support and foster debate and connection among protagonists and dream-makers.
OuiShare Fest is all about exploring the edges of these new developments from a multitude of perspectives and connecting the dots between them.
Why should I be there?
OuiShare Fest is 3 days of connection, experimentation and collaboration. It will be a learning expedition on new methodologies, for accelerating projects and jumping into a pool full of beautiful and enthusiastic people. Everyone is invited, because the larger the diversity of backgrounds, the better! Here are some good reasons for you to join us:
- citizens and analysts might finally understand how multiple transformative processes meet, clash and self-reinforce the creation of new social perspectives.
- businesses will learn from the best and most capable innovators about how to mix business process with long-term sustainability and customer delight, how to collaborate with peers and create far reaching platforms able to leverage ecosystems to shape markets and beat competition.
- policymakers will meet innovators, learn how policies are performing and gather new information on the impacts of the collaborative shift (positive and negative) on cities and economies: we will help them craft strategies that can counteract the irrelevance of the public sphere in a world that is increasingly dominated by supra-national digital businesses and corporations.
AND ALSO...
it’s going to be FUN and crazy as always, so don’t forget to come with a positive outlook on the future, a smile and openness to new encounters that will change your mood and, maybe, your life.
