Observatory Online Co-Creation Workshop

In creating the InDICEs platform and participatory observatory it was important to ask 'What is an open observatory?' And through combing the internet and drawing upon our experiences we created an abstract to try and answer that questions.

Open Observatory, an Abstract

An observatory is a space with the infrastructure to study of data that records natural phenomena. An online participatory observatory at its best should give insight into agency within a space where participants are free to collaborate, create, and break in ways that gatekeepers to democratic processes have to envision. 

As popular demands for transparency and accountability demonstrate there is still a ways to go to shift paradigms around how agency by participants within society can work. Yet as recent events and elections have shown with the rise of the far right and Brexit, the moral arc of popular energy can be unpredictable. The observatory while it should demonstrate new ways to innovate democratic and participatory practices and methods will also be presented with the very real challenges presented in online platforms such as rising hate speech and misinformation. 

The addition of technology within society has demonstrated that power can be shifted and new identities can thrive with the existence of digital space. In summary, these phenomena raise urgent and prevalent questions as to how past paradigms and systemic inequalities can be transformed faster and popular movements taken further to enable more open access and above all agency to participants and accountability within governance. 

How can data inform communities?

Introduction The world has become digitised from interpersonal social interaction to democratic practices. The observatory within this framework seeks to enable an environment for sharing, collaboration, archiving as well as a space to better understand the social and economic impact of digitisation.

Why Technology has profoundly changed how museums, artists, and people interact with cultural institutions and culture. However, many technological advances in sharing and communications have been created by and for private interests. While the aim of InDICEs does not directly address the lack of public space in tech, InDICEs inherently responds to this question using open source software, generating data policies that are oriented towards user protection, and having at its core creating open access to resources and spaces for collaboration rather than monetization. 

How However, the design of the observatory will be through the collaboration of various actors and organizations within CHI, to inform the function, usability, and priorities of different components and features. Stakeholders and partners will be present together at various workshops to co-create together with user oriented design methods, case studies, interviews, and facilitated group discussion to gain insight into the needs, preferences, and overarching themes and issues within the CHI community. 

What The InDICEs observatory and participatory space will be created within the framework as a public-commons that is free, open, opensource, inclusive and with the digital infrastructure for participatory research.  Within the observatory, a Participatory Space will exist to facilitate community amongst organizations and participants and engage stakeholders to get involved to contribute online through surveys, debates, collaborations that innovate existing practices and priorities of CHI’s on and offline. Ultimately the observatory and participatory space will serve three functions: facilitating different types of individuals seeking information and visual data, a toolbox with recommendations, models and references, and finally a space to collaborate and engage with the CHI community. 

Ethical Compass Underlying the creation of the observatory, Platoniq as the facilitator of the  Observatory Online Co-Creation Workshop, will pay special attention to co-creating an observatory that prioritises safety, inclusion through respect for diversity, and accessibility within the process and finished product. Work especially in the digital world has to take into account safety of participants on a platform to both express individual points of view as well as keeping in mind discriminatory attitudes. Additionally, in collaborating, sharing, and giving information an important consideration will be policies around the life, use, and sharing of data especially between and about individuals. Taking all this into consideration the process around constructing the platform will also implement attitudes of care and awareness so that it might be better reflected in the observatory and participatory space.