Observatory Online Co-Creation Workshop

We have definitely broken a sweat this summer with the ongoing activities and progress we’re making on our platform. So far we’ve had our second round of assemblies and even initiated a third consultation process for a workshop series that will cover IPR and ‘Value Chains’. 

Designing the Platform

But before we can get into all of that, an important issue that has come up is how we’ve designed our online spaces for collaboration. As previously mentioned we have five assemblies and three processes created to address, create tools for, and understand the digitisation of heritage and culture. But we would be remiss if we didn’t also make clear that the InDICEs platform was created through a European project and as such InDICEs follows certain protocols by being organized through various work packages, tasks, and deliverables. However, the vision we have for InDICEs is to live beyond the parameters of an EU project and also be an accessible resource and space to participate for non partners working in cultural heritage. To check out how our assemblies and processes connect to our EU project framework please check out the following link:

https://participate.indices-culture.eu/pages/atypical 

Progress so far

Just as a brief review of some big changes have been the creation of a fifth assembly for IPR discussions, as well as a the creation of a third process previously mentioned for a series of workshops. In addition, there has been the second round of assembly meetings for Platform Model and Ethics, Hypothesis, and Tech and Integration. 

Participation Model and Ethics Assembly

Within our second assembly, participants worked in four groups:

• Impact & Engagement
• Accessibility & Diversity
• Policy & digitisation
• Voice & Narrative

These four groups represent the four different categories created for the 22 principles that were proposed. They also represent the initial idea we have for an impact framework. From these 22 principles participants were tasked with:

• Deciding whether the principle stays or goes, or merge with another. Create a new principle if necessary
• Defining the value using the proposal
• Imagining how can we see those commitments on our platform?

We hope to make concrete progress on the online governance of the platform with principles and values when we reconvene this coming September. 

To see our work in progress check out our principles proposals here:

https://participate.indices-culture.eu/assemblies/ethics/f/19/

Hypothesis Assembly

Within the Hypothesis assembly participants have created 20 user scenarios that have allowed us to outline specific functions and possible features for the digital platform. The Hypothesis assembly has helped to envision what the needs of our audience is and in addition we will be embarking on some more concrete steps towards creating a glossary for terms and metrics that will be salient to the progress of our platform and framing digitisation in culture and heritage. And finally after coordinating with Cyfrowe we have committed to aligning and working on three impact frameworks within our hypothesis assembly. 

Check out our scenario proposals here:

https://participate.indices-culture.eu/assemblies/hypothesis/f/22/

Tech and Integration

Just to review in the first tech assembly meeting we came up with scenarios for proof of concept of Integration of Decidim and webLyzard tech. Within this assembly we also agreed on a prototype visual dashboard. The dashboard has been created and hopefully within no time select number of partners will be testing an analytics dashboard that will be integrated into the platform. 

Check out our proof of concept proposals here:

https://participate.indices-culture.eu/assemblies/tech/f/24/

To learn more about webLyzard tech check out this link: https://www.weblyzard.com/

Further Technical Developments

Over at Platoniq we’ve been racing to create a more customised version of Decidim for InDICEs. So far we’ve implemented improvements the the conversations module and survey component. First we have the “Notify/Conversations” module which can be installed as a plugin, providing a real time functionality that allows some users (called “note-takers”) to take notes on behalf of the participants on a meeting (either physical or virtual). These notes can be taken in real time and provide a more narrative visual for the notes which differs from a general etherpad. Then there are the surveys in which Platoniq has created new types of questions. Three major developments have taken place in this regard, the first has added the capability to Decidim to create conditional questions in a survey, allowing different paths for users depending on their answers. The second is another new type of question called “matrix”, which allows complex user interaction with a formula by choosing different answers from a row/column presentation. Finally, we have added a better user experience to the administrators of the platform, now they are capable of viewing and exporting the answers in several format (html, pdf or csv).

Capacity Building

Currently, in the works as we move further into the ‘Partner Takeover’ phase of our co-design process is a capacity building workshop webinar series. Initially, we planned for partners to gradually onboard through doing short tasks on the platform to get to know it better. However, now partners will be learning to administer their own processes and create their own components. To support the webinar is our ‘How to’ page in the help section that outlines what components we’re learning and with step by step instructions for those that cannot attend. To check them out please click here:

https://participate.indices-culture.eu/pages/userregistration

Wrap-up

That closes our crazy summer schedule for the platform activities. Check back in with us in September when we’ll be having the consultation workshop and resuming our assemblies. 

To learn more about the consultation workshop check it out here:

https://participate.indices-culture.eu/conferences/chiconsultation 

To register for the workshop click here:

https://participate.indices-culture.eu/conferences/chiconsultation/registration