The Social Age Safari: Prototyping

I’ve decided not to fight it: the Safari will dominate my thinking and writing this week. Instead of trying to craft a coherent narrative around it, i’m going to use this as a #WorkingOutLoud space, warts and all, to narrate what we are trying to achieve and how it goes wrong.

The Safari design framework is something i’ve wanted to do for a number of years, so the fact that we are only two days away from it is hugely exciting. Essentially, it’s about creating a series of spaces for learning, and support for storytelling, to enable delegates to co-create a conference. Simple by design.

The architecture is this: a number of core ‘Exploration Sessions’, which are run as #hack events, surrounded by 10 Creative sessions, which are about provocation, creativity and learning.

In my introduction i will say this: “we intend to fail in 50% of what we try. Your job is to work out which half fails”. Prototyping is not problem solving: it’s the approach to finding problems. To sense making.

The Safari design is founded upon a number of tracks of work around the Social Age: the use of a Scaffolded Social Learning design framework, the utilisation of Community and Storytelling frameworks, the use of collaborative technology, and the unlocking of Creativity.

A scaffolded Social Learning solution will include both bubbles and boxes, a combination of formal and social spaces

Whilst i’ve prototyped various of these elements before, some at scale, this is the first fully integrated event where everything comes to play at once.

So we will prototype: learn: adapt and narrate. Learning as we go.

I’m excited to see what goes right and willing to learn from what goes wrong. The only thing i won’t do is bet on which bits go which way. That’s why we prototype.