Social Age Safari: Design in Detail

#WorkingOutLoud on what promises to be one of the most exciting and busy weeks of my life, so forgive me for a couple of fast and ‘stream of consciousness‘ posts. The Social Age Safari starts tomorrow afternoon: a three day co-created event, exploring the Social Age. Tonight i’m in Bristol with my Crew Mates, setting up, last minute rehearsal, last minute planning. All about the detail.

A key element of Social Learning is choreography: excellence by design, controlling the detail. This Safari event is about exploration, sense making and sharing: it may give an impression of being casual and emergent, but it’s planned in 15 minute blocks, right down to the rituals and stage management. Because it’s through the detail that the event becomes coherent.

It’s a prototype event: the main sessions are run as #hack sessions, where the community of fifty people co-create the story. We have put in place a number of key storytelling layers: the co-created daily newspaper and graffiti wall, the 24 broadcast events, and the personal narratives of writing, social media and blogging.

The design is the Scaffolding: creating a series of fifteen spaces for conversations to take place. The provocation questions provide the structure, so it’s not random conversation, but rather purposeful and directed. But still free and democratised.

The design lies in the detail, as does the devil.

We will see how it goes: the things we plan emerge as the things we deserve.

This is a grand experiment: the first of many i hope. Part of the journey as we explore the Social Age, together.