Making Ideas Happen is the new book from Scott Belsky – the founder of Behance, an online platform and community for visual creators, and the 99% conference an annual event that brings together creative thinkers to discuss their effectiveness and productivity. Scott is passionate about helping creative people realise their ideas and has been researching the area since his MBA.
Bracket’s lunchtime workshop at THE CUBE was a great success, with lots of interesting discussion about effective creative collaboration using online tools. Questions were raised around approaching intellectual property and attribution, managing egos and how to encourage people to use online tools (when all they want to use is e-mail!).
Creative Boom London kindly wrote a fantastic review of the workshop which covers all of these points (and more) in detail.
Bracket’s session at Media Camp London 4 during Social Media Week generated lots of discussion about the best methods and tools for helping groups of creatives to get things done. It looked at how social media could be used to support collaborative working between artists and designers etc that are used to working independently, usually have autonomy over their work, are characteristically busy, and highly skilled in generating ideas. The aim of the session was to develop solutions for how to channel that creativity into tangible outcomes and how social media can be used to support the process along the way.
It looks like there’s been a hub of collaborative creative writing activity happening on the web this weekend!
A group of writers have set themselves up with the task to write and publish a book in just 24 hours using online tools to work together. The group has been using Google Docs to write and edit the document, as well as using Skype and face-to-face conversation to communicate, and have been updating us on their progress through their twitter profile.
Have you ever explored the applications under the “even more” tab in Google? There are a whole suite of tools that are great for use in collaborative projects. They’re not completely perfect, but they’re free, easy to use and provide a quick way to start online communication within a team:
I’ve just been reading Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth – which outlines the way his design studio approaches projects. There are 43 items, and it’s all well worth a read, but the points that stood out for Bracket were:
#3. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.
#16. Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.
#32. Listen carefully. Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.
My interpretation of these points is that:
- We can learn a lot from the process of engaging in collaborative working. If we know how to do it effectively, we can allow it to take us to new places.
- An end product is an achievement, but it’s definitive – once it’s done, it’s done. The knowledge gained from working with others and from our own experience of being involved can be taken with us long into the next project and beyond.
- Collaboration can allow someone to grow and develop – both in terms of creative potential and in longer term individual capacity.
A couple of weeks ago, I ran a workshop at The Hub, Islington. It’s the second time I’ve run this session, for which the aim is to help creative practitioners become more aware of the process of engaging in collaborative projects. The workshop draws on the experience of the participants to identify issues they need to consider and anything that’s stopping them from collaborating effectively, and then starts to develop solutions so that projects can be productive, effective and taken through to delivery.
So far, both workshops have brought up similar themes, and the dynamics of practical collaboration seem to be getting clearer. Some of the common themes that have come out of the workshops are:
Bracket has been working on a toolkit that can be used by those hoping to work collaboratively on a project with others. The initial framework is here. It is intended to be a work in progress, inviting contributions and developed as the model is tested. There are also some suggestions from facilitators/providers of social media, gathered from Social Media Camp London 08.
The model was developed with social designers hoping to initiate collaborative projects, at System Reload London. But maybe elements can be applied to other areas, ensuring that the specific characteristics and needs of the community are considered.
