EVENT REPORT

Nadia EL-Imam, Irene Ingrid, Adrian Wagner, Inga Popovaite

30 August 2016

PART ONE

DATA AND FINDINGS

PURPOSE
The Digital Festival, an initiative of
Forum Europe and its partners, is
designed to provide a space in the
EU capital where the impact and
potential of digital technologies can
be both challenged and better
understood.

METHODS & DATA

Edgeryders collected and analysed
ethnographic data collected during
Digital Festival 2016 using
OpenEthnographer, one of the
software tools we are developing.
The dataset consists of 15 wikistyle session summaries
contributed by participants, as well
as 13 in depth interviews.

CATEGORIES & KEYWORDS

Ethnographic coding was applied to 23
posts in a closed environment on the
Edgeryders Collective Intelligence platform.
Coding is a standard ethnographic
technique. It consists of reading all
contributions and assigning relevant
keywords to snippets of texts. Keywords
become then second-order data, and can
be analysed in various ways.
133 tags in 10 categories were identified as
recurring all along the Digital Festival
Conversation

PEOPLE
Participants in Digital Festival are
20-65 years old and mostly working in
large corporations, public
administration or traditional third-sector
organisations.
30% entrepreneurs amongst those
interviewed
Individuals, not organisations:
Participation is based on
disintermediated conversation

PARTICIPANTS WORK ON
In total, the participants discussed
more than 30 different initiatives in
9 different topic areas
Initiatives are implemented by
grass root activists, industry
players, institutions and policy
makers.

AUTOMATING DRONE OPERATIONS

DRONEGRID

DroneGrid eliminates the need for human

interaction with drones to perform various
tasks.
Drones fly and function fully autonomously.
When a mission is completed, they land on
charging stations to recharge while being
protected from the weather.
Missions are scheduled and monitored on a
cloud platform.
Learn more at http://dronegrid.io

PIONEERING VIRTUAL REALITY GAMES TO BOOST PHYSICAL AND MENTAL HEALTH

DEEPSTREAM VR

DeepStream is pioneering and researching

therapeutic uses of virtual reality for
improving physical health and rehabilitation,
promoting healthier lifestyles, and
addressing mental health challenges
It offers an alternative to narcotic drug
therapies in clinical practice. Applications
include reduction of chronic pain in patients.
Learn more at www.deepstreamvr.com

ON CARE AND TECHNOLOGY

I think our challenge when we deal with health care and trying to move forward that is
that we've got 2 different cultures. We've got health care and then we've got
technology.
Technology is a culture of disruption. In that culture people look at disruption as there's
an opportunity, there's something going wrong, we can go in and make a lot of money. We
love disruption. Healthcare hates disruption, they are incrementalists. They want to
study it a lot and then they want to be very slow. Then the pharmaceutical companies, the
drug manufacturers, the health industry, it's just enormous.
There's this interesting clash that comes with this technology between these 2 big forces
in society. - Howard Rose, DeepStream VR

BLOCKCHAINS, FINTECH & SMART CONTRACTS

Mambu - Cloud Banking Platform
http://mambu.com
Resonate - Streaming Music Cooperative
http://resonate.is
Social Media Charter - Financial Services
http://smcharter.com/

ON BLOCKCHAINS, FINTECH & SMART CONTRACTS

Governments could use smart contracts to enable the workers to make a contract and
settle their tax to very low transaction costs
I do not think that we will fall back and give up all workers rights that we established in
the 20th Century just because of new tech and smart contracts
Bitcoin and Fintech is not even the most interesting application of blockchain
technology, but it is the first one. We will see much more application of it in the future.
The internet of things will be build on this technology.
Even if we can build a lot into smart contracts we still will need to have legal advice,
laws, regulations and dispute resolutions through courts. Government will not just
disappear because of blockchain technology

CONSTRUCTIVE RESPONSES TO MIGRATION

THREE APPROACHES

Train of Hope - Creating care structures in refugee camps

- http://bit.ly/1MwxuBD
Telecoms Sans Frontiers - emergency telecommunications
- www.tsfi.org
OPENandChange - Community driven innovation in welfare
- http://openandchange.care

A SOCIAL CLINIC FOR THE FUTURE

UNMONASTERY

Edgeryders identified a gap in support for the

pre-market phase of innovation processes and
devised a low-cost, sustainable model for
bridging it.
unMonastery is an online-offline program to find
and nurture bottom-up innovation initiatives and
connect them with their peers and supporters all
over Europe and the world. It draws inspiration
from Western monasticism.
A prototype was deployed in the city of Matera,
Italy, as a collaboration between the City Hall and
Edgeryders: http://edgeryders.eu/unmonastery

DISRUPTIVE DISOBEDIENCE AS A PUBLIC SERVICE

FREIFUNK

Access to internet is key to navigating the complexities of a new country, and

staying in touch with loved ones.
Restrictive legislation and a lack of technological infrastructure makes it
difficult for many refugee shelters to provide Wi-Fi to their residents
Freifunk is a community of hackers, programmers and free network activists
building ad hoc wireless networks to give refugees internet access.
It operates without government authorization.

ON DIGITAL AND THE EVOLUTION OF DEMOCRACY

Participants highlight that a
disproportionate amount of focus is
currently given to fluency of reactive
democracy
Social innovation and direct interventions
are competing with traditional politics for
the attention of innovators E.g. bottom up
urbanism
Key question: How to appropriately
support Civic Start Ups and Grassroots
initiatives?

Democracy is not about

reacting to opinions, it is
about driving collective
intelligence
Representative
democracy could become
*representation* and
*democracy* in the future

MAIN KEYWORDS BY OCCURRENCE

KEY INSIGHTS: DIGITAL & SOCIETY

Many digital ventures engage with the citizenry in
ways that are potentially extractive. Few examples
were presented of data-driven business models that are
able to do tech for the people purposes.
As individuals take part in the digital economy, an
effort to rethink the social contract across them could
unlock more participation and enable scaling.

KEY INSIGHTS: DIGITAL & SOCIETY

People most value innovation in areas that have a
demonstrable impact on health, wellbeing and quality of
life. If digital innovation is not seen as improving living
conditions of citizens, it risks losing political support.
Perhaps it is time to decouple the European discourse on
digital innovation from the Silicon Valley rhetoric and
extractive models of digital entrepreneurship.

KEY INSIGHTS: DIGITAL & SOCIETY

Many digital ventures engage with the citizenry in
ways that are potentially extractive. Few examples
were presented of data-driven business models that are
able to do tech for the people purposes.
As individuals take part in the digital economy, an
effort to rethink the social contract across them could
unlock more participation and enable scaling.

KEY INSIGHTS: DIGITAL & SOCIETY

At the centre elites have little incentive to adapt to
systemic shifts. Current inability to cooperate or build
interoperability around IOT, Fintech, migration, rise of
nativist populist parties etc are symptoms off this.
In the grassroots movements and marginalized groups
at the edges there is an explosion of creative responses
to economic, social-ecological and technological changes.

PART TWO

WAYPOINTS INTO THE FUTURE

INVEST IN BREAKING OUT OF ECHO-CHAMBERS

Blind faith in big data, filter-bubbles and active
misinformation are perceived as growing threats.
Invest in mechanisms for picking up weak signals
and collective sense-making involving people with
backgrounds significantly different from your own.

EXPERIMENT WITH NEW ECONOMIC MODELS

Encourage innovation around economic models.
This should be broad-scoped, and include the more
radical non-market approaches like self-sufficiency
(growing your own food) and moneyless models.

EXPLORE AND LEARN MORE

Big Data vs. Rich Data
Smart Networks vs Organizations
Credentialed Experts vs Collective Intelligence
Externalities and Market Failures in the digital economy

This report was created as part of a partnership between

Edgeryders and Forum Europe. It uses the Edgeryders
methodology and software for building events as engines of
collective intelligence.
Please direct enquires about the methodology or software to
Nadia EL-Imam: nadia@edgeryders.eu
Image credits: All photographs supplied by Forum Europe unless otherwise stated on individual pages