OuiFest 2016

Required: a willingness to experiment, step out of your comfort zone, collaborate and connect with other humans in a profound way.

Earlier this year I decided to take a sabbatical, deferring my MBA and speaking sweetly to my employers to travel around Europe. Sort of. I mean, with all the busses I’ve probably been in every country in the EU at least once, but some I’ve not hopped off for. The idea was to take some time out, experience some different ways of living, and come home a better, more rounded person. After all — to paraphrase the amazing Karen Wellington -social impact starts with us.

So, my first stop was Paris. By chance, it happened to be the same weekend OuiFest was on. If you’ve not heard of these guys, OuiShare is a non profit think tank established in 2012 with the vision of uniting systems change agents working on the edges of the economy. They’re currently in Europe, North America, Latin America and the Middle East — and surely some enthusiastic social impact alumnas can bring it to Australia. So they produce a lot of work around the collaborative and circular economies, and are generally pretty ace. Check them out here. OuiFest is their yearly celebration — I could call it a conference but trust me, this is not like any conference you’ve ever been to. For a start, it’s in Paris, which immediately lends it a certain glamour. Unfortunately the AirBnB I stayed at was anything but glamorous, but we take our chances in this world. They look for volunteers so if your french is better than mine and you’re in the area next year, suss it out. I got my ticket for 50euro as a student/hacker applicant, and it was the best 50 euro i spent in Paris — the city which charges 9 Euro for a latte.

Held at the Cabaret Sauvage near the 19th Arrondissement, OuiFest is -

“… an interdisciplinary festival thats gather creative leaders, entrepreneurs, movement builders, purpose-driven organizations and communities from across sectors and countries who want to drive systemic and meaningful change.”

Cabaret Sauvage is located beside the River Seine, and the venue included a spiegel tent, a boat and several pop up workshops . In fact, the number of sessions were so many, that it was impossible to see them all. You could go with 10 people and none of you would have the same experience, and each of you would see and learn about amazing things. In addition to the workshops, four local start ups were selected as test subjects for the week. They were given a sea container each, and conference attendees offered their services during the week to help develop their business plan.

Among the many hands on sessions was storytelling with lego. I was so excited at the very idea that I arrived 20 minutes early for the session, and started chatting to the facilitator — Hailey Cooperrider of Collabforge. Did you know that lego has developed a special product especially for business? It’s ridiculously expensive, but fortunately for me my sister has 3 children and kilos of lego scattered across her living room floor, so I won’t be in need of spending that kind of money. The session involved sharing ideas, then forming teams to demonstrate what the idea would look like with lego figures. Through this we were able to visualise the idea, create symbols and meaning, and then think of new ways to move forward. For me, it really helped solve one of the biggest concerns I’ve had with prototyping. I could never really figure out (this is going to sound naive, but i don’t care) how you prototype something without causing disruption to existing services, or actually setting a service up to see how it works. I’m confessing here, in print, that whenever I thought of prototyping I thought of popup stores and food vans. With the lego, we were able to see how things worked and looked like. Since then I have experimented with different types of prototyping and have found it is quite possibly one of my favourite things to do. It’s like being back in kindergarten, but with a purpose.

In the ship moored on the river they held a number of hands on workshops. One of the most powerful bought the personal into the conference through a discussion on grieving as a community. This session united many topical issues, including terrorism, grieving for communal safety, the ways people react when a celebrity dies, but was also an opportunity to grieve personal losses. One way for us to be stronger as a community is to be stronger individually, and working through issues of loss and grief with others is just one way we can achieve this. We stood in a circle and named the people we had lost, and then remembered them as a group. It was a cathartic experience for many, without it becoming dangerously personal and intense to the point of counsellor involvement. It was also a very effective way of building empathy among participants, which we know is essential to effective social impact. It was refreshing to attend such a workshop in the middle of a conference focussed on making the world better. Sometimes, when we are always looking to the future, we can forget to take a moment for ourselves, think about that past and the people we’ve lost, and move forward together in harmony with one another.

The food, is obviously, is the most important part of any meeting. Firstly, this was a zero waste event. there were compost bins everywhere, and all the food was donated and/or organic. Of course, even donated French bread is amazing, so it isn’t as difficult as catering with the leftovers from the local Brumbys, but I believe in us Perth. I’m sure that we would be able to arrange the next social impact symposium to be zero waste. The organisers also extended the food to the evening and the wider community by having a special Vizeat night on the Wednesday. Vizeat is a platform which connects people through food — hosts set a menu, date and price for both locals and tourists to join together for a meal. This turned out to be a genuinely special experience — we ate Korean bbq and shared stories from the conference with the others who were less familiar with the idea of social impact. I learnt too — among the guests was Alysse, who had just completed a 3yr stint as a KaosPilot in Denmark. KaosPilot is a program run in Aarhus, which develops design thinkers and change agents, and sounds just brilliant.The night was a nice way to connect people from the sphere of social impact and collaborative economies to the wider community. The thing is that to make significant change we need to engage with people outside our little social impact bubble, and sharing a meal is a simple but effective way to achieve this.

Authors note: I’m home in November, and need a job. Call me.