Flexibility — it’s brilliant!

Thanks to a tweet from Sandra Perry I realised I missed out something really brilliant in last week’s post on reciprocity.

The CoLab Exchange sessions this autumn are drawing on learning and ideas from a number of sources, key among them though is The Civic Foundry incubator and accelerator programme running in Birmingham. Sandra and her daughter Cassie were two of three participants from Dudley borough in the 10 week Field Work phase of The Civic Foundry (the other was Liz Stuffins from Dudley Council).

In mentioning The Civic Foundry in the evening session of the first CoLab Exchange I asked Sandra if she would mind sharing her experience of it. I then realised I could access the presentation that she and Cassie had given on the final day of the Field Work, as The Civic Foundry team used Yammer really effectively to enable connection and conversation between sessions and to hold files including every single presentation made over the 10 weeks, including 18 made by teams of participants on the final day.

So without prior preparation Sandra generously gave a presentation on the idea she and Cassie had developed during their time in The Civic Foundry Field Work, and which they are working towards implementing in Dudley: Log Cabin Living. Sandra also talked about great connections she had made with people through The Civic Foundry, including a group of young people involved in Black Country Make in Heath Town, Wolverhampton.

Neither Sandra or I had planned that this presentation and the following great discussion would be part of the CoLab Exchange session. But that sort of flexibility was us putting into action learning from The Civic Foundry around Platform Thinking. Below are the slides on Platform Thinking I used, slight adaptations from slides developed by Joost Buenderman for The Civic Foundry.