Week 1 - Make it simple!
I have always liked beginnings – the initial notes of a song, the introduction of a book, the first steps of a travel – because they encase the potentiality, the mystery, and the curiosity about what will happen . One can feel tension, and the expectation adds to everything a special emotion. The first week of The Urban Innovation Bootcamp gave me all this: the feeling of belonging to a group whose ideas grow and change step by step.
It was a quick start that lead us, beginning from the first meeting on Monday, to understand the important role played by time. The agenda is dense, the weeks of work are only 8 and the activities follow one another, and then, let’s admit it, the adrenaline makes everything more fun. Moreover, time becomes more worthwhile when we work with others, and exactly the idea of a group is one of the main pillars of our Bootcamp. We met our teammates and , activity after activity, we learned the abilities that we can share with each other. It is an ongoing equilibria of skills, listening, unavoidable jokes and panic attacks when only a few minutes remain until the deadlines of our projects.
During the labs we often listen to this sentence: innovation does not exist in isolation. Exactly this philosophy has been the guideline that we follow when leaving our home base in order to interview different people involved by the projects of the Bootcamp. Last week, we collected opinions and stories, took pictures, and shared with the aim to clarify the dimension and the nature of the problems we are dealing with. The dialogue was not always easy , but was fundamental in order to improve our ability to communicate our innovation purposes. Helped by the hints that Paula de Wal, an expert in communication, gave us, we had the chance to apply some effective techniques to organize our findings, by summing them up in an infographic. An infographic consists of a single slide in which we can explain the problem, the solution and the impact of the projects we are working with. It must be simple, direct and able to convey to the audience our work while avoiding misunderstandings. Remaining in the field of communication and human relations, we appreciated the story of Lena Selzer, who told us her experience with Civilla (link:http://www.civilla.com/), a center for social innovation in Detroit of which she is a co-founder. She gave us a telling overview on Human Design Thinking. We understood that people are the true center of the type of innovation implemented by the Bootcamp and the words by Lena communicate her passion to us all, one of a unique motivation to overcome difficulties.
To conclude, I want to leave you with a simple, but important, image: the circle. All of our meetings, in fact, start and end with us forming a circle – not always perfect, I admit - animated by the tireless facilitator team that helps us during the entire Bootcamp. This activity gave as the opportunity to look at each other, know each other and participate in games and activities that make us feel part of a community, giving us the idea of inclusion. The circle communicates also the idea of feedback on which the project is based. Everyday this circle has been more and more active. The Bootcamp has started.There is still much to do, but one thing is certain: we still have many circles to share!
