palomar5, or: There is no such thing as “my idea”

In my days of working for the Berlin branch of the Pechakucha network, I heard about Palomar5, an insanely ambitious innovation work-camp planned by some youngsters. Then, I completely forgot about it, until I read some friend’s tweets about the palomar5 summit yesterday.

So, I thought, why not go and check out what came out of this crazy plan. The crazy plan, it has to be said, included bringing together 30 people from all over the world, setting them up in something of an indoor camp site for six (6!!) weeks, supplying them with building materials, tools, expertise, team building exercises, food, booze, and any other type of creative input you could think of.

creative playground: even the architecture invited to play, think and write

Sounds like fun! But what was the objective of this event? The thirty young and inventive minds were to come up with visions, ideas, strategies, and concrete plans to innovate the way we think about work environments, work routines/processes, and the social aspects of life and work (Sorry, ‘work’ always sounds like the wrong translation for the German ‘Arbeit’ but so does ‘labour’, suggestions, anyone?)

During 6 weeks, the ideas were constantly assessed by professionals, put to discussion and sometimes put to the trashbin. After the 6 weeks, the remaining ideas were presented to an audience of experts and business professionals. The palomar5 crew now wants to build up a network/community with the participants, to make the ideas more visible and to let them grow.

In the end, 13 projects made it into the final presentation round. Among them were a data transferring device called Dada, a startup for startups, a mobile NGO-monitoring action group called Aid Evaluation, a work-environment relaxation and meditation unit called The Egg, and a scheme for 3-dimensional (virtual) data storage. (I hope I am stating all this correctly, please follow up directly on the palomar site if you’re interested in knowing more about the projects. I had only a very brief glimpse into the whole thing last night)

The prototyping room

In case you were asking yourself this: the event was graciously financed by the Telekom as main sponsor, but there was refreshingly little branding, actually, none whatsoever on the event. It’s been hard to say anything good about the Telekom lately, but I do have respect for what they were willing to try here.

Jonathan Imme: one of the initiators (and one of the youngest looking but most ambitious 25 year olds I know)

All in all, I’d say let’s see what comes out of this innovation workcamp in the long run. Will the organizers, participants and experts manage to carry the collective creative energy outside of the laboratory setting? But in itself, the camp was an extraordinary example of what young people can achieve, both by pursuing long term goals and spontaneous creativity. The scope of this event, which seemed like a mixture of playground, workspace, party, campsite and bigbrother container, had the spirit of some crazy 70ies social experiment. It must have been quite an experience for all participants.

try *not* going crazy while staying in these sleep cubicles for 6 weeks

To close this off, I am going to leave you with a camp ‘working philosophy’. This sums up what we need to think about if we’re going to take the subject of co-creation, open innovation and crowdsourcing seriously.