blog de notas de juan freire

…  three types of work: “I work,” which requires expertise, concentration and focus; “You & I work,” which involves relatively simple collaboration among two people; and “We work,” which embodies the highest level of content and context complexity, from multi-disciplinary expertise to multi-location and multi-technology platforms.

… Organizations can address this problem by redesigning their workspaces around the following principles:

1. Focus on four main activities. Employees need to have areas for concentrated work (such as unassigned individual workstations), emergent social exchange (free-flowing hallways), learning (rooms equipped with technology and tools), and collaboration (group spaces for co-creation). The key is to make sure the different types of spaces are integrated with each other and open to all, so people can freely choose where to be based on what they’re doing.
2. Vary the size of workspaces, and the technology with which they’re equipped. Collaborative work happens best in spaces that accommodate a group of four to eight people physically or virtually or in a larger team space with multiple small pods where people can still see each other. It’s also important to give everyone equal access to on-line and on-site information.
3. Provide collaborative tools. Effective collaboration involves knowledge exchange, brainstorming, the inclusion of diverse perspectives, and scenario building. Companies must therefore provide tools like whiteboards that allow employees to record ideas and create a visual, side-by-side review of alternative solutions. Such tools are key enablers helping groups reach a shared understanding faster and more effectively.
4. Give project teams a dedicated space. The concept of ‘distributed cognition’ suggests that thinking processes are embedded in the physical work environment. A team room can provide “cognitive space” to hold ideas and experiences. Returning to the same workspace each day, keeping meeting notes on the board, and leaving work samples and half-finished prototypes on tables between meetings can help teammates maintain a shared project mindset, sharpening their focus and speeding up the collaborative process.

… The value of community and serendipity is what’s driving the wild-fire emergence of hybrid workspaces in Boston, Cambridge and Somerville. In places like Artisan’s Asylum, experimentation and entrepreneurship intersect, engineers work next to artists and their collaborations fuel creativity …

Entrepreneurs who aren’t lucky enough to catch the eye of a venture capital firm on their own can compete for MassChallenge’s annual one-million-dollar prize. The money is just a nominal motivator; the real rewards are the networking opportunities and office resources allocated to some 125 startups selected to share a 27,000-square-foot floor, donated by developer Joe Fallon, in a Fan Pier high-rise. Started in 2010 by business school graduates John Harthorne and Akhil Nigam, MassChallenge’s hodgepodge of startups gets mentors from partner organizations and rare access to top investors. The office is a beehive of activity, where finalists work alongside peers with projects in a range of high-growth industries. They have use of legal advice, office cubes and a whiteboard so massive it’s being certified by Guinness World Records. Collaborations range from a biotech developing treatments for blindness to a company that delivers artisanal wines to customers’ homes. And for motivation, the entrepreneurs just need to look out their floor-to-ceiling windows on the waterfront to imagine themselves as masters of the universe.

Academia, too, is seeing a new generation of workspaces, like the Harvard i-lab (Hi for short) in the Allston building that was formerly home to WGBH. Director Gordon Jones describes the i-lab, which opened last November, as a startup, an experiment in bringing together students and resources from schools across the university. Harvard students have access to the center’s classes and its experts, but retain rights to their own intellectual property. The center also hosts workshops like “Startup Secrets: Company Formation,” taught by venture capitalist Michael Skok, with some of the seats reserved for the public. A circular open-floor plan, exposed ceiling and IdeaPainted surfaces sprinkled with inspirational quotes evoke the dorm rooms and hacker spaces that might lure the next Mark Zuckerberg, and maybe even keep him from dropping out this time. 

“Part of what this is about,” Jones says, “even in the building design, is high modularity. It’s intentionally unfinished. This is about all of us building this place together.” Instead of an office, Jones sits in an approachable, small cubicle. The intermixing of people who wouldn’t have met in a traditional classroom pays off. For example, a biology graduate’s thoughts on natural selection influenced a business school student’s theories on company performance …

Whereas Cambridge’s coworking spaces, both academic and industry, tend to be tech-oriented, Somerville’s workspaces are more community-driven. “It’s not about making millions of dollars,” Graney says. She started the Design Annex, a 1,400-foot center housed in Union Square’s former police station, so that designers of all stripes, who would normally work out of their home, would have 24/7 access to a place free from domestic interruptions. Since the Annex is part of a global network, members, for the price of a monthly gym membership, can use workspaces or conference rooms to conduct meetings anywhere in the world.

While Annexers tend to be designers already established in their careers, another building houses a panoply of fledgling businesses. Located in a 4,400-square-foot warehouse set back from the street, Fringe comprises 20 people and 16 companies—ranging from cult brewery Pretty Things Beer & Ale Project to a roof-garden business, Recover Green Roofs. There are coworking days when Fringe opens its brightly colored conference room to people looking for a place to work, and even provides them with free coffee. Businesses pay for space per square foot, and they can partition and decorate their offices to any taste. Custom-bike builders have a utilitarian shop next to a space shared by a video producer and studio photographer, which is overseen by a salvaged piece of Shepard Fairey street art depicting Andre the Giant. Every business is deliberately different, as meticulously curated as if it were part of an art exhibition …

Entre julio y noviembre de 2009, los estadounidenses Joshua Glenn y Rob Walker llevaron a cabo el proyecto Significant objects. El objetivo: probar que un objeto con una historia vale más que un objeto sin ella. Para el experimento invitaron a cien reconocidos escritores, Whitehead, Jonathan Lethem o Bruce Sterling entre ellos. Cada uno debía inventar una historia para un objeto viejo comprado en el portal eBay. El resultado fue contundente: las baratijas compradas en eBay por un total de 128,74 dólares fueron vendidas por un 3.612,51 dólares. El valor añadido de las historias fue donado posteriormente a causas sociales. ¿Cuánto cuestan unas mini botas de metal? 3 dólares. ¿Cuánto valen las botas si pertenecieron a unos soldados aventureros de Sicilia que se embarcaron en la Guerra Civil de Estados Unidos (historia inventada por Bruce Sterling)? 86 dólares. La narración de la epopeya, la emoción generada, cuestan 83 dólares …

Calles = objetos compartidos. Y ahora llega la vuelta de tuerca Objetos-Ciudades. ¿Por qué no consideramos una calle, una plaza o una avenida como un objeto, como un spime de historias compartidas y escondidas? En un momento en el que algunas instituciones o marcas apenas hablan de una Internet de las cosas de objetos conectados con sensores, de datos controlados verticalmente, las Historias de las cosas cocinadas conjuntamente pueden jugar un papel vital. De nuevo, la tecnología necesaria es asustadoramente básica. Podemos abrir una entrada en la Wikipedia para un rincón / calle / parque de una ciudad. Después, creamos un código QR para dicha entrada con la herramienta gratuita QR Pedia. Una vez colocado en el espacio físico serán los ciudadanos los que creen una narración colectiva (suma de narraciones individuales) sobre dicho lugar. Parece inevitable: las instituciones o marcas tendrán cada vez más difícil imponer narrativas sobre lugares concretos. La voz ciudadana se va a elevar. Y la ciudades, bosques o islas se irán transformando colectivamente gracias a un procomún de historias…

Y aquí llegamos a otro detalle crucial: las narraciones están adoptando formatos híbridos, mutantes, imprevisibles. Un mapa elaborado colaborativamente con la herramienta WhatIf de Ecosistema Urbano es una narración colectiva. Una serie de tweets alrededor de un hashtag es un relato colectivo. El sonido de una plaza (voces, gritos, música), grabado y subido a la red, puede ser un tipo de relato. El proyecto HistoryPin, que yuxtapone en google maps fotos antiguas y recientes vinculando personas del presente gracias al pasado, es una narración colectiva. Y basta colocar un código escaneable —muy pronto ni si quiera hará falta código— en el espacio físico que nos traslade a un sitio de Internet para completar el círculo de los relatos del procomún …

Y las narraciones serán las articulaciones básicas para esa ciudad relacional de “lugares y redes” de la que habla el antropólogo Michel Agier. Las historias compartidas, en la ciudad fragmentada, deterritorializada, pueden ser una argamasa tan sólida como las relaciones de parentesco. Pueden acabar incluso sustituyéndolas. Las historias son aquellos hilos que los habitantes de Ersilia, una ciudad invisible inventada por Italo Calvino, colocaban entre las casas de la urbe. Los hilos eran blancos o negros o grises o blanquinegros dependiendo de las relaciones de parentesco, intercambio, autoridad o representación. Cuando los hilos eran tantos que ya no se podía pasar por en medio, contaba Calvino, los habitantes se marchaban: las casas se desmontaban. Apenas quedaban los hilos. Y luego construían en otro lugar una nueva ciudad imitando la telaraña de relaciones.

Las historias colectivas son los nuevos hilos. Las lianas compartidas que quiebran muros, fronteras invisibles, segregaciones étnicas. Da igual el color que tengan estas viejas-nuevas historias, porque son narraciones colectivas, compartidas. Pero en lugar de molestar los tránsitos, las narraciones-hilos conforman el esqueleto, la columna vertebral, las extremidades y el corazón de las ciudades del procomún. Por eso es importante construir relatos —como sugiere el colectivo de escritores italiano Wu Ming— como si fueran espacios para ser habitados. Por eso hay que construir calles o plazas como si fueran narraciones colectivas, como si fueran párrafos insustituibles de un imaginario superior que da sentido a la nada.

1. La música ahora es una industria basada en la suscripción
2. Los móviles han desbancado a las cámaras de fotos
3. La descarga y el streaming de videojuegos es tan simple como para las películas
4. Las tarjetas de crédito están al borde de la desaparición
5. Se acabó viajar en hoteles
6. Los productos de diseño ya son accesibles
7. Las clases online ya son una realidad
8. Las recaudaciones de fondos tradicionales están desapareciendo
9. El almacenamiento físico está muerto
10. Ya no tienes que ser un fotógrafo profesional para hacer buenas fotos
11. Las grandes compañías también están apostando por la colaboración social

… The Mobile Gastfreundschaft (mobile hospitality) comprises a kitchen unit with sink and gas hob, a separate sideboard and a long table with stools. They’re made from standard sections of timber and each structure has a wheel at one end like a wheelbarrow …

My topic is the shift from ‘architect’ to ‘gardener’, where ‘architect’ stands for ‘someone who carries a full picture of the work before it is made’, to ‘gardener’ standing for ‘someone who plants seeds and waits to see exactly what will come up’. I will argue that today’s composer are more frequently ‘gardeners’ than ‘architects’ and, further, that the ‘composer as architect’ metaphor was a transitory historical blip.

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But there are many parts of this country where manufacturing is very much alive, albeit in a different form. The monolithic industry model — steel, oil, lumber, cars — has evolved into something more nimble and diversified…

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As Mark Dwight, who started SFMade in 2010, explains, “For decades we have developed a culture of disposability — from consumer goods to medical instruments and machine tools. To fuel economic growth, marketers replaced longevity with planned obsolescence — and our mastery of technology has given birth to ever-accelerating unplanned obsolescence. I think there is increasing awareness that this is no longer sustainable on the scale we have developed.”

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Things made in places like San Francisco or New York command a desire-by-association (though I’m also sure creative individuals in less name-brand locals could adopt many of the business synergies and sustainable efforts discussed here). To be sure, there may be a higher cost of doing business in major metropolitan centers like these, but at the same time what gets made is largely driven by design and by consumer demand. ..