Organised by our good selves and Dublin City Council, 4 groups took to the stage to give talks and present the participants with a Burning Question for them to answer. The event was very kindly and excellently chaired by Mr. Noel Casserly from Comhar Sustainable Development Council with Michael Stubbs of Dublin City Council providing a very informative keynote to kickstart the event.

Presenting each question was Mark Bennett from Dublin City Council, a team of Masters students from the College of Europe in Brussels working on a report on how to promote green business in Dublin and two Innovation Studios members. I spoke about the core concept of Innovation Studios from a workspace point of view followed by David and Erik who presented our new concept in learning called “Integral Learning”.

The event took the form of a World Café, where after each talk we presented a Burning Question for particpants to chew over amongst roundtables of 6 people and write down their ideas collaboratively. At the end of each talk/question the participants moved to a different table so as to mix with other people and share ideas. We’ve posted slideshows below to show the contributions made by each table.

All in all, the day was a fantastic success with many people enjoying the World Café format which afforded them the opportunity to mix with peers they wouldn’t normally have the chance to. From our point of view, much of our reasons for the importance of Innovation Studios was reinforced with many people innately understanding the need for a grass roots driven enterprise space with open membership to support our country’s micro enterprises. We also had the opportunity to pitch our relavance to those who didn’t understand / appreciate the need for micro enterprise supports and their input gave us a much stronger ability to demonstrate the importance of an Innovation Studios Space.

Here are the transcripts of the sheets… DCC Hub CoE Workshop Transcripts
Here are the slideshows of participant’s contributions from the day, broken down by each Burning Question.

1. What must we do to ensure Dublin realises the potential of the Green Economy by 2010?

Mark Bennett (Dublin City Council)

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2. Could a Green Hub add Value in Dublin? Would a Green hub Work in Dublin?

College of Europe

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3. How do we Utilise the Nation’s/Region’s Strengths? We want your help – How can we help you?

Patrick O’Connor (Innovation Studios)

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4. How Can We Kickstart Green Business Through Innovation Studios?

David Johnson & Erik van Lennep (Innovation Studios)

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Photos taken during the afternoon.

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12►

SMEs – Sustainability Minded Enterprise

New places of work and new ways of working -

A response to emerging enterprise opportunities

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Wood Quay Venue, Civic Offices, 8^th March 2010

Registration from 14.30, event starts 15.00 sharp, networking from 17.30

The Dublin Hub Innovation Studios and Dublin City Council with partners invite you to a workshop event followed by refreshments.  We would value your input and collaboration on our ideas for stimulating and supporting green business in the city, such as the creation of a green innovation and hotdesking enterprise space with a uniquely tailored training programme.

The event is being hosted by Dublin City Council in cooperation with Dublin Hub Innovation Studios and the College of Europe and invitees include city-based entrepreneurs, public authorities, NGOs and private sector.

Places are limited so please fill out a short form to request an invite. We’d love to have a diverse mix of people attending to demonstrate the wide range of interesting and dynamic entrepreneurs making up the micro-enterprise community in Dublin.

Click here for the invite request form.

The Dublin Hub invites you to join us for the next step in the evolution of our – your – workspace.
We are gathering on site to put flesh onto bones, and ideas onto space. We will apply our collective design flair and great ideas to map out a space that will be appealing to work in, will spark our creative powers, will feel comfortable and welcoming, and will communicate a relaxed but professional air of confidence. We want a cool space to work in; attractive and inspiring, well suited to sharing experiences, knowledge and
conversations.

The Hub experience comes from a blending of people, place and purpose. At its heart, the Dublin Hub is about doing business differently, and better. We are not just thinking outside the box, we are redesigning the box, and that’s the point of the evening. We’re going to explore how an open space can be partitioned into potential meeting areas, a kitchen or canteen area, the main hot desk area, and whatever other thoughts we have (library, quiet area, chatting and chillout area, silent disco…).

We hope to grow as a convivial, collaborative community that’s conducive to creative thinking and cooperative working; one that will offer compelling opportunities to foster new business alliances, engage in virtual teams and develop meaningful and productive connections. We’re aiming for a flexible and responsive workspace designed by its members to meet their requirements and realities and leave room for their dreams.

Where is this space? Fumbally Annex, Fumbally Court, Fumbally Lane, Dublin 8, just off New Road / Clanbrassil Street. It’s on Thursday 17th September, starting at 6.30 pm and finishing round 9. Parking is free from 6.30 pm, just round the corner.

Please RSVP, feel free to bring along some others, and in the spirit of community, bring something to eat and some more to share.

As we like to say in the Hub community, you’re invited…

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Some responses to the questions on what sort of environment you'd like to work in

Our learnings from the last co-creation event.

We asked these questions in our first session:

What makes you go to work?
Where would be the most enjoyable place to work?
What does your ideal workspace look like?
What else do you want from work?

They were intended to be open ended questions, designed to exercise your creativity and elicit some thoughtful answers. Pleasingly, for the Hub team, the answers you gave us delivered a solid endorsement of our own views. Here is a synopsis of your thoughts.

Most of you want to work in the city centre, or within the canals, in a modern, open plan office, brightly illuminated by natural light (preferably). Flexible is a word that occurs frequently in the analysis of your answers to our questions. A lot of people want flexible opening hours, and many of you require flexible meeting space. You want access to facilities such as a printer pool, fax machines, photocopiers and projectors, even video conferencing equipment, and software tools like calendars, email, a website. Networking is crucially important to you, both among other Hub members and with other Hubs worldwide, and so is interacting or connecting to other people. A good number of you want to exchange ideas, collective knowledge, engage in a community. There’s a need expressed for mentors, business advice, support and shared expertise. You want “really frickin good” internet connections.

Oh, and practically all of you want a cafe.

Some sort of accommodation for bicycles was more popular than parking spaces; there is a desire to work near green spaces, or a park or courtyard; for some of you a quiet space – even a quiet room – is really important. Recycling, “green” policies and a sustainable approach to business are highlighted by some of you, much to our relief.

There’s a lot more diversity in your answers to the question what makes you go to work (apart from the obvious response, money). Self fulfillment, self worth, intellectual stimulation, advancement, pursuit of dreams, passion, all had about equal weight. Making ideas happen was an interesting response.

Finally, the ideas we hadn’t thought of : mobile drawers; shared subscriptions to library and online services; a gallery; a media adviser; a massive twitter feed projected onto a wall, and, my personal favourite but sadly unlikely to happen for a while, a silent disco.

For the second session, we asked you more personal questions:

Who – or what – inspires you?
What do you want to change?
Where are the best conversations happening?
What do you want to do with your life?

The answers are predictably diverse and unclassifiable. You are inspired by passionate people, original vision, creativity and innovation, diverse ideas, social entrepreneurs, the open source movement, shared experiences, positive change and seeing others do what they love. Some are even inspired by twitter. I wonder.

You want to change work practices, in particular, working more collaboratively and cooperatively, reducing the isolation of the one person business. You want to see less regulation and red tape, reductions in the costs of running a business, a reduction in the CO2 content of the atmosphere. Taking back responsibility is a repeated theme. Some of you want to change the world, which is admirably ambitious.

The best conversations are happening in pubs, not surprisingly for Ireland, informal and relaxed conversations over coffee or food, between generations, in gardens – areas outside the “office” – online, social gatherings such as conferences and bar camps, and, apparently in Finland (!)

Finally, what you want to do with your life varies from winning a Nobel prize to cycling round the world, leaving a legacy, selling or starting a company and less specific goals such as creating worthwhile work, fulfilling personal potential, taking more control of your life and getting better at what you do. Some of you just want to be happy.