"Human history is, in essence, a history of ideas" - H.G. Wells

We all have ideas and deeply wish to connect with like-minded people with whom we could share and work on them! However ideas often stay to ourselves, because we don’t know how to start. Idea Machine Wien aims to be a web platform with physical presence in the city where people can submit and develop ideas, or share thoughts and invite collaborations and interactions with their fellow citizens. We believe that collective expression and synergy can be a driving force in empowering active citizens and in shaping the collective voice, the ‘Geist’ of the city as it is today. (Angeletou, Angeliki & Marteau, Jean; June 2014: City Hype, Departure, Vienna)

The Idea Machine - quick overview and legend: (1) a person has an idea; (2) she submits her idea across an online platform or specialized citizen broadcasting kiosks in the City, the City Points; (3) the idea is structured and developed through the application tools and processes; (4) until it reaches the attention of the crowd which provides feedback and offers ressources(5) the idea is implemented and success is shared with everyone who contributed.

In April 2014, Angeliki Angeletou and Jean Marteau (@jnmarteau) decided to participate in the City Hype Competition organized by Departure, the creative agency of the city of Vienna. The competition invited the participants to create concepts taking into consideration key values that shall define the future cities: participation, community, flexibility, free space, diversity and sharing of resources.

After many brainstorming sessions, Angeliki and Jean (@jnmarteau) created and submitted the concept of Idea Machine (IDM) which collected 13,500 votes and received the Public’s Choice Award in a ceremony that took place mid of September 2014.

After some exchanges and the long term support of Rob Van Kranenburg, President and Chairman of the EU IoT Council of Internet of Things to align within a common vision, Angeliki and Jean (@jnmarteau) felt empowered enough to present and share more largely their idea to see if it meet effectively the interest of citizens.

Moussa Bakayoko, General Manager of Google Developers Group Abidjan, Juste Thales, co-founder of ExpertFox and Thierry Graziani, delegate of SolidarityWorld, a recent Switzerland organization, leader of an informal international expert group and performing occasionally as head hunter, decided to join as soon as they heard about the first draft of the project. Their role in the project is to develop and implement a scalable strategy from the local to the global scope.

Providing trust, free consultancy and resources to enable the premisses of the IDM epi-architecture, Moussa, Thierry, Juste and Jean have worked with a team of multi-disciplinary experts to define the guidelines of a modular development process and its design in terms of software.

Considering the directives of the preliminary work done by Jean those last 12+ years on the Communication for development theory (C4D), as contributor of the C4D and Head of Innovation Experience at Prospective Internationale; taking into account Angeliki’s goal to design a tool for individual and ubiquitous social impact, Juste and Moussa have participated to the design of the strategic board. They have conceived the design of a preliminary information kit and its dissemination across a strategic community leading model, including: the global community leading, the community leading guidelines and the community management, introduced within this literature as entitled as “City Chapters”.

http://opt2o.org | https://www.facebook.com/Option2.0/ | @opt2o

Christoph Mann (@manncpt) and Fabian Höffner, founders of the non profit organization Option 2.0 (@opt2o) and friends of the initiators, supported and enforced the project during the online voting phase and decided to join Angeliki and Jean in bringing Idea Machine to life locally. Along the way from September to December 2014, many brainstorming and creative sessions took place in the co-working space of Option 2.0 “opt2o x Vienna” among Christoph, Fabian, Jean and Angeliki, who experienced synergy through collaboration right from the beginning.

https://www.facebook.com/creativeurbanideas/

Meanwhile, Ahmet Uzun (co-founder of the initiative Urban Creatives), Markus Garschall (co-founder of Generation Europa and researcher) and Wolfgang Sieberth (@wolfgangsieberth, co-founder of @GenerationEuropa and early childhood pedagogue), Osmar Maldonaldo (PhD in Theoretical Physics) and Konstantina Angeletou (architecture student) decided to join Idea Machine and contributed to the growth of the concept.

While the IDM concept was initially describing an online platform with a virtual community and physical City Points, we decided that it made sense to kickstart our project by forming a real community centered around a physical space in the city of Vienna, where most of IDM members work and live.

The reason for starting a physical instead of a digital community was, that we have seen many start-ups concentrating on building complex platforms that never manage to get the attention of the end users, because they were designed based on wrong assumptions about the target audience.

In the Idea Factory, we aim to address real people, who have the need to meet and learn from each other, collaborate and share their progress in a physical, open, accessible, innovative and inspiring place. We expect to learn a lot about human collaboration and creativity during the Idea Factory journey and we soon aim to apply our knowledge and extend our impact on a global level with the digital Idea Machine platform as well as with multiple Idea Factories in various cities.

At the end of November, we presented the Idea Factory concept to an audience of 27 students and young professionals of the Option 2.0 and Idea Machine network at the closing event of “opt2o x Vienna”, who showed motivation and enthusiasm to join us in the Idea Factory journey.

With its transdisciplinary approach the IDM Staff aim (1) to achieve empowerment and synergy through collaboration; (2) to understand and promote ideas, from conception to implementation as a co-evolutionary process between academics and practitioners; (3) to link ideas in terms of epistemology, semantics, tools, organization and flow to each other.

At the end of November, we presented the Idea Factory concept to an audience of 27 students and young professionals of the Option 2.0 and Idea Machine network at the closing event of “opt2o x Vienna”, who showed motivation and enthusiasm to join us in the Idea Factory journey.

With its transdisciplinary approach the IDM Staff aim (1) to achieve empowerment and synergy through collaboration; (2) to understand and promote ideas, from conception to implementation as a co-evolutionary process between academics and practitioners; (3) to link ideas in terms of epistemology, semantics, tools, organization and flow to each other.

This article is an excerpt from "Idea Factory Book - Chapter I Ubiquitous Social Impact" (Revision 0.1.d.) co written by the members of the Internet of Ideas Collective on the 07.12.2014.

More to come soon...

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