Dear fellow OuiSharers :-)

We owe you an update on the last achievements and decisions about next OuiShare Fest. As mentioned a few months ago, for the fifth edition we want to make some larger changes to key aspects of the event. We count on you to contribute and make it beautiful as usual!

Theme

Cities. As most of you know, we decided to focus on cities this year as it’s a topic that a lot of people have been showing an interest on, with some concrete projects (Sharitories, Sharing Lille, Gare Partagée, MEL…). Plus, it’s a very hot topic in terms of how the decisions are made at global stage (by creating a network of global cities) and how to ensure a resilient society for all (by increasing gap between mega-cities and other spaces, urban or rural).

Title

We first wanted to call the event “Cities of Tomorrow” but we think it sounds too neutral and too close to Smart City- like events. A consensus has emerged around “Cities for Citizens”, until we discovered it was the title of Smart City Expo in Barcelona… So, we definitely need to brainstorm on a potential title for this edition. Please add your ideas here!

Format

As OuiShare evolves, so does the Fest, in a more ambitious way. That’s why we want to deliver more content all year long and not only put our energy on a three day event. The new format we would like to try is a real program, and consists of :
* The OuiShare Urban 100 → it’s a list of the most influential, inspiring, and relevant thinkers and builders of cities. It doesn’t have to be exhaustive, it’s our point of view. We’ll build a network upon this group of people to produce content and action. Please help us make the list, we need you!
Research and content production → we don’t want to wait until the Fest to write articles, hand on studies, and produce reports. In France, we’ve created the Lab to explore the future of shared cities, with a partner called Chronos. We have several ongoing studies such as “Data and the city”, “Collaborative Cities and Territories”, and “Autonomous vehicles”. Research will be based on this Lab and beyond, with 100 interviews from our OuiShare 100. Please help us write some content, we need you!
* Cities challenge → having 4 companies giving money (around 15K), 4 cities as experimentation fields, and 4 startups to answer the challenges : that is the idea. This part of the whole program tends to be more concrete, as a complement to the intellectual side of the Fest. Please help us find a project manager, we need you!
* Training program → we believe that the change will happen thanks to a better understanding of collaborative and digital challenges from public officials and local businesses. That’s why we’re considering a training program of two days just before or after the Fest on “How collaborative and digital transformations impact our cities”. It could also be completed with a MOOC. Here again, we’re looking for a project leader!
* OuiShare Fest → the event itself will be lighter to avoid the exhausting previous weeks in the making. We’re considering a 2 ½ days event from Wednesday 2 pm to Friday night. The content will be very high level, based on the contribution from the OS 100 list. Scarcity is precious. At the same time, we want always more participative formats, artistic performances, and less frontal content.

* Satellite events pre-OS Fest → in order to stick to our content production, and due to our willingness to raise attention very regularly on urban challenges, we’ll organise several events on sub-topics. For instance, we already organized an event on FabCity in Paris on November 10th. Events are planned in Bordeaux, Barcelona, Brussels, and Marseille already. Please also organize your local event!

Venue & date

TBC. Regarding location, it is most likely the event will take place in Pantin, very close to Paris, in the building where we’ll have our new office next year. In terms of date, it will be later this year because of French presidential elections in May. Most certainly last week of June or first week of July.

Core team

Six of us have a clear role so far. Maiwenn on event production & team coordination, Taoufik on partnerships, Helene on communication, Francesca on the transmission from previous years, Justyna as artistic director, and myself on the program. Other team members are finding their right role on the way.

Program curators

Based on experience from this year, for 2016 we would like to have fewer curators as well as experiment with having members from external organizations as curators , taking care of curating 3 to 5 sessions each. Within our community so far, both Khushboo and Albert have shown a strong interest - and have the legitimacy - for doing the curation. As for external organizations, Re:publica and Civicwise have been contacted, and we’ll maybe work with Our Cities, Shareable, or C40. The proposed deal with such organizations is documented here.

Overall this seems like a good amount of curators to me, but if you are absolutely would also like to be a curator, please write a short text explaining why he/she wants to be involved in the curation team and what expertise you can bring.

Program tracks & vision

You can find a draft grid of analysis for the program and a brief vision (slides 3 & 4 in French, it’s a draft prez too). This has been challenged at some point, you can still add your opinion on it.

Call for proposals

Even though we have a list of 100 fantastic people, and a team of expert curators, which constitutes a solid base for the program, we still want to give the opportunity for people to contribute and propose sessions. The call will thus certainly be more selective and narrow than previous years.

Patrons

The cherry on the cake, this year we look for superstars to endorse our event, make it smarter and more impactful. We have Tomas Diez, Robin Chase, Amartya Sen and Saskia Sassen in mind. Tomas has already accepted to mentor us, we need to contact the others.

For those who read it until the end, congrats! We’re all open to your feedbacks, propositions, angers, manifestations of joy and enthusiasm, and so on :-) We tried to find the right balance between moving forward to show something tangible and enabling everyone to contribute, I hope it’s satisfying for all!

See you soon!

Sam & the OuiShare Fest team

Ps : as it seems that links are not working on Loomio, please find the Gdoc to find all the info : https://docs.google.com/document/d/11P5MXnmmrSkgS9kozWV4OwQ2F2KuRO5e7JjWBAvCgmY/edit.