Rewired State: Carbon and Energy - the hack weekend question
I went to my first Rewired State event last weekend; this time the theme was carbon and energy. It was a great weekend, with lots of ideas and a great range of projects at the end (which I'll blog later). Thanks to all the people and organisations who made it happen!
I'd vaguely hoped there might be more electronics hackery there; but that would really require equipment and maybe a different kind of space (Makespace, anyone?). There's also a question as to how much of a hardware hack event would need to be devoted to training, rather than doing. I had a lovely chat with Georgina from Tinker.it and perhaps we'll be able to do something more in this vein down the line...
During the introductions, where we learnt about useful datasets and tools, I wondered whether we had quite the right blend of people in the room. Everyone seemed to have data, and be asking for others to help out with visualisations and other efforts to engage a broader audience, but there were hardly any designers, let alone user experience people, in the room. (Those that were, like LordJawsh, managed to contribute to lots of projects - kudos!)
Later on, it seemed to me like there were two quite different viewpoints about how to get people involved with carbon and energy. One set of people were optimistic that they could hack up a valuable new way of engaging people, whilst the other - more cynical perhaps - spotted the challenges (privacy, psychology, the differences between geeks and others). This latter group generally felt that 2 days of technical work wouldn't overcome the key challenge which people working on climate change issues have been looking at for years - how can you get people to change their behaviour because of a very scary thing which won't affect them for years/decades? It doesn't matter whether you are looking to get people to turn off lights or buy a different car or invest in insulation for their home or relocate to reduce their commute or accept a nuclear power station near their town or vote for certain policies - change is always more effort than staying the same, and you've got to have powerful reasons to drive people.
Maybe there's scope for getting together a slightly different set of smart people - social scientists, technologists, ethnographers, designers, economists - and seeing what ideas can be generated on a strong theme (like energy). This isn't quite Rewired State, and it's not quite CityCamp, and it certainly wouldn't be called a "hack" weekend. But thinking outside the box is going to be a key part of figuring out how we can tackle rebalancing our energy generation and consumption, to secure a civilised future.
I'd vaguely hoped there might be more electronics hackery there; but that would really require equipment and maybe a different kind of space (Makespace, anyone?). There's also a question as to how much of a hardware hack event would need to be devoted to training, rather than doing. I had a lovely chat with Georgina from Tinker.it and perhaps we'll be able to do something more in this vein down the line...
During the introductions, where we learnt about useful datasets and tools, I wondered whether we had quite the right blend of people in the room. Everyone seemed to have data, and be asking for others to help out with visualisations and other efforts to engage a broader audience, but there were hardly any designers, let alone user experience people, in the room. (Those that were, like LordJawsh, managed to contribute to lots of projects - kudos!)
Later on, it seemed to me like there were two quite different viewpoints about how to get people involved with carbon and energy. One set of people were optimistic that they could hack up a valuable new way of engaging people, whilst the other - more cynical perhaps - spotted the challenges (privacy, psychology, the differences between geeks and others). This latter group generally felt that 2 days of technical work wouldn't overcome the key challenge which people working on climate change issues have been looking at for years - how can you get people to change their behaviour because of a very scary thing which won't affect them for years/decades? It doesn't matter whether you are looking to get people to turn off lights or buy a different car or invest in insulation for their home or relocate to reduce their commute or accept a nuclear power station near their town or vote for certain policies - change is always more effort than staying the same, and you've got to have powerful reasons to drive people.
Maybe there's scope for getting together a slightly different set of smart people - social scientists, technologists, ethnographers, designers, economists - and seeing what ideas can be generated on a strong theme (like energy). This isn't quite Rewired State, and it's not quite CityCamp, and it certainly wouldn't be called a "hack" weekend. But thinking outside the box is going to be a key part of figuring out how we can tackle rebalancing our energy generation and consumption, to secure a civilised future.