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2
COORDINATORS: AMÉLIE BOHAS & FRANÇOIS-XAVIER DE
VAUJANY
CONTRIBUTORS (AUTHORS BY ALPHABETICAL ORDER): AROLES
JEREMY, AUBOIN NICOLAS, BERKOWI TZ HELOISE, BOHAS
AMELIE, BONNEAU CLAUDINE, BUSSY-SOCRATE HELENE,
CARTON SABINE, CNOSSEN BOUKJE, DANDOY AURORE, DE
VAUJANY FRANÇOIS-XAVIER, FABBRI JULIE, GLASER ANNA,
GRAND AZZI ALBANE, HAEFLIGER STEFAN, HASBI MARIE,
IRRMANN OLIVIER, LANIRAY PIERRE, PASS ALACQUA ANNIE,
VIVI ANE SERGI, VALLAT DAVID, VITAUD LAETITI A, VOLL
JOHANNA, ZACHARIOU RENEE
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ABSTRACT
This second RGCS white paper is focused on a new research practice and method co-
designed by members of our network: Open Walked Event-Based Experimentations (OWEE).
The protocol consists in a free, several day long learning expedition in a city, which brings
together different stakeholders (academics, entrepreneurs, activists, makers, journalists, artists,
students, etc.) and relies on a partly improvised process (both the people met and places
visited are part of the improvisation that emerges in the flow of discussions). Walk and
embodiment are central, as both indoor and outdoor times are expected to involve
participants and remote followers differently. Although close to the French “Dérive”, OWEE also
diverges from it on several key points. This white paper returns to the OWEE philosophy, the
importance of improvisation and public spaces, and the search for commons in the way
collaboration and knowledge are built and shared. It then discusses the issue of preparing and
managing the event. Finally, we offer several case studies and ethnographies related to past
events. These feedback and empirical analyses are opportunities to explore key questions for
the city as well as the ways we live and work together. We conclude by stressing the
importance of embodiment and ‘felt solidarity’ in the approach of commons and
communalization in today’s collaborative world.
Keywords: OWEE; method; walk; learning expeditions; commons; narration; sharing economy;
future of work; future of academia; open science; citizen science; makers; DIY.
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SUMMARY
PART I: WHAT IS OWEE?
The OWEE philosophy
PART II: LIVING OWEE EXPERIENCE
Collaborating and Co-designing the
narrative
PART III: BUILDING KNOWLEDGE
FROM OWEE
Exploring, reflecting, learning
and teaching in the walk
5
Droit devant soi, on ne peut pas aller bien loin.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – Le petit prince
INTRODUCTION : EXPLORING MAKERS, OR BECOMI NG
MAKERS?
Since 2016, the Research Group on
Collaborative Spaces (RGCS) has
organized learning expeditions and field
trips, which were, in a first time,
opportunities to explore a territory and
more simply, to launch new chapters of the
network. In early 2017, with a second
learning expedition in Berlin (#collday2017),
came the idea that from this practice
(which was quite common for innovators,
entrepreneurs and some academics), we
could co-produce an approach or a
method that could become a common,
both for the network and the communities
we work with. This common would be a way
to bridge the time and space of our
learning expedition and their narratives as
well as the different concerns,
temporalities, actors (academics,
entrepreneurs, managers, activists, artists)
we encountered. This was also an
opportunity to be closer to the culture of
making that was at the heart of our objects
of study (coworkers, makers, hackers). We
could not simply be passive spectators of
our world. We needed to be doers, makers
and hackers ourselves in order to gain a
deeper understanding of the collaborative
communities that were at the heart of our
research and entrepreneurial activities.
Following our learning expedition in Tokyo
(July 2017), we labelled this approach we
were formalizing or attempting to formalize
OWEE (which stands for Open Walked
Event-Based Experimentations). Close to
the spirit of the practice of the French
dérive (drift), the idea is to introduce in the
walk something managers, consultants and
politicians organizing field trips and learning
expeditions cannot afford: improvisation in
the flow of the walk and fuzzy temporal and
spatial boundaries for our events. An OWEE
is primarily a ‘temporal luxury’. We take our
time and do our best to care in the flow of
our walk. Beyond the walks, we take time to
analyze and reflect upon what we saw,
and how we felt. Everybody is welcome to
join. The practice of walking is key and is
amplified and made meaningful by seated,
indoor moments of visits, stays and
discussions. Beyond this local and punctual
philosophy, we do our best to connect all
our events (OWEE but also publications,
political debates, past artistic
performances, etc.) in order to make them
alive in the flow of each event…
After two years of experimentations and 19
OWEEs (see list in Table 1), we believe that
the time has come for a first feedback on
this practice. This is exactly the objective we
gave to this White Paper, namely
formalizing a first feedback co-produced
by all those who managed or participated
to our learning expeditions.
The learning expeditions (19) we
conducted between 2016 and 2018 are
summarized in the table below (see Table
1) and represented on the map (see Picture
1):
AUTHORS: FRANÇOIS-XAVIER DE VAUJANY (PSL, Paris-Dauphine University) & AMELIE BOHAS
(Aix-Marseille University)
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NAME
PLACE
DATE
HASHTAG AND DESCRIPTION
#visualizinghacking2016
Berlin
July 2016
Pictures and sketches of hacking gestures in the flow of our
exploration of makerspaces, hackerspaces and coworking
spaces. Selection of pictures and sketches presented at
Paris Town Hall at the end of our first symposium
Opening event of RGCS Barcelona #RGCSB
Barcelona
September 2016
Learning expedition organized day 2 after the opening
seminar of RGCS Barcelona.
#RGCS2016
Paris
December 2016
First symposium, including a three-path learning expedition
in the east of Paris.
#visualizinghacking2017
Tokyo
June 2017
Second session of visualizing hacking. Same principle:
capturing gestures of hacking and improvising. Four-day
long learning expedition in Tokyo.
#OOSE2017
Copenhagen
July 2017
Unconference and visit of a coworking space and
makerspace (at the end of the conference).
#collday2017
Berlin
July 2017
Second event in Berlin. Three-day long learning expedition
focused on collaborative spaces in the east and west of
Berlin.
#sharingday2017
Roma and
Milan
December 2017
Four-day long learning expedition in Roma and Milan.
Opening event for both chapters. Visit of Italian coworking
spaces and makerspaces. Discussions about the future of
work in Italy.
#OWEEUN
Geneva
December 2017
Half-day learning expedition in Geneva at the end of an
unconference at the United Nations.
#RGCS2018
London
January 2018
One-day long learning expedition in London at the end of
the second RGCS symposium.
#HIMMSU 2018 #howImetmystartup #OWEE
Paris
March 20118
Collaboration. Half-day visits and walk focused on startups
and collaborative spaces in Paris.
OWEE Printemps des Entrepreneurs
Lyon
April 2018
OWEE with EM Lyon students in the context of the
“Printemps des entrepreneurs in Lyon”.
#OWEEMTL “Entrepreneuriat et technologie”
Montreal
May 2018
One-day long learning expedition in Montreal. Focused on
collaborative spaces.
OWEE innovation labs
Lyon
May 2018
Exploration of several innovation labs in the Lyon area with
EM Lyon students.
#OWEESA
Paris
June 2018
Exploration of street art in Paris. Used to reflect upon
academia and our practices.
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#OOSE2018
Tallin
July 2018
Off the track event of EGOS 2018 conference. Seminar, fish-
ball based panel, visit of a makerspace and alternative
areas of Talllin (improvised walk).
Innovation through History: an exploration of
the CNAM museum
Paris
July 2018
Visit of CNAM with the purpose of exploring history of
innovation. Anna created a template to follow and fulfill.
#hackingday2018
Boston
July 2018
Four-day long learning expedition in Boston. Exploration in
particular of MIT and Harvard ecosystem. Topic: “Opening
and Hacking Knowledge: back to where it started?”
#RGCSAOM2018
Chicago
August 2018
Collective walk at the Millenium park (guided by a research
of Santi Furnari). Discussion and co-production on the topic:
“Revising revise and resubmit processes: towards
alternative scientific media?”.
#OWEEIDEA
Lyon
September 2018
Learning expeditions with students. Exploration of new
entrepreneurial places in Lyon.
TAB LE 1: THE OPEN WALKED EVENT-BASED EXPERIMENTATION S WE ORGANI ZED BETWEEN 2016 AND 2018
8
PICTURE 1: LOC ALIZATI ON OF THE VARI OUS OPEN WAL KED EVENT-BASED EXPERI MENTATI ONS WE
ORGANI ZED B ETWEEN 2016 AND 2018
The document is structured as follows. First,
we return to the OWEE philosophy, what the
acronym means, the key dimensions that
have emerged in and through it. We try to
put forward a taxonomy of OWEEs and
compare the approach with the French
dérive. Most of all, we explain why we
believe this simple practice is or could be a
common.
The second part is focused on the practice
of OWEE, its lived design and experience.
We return to practices we have identified in
its online and offline management. We also
reflect upon the possibility to collect data
and produce more transformative research
from it.
The third and last part is focused on
ethnographies and case studies based on
OWEE we organized. We show how our
learning expeditions have been
opportunities to explore the paradoxes of a
territory or a practice, to make beautiful
encounters, to question key research and
academic practices and to elaborate
different forms of collaborations, ways of
working modes of knowledge co-
production.
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PART I: WHAT IS OWEE?
The OWEE philosophy
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Voyez-vous dans la vie, il n'y a pas de solutions.
Il y a des forces en marche :
il faut les créer, et les solutions les suivent.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – Vol de nuit
PART I: WHAT IS OWEE? THE OW EE PHILOSOPHY
Chapter 1.1: Towards more integrative research practices?
Introducing Open Wal ked Event-Based Experimentations (OWEE)
Between 2015 and 2019, the Research
Group on Collaborative Spaces (RGCS), an
independent network of academics,
organised more than 120 events worldwide,
including 19 learning expeditions. RGCS
aims to explore places and contexts of work
transformations, in particular collaborative
communities such as coworkers, makers,
fabbers and hackers where new work and
life practices are experimented.
Collaborative communities are seen as
windows to understand new work practices
(mobile, remote, digital, collaborative,
entrepreneurial) and levers or muses that
might transform our own academic
practices.
All events organised by the network (in
particular those based on learning
expeditions) have converged into a new
research practice presented here: Open
Walked Event-based Experimentations
(OWEE).
This new set of practices aims to overcome
various dichotomies (such as knowledge-
building / knowledge-diffusing; teacher /
researcher; academic /
practitioner; academic / politician), make
a bigger impact, and offer deeper
connectivity in time and space for research
and the events organised by researchers.
What is the OWEE method: an emotion?
Over the last three years, throughout
various events and experimentations, we
have been shocked to discover how many
academics were bored with their work and
disillusioned with academia. Some grew
sick and tired of the “publish or perish”
game. Others were dissatisfied even while
academically successful.
PICTURE 2: CREDI T: FINAL HIGHL INE E XPANSION BY JOHN GI LLESPIE.
THI S WORK I S LICENSED U NDER A CC B Y-SA 2.0 LICENSE.
AUTHORS : FRANÇOIS-XAVIER DE VAUJANY (PSL, Paris-Dauphine University) & LAETITIA
VITAUD.
Chapter adapted from an article published in LSE Impact blog article which can be
accessed here: “Towards more integrative research practices: introducing Open Walked
Event-based Experimentations”
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They came to our events simply to “have
fun”! They longed for the use of new media
to write, produce, and assemble academic
production – something different to the
more traditional academic journals. They
embarked on a journey without knowing
the destination and thoroughly enjoyed
themselves in the process. Many of us
began to wonder whether scientific writing
could not also leave room for new rhetorics,
different writing styles, and the expression of
emotions (de Vaujany, Walsh and Mitev,
2011; Shanahan, 2015). Of course,
traditional modes of writing continue to be
favoured by numerous academics and still
have a valuable role to play in the
academic world. But more of us now seek
to explore new ways of writing that allow for
emotional tones and styles. Some journals
have started to publish pieces that reflect
this trend.
Furthermore, bodies and emotions are
critical to our open experimentations. For
example, the conversations people have
while walking are fundamentally different
from those they have sitting indoors. We
have walked together so much; spending
lots of time in third-places in Berlin,
Barcelona, London, Tokyo, etc., continuing
on our conversations while doing
something with our hands, dropping all
formality, feeding on the richness of the
context, and analysing it together.
Walking and talking is a powerful
combination. It effectively mixes people.
You can avoid someone in a “safe” seminar
room or event convention centre, but in a
crowded metro, bus or tramway, you may
end up speaking to whoever just happens
to be near you. When there is a large
diversity of stakeholders – academics,
entrepreneurs, representatives of public
institutions, journalists – walking works as a
powerful engine to break down barriers
and create new synergies.
All this has resulted in the OWEE method we
are continually refining. It combines
ethnography with more transformative,
action-oriented research designs. Deeply
grounded in phenomenology, this research
protocol gives a central role to our
embodied perceptions. The OWEE
approach can be described by means of
the four dimensions included in the
following table:
DIMENSIONS
DESCRIPTIONS
Open
It is open to all kinds of stakeholders (academics, entrepreneurs,
managers, community managers, journalists, activists, students,
politicians…).
It is hard to say when it truly starts and when it truly ends
Walked
Walked practices are very important in the OWEE approach. Participants
alternate stable (even seated) practices inside third-places with long
walks between third-places included into the learning expedition
Event-Based
The learning expedition is an event in the sense that it builds in order to
give a sense of ‘happening’. Something truly happens and is a possible
source of learning, scanning, surprising…
Experimentations
The design and re-design of the experimentations is full of improvisations
and bricolages. Around one third of the event is not planned and
expected to be co-produced by participants.
TAB LE 2: DESCRIPTION OF THE OWEE APPROACH AROUND ITS FOUR KEY DIMENSI ONS
First empirical results based on the
implementation of the OWEE method
We want to outline four key results based on
the first two implementations of the OWEE
method in Berlin in March 2017 (more about
which in a forthcoming article), and in
Tokyo in June 2017.
The use of Twitter for a new scientific “meta-
writing”
During our events, particularly our learning
expeditions, we tried to be reflexive and
experimental. We found that live tweets or
sequences of tweets can be useful “meta-
texts”, combining situations, people,
organisations, and publications. When
published in the flow of an event, tweets
create a live narrative that can extend the
event in time and space (see our live tweets
in Tokyo), and connect it to other, past,
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ongoing or future events (e.g. by
mentioning them in a tweet).
Unlike traditional article publishing, Twitter
provides an emotional, temporal network
that integrates source material (research
articles, books, pictures, etc.), makes it
more meaningful, and gives it a new life
through live tweets. It demands creative
new ways of writing that are reminiscent of
visual arts techniques such as assemblage
and collage, whereby found objects are
used to create something new that
transcends them.
Other social media involved in sharing live
scientific knowledge
Other social media, such as Facebook,
YouTube, or Instagram, can contribute to
making events more indelible and
unforgettable as they generate emotions.
Numerous studies have shown that the
longest-lasting memories are linked to
emotions (Rapaport, 1942); they are
recalled with more clarity and detail, which
is likely to increase the quality of future
publications.
In the context of our learning expeditions,
Whatsapp, Facebook, emails, and even
text messages play a big role in the process;
they constitute modern-day rituals that
cement all participants together. They
make the group more horizontal and
involved in sharing whatever knowledge
has been acquired. Increased
engagement and horizontal
communication can turn participants into
active “ambassadors”, keen to spread the
word.
Beyond scientific writing: learning
expeditions as community-builders
Increasingly RGCS events tend to be mainly
about team/community building. Our
learning expeditions have provided plenty
of opportunities to demonstrate this. There is
no exaggerating the impact the
community had on the RGCS network and
its production. The numerous emails,
messages, and posts using the
#visualizinghacking2017 hashtag are an
excellent case in point.
Storytelling and community-managing are
increasingly necessary to give life to
scientific writing and extend its reach and
impact. Topics and research do still matter,
of course, but style and delivery tend to
become equally important. Incidentally,
some of the best storytelling is often quite
succinct, not a common trait of scientific
writing.
For a necessary pivot in space and time for
learning expeditions… a major annual
“unconference”
“Unconferences” are participant-driven
events quite different to conventional
conferences with their fees, sponsored
presentations, and top-down organization.
That is what our first RGCS international
symposium in Paris last year was all about.
We strived to return the word “symposium”
to its original meaning (in ancient Greece it
was a part of a banquet conducive to
debate and creativity).
“Work and Workplace Transformations:
Between Communities, Doing, and
Entrepreneurship”, the 2016 RGCS
symposium, was a big unconference
designed to provide the whole group and
its undertakings with a tone, spirit, and
dynamic. It aimed to enhance, order, and
lever all of our events and various
experimentations. Naturally we hope our
next symposium will achieve all that, and
more
1
.
1
Many thanks to Tadashi Uda, Tomazaku Abe, David
Vallat, Anouck Adrot, and Charles-Baptiste Gérard for
joining this crazy adventure. And to Aurore Dandoy for
blogging on our website! Many thanks to all those who
supported it from afar: Amadou Lo, Julie Fabbri,
Stéphanie Fargeot, Serge Bolidum, Aurore Dandoy,
Marie Hasbi, Constance Garnier, Albane Grandazzi,
Stefan Haefliger, Viviane Sergi, Anna Glaser, and many
others. There are so many things I will never forget (e.g.
the exoskeleton experience)!
13
References
de Vaujany, F.-X., Walsh, I. & Mitev, N.
(2011). “An historically grounded critical
analysis of research articles in IS”. European
Journal of Information Systems, 20(4), 395-
417. https://doi.org/10.1057/ejis.2011.13
Rapaport, D. (1942). Emotions and memory,
2nd unaltered ed. Madison, CT, US:
International Universities Press, Inc. xiii 282
pp. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/11400-000
Shanahan, D. (2015). “Why perpetuate a
300-year-old anachronism? Reincarnating
the research article into a ‘living
document’”. LSE Impact Blog.
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialscien
ces/2015/05/13/reincarnating-the-
research-article-into-a-living-document/
14
Chapter 1.2: Walking the talk, talking the place: three research
protocols for learning expeditions
Managers, customers, citizens,
entrepreneurs and researchers are being
transformed into knowledge tourists but
more rarely into ‘knowledge voyageurs’.
Field trips, learning trips and learning
expeditions epitomize a new trend in
embodied explorations of places likely to
bring learning and new knowledge with
them. These transformative experiences
mainly consist in a set of visits to places and
territories, between one day and one week,
integrated into a program and narrative,
giving an orientation to this partly walked
experience. Being ‘outside’ traditional
frames and contexts of life and work is
expected to produce something particular.
Most of the time, the visit starts at a meeting
point where organizers introduce the
agenda of the day. Participants are then
guided to the first place where they meet
the owner of the place (i.e. happiness
officer, CEO or HR manager, depending on
the theme of the learning expedition). Then,
they move together to the next point of
interest. Meanwhile, they walk, take a bus,
use public transportations or follow a guide.
They can get to know each other (identity,
values, status, goals…) by engaging in
conversations and sharing similar topics.
The tour typically ends with a social event.
When participants engage in an expedition
through unfamiliar spaces, they expect to
learn new insights about themselves, about
other people they could meet or about the
area itself. Over the last decade, a number
of expeditions have been organized by
consulting corporations, professional
organizations, associations, universities and
companies. They targeted stakeholders as
diverse as customers, neighbours,
entrepreneurs, scientists or students.
Multiple promises are made, such as
networking, strategic scanning, performing
a protest, acquiring new skills, etc. But what
can we really expect from learning
expeditions as researchers? A new
fieldwork or a new method? Can scholars
integrate learning expeditions into a proper
research design?
In organization studies, expeditions and trips
have rarely been used in research designs,
except in the context of some
ethnographical or auto-ethnographical
approaches (Khosravi, 2010). Almost two
years ago (in July 2016 with a first event in
Berlin), we started to explore how learning
expeditions could lead to the joint
understanding and transformation of new
practices related to knowledge production
and knowledge diffusion in academia.
Having experimented this approach in
Berlin Paris, Tokyo, Copenhagen, London,
we are more and more convinced that trips
and learning expeditions can form a proper
research method combining various
research protocols. We are stressing the
potential of learning trips or expeditions to
contribute to the creation of new corpora
of data based on narratives and
particularly self-narratives. In the following
post, we would like to discuss how we
collect stories and impressions of
participants, including us, in the flow of the
journey. Before, let us clarify our objective
behind the new method. Our aim is
threefold: collecting data; exploring open
learning processes; producing and
combining powerful narratives likely to
transform research practices.
First, we aim to collect participants’
reflexive and narrative materials directly
related to the event. Being part of the
group could facilitate the understanding of
emotions. For instance, during the visit
or/and right after the visit, we want to
AUTHORS: JEREMY AROLES (Durham University), HÉLÈNE BUSSY-SOCRATE (Paris School of
Business), ANNA GLASER (ESCP Europe), PIERRE LANIRAY (PSL, Paris-Dauphine University) &
FRANÇOIS-XAVIER DE VAUJANY (PSL, Paris-Dauphine University)
This chapter has been published on the RGCS website in the blog section.
15
explore what people felt and how they
reflect upon what they lived. Materializing
these reflections is a way to deeply
contextualize the experience. Researchers
are more likely to phenomenologically and
interpretatively describe the learning
process itself from the inside, especially if
they also join learning expeditions.
Second, meeting participants outside
traditional boundaries allows us to catch
direct feedback about individual’s learning
process and expected transformation at
work. If completed away from the event,
the protocol is likely to reveal how emotions,
affects and discussions have settled into
different levels of emotions and been (or
not) re-explored by participants. It is a way
to analyse the lived duration of the trip and
visits as well as what they ‘express’ for
participants (Merleau-Ponty, 1945). The
idea is thus to collect longitudinal data for
all the learning trips we have organized.
Finally, repeating the protocol in different
territories, within the same entity (our
research network RGCS) allows us to
develop common but different materials…
the identification of a “net of actions”
(Czarniawska, 2004) or “field of events”
(Hernes, 2014). What are the regular meta-
narratives coming into the story (Ricoeur,
1983)? How? What kind of temporal
structures do they enact? What are the
embodied practices traveling from one
experience to another?
Today, we are still experimenting different
protocols to complete our goals. We are
working mainly on three data collection
methods, which are presented in the next
section. We will explain then how it is
related to our broader research method
(OWEE) likely to strengthen our last research
objective, which consists in being
transformative of research practices by
means of an accumulation and meta-
narrations of all OWEEs. We will conclude by
exploring key stakes of the process so far.
1. COLLECTING NARRATIVES AND REFLEXIVITY IN THE FLOW OF LEARNING
EXPEDITIONS: THREE PROTOCOLS
Recording live and past perceptions has
been a traditional way to collect data in
certain fields. In ergonomics and Human
Computers Interactions studies, sense-
making and reflexivity processes have
already been subjected to numerous
methodological explorations (Cairns and
Cox, 2008; McCarthy and Wright, 2005).
Some methods are based on recording
actors’ comments (and their coding) in the
flow of their action. Others are based on ex-
post comments of a video showing the
actor implementing a set of gestures and
actions that are ex post commented by the
actor himself/herself. Philosophy has
explored the issue of thought and body,
and how thought and reflexivity are
interrelated with action and agency (see
e.g. Merleau-Ponty, 1945; Vygotsky, 1978).
In social sciences, narrating reflexivity (e.g.
with logbooks) is also at the heart of
numerous protocols ranging from auto-
ethnography to life stories (White, 2001;
Bertaux, 2005; Dyson, 2007; Hayano, 1979;
Malaurent and Avison, 2017).
In the context of learning expeditions, we
offer to explore three different research
protocols: (i) one based on the process of
telling loudly (and recording) a thought; (ii)
another on writing up a story individually
and collectively (iii) a last one based on
visualization and artistic expression. We
expect the three methods to be related
and to materialize different kinds of
embodied practices and narration. In fact,
telling can be more immediate than writing
which can be modified. We would like to
explore this distinctiveness before
combining both telling and writing into a
single research protocol. Some techniques
have already implemented, others should
be implemented and tested very soon.
16
1.1. TELLING LOUDLY AND SELF-RECORDING THE TRIP
The first protocol is based on commenting
on pictures taken by participants (including
researchers) during the expedition. A
selection of pictures is displayed
chronologically to summarize the trip and
to ask participants to react individually.
Pictures are collected through the social
network Twitter or/and Instagram, as
everyone is encouraged to use a single
#discussion topic.
Ideally it takes place at the end of the visit,
in a quiet place. We expect all participants
to share feedback as a ‘counter-gift’, i.e. in
exchange of being able to attend the tour
for free (whereas others could charge
2
). For
around 40 minutes, participants are
dispatched in the room. With their
smartphone, they record their thought and
send the file to the lead researcher. They
have been asked to look at the pictures
and texts and tell what they did and felt.
Discourses are transcribed word-by-word,
and then coded at the level of the
expedition in a first instance and then
consolidated with all other expeditions
organized. The idea is to explore and
compare vocabularies, topics and
narratives from one learning expedition to
another.
The spoken nature of the record (tone of
voice, rhythm, and emotion in the
background, etc.) is also be part of the
coding. Organizers and community
managers are asked to participate. Their
feedback is considered as well.
The next part of the protocol involves more
reflexivity from participants. They are invited
to write up some lines about the learning
expedition. It could rely on the design
described above (pictures of the
expedition and line of personal tweets) or
via a structured questionnaire.
In both cases, all tweets or Instagram posts
produced during the learning expedition
are extracted (from the hashtag of each
learning expedition) and analysed. They
are also expected to be part of the
duration, expression and narrative
interrelated with the event.
The first experiments of the protocol in Milan
and Paris have shown that involving
participants in the process is not easy. The
best thing to do may be to explain very
clearly at the beginning that a small data
collection will be included into the learning
expedition. As all events are free to attend,
it may also be useful to remind that
participating to the data collection will be
part of a ‘counter-gift’.
1.2. VISUALIZING WHAT WAS SEEN AND FELT THROUGH ART
Beyond words and spoken language, the
idea is here to rely on more visual and
metaphorical modes of narration and
reflexivity. Pictures, drawing, sketches, can
be produced by participants during the
expedition or at the end of it. All materials
are then collected by organizers.
This last protocol has already been
implemented twice by the RGCS: once in
Berlin (July, 2016) and another time in Tokyo
2
Participants are normally charged to attend a
learning expedition if it is organised by a private
organization.
https://collaborativespacesstudy.wordpress.com/201
(June, 2017). The topic was ‘visualizing
hacking’. Participants were asked to take
pictures of gestures, movements, routines,
artifacts that embody hacking, bricolage
and improvisation related to new work
practices. For each event, an exhibition of
all pictures, sketches and drawings was
organized, one at Paris Town Hall in
December 2016 (first RGCS Symposium),
another one in London in a makerspace in
January 2018 (second RGCS symposium).
8/04/29/walking-the-talk-talking-the-place-three-
research-protocols-for-learning-expeditions/#_ftn1
17
2. POSSIBLE INTEGRATION INTO A BROADER RESEARCH METHOD: OWEE
What would strengthen and extend the
potential for such protocol is its capacity to
be replicated simultaneously within more
global self-reflexivity exercises under a
broader research design. We started to
work on such a research design one year
ago. We called it Open Walked Event-
Based Experimentations (OWEE).
OWEE is a particular type of field trip or
learning expedition focusing on the
exploration of new work practices and
managerial innovations in the context of
third places and collaborative spaces
visited over one or three days. We
organized learning expeditions around
topics such as the collaborative economy,
new places for entrepreneurship and
innovation, future of work, artistic
innovations. All were an opportunity to
explore and make visible new work
practices in the context of a specific city
and territory.
All OWEEs follow four criteria (de Vaujany
and Vitaud, 2017).
First, they are opened to various sets of
stakeholders: academics, entrepreneurs,
managers, artists, activists, students and
politicians. The event is expected to foster
collaborations between and beyond the
group. There is no selection process. It is a
‘first-come-first-served’ event. People can
register for free via Eventbrite where they
can download their ticket. The community
manager is in charge of collecting
subscriptions. The event is shared in various
networks; this increases our likelihood to
attract diverse communities.
Second, the expedition is walked.
Participants do not use a car or a bus, but
mainly walk between each site (or
sometimes use public transportations
together). Walking through public or semi-
public spaces is expected to create more
ties between walkers and to be more
performative for those following this
iconography through social media (e.g. the
tweets and the pictures they contain).
Third, OWEE is event-based in the sense that
it is designed in such a way that it creates a
curiosity, the sensation that things will be
partly unpredictable. Anything, planed or
not, is likely to happen. Fragility is felt off site
and on line, and reinforced by the
openness of the event.
Fourth, OWEE is a work in progress method.
Bricolage and improvisations are
authorized during events, both about the
method itself and the content of the
expedition. One third of the program is
empty and will be filled and co-produced
by participants themselves in the flow of the
walk. Through emails, phone calls to friends,
etc., participants generate new ideas,
suggest new places to visit at the last
minute … which is also a great way to
produce collaborations.
3. KEY STAKES OF THE OWEE EXPERIMENTATION
Beyond self-reflexive protocols presented in
the first section and then the OWEE design,
what is our scientific contribution?
We would like to produce both new
temporalities and new temporal structures
for research practices, i.e. the co-
production of knowledge by academics,
entrepreneurs, managers, activists, students
and artists over one to three days. We
believe it is likely to be the repetition and
connection of events that may lead to a
transformation of the research field itself.
From the perspective of participants
(mainly), OWEE, its reflexivity and narrative
phases could become a broad meta-
narrative. The co-designed method itself
could be strengthened by becoming a
‘common’ (Ostrom and Hess, 2007).
Citizen science and open science are
major social movements today. All citizens
can become researchers or can contribute
to scientific explorations. Science,
whatever the field (economics,
management, organization studies,
18
anthropology, chemistry, history, computer
science…), is all the more likely to be at the
heart of the city and to serve truly the city
as it becomes physically open to it. Science
is more likely to be part of all social,
economic, technological and political
movements as it also becomes a
movement (in all senses we can give to this
idea) itself.
We believe that OWEE, among many other
initiatives, is likely to become one of these
movements. But moving for the sake of it is
not enough. It needs to be part of a
broader, powerful narration and set of
narrations. Let’s work together on it…
References
Bertaux, D. (2005). L’enquête et ses
méthodes : Le récit de vie.
Cairns, P., & Cox, A. L. (Eds.). (2008).
Research methods for human-computer
interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Czarniawska, B. (2004). “On time, space,
and action nets”. Organization, 11(6), 773-
791.
de Vaujany, F.-X. & Vitaud, L. (2017).
“Towards more integrative research
practices: introducing Open Walked Event-
based Experimentations”, LSE Impact Blog,
August, 30th
Dyson, M. (2007). “My story in a profession of
stories: Auto ethnography-an empowering
methodology for educators”. Australian
Journal of Teacher Education, 32(1), 36-48.
Hayano, D. (1979). “Auto-ethnography:
Paradigms, problems, and prospects”.
Human organization, 38(1), 99-104.
Hernes, T. (2014). A process theory of
organization. Oxford: OUP.
Khosravi, S. (2010). ‘Illegal’ traveller: an
auto-ethnography of borders. Springer.
Malaurent, J., & Avison, D. (2017).
“Reflexivity: A third essential ‘R’ to enhance
interpretive field studies”. Information &
Management, 54(7), 920-933.
McCarthy, J., & Wright, P. (2005). “Putting
‘felt-life’ at the centre of human–computer
interaction (HCI)”. Cognition, technology &
work, 7(4), 262-271.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945). Phénoménologie
de la perception. Paris: Editions Gallimard.
Ostrom, E. and Hess, C. (2007).
Understanding knowledge as a commons:
from theory to practice, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, MIT Press, 2007
Ricœur, P. (1983). Temps et récit I.
L’intrigue et le récit historique. Paris: Seuil.
Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in Society: The
development of higher psychological
processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
White, S. J. (2001). Auto-ethnography as
reflexive inquiry: the research act as self-
surveillance.
19
Chapter 1.3: A détour towards situa tionism: what can OWEE l earn
from the French “dérive”?
The “dérive” can be translated in English as
“drift”. It has been originally put forward by
Guy Debord, who was a member of the
Letterist International, in the context of his
“Théorie de la derive” that was formalized
in the late 50s. Debord defined dérive as “a
mode of experimental behavior linked to
the conditions of urban society: a
technique of rapid passage through varied
ambiances.” Dérive is fully improvised; it is
an unplanned, walked journey through an
urban landscape. Still according to
Debord, the maximum number of
participants is three, which makes it possible
to keep the integrity of the group in the
process of improvisation. Through “dérive”,
participants are expected to suspend their
everyday relations and “let themselves be
drawn by the attractions of the terrain and
the encounters they find there”. Dérive aims
at studying the “psychogeography” of the
city (the lived experience of the city)) and
emotional disorientation. Debord believed
that the process could lead to the potential
creation of Situations.
Open Walked Event Based
Experimentations (OWEE) share with the
notion of dérive a sense of improvisation,
drift, bricolage. Going adrift in the urban
landscape is also expected to produce a
different experience of the city and of some
of its visible and invisible dimensions (in
particular about new work practices).
During our last learning expedition in Boston
(#hackingday2018), two thirds of our visits
and encounters were improvised in the flow
of our questions and discussions. Following
new questions, new aspects we wanted to
explore further, we sent emails, tweets,
gave phone calls in the flow of our walk.
As for “dérive”, crossed discussions in small
groups are also an important part of the
process that often results in co-produced
traces (articles, posts, Framapads,
exhibitions of pictures, seminars…). Clearly,
“dérive” techniques related to this issue
could be explored further (in particular
artistic techniques) to get lost differently in
the space of the city.
Nonetheless, OWEE departs from dérive on
several key dimensions. It is not fully
improvised. Part of the program is pre-
defined, which gives some matter and
direction (in all sense of the term) to our
event. Only one part of the program is fully
improvised. Then, our events have, so far,
included between 3 and 67 participants.
Even if we often divided big groups into
smaller ones, we are far from Debord’s
philosophy. The idea is also to produce
collaborations and common worlds
between participants and the world they
bring with them in the flow of the walk.
Social media are also another key aspect
that adds another dimension in the dérive.
Dérive is often extended on line. Virtual
participants can walk and go adrift with us.
Walkers can go adrift both in the flow of the
walk and on line with their smartphone.
But at the end, both OWEE and dérive share
a strong belief. Encounters, true
encounters, alterity, felt solidarity and
Ricoeurian instants are at the heart of the
protocol. And they will be all the more
relevant as they stress the invisible entry
points, boundaries, gate-keepers, hidden
practices and fragilities at the heart of the
space of the city and our walked narrative.
References
Debord, G. (1956). « Théorie de la dérive ».
Les Lèvres Nues, n°9 (December 1956) et
Internationale Situationniste, n°2
(December 1958).
Sinclair, I. (2012). Ghost Milk: Recent
Adventures Among the Future Ruins of
London on the Eve of the Olympics. New
York: Faber & Faber.
AUTHOR: FRANÇOIS-XAVIER DE VAUJANY (Paris-Dauphine University)
This chapter has been published on the RGCS website in the blog section.
20
Chapter 1.4: O WEE: From walking in common to walking as a
commons
The OWEE research method, always under
construction (having Levi-Strauss’s spirit of
‘bricolage’ at its core), is directly inspired by
the values and practices of the places we
study (makerspaces, hackerspaces,
FabLabs, coworking spaces, etc.). What we
observe as researchers (collaborative
practices, spaces, communities and
movements) tends to influence how we
conduct research.
As stated on our website, “RGCS is inspired
by makers and open science movements.
The culture of DIY, open knowledge and
doocracy are at the heart of its values”. So
it’s not a surprise that the OWEE research
method puts an emphasis on ‘Openness’
and ‘Experimentation’. What could be a
better way to create knowledge than to
experiment (a concept, a method, a tool,
or whatever artefact a human mind can
figure out – the trial and error process may
be used indifferently in a mind or in a lab)?
Doing it in a collaborative way implies
openness.
Openness is a practical way of creating
valid knowledge according to Popper’s
empirical falsification principle (Popper,
2002). Besides, knowledge increases by
being shared. This idea underlies the
diffusion of scientific knowledge since the
publication (both in 1665) of the first
scientific journals in France (Journal des
savants) and in England (Philosophical
transactions of the royal society).
The openness in science is mirrored in
collaborative spaces, which have inherited
the collaborative DNA of the Web. « To
manage the complexity of the
technological landscape, hackers
[programmers] turn to fellow hackers
[programmers] (along with manuals, books,
mailing lists, documentation, and search
engines) for constant information,
guidance, and help. » (Coleman, 2012, p.
107). In the mid-1980s, Richard Stalleman, a
programmer at MIT, initiated the free/libre
movement, arguing that the digital
properties of software (easy copying and
distribution) make it possible to treat it as a
public good.
What we have observed in our learning
expeditions is people’s willingness to
understand knowledge (scientific
knowledge of course but also practical –
‘bricolage – or artistic one) as a public
good meant to be shared in order to
benefit to the community.
The famous Budapest Open Access
Initiative explains (in 2002) precisely what is
at stakes: “An old tradition and a new
technology have converged to make
possible an unprecedented public good.
The old tradition is the willingness of
scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of
their research in scholarly journals without
payment, for the sake of inquiry and
knowledge. The new technology is the
internet. The public good they make
possible is the world-wide electronic
distribution of the peer-reviewed journal
literature and completely free and
unrestricted access to it by all scientists,
scholars, teachers, students, and other
curious minds. Removing access barriers to
this literature will accelerate research,
enrich education, share the learning of the
rich with the poor and the poor with the
rich, make this literature as useful as it can
be, and lay the foundation for uniting
humanity in a common intellectual
conversation and quest for knowledge.”
On the one hand, knowledge is a public
good easily shared thanks to the Web. On
the other hand, a ‘second enclosure
movement’ is threatening this public good
(hence changing the nature of this ‘good’
to become a ‘common-pool-resource’
following Elinor Ostrom’s concept).
AUTHOR: DAVID VALLAT (Lyon 1 University)
This chapter has been published on the RGCS website in the blog section.
21
1. KNOWLEDGE AS A COMMON-POOL-RESOURCE
What is a common-pool-resource (CPR)
according to Elinor Ostrom, the 2009 Nobel
Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences? A
common-pool-resources is (originally) a
natural resource that requires collective
management (Ostrom, 1990) or else risks
facing “the tragedy of the commons”
(Hardin, 1968) – that is to say, excessive
exploitation of a common good (e.g., fish
stock) for private purposes according to the
well-known logic of the free rider (Olson,
1965).
Understanding properly the CPR idea
requires a classification of economic
goods, undertaken by Samuelson (1954),
according to two criteria:
Exclusion, which gauges the alternately
public or private character of a good by
asking: can one easily exclude certain
individuals from the use of this good or not?
Rivalry (or subtractability), which indicates
the degree of a good’s availability in
relation to its use by asking: does the
personal use of a good deprive others of its
use?
The intersection of these two criteria results
in the following table (see table 3).
Useful knowledge, which is at first a public
good, is threatened of subtractability. To be
more precise useful knowledge is
threatened in three ways:
o Information overload (too much
information to deal with);
o Knowledge enclosure (intellectual
property: patent, copyrights);
o Orwell’s Doublethink (fake news or
alternative facts).
So knowledge is, now, much more a
common-pool-resource than a public
good.
SUBTRACTABILITY
Low
High
EXCLUSION
Difficult
Public goods
Useful knowledge
Sunsets
Common-pool resources
Libraries
Irrigation systems
Easy
Toll or club goods
Journal subscriptions
Day-care centers
Private goods
Personal computers
Doughnuts
TAB LE 3 : TYPE OF GOODS (SOURCE: HESS & OSTROM, 2011, P.9)
2. OWEE: A COMMUNITY MEANT TO PRODUCE KNOWLEDGE
The OWEE research method is aimed at
producing open access knowledge (Suber,
2012). To do so we rely upon collaboration
(of researchers, makers, citizens, students,
etc.). Walking in common according to the
OWEE research method is a good way to
create a community: “[We] are opened to
various sets of stakeholders: academics,
entrepreneurs, managers, artists, activists,
students and politicians. The event is
expected to foster collaborations between
and beyond the group”. The community is
both physical (people engaged in the
walk) and digital (people following our live
tweet, people taking notes on Framapad,
etc.).
We understand the word “community”
according to its Indo-European roots (see
Benveniste, 1969), COMMUNIS: who has
22
reciprocal obligations. An OWEE seeks
reciprocity (in the knowledge creation
process of course but more basically in the
open mindedness, respect, benevolence,
that underlie our research and teaching
practices). Reciprocity is an organized
process. So while creating a community, we
build rules (formal and informal), we build
an institutional arrangement that achieves
coordination. That arrangement is not as
familiar as the Market or the State. It’s a
COMMONS. With this institutional
arrangement, we move from walking in
common to walking as a commons. How
so?
A central point in the works of Elinor Ostrom
is to demonstrate that the common-pool-
resources are resources subject to social
dilemmas, in other words the risk of the
disappearance of the resource (by
overexploitation). In order to address this
risk, one must organize oneself. It is
important to underscore that a common-
pool resource only becomes a commons
once a communal management of the
resource has been put into place. A
commons, thus, must be governed.
Conversely, a common-pool-resource can
exist without implying communal
governance (the climate is a common-
pool-resource but not a commons). By
extension, a public good governed
communally becomes a commons, as is
the case of Wikipedia or Linux, both of
which are knowledge commons.
3. WHERE IS THE OWEE COMMONS?
It is not easy to see the OWEE commons at
first glance because commons are deeply
contextual. According to David Bollier:
“Each commons has its own distinctive
character because each is shaped by its
particular location, history, culture and
social practices. So, it can be hard for the
newcomer to see the patterns of
“commoning” (Bollier, D., & Helfrich, S.,
2014) The term commoning suggests that
the commons is really more of a verb than
a noun. It is a set of ongoing practices and
not an inert physical resource. “There is no
commons without communing”.
So, the OWEE commons can be seen
through a set of practices. Empirical studies
on the governance of common-pool-
resources (CPR) have allowed for the
establishment of design principles that
facilitate the perpetuation of communal
governance (and thus enable the
protection of common-pool-resources).
These principles do not automatically imply
the success of communal governance but
they have been found to be present in all
instances of success. The principles are as
follows (Ostrom, 1990, pp.90-102):
23
#
OSTROM’S PRINCIPLES
(1990, PP.90-102)
IMPLEMENTATION IN OWEE
1
The limits of the common good are
clearly defined; the access rights to
the common good are clear
For each OWEE we specify (usually on
Eventbrite):
O how people can join us and what we
intend to do (boundary rules);
O who is acting as a guide, who is
taking notes, etc. (position rules)
2
The rules governing the use of the
common good are adapted to local
needs and conditions
The purpose of the OWEE is to produce
open access knowledge, hence the
distribution of this knowledge through
social media, a website (RGCS blog
and live area) and open access
publications (RGCS White Papers)
3
A system allowing individuals to
participate in the definition and
modification of these rules on a
regular basis has been established
The OWEE method is discussed after
each event (with participants and
online); modifications of the method
are published on the RGCS website. A
group on slack is devoted to OWEE.
4
A system for community members to
self-check their behaviors has been
established
The rules in use during each OWEE are
defined when needed (for example
being silent while visiting a place where
people are working). A basic rule is
reciprocity, or the Golden Rule (tweet
others as you would wish to be
tweeted): contribute to Framapad, to
the live tweet, retweet, etc.
5
A graduated system of sanctions for
those who violate the community’s
rules is provided for
The case has not been encountered
yet; let’s say that a call to order would
suffice (exclusion should be the ultimate
sanction).
6
An inexpensive conflict resolution
system is available to community
members
Our first choice for the moment:
DISCUSSION.
7
The community’s right to define its
own rules of operation is recognized
by external authorities
This right has not been questioned yet.
8
When applicable (such as for a
common good that exists across
borders or a common good
assigned to a range of territorial
levels), the organization of decision-
making can be established at
several levels while respecting the
rules set out above
RGCS is a very decentralized network
and OWEE events are organized all
other the world.
TAB LE 4 : OSTROM’S DESI GN PRINCIPLES I MPLEMENTED I N THE OWEE METHOD
So, walking as a commons is for us to
produce collaborative knowledge (mainly
scientific but not only), with an
experimental and experiential method and
to share broadly (following the open
access philosophy) both the outcomes of
the research and the method used. It’s a
way to organize ourselves relying upon
reciprocity, trust and individual
responsibility, following the example of
many collaborative spaces. Commons is a
very performative concept: using it
24
(intellectually) leads to practicing it. And
with the practice comes a new world of
organizational experiments, social
interactions, political institutions and
research fields.
References
Benveniste, É. (1969), Le vocabulaire des
institutions indo-européennes. 1,
Économie, Parenté, Société, Éd. de Minuit,
Paris, France.
Bollier, D., & Helfrich, S. (2014). The wealth
of the commons: a world beyond market
and state. Levellers Press.
Coleman, G. (2012). Coding Freedom: The
Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Hardin, G. (1968). “The tragedy of the
commons”, Science, 162(3859), 1243–1248.
http://doi.org/10.1126/science.162.3859.12
43
Hess, C., & Ostrom, E. (2011).
Understanding knowledge as a
commons: from theory to practice. MIT
Press.
Olson, M. (1965). The Logic of Collective
Action. Harvard University Press.
Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the
commons: the evolution of institutions for
collective action. Cambridge University
Press.
Popper, K. R. (2002). The logic of scientific
discovery. Psychology Press.
Samuelson, P. A. (1954). “The pure theory of
public expenditure”, The review of
economics and statistics, 36(4), 387–389.
http://doi.org/10.2307/1925895
Suber, P. (2012). Open Access. MIT Press
25
Chapter 1.5: The city: Re-introducing streets and public spaces in
research practices
Research has transformed the street and
public spaces into research objects (see
e.g. Bundy, 1987; Voyce, 2006; Weisburd et
al, 2004), but what about making them
(again?) a research practice?
Researchers and intellectuals are part of a
seated, closed, indoor and covered world.
Most academic events, in particular in
social sciences and humanities, take place
in hotels, conference centers or university
seminar rooms. For academic gatherings
such as conferences or workshops, public
spaces are just week-end stories (after a
Thursday and Friday focused on the event
itself), part of a short walk for a social event
or a touristic exploration of the city before
coming back at home.
Research practices of social scientists, e.g.
management and organization studies
scholars, remain focused on well-defined
organizational phenomena, and are
communicated in well-defined contexts
(conferences) and in established media
(scientific journals) after the research, once
it is stabilized. Indoor environments thus
pervade research practices in social
sciences and humanities. Numerous
reasons can be invoked for this: protection
against capricious weather, search for
serenity, conference fees (we then pay to
‘access’ or even ‘possess’ something),
concern for participants’ security, logic of
insurance, need for facilities (e.g. using a
video projector, a microphone, being
seated…)… And presenting research in
public spaces is not at all an obvious thing.
What could be meant by that? What would
it change or add to traditional ways of
producing, sharing and communicating
research?
Since the beginning of the learning
expeditions and collective walks organized
by the Research Group on Collaborative
Spaces (RGCS), we have had the
opportunity numerous times to walk our
research, to chat ‘outside’ and ‘on’ our
research objects. Walking in new work
places such as coworking spaces,
makerspaces, biohackerspaces, fablabs…
generate different kinds of discussions.
Walking between the places of each visit
also generates numerous opportunities to
feel the context, districts, areas and
connectivity of the place. It is a way to feel
the narrative around it and to comment on
it together. Sometimes, we have also
improvised breaks in gardens, public
squares, public spaces… This created a
particular atmosphere far from traditional
academics or practitioners’ meetings. We
could be interrupted, entertained,
disrupted by many things around us. This
fragility changed the narrative we
produced for ourselves and those following
us, from a distance, on social media.
Obviously, we were ‘in’ the world we were
commenting, connected to it. The
performativity of such an experience was
different from the context of the traditional,
controlled, seated world of the meeting
room, the convention center, the seminar
room.
Gestures, walk, movements and speeches
take another dimension in public spaces.
They can be seen and heard by people
beyond the interaction. They can be
interrupted by people and things beyond
the immediate stage of the presentation or
discussion. People can move from one
place to another, which means the explicit
emergence of a new context in the flow of
the discussion. As they are ‘out’, they can
be located in places other people know,
could join, have been… Diffused on social
media, such places are thus likely to involve
other people. These virtual participants
have been, will be or could be there. Public
spaces can thus be powerful contexts for
different practices of sharing and
communication of knowledge. If the
experience of the public space combines
a variety of people (academics,
AUTHORS: BOUKJE CNOSSEN (Leuphana University), STEFAN HAEFLIGER (Cass Business
School) & FRANÇOIS-XAVIER DE VAUJANY (PSL, Paris-Dauphine University)
26
entrepreneurs, journalists, activists,
students…), it can then foster fluid mixed
conversations and collaborations. These
possibilities can be leveraged and
activated by specific community
management techniques (see Open
Walked Event-Based Experimentations,
OWEE).
Nonetheless, public spaces are also and
obviously the context of class struggles,
economic inequalities and property fights.
The history of jaywalking in the US and in
many other countries clearly epitomizes
this. If till the early 20th century, streets have
often been common places, everybody’s
places, the car manufacturing lobby has
made it partly ways for cars and car drivers.
Likewise, public spaces (e.g. streets but also
squares, beaches, public gardens…) can
be controlled and dominated by various
groups: men, gangs, marketing
corporations, bourgeois… But public
spaces open the possibility for shared
experiences of these dominations and
violence. The performativity of the place
can be shown obviously, visibly, and in an
embodied way. Walking in the
Haussmannian parts of Paris can make
obvious the bourgeois stage they are.
Walking close to the façade, on the large
pavements, in the second empire
decorum, can be shared and pushed
forward by a collective experience. The
“Dérive” described by Guy Debord (1956) is
a way among others to feel and comments
the different areas and atmospheres of a
city.
What about including more the street and
the experience of the street in researchers’
experience and collaborations? Likewise,
what about including urban walks in
managers, entrepreneurs, activists, artists,
students’ experience of the city? Maybe it
is time to open science literally, physically,
to the atmosphere and movements of the
city. Maybe it is time to transform the city, its
actors, flows, spaces, places, times, into
partners of our research.
References
Bundy, C. (1987). “Street sociology and
pavement politics: aspects of youth and
student resistance in Cape Town, 1985”.
Journal of Southern African Studies, 13(3),
303-330, DOI: 10.1080/03057078708708148
Debord, G. (1956). « Théorie de la dérive ».
Les Lèvres Nues, n°9 (December 1956) et
Internationale Situationniste, n°2
(December 1958).
Voyce, M. (2006). “Shopping malls in
Australia: The end of public space and the
rise of ‘consumerist citizenship’?”. Journal of
sociology, 42(3), 269-286.
Weisburd, D., Bushway, S., Lum, C., & Yang,
S. M. (2004). “Trajectories of crime at places:
A longitudinal study of street segments in
the city of Seattle”. Criminology, 42(2), 283-
322.
27
PART I: WHAT IS OWEE?
The OWEE philosophy
PART II: LIVING OWEE EXPERIENCE
Collaborating and Co-designing the
narrative
28
Sache-le donc, toute création vraie n’est point préjugé sur l’avenir,
poursuite de chimère et utopie, mais visage nouveau lu dans le présent,
lequel est réserve de matériaux en vrac reçus en héritage,
et dont il ne s’agit pour toi ni de te réjouir ni de te plaindre,
car simplement comme toi, ils sont, ayant pris naissance.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Citadelle
PART II : LIVING OWEE EXPERIENCE. COLLABORATI NG AND
CO-DESIGNING THE NARRATIVE
Chapter 2.1: Designing serendipity: walk in progress
In the context of one Open Walked Event
Based Experimentations (OWEE), Nicolas
and I were in charge of organizing a
learning expedition in Paris about Street Art.
Most OWEE and past learning expeditions
organized by RGCS so far have been
organized as a set of visits. We thus walked
between places and indoor times. Our idea
here was to spend all of our time in public
spaces, and to discover, collectively with
participants, streets, public walls, gardens
and places open to the public. Nicolas and
I were neither street art nor art history
experts. Although we realized very quickly
that organizing a tour about something that
is short-lived is complicated and risky, we
tried to figure out what could be our role
during the tour. We had two strong assets to
organize this walk: our institution is based in
one of the most important scenes for Street
Art in France, the XIIIth arrondissement of
Paris, and we had an initial network that
could help. Thus, we named ourselves
‘facilitators’, helping the group to learn
more about street art through different
points of view. We decided to divide our
OWEE into three stages.
The first stage involved identification of
actors. Nicolas got in touch with a good
friend elected at the XIII arrondissement city
council. Very quickly, the mayor himself
answered positively to our call and invited
us for breakfast. A visit of the city council
would give to participants the elective
representatives’ point of view. In
partnership with a gallerist, they ordered
several pieces to promote a positive image
to citizens. On my side, I got in touch with
several artists I knew. Despite their interest
for the walk, most of them were traveling
abroad at that time. So I visited Urbacolors,
and interactive maps, picked up names of
artist working in the XIII and contacted
them via Facebook Messenger. Two days
later, Lor-K called me. She makes sculptures
with rubbish and was really interested in
bringing up her critical vision of street art, so
did I! She would explain to the participants
how she meanders in the city to find the
correct place.
The second stage involved “spotting”.
Once we had our contacts for guiding
participants in the street art world, we had
to design the walk. To make sure
participants could enjoy some street arts
between the city council and Lor-K
projects, we decided to go and have a
look ourselves. We did a first spotting
together in bicycle. It helped us to
familiarize ourselves with the area, and to
look at practical things such as quiet places
to discuss and where to have lunch. Nicolas
went for a walk and spotting of the places
alone one day before as he guides the
group. This walk was an opportunity both to
consider all possible trajectories of route
and to think about the street art works that
can be presented, the spaces and times of
sharing. It was also a step to enrich the
network. Indeed, Nicolas took the initiative
AUTHORS: HÉLÈNE BUSSY SOCRATE (Paris School of Business) & NICOLAS AUBOIN (Paris School
of Business)
29
to go meet Mehdi Ben Sheikh, the head of
the itinérance gallery, which is a key actor
of street art in the 13th arrondissement. He
was immediately excited by the project
and opened to help us. He proposed to
welcome us in the gallery and to present
himself the philosophy of his approach of
production and accompaniment of artists.
It was also a stage to discuss on issues of the
institutionalization of street art and the role
of the gallery owner in this process.
PICTURE 3: MAP AND SHORT WALK TO SPOT THE PLACES TH AT WOULD BE AT THE HEART OF OUR
LEARNI NG EXPEDI TION (SOURCE: AU THORS’ OWN)
The last stage involved the management of
serendipity. Like most plans, nothing
happened as planned and this is truly what
is expected from OWEE process!
On D-day, we had many good or (rarely)
bad surprises. We had planned milestones
but we left a lot of room for improvisation.
From the City hall to the gallery we let
ourselves be carried away by unexpected
discoveries of art works on the street or
places like the Frigos, by the people we met
(Lor-K, Bamba, Emmanuel, the Frigos
member, people in the street), by the
anecdotes that have generated questions
and reactions. This serendipitous process
was particularly enjoyable. We had to
adapt to the climatic conditions (by looking
for a covered space) to the physical
conditions (by looking for a café where to
settle and debrief) to the opportunities
related to the meetings in particular in the
Frigos.
We also rethought the trajectories of our
travels both to meet the constraints of
timing but also to maintain an openness to
the opportunity of a discovery such as
taking the tube to discover the frescoes in
height and find more quickly one of the
artists with whom we had an appointment.
The group set up on Whatsapp and
occasional phone calls to participants
allowed to manage flexibly the constraints
of time and place that appeared on the
way. The adaptation of the role of the
guide was also important to accompany
the different phases of the OWEE: first a
leadership role to move the group in motion
towards the first landmarks (physical and
intellectual); then, a role of facilitator to
create link with the various stakeholders;
lastly, a more elusive role to keep a space
for improvisation and autonomy of the
participants.
30
Chapter 2.2: Managing Indoor and Outdoor Times in Learning
Expeditions
This summer, walking has been a trendy
topic in French bookstores. Presented either
as a healthy practice, an opportunity for
true, reflexive loneliness, a possibility to
explore a territory, a new managerial
approach or as a political engagement,
walk is an embodied practice at the heart
of numerous trends and fashions today.
Indeed, it is a very old practice. Aristotle
taught philosophy while walking in the
Lyceum of ancient Athens. Beyond the
peripatetic school, situationists (with the
practice of ‘drifting’) or revolutionaries
(through walk as a protest) have all settled
practice as a movement with possible
political connotations.
Walk is also an experience. Moving from
one place to another (see vignette below)
without thinking about it, there is something
lived in-between. Walking as a group of
researchers outside the university walls is an
intriguing, liminal experience. For
academics (and probably
entrepreneurs…), experimenting the indoor
world is much more common than he
outdoor one. We cross, move, see public
spaces, but we rarely do something for and
in them.
When we began the Open Walked Event-
Based Experimentations (OWEE) adventure,
we were not aware of the novelty (in
particular for many researchers) of such a
practice of walked conversations and
events taking place in inner courts, streets,
gardens or public squares. What is more
striking is that we did not plan to walk in-
between two places for academic
purposes. It was the easiest way to reach
the next destination for an association with
no resources. Now, walked conversations
including citizens, entrepreneurs, artists,
students, academics and activists have
become our flagship, as a ‘do’ tank
(RGCS). More and more, we believe that
the practice of walking has implications
both for research, teaching and the
political relevance of any knowledge co-
produced by a community.
1. OWEE (OPEN WALKED EVENT-BASED EXPERIMENTATIONS) IN PRACTICE: A
COUPLE OF ASTONISHMENTS
Since our first event in Berlin in July 2016, our
network has organized numerous learning
expeditions and field trips all over the world.
We want to come back here to the live, hot,
‘in the event’ community management of
our walk and discussions.
First of all, what we find striking is a size
effect. We have had the opportunity to
manage very small (2) and very big (67)
Walk as a shared and diverse experience
Walking does not boil down to putting one foot after the other. As reminded by the French
poet Baudelaire with his vision of flânerie or by Leroi-Gourhan in his anthropological
account of hominids who became human when stood on their feet, walk is a central
experience in our lives. However, it would be a mistake to believe that there is a normality
or normal state or process of walking epitomized by so-called ‘healthy people’. Walking in
our perspective is not incompatible with wheelchairs, disabilities and drifts. It is both the
most shared and the most diverse experience.
AUTHORS: AURORE DANDOY (PSL, Paris-Dauphine University) & FRANÇOIS-XAVIER DE
VAUJANY (PSL, Paris-Dauphine University)
This chapter has been published on the RGCS website in the blog section.
31
groups of people in the context of our
learning expeditions. Managing a group of
three or five people makes improvisation
and drifting (derive) much easier.
Community managers and participants
can improvise visits and people
encountered in the flow of their questions
and their discussions. The bigger the group,
the more likely it is to stick to the program
(e.g. to make coordination more effective).
It appears more manageable to co-
produce the program within small groups,
even if when we are big groups, the group
can split spontaneously and re-assemble at
some point.
Then, the process of walking has been full of
interesting micro-observations and micro-
experimentations. Stopping something and
doing a break has often been a way to re-
constitute the group and the collective
conversation. Walking the conversation, in
particular after something likely to be
commented (a visit), made it also often
more fluid. But again, a good community
management requires to pay attention to
the sub-groups likely to emerge and re-
emerge and to arrange stops, games,
open conversations… likely to break them.
In line with this concern, the use of
(crowded) public transportations has also
often been particularly useful. First, one can
avoid all day long someone, but once in a
crowded tramway or metro, you are
pushed and can be close (or closer) to
someone you wanted to avoid. Then, a
social convention is activated. You cannot
spend 20 minutes in silence with someone
you know and will spend other hours or days
with. You feel you have to say something.
Second, walking is a tiring activity and
people needs to rest regularly to avoid
tiredness which increases negative
emotions and risks of conflicts. Moment of
meals are also an important part of the
schedule in order to not lose people or split
the group at wrong times.
Interestingly we also noticed that outdoor
parts of our events were performative
precisely because of an in and out set of
movements. Just walking continuously
outdoor does not necessary create
something for those in the group or those
following us from far. This is the movement
and tempo and narrative of this movement
that can bring a particular performativity
and narrativity. In the case of the social
movement called Nuits Debouts in France,
public gatherings at the place de la
République in Paris were performative
because people kept ‘coming back’.
Because we felt that these people had an
‘house’, were ‘in’ a couple of hours or days
before. Because they could or should be
somewhere. Because the length of their
stay here, the duration of the narrative, was
a way to show their determination.
But it is also important to specify that OWEEs
walks and conversations are always
extended by means of online social
networks. Some people follow us. They walk
symbolically with us. They interact with the
group and the people encountered and
wrapped (e.g. through mentions of Twitter)
in the online narrative. After our events, the
use of posts, articles and videos is also a
way to extend in time and space a
narration which will be put in the loop of
future events and their live tweets and
onsite narration.
With more or less success, our learning
expeditions try to include a high variety of
people: academics, entrepreneurs, artists,
activists, public policy managers, journalists,
slashers, students, workers, etc. This unusual
situation (some people do not understand
that they will join such a heterogeneous
group) sets up great opportunities for fluid
conversations and collaborations. It is
interesting to see that behind job status, we
are all made of flesh, something a long walk
makes obvious.
As an ongoing protocol, all OWEEs are
different from the others and give new
insights for enhancing the protocol. A year
ago, we were trying to write a guide for a
walked community management (an
“OWEE box”). We listed numerous
mandatory requirements, such as duration
of the OWEE or tools to use to collect data.
Now, on the contrary, we encourage
micro-experimentations, such as
enhancing the improvisation part of the
learning expedition or the use of camera to
interview participants and passersby.
32
2. EIGHT PRACTICES IN OUR WALKED COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT
Beyond the diversity of our events, we
identified in our notes a set of particular
practices community managers are likely to
enact in the context of an OWEE-based
learning expedition (see Table 5 below). This
analysis is based in particular on our
learning expeditions in Berlin (July, 2016),
Tokyo (July, 2017), Paris (March, June, 2018)
and Boston (July, 2018), which we had the
opportunity to animate together or
separately.
PRACTICE OF WALKED
COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT
DESCRIPTION
LIMITATIONS
Practice 1: Assembling and
re-assembling the group
Bringing a visible dressing
and/or artifact. Keeping a
visibility on the street.
Identifying representatives of
sub-groups.
Guiding and re-assembling
can also break the fluidity
and openness of the
conversation. It can also be
at the opposite of a spirit of
improvisation.
Practice 2: Dissolving or
connecting sub-groups
Arranging stops, breaks,
jokes, provocations, to make
the conversation as open
and fluid as possible.
Some people just want to be
alone. The presence of sub-
groups can also be
important for the creative
activity that will take place
on site or indoor.
Practice 3: Maintaining a
sense of openness and
improvisation
Not coming with a paper-
based version of the
program. Showing that
things can be changed from
the beginning, as quickly as
possible.
Some people left the group
because they interpreted
this as a lack of direction or
leadership.
Practice 4: Directing to next
stops and public
transportations
Using entry processes in
metro, buses, and tramways,
the process of buying tickets,
as a ‘shaker’ and key time for
the discussions about what
could be done next.
Some people have their own
bike or have a precise idea
of the way we should follow.
Practice 5: Extending the
walk online
Using Twitter, Facebook,
Instagram, Blogs, Framapads
and other tools to comment,
reflect and share the
dynamic of the walk.
Including the live experience
into a broader narrative
(doing a temporal work, see
Kaplan and Orlikowski, 2013).
Some people do not want to
appear online, on pictures
tweeted. This practice can
also foster a very artificial
way of behaving. Good not
to tweet all the time.
Practice 6: Coordinating the
walk among participants
Finding a way to coordinate
the walk. Include two key
issues: people can get lost,
some people may need to
come in and out during the
event and may need to find
the group again. Some
people just want to share
things between the group…
and not on Twitter.
At some point, a WhatsApp
group can be so successful
that people will not share
anymore things on social
media.
33
Practice 7: Encouraging
initiatives and spontaneous
experimentations
Listening to suggestions or
negative impressions.
Looking closely at every
participant and wondering
when one stays alone if it is a
need of loneliness or
someone who is waiting for
something else and who
could lead his/her idea as
another micro-
experimentation.
Guiding a group with a
partially organized program
is a challenge but allowing
people to change
everything in it, even the
organized part can cripple
the guide.
Practice 8: Being a catalyst
(Brafman & Beckstrom, 2006)
Putting one’s ego aside to
enhance participants’
initiative. Listening to one’s
life story. Mapping skills and
needs among the group.
Trying to help everyone with
answers, new questions or
connections with someone
who could help. Being trustful
and honest when previous
engagements cannot be
kept. Accelerating and
catalyzing interesting trends
ongoing trends in the group
more than trying to impulse
things all the time.
It can be frustrating for the
organizer not to act as a
leader but as a catalyst (the
one who closes the walk, not
the one leading it). Questions
like “what will we do next?”
or “where do we go?” must
not be answered as a tourist
guide but merely as a fellow
walker: “I don’t know, what
do you think?”.
TAB LE 5 : EI GHT PRACTICES IN OU R WALKED COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT
Embodiment is at the heart of a walked
community management. Gestures,
postures, rhythms of the walk by the
community manager, all contribute to
make the learning expedition expressive for
all those walking or joining far in time and
space the conversation. And the eight
practices we have stressed engage bodies,
corporeity and intercorporeity (Merleau-
Ponty, 1945) in the process of walking.
References
Brafman, O., & Beckstrom, R. A. (2006). The
starfish and the spider: The unstoppable
power of leaderless organizations. Penguin.
Kaplan, S., & Orlikowski, W. J. (2013).
“Temporal work in strategy making”.
Organization science, 24(4), 965-995.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945). Phénoménologie
de la perception. Paris: Éditions Gallimard.
34
Chapter 2.3: Academia in the Mirror of Street Art: Back to a Recent
Walk in Paris
This was a rainy day in Paris. On June 14th,
an alternative academic network (RGCS)
organised a great learning expedition
about street art in the 13th district
(“arrondissement”) of Paris. This Open
Walked Event-Based Experimentation
(OWEE) was an opportunity to mix
academics with entrepreneurs and street
artists. A group of 20 people thus walked in
the grey and cold streets of Paris this day.
The context helped us to realize how
colourful and warm street art can be!
We started with a meeting point and a first
discussion at the town hall of the 13th
arrondissement. The deputy mayor
explained us the history and context of
street art here. We then walked around
from one point to another (see the hashtag
#oweesa and our album) before the final
destination at les Frigos.
1. THE STREET AS ART
In this article, I want to focus on an
encounter which took place during this
expedition, one of this moment where
something happens, where and when we
are obviously here, in the situation. It was
the planned encounter of the street artist
Lor-K in an inner court. We were all seated
here, in the cold. Actually, it was raining.
Lor-K, a young woman Parisian street artist,
stood in front of us, with a cardboard next
to her. I will never know what it was for.
Suddenly, all the meaning of an OWEE
became obvious to me. The possible “mirror
effect” for researchers was there.
We are animals of the inside! We are mainly
seated, covered, protected, involved in
ritualistic environments such as meetings,
seminars, courses, PhD defenses, data
collection… Here, I felt clearly outside, with
someone looking at my “inside”. My all
world is an “inside”, made of activities
defining the inside from the outside, and
staying in the inside. Lor-K recycles waste
and rubbish on site. Her whole world is
made of what the inside does not need
anymore. She stays courageously on the
street, works on the street, includes art in
and on street, not from the street or the
horizon. She creates beauty in an
unexpected way and makes rubbishes nice
in an ephemeral way.
Here comes another key temporal
difference: I spend the bulk of my time
trying to build things made to last, or rather,
that I expect will last a little bit. She told us
that she never sells her art. She wants to
keep the integrity of it. She sells narratives
about her work: pictures in exhibitions,
books, articles, activities on social media.
She creates continuity and durability with
the narrative itself. On my side, I realise I
keep settling ephemerality and
discontinuity with my individual and
collective narratives…
AUTHOR: FRANÇOIS-XAVIER DE VAUJANY (PSL, Paris-Dauphine University)
This chapter has been published on the RGCS website in the blog section and also by The
Conversation (https://theconversation.com/academia-in-the-mirror-of-street-art-back-to-
a-recent-walk-in-paris-100232).
35
PICTURE 4: PARIS STREET; RAINY DAY, BY GUSTAVE CAILLEBOTTE (1877). FLI C KR
2. ALONE TOGETHER
Lastly, Lor-K told us about her loneliness. Her
purposeful, chosen loneliness. She preferred
to work alone, it’s more effective. At least
for the concrete part (maybe not for the
narrative part…). She was alone in the
middle of us. She is alone in the middle of
the city. Street artists are “alone together”,
like entrepreneurs, and maybe also like
many academics. This is not my case with
RGCS and all these great people interested
in alternative things. I think precisely that the
whole OWEE narrative is about breaking the
numerous waves that fragment academia,
and to produce (with numerous other
initiatives) more synchronicity and duration
for our work. This is about re-creating
powerful collective narratives for
academia, shared collective narratives
likely to be more transformative and
relevant for the City.
But at some point, the place was so cold. I
was happy to come back to my indoor,
bounding world. At least for a moment.
Just a last thought before coming back to
my safe, protected world. OWEE is about
alternating, encountering, walking,
narrating and reflecting. Third-places and
collaborative spaces are beautiful levers
and contexts to create discontinuities. But I
realize more and more that street art, art at
large, and all the aesthetic, cultural and
historical places of the city I’m not used to
cross, can play the same role.
To be continued…
36
Chapter 2.4: Wha t a Difference a Walk Makes? The Impact of Walk
and Embodiment in Reflexive Collaboration and Creativity
In the few months we have been
experimenting the type of learning
expedition we call OWEE, there has been a
set of features we observed when a group
of people is moving – and walking –
together in order to observe, analyze,
ponder and reflect upon a set of places or
human activities.
1. DIFFERENT CONFIGURATIONS OF THE REFLEXIVE WALKERS IN OWEE
1.1. THE SWARM
The group gives power and a sense of
purpose in any human activity. In OWEE
events, there is a certain sense of elation
seeing a mass of people engaged into the
same analytical activity, all mobilized
around a trajectory, and aggregating into
a swarm behavior. Like in a swarm, local
simple rules allow the aggregation and
combined movement of participants:
follow someone, listen to someone if you
can, keep reasonable proximity, take
pictures, talk to your neighbours, look
around and walk. OWEE groups differ from
guided tours (only one person talks and the
group follows the leader) or delegation
visits (selected group, controlled access to
specific places), though it might look like it
from time to time. What differs is the
swarming behaviour: there is no central
authority, no one is the leader, trajectory
might evolve, participants are not quite
controllable but still self-coordinated.
1.2. THE PACK (AS IN A WOLF PACK)
The OWEE group can also display the
behaviour of a pack, where the group will
benefit from the specific behaviours of a
few members who might dare doing things
others might not feel allowed to. A
“leader”, ”deviant”, ”alpha” or just
“diplomat” researcher will give access to a
specific setting or to new informants and
the whole group can immediately benefit
from it. These boundary crossing roles are
often distributed in a group and different
participants will become the “alpha” in
different situations and at different times.
The OWEE protocol gives instant access to
a sort of behavioral capital spread across
the participants and it helps accessing
unpredicted and unpredictable resources
and people. In other words, “curiosity feeds
the cats”.
In London (January 2018), we visited
Containerville, and could walk around the
area but only from the outside of the
offices. We could see that in one of the
containers a business meeting was
occurring. Two participants dared
interrupting them and asked them about
their experience of the area. The rest of the
group rushed to listen to their testimony.
During the Paris StreetArt OWEE (June 2018),
a sub group wandered through the
labyrinthic corridors of the Frigo. It was a
purely improvised visit, we were expected
by no one and knew no one. On two
occasions we literally intruded into the
working spaces of two tenants, led by a
researcher with a video camera. We were
not necessarily welcome but we could
engage with them nevertheless, and
though we were scolded for intruding in
such a way, we spent an extra hour there
and discovered a whole new dimension of
the history of the space.
AUTHOR: OLIVIER IRRMANN (ISEN Lille)
This chapter has been published on the RGCS website in the blog section.
37
2. ACCESS, SOCIALIZATION AND PARALLEL PROCESSING
2.1. POWER AND SOCIALITY
Walking in a group/swarm/pack has a few
consequences. First, it gives participants
legitimacy to access places they might not
have entered as individuals, and sometimes
even in a slightly forceful way. When 20 or
30 people arrive unannounced in a site,
doors often open even for a few minutes.
When the group is announced in advance,
we often meet well informed and
networked actors who bring higher quality
insights. Second, the group/swarm/pack re-
socializes the research activity. Talking
together for a long time, to different
people, in different places reconnects
participants to the social dimension of the
inquiry. They connect across organizational
and occupational boundaries, compare
feelings and experiences, and engage in
on-the-spot dialectic analysis. In other
words, OWEE becomes a mobile third place
(close to the original meaning of the term
by Ray Oldenburg) for research on
collaborative and creative spaces,
hanging out for the pleasure of good
company and lively conversation.
Finally, the group also generates external
attention and curiosity, from time to time. In
a few instances, complete strangers joined
the group or engaged into the same
activities. The open philosophy of the
expedition allows and also welcomes such
improbable meetings that are the heart of
the idea of reconnecting to the
environment and social fabric of places
and spaces.
2.2. PARALLEL AND REDUNDANT PROCESSING
In the OWEE protocols, we observe parallel
processing of information. We see quite
many people taking pictures of the same
areas and talking about the same places.
The sheer mass of people engaged in the
activity is increasing quite a lot the diversity
of experiences and therefore extends the
quality of reflections about the places. In
London we visited a locally celebrated site
of “Brutalist” architecture and many
conversations pointed out how much this
was similar to buildings around the world,
from Helsinki to downtown Montreal and
how the representation and images of such
landscapes differed. The group brings a
diversity of experiences that can be shared
instantly.
Parallel processing means also the
production of a lot of redundant
information. It struck me that people do
mostly take the same pictures from mainly
the same point of view. In the London
expedition when we went to visit the
rooftop of the Village Underground
http://www.villageunderground.co.uk/abo
ut/> most of us took and published on
the social media the same pictures with the
same perspectives. As such it is interesting
to see that we do share a common visual
culture of space, but we might think about
how to interpret it and leverage these
redundant observations for further analysis.
2.3. PONDERING AND REFLEC TING
Walkers stop from time to time. Physical
limitations of the human body make seating
together a de facto compulsory activity,
considering the expedition might last the
whole day. These pauses are a good
opportunity to reflect and ponder about
what has been seen and experienced. With
a bit of facilitation, the pauses become
intense moments of debates and reflection.
They can also be used for data production,
from sharing photos on a repository or
posting them on social media, to writing
collaboratively. The pauses are mostly
improvised and the group stops wherever it
can, often in a café or a public space. This
activity of pondering and reflecting
collectively brings a moment of
deceleration to the expedition, a rhythmic
pattern to a day of exploration.
38
Chapter 2.5: Notes as gestures: The use of l og books in
ethnographical work
Our learning expeditions in collaborative
spaces and our ethnographies of new work
practices have been the opportunity to use
numerous diaries, reports and note books to
keep a trace of what we saw, what people
said or how we felt.
Such a practice is not new in ethnography
and auto-ethnography. Ethnographers
have always collected and self-produced
the narrative traces of their experience.
They have always done it asynchronously
(e.g. at the end of the day…) or
synchronously (in the flow of what they
were observing). We would like to stress
here an embodied, material, visible aspect
of ethnography as a practice: the gesturing
of notes, sketches, traces of our shared
experience with the people and societies
explored.
More than ever, in a digital, largely
disembodied, world, gestures and physical
movements of the ethnographer are key
micro-practices on the field. Our
ethnographies and learning expeditions (in
particular the long ones with two, three or
four days of field trips with a group) have
made this issue particularly visible.
First, using expressively, obviously, visibly
logbooks is a way to create boundaries with
people encountered. As shown by Camille
Bosqué in her ethnography of makerspaces
and FabLabs, it is a way to create a tie and
a bubble with the people we met. In the
context of our ethnographies and walks, we
noticed the importance of using our
logbook, putting it on a table while talking,
putting a pen close to it, drawing a figure,
a map, a story… and letting implicitly the
people interviewed taking the diary and
writing, drawing on it (see Picture 5 below).
Taking at some point a second pen, and
doing it together. Some very shy, distant
people became much more confident at
this point. Most of all, this co-produced and
shared trace has been often important to
express subtle things about the place. To
help us remember months after our
ethnographies, we sometimes attached a
picture of the sketch co-produced. In her
doctoral work, one of us (Albane
Grandazzi) uses the notion of “boundary
gesture” to label this kind of bounding,
spacing, spanning embodied practice.
PICTURE 5 : THE USE OF LOG BOOK S AS BOUNDAR Y G ESTUR ES (SOURCE: AUTHOR S’ OWN)
Then, in particular in the context of makers,
hackers, coworkers, i.e. DIY and DIT
oriented doocracies, this visible doing has
been a way to find our place in. We are also
AUTHORS: FRANÇOIS-XAVIER DE VAUJANY (PSL, Paris-Dauphine University) & ALBANE
GRANDAZZI (PSL, Paris-Dauphine University).
This chapter has been published on the RGCS website in the blog section.
39
doers, we write, sketch (at least we try…),
share, make things concrete and visual! In
a place where one of us (François-Xavier
de Vaujany) conducted another
ethnography (an artistic makerspace in
Paris), we even felt that it was a way to
share a collective dance, to be
harmoniously in the shared movement that
made the place.
In the context of Open Walked Event Based
Experimentations (OWEE), the visible and
shared use of log books is important, but
also different. We explore societies, but we
also share an experience with a group of
people who is also part of the observation.
Taking notes, in a shared or selfish way is not
easy (we move and we walk a lot) and
probably counter-productive. But we have
also started to experiment the practice
while seated, in more transitory situations…
To be continued…
40
Chapter 2.6: Co-producing traces from our walked discussions: the
use of digital tools
Our learning expeditions and field trips
following the OWEE protocol have often
resulted in co-produced traces by means of
various tools: posts on blogs (e.g. RGCS
WordPress, the Conversation, LSE Business
Review, LSE impact blog…) written by
coordinators during and after the event,
social networks (in particular Twitter,
Facebook and Instagram), geolocalization
systems (e.g. Samsung health systems) but
also more specific collaborative
technologies such as Stample or
Framapads. The use of these tools aimed at
narrating our events as they were
happening, learning and reflecting from
them, searching for political impact
through better integrative and connective
narratives.
We would like here to give a short feedback
about two technologies we used:
Framapads and Twitter and how they help
us to co-produce reflexive traces of our
events.
1. FRAMAPAD: GREAT OPEN TECHNOLOGY, BUT ATMOSPHERE AND
ANIMATION ARE KEY
Framapad is a great open source
technology developed by Framasoft
3
(a
fantastic project which was highly inspiring
for our first White Paper). This associative
network offers various open technology
which are seen as a way to ‘degoogle’ our
societies and bring control and power back
to citizens themselves. Framasoft offer thus
numerous alternatives to Google
Technology such as You Tube, Google doc
or the Google search engine.
Since one year, we have had the
opportunity to use a technology called
Framapad to a dozen of reflexive processes
before, during and after our learning
expeditions. Framapad is an on-line word
processor that makes it possible to write
and record what is written. All the
participants just need to know and access
the Framapad set up for the event. Then,
everybody can write directly in the
document including our not a pre-defined
structure. Interestingly, each participant
has a specific color once s/he starts writing,
and can link this color to his name. A history
of the document s continuously kept, and
the process of writing is extremely horizontal
(no particular privileges linked to the person
setting the link or an administrator).
After numerous frustrations expressed after
our events (and the traces we kept from
them), Framapad seems to be a very
interesting way to co-produce a trace.
Based on the events during which we used
it, we see three main practices which can
be enacted from Framapad (see Table 6).
Each of this practice is likely to make more
collaborations in the event, and to produce
more narrations in it likely to extend, to
connect it to other events.
3
Please donate to Framasoft, a generous, open,
responsible project!
AUTHORS: VIVIANE SERGI (ESG UQAM) & FRANÇOIS-XAVIER DE VAUJANY (PSL, Paris-
Dauphine University)
41
PRACTICES BASED ON
FRAMAPAD
DESCRIPTION
LIMITATIONS
Practice 1: Onsite
emulation with
projection on a wall
Projecting the Framapad
during its use onsite (e.g. a
seated discussion, the
concluding discussion in a
seminar room or a
collaborative space). It incites
people to write something and
see their colour appearing on
the wall. It is emulating. If two
or three people start playing
the game (and this can be
agreed), the dynamic can
come very quickly.
The size of the projected
screen makes that quickly it is
not possible to see all the
dynamic. This can be a good
thing (then people look at their
smartphone or laptop) but
also very quickly… this can
become distracting.
Practice 2: Writing of
a collective summary
and report of the
event
People can write collectively a
summary of the event, during
and after it. This is a way to
create a common memory
and a common at large.
Very quickly, 10, 20… 50 (we
have experimented different
sizes) of people writing
together creates a messy
result. Creating (even after a
collective loop) a first structure
can be manipulative. Creating
a set of different Framapad
(i.e. introducing a revise and
re-submit process with
different versions) can be
facilitated by the tool itself. But
this requires a form of
community management
through one or two leaders…
likely to push their own view of
the topic. And conversely, not
trying to look for community
managers can make the
process… unfinished. The
document is never cleaned
and remains very messy and
unreadable (which has been
the case in several of our
experimentations).
Practice 3:
Coordinating the
walk and the all
process
People comment, criticize,
guide, deconstruct loudly the
process of walking, visiting,
discussing of the visit. It turns to
be something between a
reportage and a ‘command
car’.
The Framapad is then just a
way to have a trace of some
live decisions and reflexivities.
TABLE 6: FRAMAP AD BASED PR ACTICES OF CO-PRODUCING TRACES
All three practices have their advantages
and their drawbacks. We did not find a
stable path to gather collective narrations
for our OWEE based learning expeditions.
But one key lesson keeps coming back from
our experimentation: the general mood of
42
the experimentation (goodwill…) and the
community management (and his/her
kindness) are key in the process…
2. THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA: COMBINING WALKED WITH DIGITAL
NAVIGATION
Social media (in particular Twitter) have
been at the heart of our experimentations
since the beginning. We have always
tweeted our events since the beginning
(e.g. our two first event in Berlin and
Barcelona). Creating a specific hashtag,
diffusing it to the participants ahead of the
event and to all people likely to be
interested has always been part of our
processes (with a couple of exceptions at
the beginning).
Interestingly, we quickly noticed that the
use of Twitter was not limited to
communication, and included a few other
practices. It was also a narration we could
play with, a set of narrations we could
combine and re-introduce later in the flow
of later events. Based on our experiences,
we identified a number of key practices, as
summarized in table 2. This list is not
exhaustive, and other practices could
emerge in other events.
TWITTER PRACTICES
DESCRIPTION
LIMITATIONS
Practice 1: Commenting
and sharing the walk and
process of the learning
expedition
Participants can share on-
the-fly observations, take
pictures and videos of what
they see, hear, feel… and
comment on the visual
elements they have
captured. They can also
share their general
experience, and include
more global reflections
about what they are hearing,
seeing and discovering.
The use of the Twitter
account can be a way to re-
tweet, combine, comment
on the comments and put (or
not) some directions to it.
However, the sum of the
tweets rarely creates a
coherent narration per se.
Unless some kind of analysis is
made after the event, the
traces left on social media
remain slightly disjointed.
Also, the challenge of
tweeting while listening to a
presentation and even more
while walking should not be
underestimated. Users that
have already learned the
codes of Twitter will be more
comfortable in developing
their comment in the format
of a tweet and also in playing
with hashtags.
Practice 2: Putting
publications in the live
tweet
Books, articles, scientific
interviews and podcasts,
research posts… have often
been put in the line of tweets
by participants and
community managers. We
often noticed that it
attracted a new readership.
Tweeting research in
Choosing one research
instead of another is not
neutral. And tweeting too
much research can be
counter-productive. A
balance must be found
between references and on-
site observations.
43
context… makes it more
contextual.
Practice 3: Connecting
the event in time and
space
We re-tweeted videos, posts,
articles about past events in
context which made us
remind them. We also
diffused information about
future events (RGCS events or
non RGCS events) in the live
tweets. We used as much as
we can this flow of attention.
Talking too much about the
past or the future can cut us
from ongoing experience and
maybe favour
disembodiment.
Practice 4: Building the
RGCS network itself,
cultivating a sense of
belonging and
happening
We mention as much as we
could RGCS coordinators
and RGCS friendly people…
This was a way to connect
with them and indirectly, a
powerful maintenance or
developmental practice for
our network. Sometimes, we
wonder if Twitter is not also
great for ‘internal’
communication.
This practice can also result in
a ‘club’ atmosphere and can
become be non-inclusive.
TAB LE 7: TWITTER BASED PR ACTICES IN OU R LEARNING EXPEDITIONS
All practices described in table 2 have
been largely present in our last OWEE
events. In the context of events like learning
expeditions, social media like Twitter offer
an easy and very flexible way to integrate
comments, photos and short clips while the
learning expedition is happening – and also
to ‘naturally’ create a timeline of the event,
from multiple viewpoints. With the
exceptions of its technical limitations (e.g.
the number of characters), Twitter allows for
a wide variety in style, when it comes to the
content that is shared. Hence, one of the
most interesting effects from using this
platform is the accumulation of tweets that
have spontaneously been produced by
different participants without any form of
coordination, each with their personal
voice and their own specific message.
Using these public platforms also makes
visible the OWEE approach, making it
known in the community, and generates
inputs that might become data for
researchers who may or may not have
participated to the event. Having a main
account, like that of @collspaces is a useful
complement to the accounts of individual
participants, as it can be used to curate the
content that has been produced. It can be
used to amplify some tweets (like, for
example, the ones that have captured a
key feature of the event), to disseminate
the main observations and reflections and
also to summarize what might have been
expressed in several tweets. In this, the
importance of hashtags should not be
downplayed. On Twitter (it would also be
the case on Instagram), hashtags are
crucial – especially having a devoted
hashtag for the event, which will allow to
trace back all the content produced during
the event. The main hashtag for the event
should hence be carefully chosen, and
communicated in time and clearly to the
participants.
44
Chapter 2.7: C oll aborative Ethnography in the Walk: The use of
Camcorders
Ethnography is increasingly a collective
thing, involving teams of researchers,
members of the society explored, and
people co-exploring from a distance with
digital tools.
In the context of the Research Group on
Collaborative Spaces (RGCS), we
organized numerous learning expeditions,
field trips and stays which are opportunities
to discover, deconstruct, share, new work
practices. These expeditions are more and
more part of a research and political new
research practice we co-produce at the
level of the network itself: OWEE (which
stands for Open Walked Event Based
Experimentations). OWEE implies both an
openness to any stakeholder in the
exploration and co-construction, an
intense use of social media to share and
extend the experience, and a strong sense
of improvisation (a major part of the places
and people we visit are improvised in the
flow of our questions and discussions). The
protocol shares some similarities with the
French “Dérive” (e.g. drifting)
conceptualized by Guy Debord.
Walk, embodiment and gestures are a key
part of our emergent protocol. We would
like to focus here on a key embodied
practice which is playing an increasing role
in our expedition: the role of camcorders in
the social dynamic of our events (see their
use below in the context of our learning
expedition about street art in Paris
#OWEESA).
PICTURE 6: THE USE OF A CAMCORDER AT OUR STREET ART L EARNI NG EXPEDI TION IN PARI S
(SOURCE: AUTHORS’ OWN)
The network has two camcorders at its
disposal. We have started to use them in the
context of two learning expedition: one in
Paris about street art (June, 14th) and
another one in Boston about the opening
and hacking of knowledge in elite
institutions (July, 24th-26th). Anna used the
first camera in the former, and François in
the latter. We would like to give here a first
feedback about the use of this practice in
the context of collaborative ethnography.
Our use of camcorder was twofold:
keeping a memory of our events (to store
them and diffuse them on line), doing
crossed interviews of participants and
people encountered (individual and
collective, seated or walked). Smartphone
could be a way to do both things, but we
quickly realized the technical limitations of
these tools.
Interestingly, beyond their precious use to
collect ethnographical material. Paris and
Boston’s experience have been a way to
AUTHORS: ANNA GLASER (ESCP Europe) & FRANÇOIS-XAVIER DE VAUJANY (PSL, Paris-
Dauphine University)
This chapter has been published on the RGCS website in the blog section.
45
realize another key aspect of camcorders.
They (re)introduce gestures in the narration
and in data collection. Holding the
camcorder is also holding obviously and
visibly the line of narration. For those
interviewed, the cam and the gesture
introduced a small tension, a solemnity in
the process of interviewing. The cam
creates a bubble for those interviewed and
those seeing the scene from the outside. It
makes obvious that an interview is going on
(in contrast, today’s tool of data collection
are so miniaturized that they become
almost invisible, and part of everyday
objects, i.e. smartphone).
In some context (see the Picture 7 of this
interview below), the cam can be put
somewhere and everybody can feel part of
the scene and interview; nobody holds the
line.
PICTURE 7: PUTTI NG THE CAMERA FOR A COLLECTI VE DI SCUSSI ON AT MIT SLOAN BUSINESS
SCHOOL (SOURCE: AUTHORS’ OWN)
Gesturing the cam is thus a powerful way to
invite narrative and reflective perspectives
into the walk and discussion.
We are only at the beginning of our
experimentation with this tool and other
ones (e.g. Framapads, blogs and social
networks). Cams have obviously a great
potential to introduce new embodiments,
new spatialities, new narratives and new
temporalities into our events. Among the
other experiments we have on mind, the
sharing of the cam is one of them. In the
context of our next learning expedition, we
would like to invite each participant to hold
at some point the camcorder and to do
films and interviews with is. Let’s see what
this mediation will create for the group and
for the network.
To be continued…