“Media College” platform for Périfééries

To meet a need for creative, intellectual emulation and the production of ideas for one of the axes of the Saint-Denis (93) city’s bid for the title of European Capital of Culture 2028, the best way for me was to create a digital tool for collective intelligence, which has borne fruit.

Creating moments of creative synergy between people who don’t know each other, who are volunteers, who may only come once to the proposed cycle of meetings, and even getting them to come, is a challenge. This was the difficulty faced by the Périfééries project team (Saint-Denis (93)’s bid to become European Capital of Culture 2028, led by Juliette Bompoint). The “media college”, one of the project’s eight areas of work, was struggling to get people together, and meetings were having trouble bringing people together.

I was invited to attend one of the meetings, and it became clear that I could provide a constructive energy boost in the short time (six months) available for gathering ideas. I proposed that from then on, meetings would be held by videoconference, over short periods (1h30), with ideas collected online via a digital cooperation tool of my own devising. Each meeting began with a brainstorm on the themes to be worked on during the meeting, then the participants were invited to write in the collective intelligence tool. Their contents were linked to each other, and from one meeting to the next, we benefited from the structured trace of previous people’s proposals. In this way, even a one-time visitor could be linked to and contribute to a building that was clear, accessible and open to his or her participation. Digital tools, when used properly, can help to foster links.

I didn’t use an existing commercial platform, but instead built a very easy-to-use cooperation tool, ready to use in 5 minutes, based on the open-source software SPIP, which preserves the heritage of this moment of constructive emulation. This tool enabled me to get the most out of the meetings I was in charge of running.

In the end, Saint-Denis’s candidacy was not selected (Bourges was chosen to be the European Capital of Culture in 2028), but the way in which we worked to collect ideas was rich in lessons.

Collective intelligence tool

https://www.benoitlabourdette.com/_docs/projets/2022/2022_perifeeries_college_medias/