IdeaSPARK | SparkCon

ideaSPARK

Workshop: “Activating our community with local creativity”
Join other members of our community in a problem-solving session to solve the problems you want to address. We will solicit ideas from the group on their pressing issues, take a vote on the few we can solve, and then organize teams of diverse talents to come up with solutions. Initial solutions will be presented at the end of the day, but those groups who are inspired are encouraged to work a bit through the weekend and present their final solutions on Sunday.

These solutions are not for commercial use, they are for us to come up with concrete solutions to the things we think are important. We will publish and promote these results as much as possible. Ultimately we’d love to see these projects get funding and become implemented in full scale with these team members as participants or advisors.

Participation is limited to 100 participants, so sign up now!

This is a departure from earlier workshops. In 2006 we had speakers share personal thoughts on creative culture, and had very open-ended workshops on how to define a local thriving creative scene. For results from the first workshops see the SPARKcon comment.

In 2007, we had speakers present themselves and also present a challenge to the audience on issues that needed to be addressed. The ensuing workshops gave some results on how to attack these problems in our community. Final summaries of this work is currently in process.

2008 ideaSPARK schedule

Friday Sep 19
9a: arrive with excitement, go over purpose and scope
9:30 – solicit ideas (up to one per person) on SPECIFIC problems in the community they want to address
10:15 – vote on most important task you want to work on
11:00 – break into teams for each project (each project will have interdisciplinary teams)
11:30 – introduce each other on teams, map out an afternoon strategy
12:00 – go to lunch with teams, analyze problem

1:30 – return to workshop, each team finds a table and begins work on solving the problem
4:30 – presentations on the problem and solution found in the workshop. Ech team announces if they will continue to refine the idea for the Sunday presentation.
5:15 – go get a drink or dinner with your team if you like
7:00 – go to Moore Square for danceSPARK (7p) or fashionSPARK (8p) or anything else on our full calendar.

Sunday Sep 21
2p: final presentations from each group and list of things needed for implementation
3:30p: other summary comments and suggestions for SPARKcon going forward

2008 ideaSPARK sponsors
Urban Design Center