I Think day five for our team will be seen as a first leap towards a better understanding of what we are exactly doing at POC21. This five-week accelerator is more then a work camp, it is a place where the way of working and living is questioned every day.
Take for example our morning task; all of our team took the responsibility to help prepare the dinner. At 9h30, after the morning meeting we started chopping kilos of vegetables to prepare a meal for 80 people. We didn’t have time to work at our project and in the beginning it was a bit of frustration. After some reflection we concluded that this co-living part has to be taken as serious as our work on the bike. If we want to change society and be more sustainable we have to be that in every aspect of our life, and not only in the project. Investing in a co-living system is therefor as import as starting to work on the battery
After the meal we were invited to follow a short media training and introduction to the different aspects of talking to the press. Friday will be a busy day and press from all over France will come to have a first look at what is happening at POC21. We are excited but also a bit afraid to bring our project to the larger audience. What we need is a big rethink about the global design of the project, it just happens that is the next thing we are convoked to.
This Designers moment was one of the most intense and also emotional brainstorms we had at POC for the moment. They wanted to know our ‘business model’, our future plans, way of working, and practical design questions. Every one of those questions opened new questions and challenges. How can we bring all those ideas we have around the possible uses of Vélo M2 in one easily explainable plan. So what we need is a giant mind map!
But before we have a major talk, we take some time off and I make use of that occasion to talk to Tomas Diez, from Barcelona, the creator of one of the first fablabs in Europe. He gives us tips on our fablab module and hints to what fablabs will be looking like in 2-3 years: http://mtm.cba.mit.edu/
Right before we go to bed we decide to take place at the reunion table and make a giant mind map with all the questions , ideas and possibilities that we had in mind, after discussion our hopes, expectations, possibilities we decide that tonight will not be the night we find our first business model, but what a heck of a day it was, with one big step forward for this beautiful project.
Now it’s time to Party!
Vélo M² 