Connecting the Dots :: Speed Dating Culture and Technology Innovaters

As I mentioned in my last post, MUSE II was designed with cultural engagement at the core of our whole plan. The biggest challenge in doing leading edge research within our mandate was finding the right cultural groups who had existing content and audiences, as well as the interest and capacity to experiment with new mobile technologies, and then connecting them with leaders in mobile technology innovation who could pull projects together. With an end goal of inspiring innovative project ideas that are both innovative and culturally relevant, we needed these two groups to collaborate. As folks from these sectors don't tend to naturally collaborate, some MUSE-Matchmaking was in order. 

Our first call for proposals for MUSE II had us sending out two distinct outreach flyers - one to cultural and community groups, and a different set to the local digital media community. We invited them to a unique matchmaking event at Steamworks in Vancouver, and over 100 people showed up. Depending on which category of organization you were in (there were 3 actually: cultural group, mobile tech developer, and systems integrator / developer) you were given a coloured dot to wear. After a few lively presentations on what true collaboration looked like, and hearing stories from other mobile technology success stories - including MUSE I project Get Your Vote On, and the Murmur project out of Toronto - we sat back and let people loose on a "speed dating" exercise.

I've organized a few "speed-geek" events at my annual Web of Change conference, but doing one with this many people, from so many diverse backgrounds, and trying to spur meaningful conversation about such a new topic was definitely a challenge. It was a lively afternoon and very apropo that we held it at a bar!

Were we successful in our matchmaking? This time I would say a resounding yes. 2 weeks later MUSE received over 20 full proposals from the community, all of which had to have a technology developer, a cultural partner, and a killer idea. During a gruelling afternoon, the judging panel whittled that list down to the strongest 5 who were invited to prepare a much more detailed pitch and development budget before our judging panel to see which projects we would be able to fund. The winners: Metrocode, Mobile VIFF, and PocketCine were the strongest of the bunch.