A snapshot of the 1st Conference on Digital mediation – Ajaccio (Corsica) - 19, 20, 21st September 2011

145 highly commited and active participants on the site, 30 active distant participants via a multi-functionnal online platform, 3 days of intense exchanges, making, prototyping, 1 global co-working space, 6 thematics entries, 10 « construction works »..

After 15 years of public actions towards « Access for All » to ICT's, stakeholder's from various fields: social action, education, culture, long life learning, territorial development, digital facilitators gathered to assess and imagine the future of digital mediation, at the invitation of the Collectivité Territoriale de Corse, in parnership with Créatif (formal member of Telecentre Europe) and with the support of various partners (Délégation aux Usages de l'Internet, Ministère de la culture et la communication, Secrétariat Général du Comité Interministériel des villes, European Union, ADEC, ..)

Starting from the shared reality of persistent inequalities of access and uses and, at the same time face, the necessity to develop adapted accompaniments to fit the needs of all targeted individuals, they spent three days building new approaches to digital mediation.

The method chosen gave priority to a materialisation of issues, designing of prospective scenarii making of scale models of future services. Each participant was fully involved in the “co-making” process which relied on service design methods.

The results of this 3 days “work in progress” are available on line, through videos, interviews presentations, pictures.

A short introductory plenary session allowed the drawing of a definition of “digital mediation” and the contextualization of digital mediation with sustainable development and learning communities. Then 6 main thematics:

• Cultures, digital identities and commons,

• e-government, public services, public policies,

• Social innovation: from new working forms to new collective organisations,

• Digital divides, e-inclusion,

• Citizens' expression, digital democracy, e-citizenship,

• Training, Education and educational actions

and the issues related to their relation with digital mediation were targeted in workshops the Monday afternoon. The participants produced at the end of that first day propositions (“construction works”) to be developed the following day. Two of the workshops were fully accessible to distant contributor through a web interface allowing distant involvement.

The second day, each participant got involved in one of the 10 proposed “Construction works”, firstly from the perspective of the end users and then designing a perspective of evolution.

The ten identified “Construction works” were:

• Learning communities, tools of digital mediation on territories

• The telecentre (EPN in French) becomes an incubator for local initiatives

• Digital mediation as a lever for the development of collaborative practices

• Digital mediation as a catalyst for creative expression

• Telecentres collect, indexes and values the "digital common goods"

• Digital mediation “beyond the walls”

• The Telecentre gateway between the user and administrations

• The digital mediator (facilitator) craftsman of the dialogue and co-construction between elected officials and citizens

• The common denominators of digital mediation at European level?

• The place of digital mediation in the eco-system of social inclusion

Each of the group produced a storyboard of the designed service matching the construction work. Each of them is online.

The third day, participants presented to each other their outcomes of their work.

And finally the roadmap of the coming months was drawn:

• gathering and online availability of produced contents

• analysis of all the production,

• making of a “white book of the digital mediation”,

• encounters in November, January, July to follow-up on work started

At the end of Monday and Tuesday evening, a short format of Projects presentations allowed 12 projects to present their work.

The whole event took place in the Congress place of Ajaccio, in rather beautiful and energetic surroundings.

Even though all contents are in French, you are welcome to ask us more details and information about parts of the work most relevant to you !

Indeed Créatif is happy and willing to share with the European network the outcomes of this work and to exchanges with networks with similar organisation of prospective works.

Monday afternoon workshops

Discussion around monday workshops outcomes

Discussion around monday workshops outcomes

Tuesday prototyping

Tuesday prototyping

Tuesday prototyping

Tuesday prototyping

Tuesday prototyping

Tuesday prototyping

Tuesday prototyping

Outside terrace with the 10 "construction works"

The distant/present mutualized working board for the monday afternoon workshops