Online:Offline:Online – Thoughts post-event

I’ve just got home from the Online:Offline:Online conversation at the South Bank Centre, with a head full of questions. I was really pleased to have such an eclectic mix of people in the room, and took some really interesting thoughts out of the main debate – particularly ideas about digital littering, about how we preserve and curate memories and representations for future generations (and our future selves), the potential freedom of online space in countries/regimes where people do not have the luxury to meet and debate physically, questions about whether we should refigure the metaphor of space in relation to digital stuff and think instead about a range of tools we use to inhabit the world we live in, and much more. A big thank you to everyone who came along and participated.

One of the most interesting things, perhaps, was that there ended up being two conversations, one in physical space (the SBC) and one online on twitter (#wefoundmaterials). Unfortunately we didn’t manage to find a way for those two conversations to interact with and inform each other. We deliberately didn’t project live tweets as I for one have been to events where I’ve found this extremely distracting, but it’s interesting that one agreement we seemed to reach was that it’s where on and offline meet that the interesting stuff happens, but that didn’t happen in the event itself. I find it intriguing that different things were said on and offline – was it a matter of time and etiquette, or does digital space (which we can broadcast into without having to wait for others to make a point or finish a line of questioning) allow us the freedom to say things we aren’t comfortable saying in a room of people?

This opens up questions, relevant I think to Found Materials as a group of people interested in conversation and debate, about how you create spaces for meaningful conversation. We were particularly keen to get a wide range of people in the room with different experiences and ideas – which obviously means people are coming from different angles, with different vocabularies and different levels of experience. How can we find ways to connect across disciplines and experiences to push, challenge and develop our own thinking?

And then finally there was an element of debate about whether we were having an ‘old’ debate (and whether that mattered), and then indeed, what it was that was worth having a conversation about at all. What are the ideas, the nubs of contention in this realm of place/narrative/digital/physical that are worth exploring?

I’m really interested to hear peoples’ responses to the event – and to these themes (above): the content and strands of conversation – what’s worth talking about? And to the question of how we create spaces for meaningful exchange and debate.