it’s settled: presentation was held (think it went quite well), the mind “opens” for the final act, drawing upon the fresh memory of today – in two respects

for today: very nice ideas (first idea had an amazing design, very impressive – none of the others [including of course our group] comes near this innovate mode of design as well as presentation), the theory input was also nice [in particular the linking from our sessions with the stages in theory-u, very illustrative)

in total: regarding the whole seminar, the following aspects appears noteworthy:
- multi-disciplinarity alone does not lead to „greater“/better results – its about the social technique that is used; the used one, as marked in pre-reflection, turned out very nice (admittingly ;)
- my adjective to describe the whole seminar is “applied” –> the sociologist in me says “neat” (in particular the focus on observation, a sociologist core category), the philosopher “naja” (in particular because of a medium attention to arguments, a philosophical core category) – this means two things
#1: insights gained are very useful for business students that (a combination from stereotypes + observation) are hardly used to such thinking patterns; for philosophers who are used to concepts like emergence or creatio ex nihilo (in a non-theological but theological sense), there a (in comparison) fewer insights
#2: I do not fully agree with the label “philosophy of science” for the content. although the context is science, the (felt) notion of applied leads to another conclusion. as it was mentioned today, the whole project can be better labelled as applied knowledge technique (or, as the title of the phd-course rightly says: a form of “design thinking”). to put it on a fundamental epistemic level with Kant and the likes, that does not seem appropriate

so much for that – finally (+summary): it is really astonishing, how fast a knowledge transformation passes by!

g

based on an intuition of one member (I guess), we decided to use more "multi", ie a second projector that displays the interactive part as kind of "basso continuo". let's see...

PS: PS: I realize this blog has a strange life of its own – although articles were written on different days, it sometimes groups them under one... that is what you get when you do not use g**gle stuff :)

with sunday, everything will be set (only minor details remain open). it is funny/interesting to look back (ie beginning march) and to see what has been done so far... amazing, how an initial idea turned into something completely different! also, the social/group dynanism is impressive ("group" is not a factor often considered in philosophy). to sum up, it was a really nice experience. i am looking forward what the theoretical reflection (after all the presentations) will have in peto

after our meeting yesterday we decided to cut back in terms of use of multi-media - too much distracts from the content. we rather stick to more dynamism that arises from personal communication

for our presentation, we decided to make a short movie - partly funny, partly serious. I wonder whether the tendency to go multimedia in presentations is per se a good thing or not - in particular in phiilosophy, one tends to be critical towards this -> the form (ie the presentation) may be clouding the strenght of the content (ie the argument). but maybe this only holds for existing knowledge... new knowledge, new form?

the more meetings, the more concrete - guess this is not always the case. but for our prototype, it's definetly true. having had an intense session on thursday, also the details become preciser - and, surprisengly, harmonize with all the rest (at least that's my perception). my part (introduction and presentation as well as specification of org-chart /structure) has reached a status of preliminary completion - let's see whether there will be major changes on the next meeting or not

during the final preparation of next week, I came up with a new name for your institution that really rocks: IRIS – an acronym for Institute for the Identification of Relevant Issues of Society. one the one hand, it gives a clear idea what it is about, on the other hand it is a great metapher with regards to LOOKING for issues. how do you observe/look for something? - with the help of your iris !! – I really like it :)

the only downside is that you should not use an iris as logo (if we make one) - think that reminds people on big brother (or the former Wiener Südbahnhof...)

the second meeting on the new idea was also very fruitful – there will be some nice prototypes for the coaching meeting on Tuesday. hope that our plans concering visualization (pezi-presentation from one of the other groups really impressed us in terms of usability and possibilities to visualize)

in our meeting today we really got things going, in particular how the "big" prototype agenda of an idea of a guy meeting an the institute should look like - the others are kind of "smaller" ones

methodical sidenote: it was particulary helpful that we meet in a class room at the NIG where we could visualize our ideas on the blackboard (simple but very effectice) - see below for one illustration (can only link it due that this blog cannot store anymore pictures...)

http://kct4.wikispaces.com/file/view/03052011429.jpg/225746722/03052011429.jpg

after the easter-break, things changed radically. put differently, the simple idea from the outdoor session has now been transformed into something that is really graspable. it is about an institute that aims to identify problems or issues that are of high relevance for society. we aim to work out a concept how such institution might look like, in particular:
- how does it work?
- how is it structured?

only little connex to the initial topic - but way more interesting!

although we have not yet developed preliminary final prototypes (ie agreed on different versions of the content), it got an idea for the design / viusual presentation of the prototype

instead of "just" making a concept in word-format, one could make an visually appealing ppt which really makes you "hungry" for the concept. this means using a lot of pictures and less text - both should in particular irritate (in a positive manner) and not simply show "how to do" (it would be closer to the requirement to develop something really new, although it is not a revolution per se)

for an example see this: fam-unternehmen_quanti (pptx, 4,620 KB)

outdoor session turned out to be quite unusual, but promising in several respects. the shift of our topic was really a good thing as this one seems way more interesting (in particular in that respect that you can have more ideas about the one we focussed on before). I don't know yet which observation methods will be used (if we use any in an explicit manner), but this idea really seems promising - lets see how your prototyping unteil 10th develops