Second OrganiCity Open Call Clinic held in London

The London OrganiCity team hosted its second Open Call Clinic on Tuesday 14th June at the Urban Innovation Centre.

Alongside partners, Imperial College and Intel, we welcomed almost 30 experimenters from across the UK to the event – with one person travelling from Paris to attend!

With the first open-call deadline now approaching, John Lynch from Future Cities Catapult gave a brief overview of the OrganiCity project for newcomers and then opened the floor up for questions around the open-call process, platform and tools.

The clinic not only gave experimenters the chance to ask the OrganiCity team general and technical questions about the open-call process, but also allowed them to meet other experimenters, share ideas and gather feedback on their proposals.

Some of the questions we heard, included:

• How can we better access the data available in the tools?

More information on the tools is available in our “Experimentation as a Service” guide. Some of the tools are not yet available, but this document serves to illustrate the principles upon which the entire OrganiCity platform will operate. If you have a specific question regarding a city or a particular dataset, please contact helpdesk@organicity.eu.

• Are there specific targets around which stakeholders we should work with?

The only guidance is that you should co-create your experiment with those who might use or be affected by your work. That means adequately engaging stakeholders, communities and organisations who would be impacted by your experiment, with scope to adjusting your experimentation based on their feedback and needs.

• Is the scale of the project important? 

Yes, the scale of your project is important in the context of its feasibility and impact potential. A large-scale experiment may have great potential for impact, but is unlikely to be feasible in the short experimentation period that is available (just 5 months). Conversely, an experiment on a much smaller scale might be feasible, as it requires less time and resources, but may exhibit very low impact potential. Striking the right balance will be important in meeting the requirements of our evaluation process.

• Could you have a project that only produces data?

Yes, but we can’t host data platforms. Please refer back to the three pillars of an experiment: “novel, tools, co-creation,” and the evaluation criteria of: “idea, impact, feasibility” – anything within these boundaries is viable, including the provision of data to the platform.

• Would you offer assistance in building relationships with contacts you have better access to (e.g., local government)?

We can’t guarantee support, but if you’re missing people to collaborate with, just post it on the Facebook page or use our scenarios tool. Co-creation is part of the equation that makes a good project, we’ll do our best to publicise your effort through our various channels.

The first open call deadline is now just over a week away – on the 29th June – so if you have further questions, please check our FAQ and the open call documentation. Or if you can’t find the answer you’re looking for, please contact our helpdesk at helpdesk@organicity.eu.

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