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CovJam
CovJam, local government's first mass online brainstorm to harness wisdom, passion and great ideas from people who care about Coventry took place on 29, 30 June and 1 July 2010.
What is a jam?
The term jam is borrowed from jazz – reflecting the nature of a spontaneous event where participants (jammers) respond to each other with no real idea of how things will emerge – just like a jamming musical session. They are on-line events so people can participate from wherever they can get internet access, but it's more of an on-line brainstorm than a chatroom or a Facebook page.
Jams are used
to enable broad collaboration, gain new perspectives on problems and challenges, and find important patterns and themes -
all with the goal of accelerating decision making and action. It asks the question "Anyone out there got a good idea?"
Jams are grounded in "crowdsourcing", also known as "wisdom of the crowds", whereby the collective instincts
of crowds often turn out to be right.
Has this been attempted before?
IBM has run different types of Jams
before, both internally and for specific organisations across the world. For example, one of IBM's early jams, to explore
ideas surrounding emerging technologies and how they may spawn new high-growth businesses, engaged over 140,000 IBM staff
and clients. It generated 37,000 new ideas of which 31 were progressed. Ultimately, IBM committed $100 million in development
funds to the 10 most promising ideas to get them started.
Earlier this year Global Pulse 2010, an IBM jam sponsored
by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and with the active participation of the White House, brought together
individuals and organizations from around the world on key issues facing communities everywhere, with a particular focus on
the developing world. It involved 10k participants from 175 countries
How did the jam work in Coventry?
IBM approached Coventry earlier this year and invited us to be their first UK local authority partner in a pilot project to test the concept of jams in the public sector here. As a result we ran a mini Jam with invitees from as wide and diverse a range of people as possible. We called our event the CovJam, and it took place on 29 and 30 June and 1 July.
Jammers could log into the jam site at any time over the three days we are running the CovJam. The site was monitored, policed (inappropriate material can be removed quickly) and updated live by IBM from their jam office in Washington. Back in Coventry council staff, staff from partner organisations and other volunteers facilitated five separate themes, with a range of invited VIPs and subject matter experts on hand to inject new ideas into discussions, pose questions and pick up emerging issues. Discussion trends, polls, hot topics etc were identified using data mining tools.
The themes
Each theme had a main host who opened each theme and got the discussions going. There were several facilitators for each theme working in three hour shifts from 8:00am to 8:00pm. They were not necessarily experts in the theme and their role was to keep things moving, open up new threads based on emerging themes and topics etc.
The themes discussed included:
- The rebirth of Coventry: The urban design for a future city. What do we do to the centre of Coventry to make people want to live here, work here, shop here, socialise here?
- Sent to Coventry: Be inventive. What does Coventry really want to be known for?
- Aspiring Coventry: Yes we can! Aiming high and fulfilling our potential. How can the people of Coventry believe in themselves and their city?
- Community Cohesion: Getting on together and celebrating diversity. As the city continues to grow and change, will it remain relaxed and at peace with itself with its citizens feeling a strong sense of place and able to get along with each other
- Citizens in the driving seat: The relationship between the state and the individual
What happens after the CovJam?
IBM uses sophisticated data mining software to produce a detailed report that analyses trends, hot topics, emerging issues and so on, which we can use to develop our thinking and policies on our themes. We also asked for a series of outcomes to be agreed between ourselves and IBM so we were clear about what we wanted to achieve through the CovJam.