On Collaboration #7: Paul Kercal, Guildford College

Ahead of our next Group Think event later this month (co-produced with the Barbican Centre), on the subject of collaboration, we've been talking to some of our friends, colleagues and clients about how collaboration fits into their lives and work. So we sent out a little questionnaire and, over the next few weeks, we'll be publishing what everyone told us.

Here's number 7, Paul Kercal, an art teacher and master of collaborative iPad art, as you can see here on iPad Creative.

Who are you and what do you do?

I'm Paul Kercal, a teacher (A-level graphics but also media and IT). I also write books on occasion, draw things on a variety of platforms including iPad, iPhone and Promethean IWB, and am also a youth worker.

Why do you collaborate?

I love collaboration! In the class I like seeing where people take ideas, the more open ended the initial process is the better. I love seeing students work together to solve a problem. On occasion I've set up group art events where people can come together and create artwork with a common theme and that, probably, is where I'm happiest.

Which collaboration tools do you like and why?

I love sketchshare - an app which allows four people to draw and talk to each other at the same time, each on their own iPad but all seeing the results of a group effort. I also love paper, a pencil and a good idea that anyone can latch onto. A new app clibe which does seem like it might have a community aspect to it as well... We'll see how it evolves.

When does collaboration tend to work best?

When people feel warm, comfortable and happy, so venue is very important. Palpable and infectious enthusiasm helps also...

What framework or rules do you need for successful collaboration?

Ideas: how can you take out any complexity?
Materials: can every single person use them?
Preparation: everything done a week ahead, nothing on day before.

Collaboration needs energy.

Briefly describe a collaboration you admire and tell us why you think it works.

I adore sketchbook exchanges and admire anyone who organises one. I love Ready 4 action - a collection of Surrey youth groups who come together to do gardening projects for the elderly or infirm.

When has collaboration gone wrong for you?

Occasionally my dreams have gone further and faster than people can keep up with and I often have to remember to speak slower and listen more :). The biggest collaborative event I organised broke down at the technical stage where I assumed that something which seemed easy would be. Getting the team on the same page is a wonderful thing.

On the BBC's Connected Studio

Last week Sarah and I were lucky enough to get along to the first of the BBC's Connected Studio sessions up in Media City UK, Salford. The CS project is the organisation's latest attempt to negotiate what Project Lead Adrian Woolard terms "the tricky space between innovation and actual production". Previous takes on cracking the area include the Innovation Labs series. I participated in one of those back in 2006 in my role as Somethin' Else's Head of Digital, so I was keen to see this latest manoeuvre. In the event, Sarah and I came away very impressed, both with the quality of the ideas coming from attending teams and with the slick, highly professional and largely successful delivery of the day.

Each of the Connected Studio sessions will take on one of the BBC's so-called "products", which range in size and indeed taxonomical category from say, News or Children's to Radio or - in the case of this inaugural session - Homepage, Search and Navigation. The notion underlying the sessions is that the BBC lacks an easy framework for innovation both by internal and "indie" teams, something with which I think few of us "out here" would disagree. The Connected Studio sets out to rectify that. And before anyone gets suspicious of yet another large organisation paying lip service to open innovation and collaboration (two pet topics of ours here at UC, of course) let me point out that the BBC's Future Media chief Ralph Rivera has put over a million quid of innovation funding on the table. So this is a very real initiative. (Adrian Woolard again: "This isn't just about making staff feel better about themselves.")

The shape of the day was relatively straightforward. After an initial plenary briefing (Adrian introduced the whole shebang and James Thornett and Clare Hudson talked specifically about the HP, search and nav areas), attendees were asked to either get working on ideas either in existing teams or else "advertise" their basic concepts and pull teams together on the fly. I should emphasise that while the day took something from the hack day idea, it wasn't strictly one. Rather it was a "concept hack day", if you like; the hope was that by the end of the day teams would have ideas which, if approved (more of this in a moment) might move on to the early development phase. I particularly liked the fact that ideas in any state of preparation were welcomed, from the vaguest notion through to fully fledged paper prototypes.

While things got underway in the morning, a number of presentations took place in the "speakers' corner" area of the room and I decided to sit through these, out of personal interest but also to gauge what the BBC consider the wider context in which the sessions sit.

• Tim Fiennes discussed the broader search and homepage "market", highlighting in particular that social, search and app-based browsing had had a massive effect on the importance of the HP.
• Tom Broughton gave a very high level but extremely informative breakdown of the technologies the BBC use in this area.
• Phil Poole talked about the new kinds of take on personalisation and participation (which he broke down as Share, Follow, Save and Like); he also touched on how little "active" personalisation was taken up - only 10% of users had taken advantage of this aspect of the BBC HP V3.
• And creative facilitator Linda Cockburn gave an excellent quick masterclass on the art of pitching (keep it clear, graspable, relevant.... and pithy).

Throughout the afternoon these speakers and other CS team members were on hand to give feedback and advice on the developing ideas. The ability to be able to ask questions freely of the HP team and get open and honest answers was very well received by participants. There were also opportunities to test out ideas on real audience members. Some teams pitched in private, a recognition that IP ownership is often a hot potato in the innovation space and a prime concern for indies, although this didn't seem to be a big issue with any of the teams in attendance. I suspect that may vary at other sessions, according to the BBC "product" under consideration, but we'll see.

So, I've mentioned pitches there a couple of times, and here's how the day wound up. Any team who felt that they had an idea ready to pitch to the HP and Nav team could do so... and 23 teams did! Now I confess that, sat in the audience, hearing that 23 teams were about to pitch ideas made my stomach sink somewhat (and to be clear, it was my birthday and I was exceptionally keen to get to the drinks part of the day) but actually it turned out to be a real hoot. Teams were given just two minutes to present - and amazingly only a couple went over, and even then only slightly. The running of this particular bit of the day was exceptionally smooth, with the potential logistical car crash (23 teams changing laptops, monitors and so on) completely avoided. Most teams used paper to present, something which always gladdens my heart, and given the speed with which everyone was racing through their presentations, it reminded me obliquely of a 90-minute Subterranean Homesick Blues*. And most importantly of all, the ideas were all genuinely smart, well thought-through and engagingly presented.

Now I won't go into depth about each idea here, but instead say that a small handful of areas or similar approaches emerged:

• Hyper-local content and services
• Cross-BBC product user journeys
• Smart recommendations
• "Ambient" rather than "active" personalisation
• Sign-in-driven services
• Access to deep archive
• Time-based navigation - and "nowness"
• Editorialised packages  - with potential "talent" involvement

Teams will be told over the next week who gets to go through to the next stage of funded development and here I see the real challenge in the whole initiative. If several teams cover the same ground with very similar ideas - and they did - then how to choose between them? Moreover, is there a way to bring new teams together from those which overlapped conceptually? I was particularly struck that some of the BBC teams had an undeniable advantage when it came to their presentations: they'll have had BBC strategy properly drummed into them, after all! Is there a mechanism which would allow the coming together of internal and BBC teams after the day? I certainly hope so.

It remains to be seen how the initiative pans out - and we'll be watching extremely closely. My ultimate conculsion on the Innovation Labs back in the day was that it was hugely difficult to link the ideas into overall BBC strategy and output. (Short version of my experience: the brilliant coder Adam McGrath, now at Google, and I spent a week paper prototyipng a kind of mash up of Radio 1 and Last.fm; the judges from Radio 1 gave it the thumbs up but six months down the line there was no cash for it as it didn't match the network's strategy at that point.) The way Connected Studio has been set up is specifically to avoid that and I have to say, if the follow-through is a good as the set up then it might just crack this very difficult nut after all.

* For those too young to get that particular reference:

On Collaboration #6: Mark Williams, Heart n Soul

Ahead of our next Group Think event in May (co-produced with the Barbican Centre), on the subject of collaboration, we've been talking to some of our friends, colleagues and clients about how collaboration fits into their lives and work. So we sent out a little questionnaire and, over the next few weeks, we'll be publishing what everyone told us.

Here's number 6, one of our clients, Mark Williams of Heart n Soul.

Who are you and what do you do?

I am Mark Williams and I am the Artistic Director of Heart n Soul. Heart n Soul are one of the UK's leading cultural producing organisations. We make spaces where people can feel safe, creative and free to express themselves and to learn. We work together with people with and without a learning disability.

Why do you collaborate?

The best kind of collaboration for us is one based on a shared sense of purpose, as open a brief as possible and as above the creation of a space where we can all feel safe, creative and free to express ourselves. We collaborate because we want to work with people who know more about certain stuff than we do! We want to learn more, be open to trying new approaches and ways of thinking and together create something far richer and more interesting than we could possibly achieve on our own.

Which collaboration tools do you like and why?

We are experimenting with google plus at the moment for a couple of creative projects and one major international collaborative piece. We like the way that google circles enable a more focussed, transparent and personal/private way of sharing information, photos, audio and film clips, commenting in a chronological way that means everyone involved can follow streams and comments. We are liking Posterous (blog site) as a way of sharing news, influences and milestones in a more public way and Soundcloud for music making and musical collaboration. We are working with ipads as a creative technology and collaboration tool and are loving the speed with which apps can provide accessible, creative and immediate results that can be easily seen across a range of digital channels. Apps we like at the moment are Madpad, Vidrhythm, Video Star, Animoog, ikaoscillator and Green Screen. We are excited about the new update of Garageband which has options for wifi real-time jamming sessions.

In a lateral way, we are enjoying the 'to the side' possibilities of Tumblr - a space where individuals on a project can share and reveal more personal creative sides to them than might be obvious in the main collaboration. By following each other and not being limited by the parameters of the collaboration it is possible to gain additional insights and perspectives around the collaborators which can inform the work together in different and interesting ways.

When does collaboration tend to work best?

When there is a clearly defined concept and lots of creative space to experiment and try things out, learn, improve and combine ideas to make something that did not exist before and that is enhanced by the extended and expanded range of voices and expertise that are shaping the final product.

What framework or rules do you need for successful collaboration?

The space is created by agreeing a set of boundaries and 'rules' that allow everyone to feel ok about trying things out, experimenting, failing and learning. It is important to identify key roles - for example - a concept facilitator who can help guide and inform the rest of the team. Roles and responsibilities are important but again should not be too 'rigid' - there should be plenty of room for left and right turns and clear and transparent ways of keeping in touch with the project (ie google plus) and enough time built in for the right people to meet together with some clear understanding of why they are meeting.

Briefly describe a collaboration you admire and tell us why you think it works.

Hate to blow our own trumpet... but the most exciting, ambitious and very live collaboration that I have ever been involved in has to be the current Dean Rodney Singers. Led by the vision of autisitc artist Dean Rodney, the aim is to explore and create spaces for online and real time collaboration to take place across 7 countries with a mix of 72 disabled and non-disabled band members who together are creating and enhancing 7 dimensions, 23 characters and pieces of music, narrative and dance moves and developing ways that the rest of the world can comment, play and add to the canon of work both online and in a 9 day installation at the South Bank over the summer (during the Paralympics).

It is working because it is coming from a place of everyone believing that it is a good thing to make happen (and that it will happen!); because there is a clear vision mixed with a large amount of not knowing exactly how we are going to realise it (genuinely innovative,creative, exciting and 'on the edge of a precipice' frightening). the people involved are low ego, highly creative, and have a lot of space to experiment in with a clear timeline and simple boundaries.

When has collaboration gone wrong for you?

Collaboration can go wrong when the framework is too creatively restricting and too tight to enable people to do what they do best. This can happen when there is too much direction from the top down and/or a 'box ticking' mentality applied so that a degree of tokenism and looking good in a funding application occurs with out any real authentic substance being allowed to come through.

On Collaboration #5: Debbie Forster, Apps for Good

Ahead of our next Group Think event in May (co-produced with the Barbican Centre), on the subject of collaboration, we've been talking to some of our friends, colleagues and clients about how collaboration fits into their lives and work. So we sent out a little questionnaire and, over the next few weeks, we'll be publishing what everyone told us.

Here's number five in the series, Debbie Forster of Apps for Good.

Who are you and what do you do?

I'm Debbie Forster, COO of CDI Europe, and my work focusses on our Apps for Good programme.

Why do you collaborate?

The best kind starts with people or groups that share a core purpose or aim, once that's in place you are better placed overcome the various challenges that collaboration inevitably throws up. I'm from education, and I find that wanting to make a difference for young people is a powerful driver that can create some great opportunities for collaboration. But then you need to build in personal relationships AND a specific project or piece of work or the collaboration quickly becomes just talking shop and people drift away.

Which collaboration tools do you like and why?

I've used some pretty basic/free tools like Google docs, Skype etc, which work fine once the face to face has taken place; without that, the work tends to stay superficial. I think tools which allow voice interaction rather than just sharing of docs/screens, etc is important as effective collaboration needs regular synchronous verbal interaction. You definitely don't need to always be face to face but you need to find ways to genuinely interact and discuss to really make collaboration work.

When does collaboration tend to work best?

When there are very different skills, abilities, background and experience balanced by common aims and goals, complementary styles. And if you can group people who genuinely like and respect each other's styles & goals, great things can happen.

I've also found that it works best when there is the agreed goal and plan but regular discussions to explore other opportunities and needs. The old "there's no such thing as a stupid question" is important in collaboration.

What framework or rules do you need for successful collaboration?

This will vary dramatically from case to case, but for me the crucial thing is to start with real clarity on both sides on what they need to get from it to be a success, any "no go" areas and maximum/minimum levels of commitment that can be expected on both sides. I'm also keen to understand ahead of the game what should happen should problems/disasters arise and a commitment to transparency. Understanding how you'll tackle problems helps avert the risk of them turning into disasters.

When has collaboration gone wrong for you?

I can think of some past disasters when collaboration was set up for its own sake, to "tick a box" and really there wasn't a shared goal... or even a real purpose for it - wasting everyone's time and good will.

Also seen problems where potential problems like conflicts of interest, inherent competition weren't honestly discussed and wrecked plans part way through.

On Collaboration #4: David Rogerson

Ahead of our next Group Think event in May (co-produced with the Barbican Centre), on the subject of collaboration, we've been talking to some of our friends, colleagues and clients about how collaboration fits into their lives and work. So we sent out a little questionnaire and, over the next few weeks, we'll be publishing what everyone told us.

Here's number 4, and a former client of ours, David Rogerson

Who are you and what do you do?

I am David Rogerson - Senior Digital Producer at ico Design Partners - a digital, brand and design agency based in London that works with clients from the arts, property, leisure, interior design and museum sector.

I was formerly Digital Manager at Sound and Music - the UK's largest non-venue RFO. And worked on projects from collaborative software development for special needs education, major websites, festivals and content.

Why do you collaborate?

Doing it with others is fun.

Which collaboration tools do you like and why?

I tend to be taken in by new fangled tools - especially digital applications - but aside from Google Docs there are few that I have stuck with.

Nothing helps collaboration more than good, speedy communication - and sitting in the same room helps. Coffee breaks are good too. I like the Agile approach of being surrounded by your thought process (stuck to walls, on posters and index cards).

I find it hard to describe my thoughts without a pen and a bit of paper and I find standing up around a board gets any project moving.

When does collaboration tend to work best?

Perversely, collaboration works best when people are able to get on and do their own thing without too much back-and-fourth with the group. This is achieved by clear aims, vision and decision making process.

These parameters need to be set in the beginning and there needs to be regular opportunities to critique, problem solve and learn throughout the process.

Finally, trust is important. You don't have to like the people you're collaborating with but you definitely need to trust them.

What framework or rules do you need for successful collaboration?

There is no one framework I have found that works.

I do think Agile methodologies point to ways of collaborating efficiently and creatively but they come with there own limitations and isn't right for many contexts.

I do believe in starting with the two questions who and why before anything else. If you can't get beyond this - it will never work.

What and how come later.

Briefly describe a collaboration you admire and tell us why you think it works.

I was going to choose Wikipedia but Shirkey's covered that one much better than I could ever dream of. Instead I will go with freeform, US radio station WFMU.

It is a donation-funded radio station (no ads) that is run by volunteers mostly. They are dedicated to playing whatever the hell they want. They are irreverent, funny, experimental and hugely prolific. They stream 5 separate stations continuously online, they hold events, live sessions, have a massive blog, iphone apps etc etc.

They do this because lots of people dedicate a lot of their own time to something they believe in. It has clear leadership but is very much 'owned' by the DJs and public who listen to it. They have exposed me to more new music than any and all the music orgs and radio stations in the UK combined.

When has collaboration gone wrong for you?

Collaboration fails to some degree every time. It is how much it fails and how much it effects the results that matters.

On a grand scale, I was involved in the merger of four (at some points more) organisations. It involved the collaboration of staff from all these orgs to try and shape the new organisation.

It went wrong in many ways

1. No one knew (or could agree) what they were trying to achieve and how they knew when they go there
2. There was no trust - you were collaborating with people whose jobs depended on seeing through their own position
3. Lack of ability - people weren't skilled or experienced in collaboration and so didn't know 'the rules'
4. There were no rules
5. There were lots of rules, but most didn't know what they were
6. People were asked to be objective about subjective things
7. Pretending things were non-hierarchical but undermining it with hierarchy
8. No one was seen as being in charge
9. The decision making process was not clear