by Rattle Research

Amplified Leicester is a city-wide experiment designed to boost the innovation capacity of Leicester and share new skills which are fast becoming essential in 21st Century workplaces and communities.

In 2009/10 we offered a small group of participants from across the city the chance to:
•    Benefit from Leicester's huge diversity of people and cultures
•    Generate new ideas quickly
•    Think like a futurist and see the bigger picture
•    Organise and collaborate better
•    Be persuasive in different social situations
•    Share and develop creative ideas
•    Manage the stream of information which bombards us every day
•    Choose the best people to collaborate with
•    Make the most of different kinds of resources – social, economic, creative

Every fortnight participants attended inspiring lectures and workshops and in between meetings worked together via Twitter, Facebook and other social media applications. They filmed interviews in their communities and shared the videos online.

On Thursday 15 April 2010 we will showcase their work and expand the conversation to include the city and beyond. This one day event at the new Phoenix Square Digital Media Centre will include practical workshops run by the participants themselves, presentations of their experimental projects, and talks by the project team. Keynote speaker, Andrea Saveri, an independent foresight and strategy consultant based in Berkeley, California, will locate the Amplified Leicester experience within a global context. Find out more at www.amplifiedleicester.com

Admission is free of charge.

Programme (subject to change) MORNING Optional Workshops by Amplified Leicester participants (see below for full details)

09.30-10.30 Parallel Session 1 (choose from 3 workshops)

11.00-12.00 Parallel Session 2 (choose from 3 workshops)

SORRY - ALL THE WORKSHOPS ARE NOW FULL

AFTERNOON Showcase Event

[A] Advisory Group    [P] Amplified Leicester Participant

13.30 Welcome

Ted Cassidy MBE, Head of Regional Partnerships, De Montfort University [A]

13.40 Amplifying the Day (Amplified)

13.45 Summary of the Amplified Leicester project

Sue Thomas, Professor of New Media, IOCT & Humanities, DMU

Thilo Boeck, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Social Action, DMU

14.15 Miniproject Reports

Introduced by Ishi Khan-Jackson [P]

·         Leicester Guerrilla QR code project (Sarah Eaton & Mike Wilkinson) [P]

·         #Leicester on the Map (Ben Ravilious) [P]

·         The Leicester Family (Farhana Shaikh) [P]

15.00 Tea break

15.30 Participant Panel & Discussion
Chaired by Sue Thomas

·         Sharon Bown (Countesthorpe Cluster of Schools) [P]

·         Ian Davies (Photographer & Writer) [P]

·         Laura Horton (Regional Equality & Diversity Partnership) [P]

·         Inspector Bill Knopp (Leicestershire Constabulary) [P]

·         Joy Marsden (Joy Marsden Training & Development) [P]

·         Simon Parker (Leicester Libraries & Citizens' Eye) [P]

16.30 Keynote Speaker

Andrea Saveri 'Amplified Leicester and the Resilience Imperative' 

Introduced by Prof Andrew Hugill, Director, IOCT, DMU [A]

17.15 Panel discussion

Chaired by Ross Grant, Leicester City Councillor [P]

·         Thilo Boeck, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Social Action, DMU

·         Toby Moores, Amplified & CEO Sleepydog Ltd [A]

·         Andrea Saveri, independent consultant

·         Sue Thomas, Professor of New Media, IOCT & Humanities, DMU

·         Vijay Singh Riyait, CEO iQubed & Sikh Geek [A]

18.00-19.00 Drinks Reception

Keynote Speaker: Andrea Saveri on 'Amplified Leicester and the Resilience Imperative'
The forces of globalization, economic crisis, climate change, and brittle legacy systems have presented communities around the world with a resilience imperative. Communities that thrive in the future will be the ones who can create new patterns of learning, relationship, and value creation. The building blocks of community resilience rest on strategic use of digital media as a way to: develop network power and cooperative systems; create a process for building social and design capital; and nurture a mindset for community transformation and individual growth. Amplified Leicester offers a rich opportunity to examine community prototyping and learning in action and to examine how networked resilience will shape the future of community and regional life.

Andrea Saveri is an independent consultant, located in Berkeley, California. She works at the intersection of foresight and strategy helping organizations adapt to a world of unexpected change. For more than 20 years Andrea has worked in Silicon Valley and around the world with businesses, foundations, and public institutions applying insights from futures research and emerging technologies to develop strategy and market opportunities. She currently focuses on the convergence of technologies of cooperation, strategies for collective action and commons building, platforms for enabling resilience, and amplified communities. This nexus of disruption and creativity offers unprecedented opportunity to regenerate community life, flexible institutions, and our capacity for wellbeing.

Workshops (Book as part of the registration process)

Find the bios of workshop leaders here.

Morning Workshops 1 09.30 - 10.30

1A  INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL MEDIA FOR CREATIVE WRITERS with Farhana Shaikh

Learn how to use social media to research stories, create a readership and build up a profile.

1B QR CODES - CREATING, READING, & GUERILLA CAMPAIGNS! with Sarah Eaton & Mike Wilkinson

Learn how to set up a QR reader on your phone and create a QR code. Plan your own Guerilla QR code campaign.

1C LAFF YOURSELF CREATIVE with Ishi Khan Jackson

Laugh your way into thinking creatively for the future with laughter therapy, comedy improvisation, games, and thinking outside the box. 

Morning Workshops 2 11.00 - 12.00

2A  I HAVE A STORY TO SHARE with Nduka Onwuegbute

Learn how to create, develop and publish stories using generated prompts, and share the generated stories using social media.

2B OPENING THE BUSINESS FLOODGATES with Mel Gordon

Learn how to use Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and blogs to market a business.

2C VIRTUAL WORLDS FOR BEGINNERS with Mike Wilkinson

Find out what virtual worlds such as Second Life and Forterra are all about.

Amplified Leicester is managed by the Institute of Creative Technologies, De Montfort University in partnership with the DMU Centre for Social Action and Phoenix Square Digital Media Centre. The project is commissioned and supported by NESTA, an independent body with a mission to make the UK more innovative.