tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71650446943418968392024-03-10T03:46:13.423+01:00Daniel Pargman's academic homepageThis is my (academic) blog and homepage. Read the short introduction to the blog <a href="http://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2010/09/blog-post.html">here</a>. I write for the benefit of those who wish to keep up with what I do and also for me to remember what I did last week!pargmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17208443783482286491noreply@blogger.comBlogger604125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7165044694341896839.post-30163090575969832022022-06-16T20:22:00.260+02:002022-07-03T14:16:08.767+02:00Traveling in style by train to ICT4S 2022 (Plovdiv, Bulgaria)<p> .</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYxHj2CJ_UF9ijz7dT2_5jiZ-oss4AmxBePEp_7ZWdcptc5A2afwEHFnKArS1HHw9YTLwVqIxMzY3w9MX9NKkMlhXGtIdUWa2XBTAw5b0otSJlGhkamA1AbpUd8vpvCiENSwutGw9gJ8r6UaTnnp3v71HRhuqYBp7mFZP6e1AAjhmp-9LW_fesm77uGg/s1440/Sth-Plovdiv.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="1210" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYxHj2CJ_UF9ijz7dT2_5jiZ-oss4AmxBePEp_7ZWdcptc5A2afwEHFnKArS1HHw9YTLwVqIxMzY3w9MX9NKkMlhXGtIdUWa2XBTAw5b0otSJlGhkamA1AbpUd8vpvCiENSwutGw9gJ8r6UaTnnp3v71HRhuqYBp7mFZP6e1AAjhmp-9LW_fesm77uGg/w336-h400/Sth-Plovdiv.png" width="336" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>This is the trip we made from Stockholm to Plovdiv (Bulgaria) by train to attend the ICT4S conference.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><p>Me and my colleagues Elina Eriksson and Arjun Menon took the train from Stockholm to Plovdiv, Bulgaria to attend the The 8th International Conference on ICT for Sustainability (<a href="https://conf.researchr.org/home/ict4s-2022">ICT4S'22</a>). The next blog post will treat the conference itself but this blog post is only discusses the trip (which was an adventure in itself). We hopped on the train Friday June 10 at 16.15 (but the train was delayed so actually more than one hour later) and arrived to Plovdiv Sunday June 12 at 15.00.</p><p>Elina took on the responsibility to book the trip and I commend her for her work - because it wasn't easy. KTH Royal Institute of Technology has procured a travel agency, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Express_Global_Business_Travel">Egencia</a>, and we are mandated to use their services. We are indeed thankful for that in <a href="https://www.kth.se/hct/mid/research/sustainability/projects/flight-1.920661">our research project Flight</a> since they have (or should have) complete data about KTH air travel, but they are unfortunately not very good at catering to people who want to find alternative ways to travel (e.g. train). The problem is that as KTH employees we are mandated to use Egencia, but they are (apparently) not mandated to give us good service.</p><p>The best (or perhaps indeed the only) sensible way to book a trip by train is currently to do the research yourself and then send screen shots to Egencia so they can charge KTH for booking the trip we tell them to book. That sounds like a pretty sweet deal for a travel agency and I'm considering starting one myself. It would in fact be hard to not do a better job when it comes to booking trains than the "service" Egencia currently offers us. What I personally don't understand is how Egencia could win the bid to be our travel agency, but I guess they do fine with air travel and that train travel is not on the table when KTH procures a travel agency. That would then mean they can do a shoddy job booking trains as long as they don't screw up air travel. It <i>has</i> happened that they (probably) use the <a href="https://www.bahn.com/en">Deutsche Bahn website</a> and book whatever option comes up first, even if it is totally unreasonable like suggesting a trip by train from Stockholm to Amsterdam where you have to change trains 10 times (true story!). </p><p>In this particular case they followed our (e.g. Elina's) instructions and booked trips from Stockholm to Berlin (direct train with a sleeper car Friday 16 - Saturday 05.30) and then a train from Berlin to Vienna (Saturday 08 - 18). Both trains were delayed so it was lucky we had planned the trip with some slack between the trains!</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEickGf6k4__R9xhGOsitnin4TgdYVDxjKq-8AgIMGsunmMio50bOHpm8pwgSZNvmiw8mzMnO-i_NeRkXy_2WfivHVl1wBFdOuXQA8cfIHyi0y4VhFCu7UROhdCLcoazDgwt_W3hSPGZocwaqq214u_lcdjA0L2NCTpHwFCwU_1H0MA8JFzKwj337FU_6g/s4000/Daniel%20+%20Arjun.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEickGf6k4__R9xhGOsitnin4TgdYVDxjKq-8AgIMGsunmMio50bOHpm8pwgSZNvmiw8mzMnO-i_NeRkXy_2WfivHVl1wBFdOuXQA8cfIHyi0y4VhFCu7UROhdCLcoazDgwt_W3hSPGZocwaqq214u_lcdjA0L2NCTpHwFCwU_1H0MA8JFzKwj337FU_6g/w240-h320/Daniel%20+%20Arjun.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>Me and Arjun waiting for the train in Hamburg</i></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsRKxPkntg3oDw1oGFNIIbaJK4OchhLWmzZhpiNJ9JmCS8A_7YCh1siFsMMCCIG78rcDDAszu8bFKlHuVaDLHTqP5QhibwGeA90m_G9KVol6tOF6ssyg1Q4cngqGYC3nRmKL9U9OKg-4zZ9ZktIDys8G7JE8j2Jn-abTt9cexwo-l45mSNW23owTPneA/s3264/Elina.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3264" data-original-width="2448" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsRKxPkntg3oDw1oGFNIIbaJK4OchhLWmzZhpiNJ9JmCS8A_7YCh1siFsMMCCIG78rcDDAszu8bFKlHuVaDLHTqP5QhibwGeA90m_G9KVol6tOF6ssyg1Q4cngqGYC3nRmKL9U9OKg-4zZ9ZktIDys8G7JE8j2Jn-abTt9cexwo-l45mSNW23owTPneA/w240-h320/Elina.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>Elina. In Germany you have to use face masks on all trains (not the case in Sweden)</i></div><br /><p>Our travel agency Egencia could not give us adequate help traveling from Vienna to Bulgaria - they couldn't even book tickets with the bus operator (Arda Tur) that Elina found for them and that operated a direct bus line between Vienna and Plovdiv (Saturday 21 - Sunday 15). That meany we (Elina) had to book these tickets. The smaller problem that follows is that we (Elina) had to pay for the tickets in advance and only later get money back from KTH. The bigger problem is that when we book the tickets ourselves it's basically no longer a business trip where we can call the travel agency and get help should any problems arise. Due to train delays (a wildfire somewhere in front of the train in southern Germany) we arrived to Vienna not three but only one hour before the bus left and we had to hurry to buy food and take a taxi to the bus station - but we made it and arrived in time to Plovdiv to have dinner with Ivano Malavolta from VU Amsterdam (Elina's <a href="https://conf.researchr.org/track/ict4s-2022/ict4s-2022-doctoral-symposium">doctoral consortium co-chair</a>)</p><p>The bus trip was better than expected. While there was no toilet on the bus, the bus stopped every 3-4 hours so people could go to the bathroom, buy drinks and food, or in the case of <i>everybody</i> else on the bus, have a smoke. At these pit stops we also discovered that there were many other bus lines that started in Germany or even further away (Italy, Netherlands, UK) and that criss-crossed Central and Eastern Europe as well as the Balkans with a fine-grained network of bus lines to a wealth of cities I had never heard of. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu66rrEHxSezSGmSOMnEgBgAWs-bi1Wqf2fGkofCQMR5Y-MwSOhWc2FMiBRI4mWbDP4yX8JqSlAbVYzpputTmal3JCShmNvYKSGQdqzWtCbk2xhOoStsaAWupt9SblHnKxtB3MY71-Qi4jvNAt6guW7cVSdAPGetSlyQbYPDSfQJvK0WkJomJEYuzd-Q/s4032/Bus.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu66rrEHxSezSGmSOMnEgBgAWs-bi1Wqf2fGkofCQMR5Y-MwSOhWc2FMiBRI4mWbDP4yX8JqSlAbVYzpputTmal3JCShmNvYKSGQdqzWtCbk2xhOoStsaAWupt9SblHnKxtB3MY71-Qi4jvNAt6guW7cVSdAPGetSlyQbYPDSfQJvK0WkJomJEYuzd-Q/w240-h320/Bus.HEIC" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>Macedonian bus company Hak Komerc operating a bus line that starts in Italy</i></div><p><br /></p><p>The one thing that didn't work that well was sleeping on the bus as the seats were not very comfortable. There were however not that many people on the bus so we could spread out a bit, but that didn't make up for the fact that you couldn't recline the seats very much. None of us got enough sleep on the bus and I felt stiff from the not too comfortable seats. </p><p>The scariest moment on the trip was when we realized the bus from Vienna to Plovdiv travelled through Serbia. I'm currently waiting for my new passport (post-Covid waiting times are <i>extreme</i> in Sweden), but I have a "national identity card" that can be used within all EU countries - but Serbia is not an EU countries and we didn't realize the route would take us there. Phd student Arjun (with an Indian passport) had the same problem and we were both afraid we would be stranded on the motorway between Hungary and Serbia in the middle of the night. That fortunately didn't happen, they just let us through without any problems at all but it was still a bit scary. This is what Arjun wrote about the border crossings in our research group's Slack channel:</p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">In the destination country [Bulgaria] at last.. further adventures ensued at passport controls between Hungary and Serbia & Serbia and Bulgaria, where my ‘exotic’ passport caused quite a flurry -</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">The Hungarian border police took a solid 3-4 minutes and meticulously went through each page of my passport and compared each photo to my face, before finally (and very reluctantly) deciding to let me leave the EU</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">The Serbian border control were more inclusive and merely said “Oh! Indian”, in the tones of a 5-year old pointing out an airplane in the sky to their parents</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">The Bulgarian border control exclaimed “Indian! Where are you going” before running off with my visa and passport, presumably to show off to his colleagues - “Look guys! I got an Indian passport! Have you guys even seen one?!”. Mercifully, he returned and I'm now in Bulgaria and back in the EU.</span></p><p>All in all our trip from Stockholm to Plovdiv took less than 48 hours! Months in advance we consciously chose to frame it as an "adventure" - and it worked! It was a great adventure and we enjoyed it a lot. It's however a great advantage to travel with others, it wouldn't have been fun at all to travel all by yourself. The one thing that didn't work was nailing down the details of the trip in advance. Our plan was to have a route ready at least one, but preferably two or three months in advance and then spread it through the community in the hope that other participants would join up in Denmark, Germany or Austria (where the direct bus departed). Due to all the diddling and mails being sent back and forth to the travel agency we never did get around to do that. </p><p>We also had a great idea for what the conference organizers could (should) have done when planning the conference. They should have booked two buses where conference attendees could have booked a seat. These two buses should then leave from central locations with good train connections and go directly to Plovdiv. One bus would catch people from Northern Europe and the suggestion is that it should depart from Vienna. The other bus would catch people from Western and Southern Europe and could depart from, say, Venice. It could even be that these two bus routes could join and merge in Zagreb (capital of Croatia). Zagreb is exactly a four-hour bus trip away from <i>both</i> Vienna and Venice and the trip from Zagreb to Plovdiv would then take an additional 10 hours (plus breaks etc.). That would surely have been the best way to travel to the conference <i>and</i> to arrive at the conference with an instant network of friends.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCePqhx_LImWIys0WlhIagsmz8wdfJcQypiOMdw9tG4eGM6OEmXvHnG1eFarytxZlaJRigFy3PTKDMG5qOyRGGFKLLpwuaeDtLGkQ0ZxJispyVFxLk8aoRtiBazNQM13dhGVcwar8inYqGLLLCYEyJf0-YTqzs1mALqBj119FOIUb4QPpKX2BsRzTdGQ/s2394/Vienna-Venice-Zagreb.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1450" data-original-width="2394" height="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCePqhx_LImWIys0WlhIagsmz8wdfJcQypiOMdw9tG4eGM6OEmXvHnG1eFarytxZlaJRigFy3PTKDMG5qOyRGGFKLLpwuaeDtLGkQ0ZxJispyVFxLk8aoRtiBazNQM13dhGVcwar8inYqGLLLCYEyJf0-YTqzs1mALqBj119FOIUb4QPpKX2BsRzTdGQ/w400-h243/Vienna-Venice-Zagreb.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>Furure scenario: hop on the conference bus either in Vienna or Vencie and go directly to Plovdiv together with other conference attendees!</i></div><p><br /></p><p>This is surely how we all should travel to "local" conferences in the future, right? For further reference, <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2022/04/edu-rail-application.html">see this blog post</a> about the future of academic travel. The application was turned down but I think we will submit a new application within a year.</p><p>Last note: all three legs of the trip (Sth-Hamburg-Vienna-Plovdiv) had wifi, but only the trip from Hamburg to Vienna had good rather than shaky wifi and this is something that needs to be improved so that people can work during the trip! </p><p>.</p>pargmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17208443783482286491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7165044694341896839.post-3552478943296898132022-06-09T20:42:00.252+02:002022-06-27T14:43:36.543+02:00Feel the energy! (approved research project)<p>.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLzrJe8OoJnVciyV-v2AdujovZFpkK_sq8CLdoFg6Dkze4SLNVBe5gCLZ8th7uPSG8NnLpylrdABkzVmI6_RUKG7BnYuqYLkPvt98C3Ki2BLtRzRclQrDy0neqlv05xhFEp1VCzjEI_OJNFgQ82npb2pQHouYb_T59fV0Ahifq0_fqlSf0hpf4tkRHDw/s1371/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-06-27%20kl.%2014.34.49.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1371" data-original-width="1056" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLzrJe8OoJnVciyV-v2AdujovZFpkK_sq8CLdoFg6Dkze4SLNVBe5gCLZ8th7uPSG8NnLpylrdABkzVmI6_RUKG7BnYuqYLkPvt98C3Ki2BLtRzRclQrDy0neqlv05xhFEp1VCzjEI_OJNFgQ82npb2pQHouYb_T59fV0Ahifq0_fqlSf0hpf4tkRHDw/w308-h400/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-06-27%20kl.%2014.34.49.png" width="308" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p>We just found out our application for a two-year research project was approved! The money comes from The Swedish Energy Agency's call "Design for an energy efficient everyday life" (<a href="https://www.energimyndigheten.se/utlysningar/design-for-energieffektiv-vardag--utlysning-6/">Design för energieffektiv vardag</a>). </p><p>It is my colleague <a href="https://www.kth.se/profile/bjornh">Björn Hedin</a>'s application "<b>Feel the energy! Tactile learning about everyday energy use</b>" that got 4.7 MSEK in funding and the project itself will run between October 2022 to December 2024. </p><p>While Björn unfortunately does not work at our department any longer (but rather at the Department of Learning in Engineering Science), we continue to do research together and this application is an example of that. The project money will be used for hiring a phd student who will work in the project, but it will also pay for 5% of my time and ≈ 25% of current phd project <b>Arjun Menon</b>'s time. Arjun works at my department but Björn (who thus works elsewhere) is his advisor. Besides Björn himself an additional three persons are also part of the project and I expect I will meet them for the first time during the mid-September project kick-off:</p><p>- <b>Daniel Rosqvist</b> is "Science Center Manager" at the <a href="https://www.tekniskamuseet.se/en/">Technical Museum</a> and has many years of experience in designing museum-based learning activities. Daniel also attended Björn's phd course on "Learning behavior" (about creating engaging learning experiences).</p><p>- <b>Malin Lindstaf</b> works as a project leader at the municipal energy and climate advisors (<a href="https://www.energimyndigheten.se/energieffektivisering/jag-vill-energieffektivisera-hemma/energi--och-klimatradgivning/">Energi- och klimatrådgivning</a>, EKR) in the City of Stockholm. EKR are in close contact with citizens and can help the project identify knowledge gaps. EKR also has mobile energy-related exhibitions where the concepts developed in this project could be integrated and tested.</p><p>- <b>Anders Blomqvist</b> works at the same institution as Björn (Department of Learning in Engineering Science) but at another division, "<a href="https://www.vetenskapenshus.se/?language=en">House of Science</a>" (Vetenskapens Hus). House of Science has 80 000 visitors per year and is another venue/platform where we can test concepts that are developed in the project. </p><p>So this is a very strong team, but what then are we actually going to do in the project? The English-language project abstract states:</p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">The public’s understanding regarding their own role in the energy system and how they themselves can influence their situation is very low - so-called “Energy literacy”. Energy issues are perceived as boring, abstract and complicated, and research shows that traditional learning about energy consumption quickly falls into oblivion and has little effect on individuals' choices and behaviors.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">In this project, we want to explore how people's knowledge and engagement to everyday energy issues are affected if they actually get to “feel” the energy physically. We will develop a flexible concept for portable “exhibitions” with associated pedagogical instructions that can be used in classrooms, exhibitions, foyers and at festivals. With the help of these, participants can playfully interact with models of real objects and situations, where abstract quantities such as energy, power and carbon footprint are represented by the weight and and volume of physical objects.</span></p><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 164, 0);">Previous generations often had a direct physical relationship to their energy use (Borgmann 1987). They cut and carried firewood, dug ditches and used their legs to move around. Modern campaigns such as "two holes in the wall" (e.g. you don't need to know or care where the electricity comes from) have deliberately encouraged people not to worry or care about developing a mature conception of energy and energy use. The energy is instead available wherever and whenever you need it - as if it has sprung forth from a cornucopia of eternal and endless energy. We have become accustomed to energy being inexpensive, abundantly available and ready to be used at the slightest whim ("at the flick of the switch"). This has also led to low levels of "energy literacy" among the general population. </span>An important objective of the project is thus to design and explore the possibility of helping people regain a more direct, physical connection to energy. The hope is that participants can gain a greater understanding of the large (but various) amounts of energy that different everyday chores require, an increased understanding of the importance of managing their energy use as well as knowledge that will help them "strain at a gnat and swallow a camel".</p><p>I will work 5% in the project and mostly as an observer/pollinator between this project and my own art + science + communication project "<a href="https://www.kth.se/hct/mid/research/sustainability/projects/homo-colossus-1.951728">From Homo Sapiens to Homo Colossus</a>: Visualising our energy footprint". I expect I will also be helpful primarily in writing articles, in supervising bachelor's and master's theses and of course also by designing and testing workshop contents and formats (these are three of the project deliverables). I will surely want to apply my evolving <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_Hosting">Art of Hosting</a> skills to the design of new workshop formats! <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2022/06/homo-colossus-house-of-culture-workshop.html">My previous blog post</a> is about using Art of Hosting methods for designing a workshop format for the Homo Colossus project and it's also very good that also Arjun who will work in the project took the same three-day intensive Art of Hosting course half a year ago!</p><p>Last but not least, the project has budgeted money to buy a 3D printer and I look forward to see how it will come to use in the project!</p><div>.</div>pargmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17208443783482286491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7165044694341896839.post-91038395147855643422022-06-05T20:11:00.469+02:002022-07-06T04:17:53.716+02:00Homo Colossus @ House of Culture (workshop)<p> .</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8pjT0z-oOQjl5x6NBdMikMR9IrsudTeDnNuM63boXMXeVL69XzwWnz41iimJ8cUvf7Sv1M0FT1NLeXy4j0WNEYAmImJbGKlyXIgHpPEOM4pxeu3TQEXdG-ptra61yeXLxhfkq0_3WYidGajewkWQYroutA9YGyiIWEcLohYbV67vSxo66rjY5nyVYdw/s2480/220603%20Kulturhuset%20Homo%20Colossus%20workshop.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2275" data-original-width="2480" height="368" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8pjT0z-oOQjl5x6NBdMikMR9IrsudTeDnNuM63boXMXeVL69XzwWnz41iimJ8cUvf7Sv1M0FT1NLeXy4j0WNEYAmImJbGKlyXIgHpPEOM4pxeu3TQEXdG-ptra61yeXLxhfkq0_3WYidGajewkWQYroutA9YGyiIWEcLohYbV67vSxo66rjY5nyVYdw/w400-h368/220603%20Kulturhuset%20Homo%20Colossus%20workshop.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p>Our science + art + communication project "<a href="https://www.kth.se/hct/mid/research/sustainability/projects/homo-colossus-1.951728">From Homo Sapiens to Homo Colossus</a>" organized a workshop at Stockholm +50 in cooperation with the City of Stockholm and Kulturhuset (House of Culture)!</p><div><br /></div><div><div>A high-level UN meeting has been held in Stockholm this past week, <a href="https://www.stockholm50.global/about/about">Stockholm+50</a>. The UN meeting also commemorates the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment that was held in Stockholm - the first large UN-held conference on the environment. Besides the UN meeting itself, numerous activities have been organized in Stockholm during the past week by the civil society and other actors, including by the City of Stockholm. </div><div><br /></div><div>We were invited by the City of Stockholm to be part of the activities that were planned to happen right in the center of Stockholm - at Sergels Torg and in Kulturhuset (The Stockholm House of Culture). This happened three months in advance and our research project have since designed, developed and implemented a 2-hour workshop format for the Stockholm+50 event - see the invitation to the event above.</div><div><br /></div><div>During the first month, there was a lot of planning and decisions-making (who is the target audience, would you need to sign up in advance, should school classes or individuals sign up, what help would we need in terms of materials and personnel etc.). We decided to target youths and young adults (14-25 years old). They are also the audience for quite some activities at Kulturhuset and this is also a convenient group for us since it's basically "my students at KTH” and “their younger siblings” (e.g. my own teenage children). The City of Stockholm and Kulturhuset also offered support in the form of a cultural and theater pedagogue/educator with much experience of working with youths, Åsa Kalzén, who has been a sounding board during the development of the workshop format. Åsa came to the kick-off for our detailed workshop planning - a design meeting at KTH a month in advance of the workshop itself. </div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><img height="113" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/lPshJt4K55zRbClutw5zXKvXGiixGu-G4iJiwVQxjPyWMUzq0L-hJy36VTX3Ax82J1mVVIx_eb3zsRMsdatJZKV8Zmul9x5g7hThQOCz_lkexGXypHLW7jZZdrzHFLjYIC0I9tDvNqBvi_u0Fw=w400-h113" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" width="400" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><i> Our first planning session. </i></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>From left to right: Daniel, Belinda, Per, Åsa K, Åsa AB. Behind the camera: Mario.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div>While there are five persons in our science + art + communication project, it was me and Belinda who took on the responsibility of planning and leading this workshop. While I have known Belinda for the better part of a decade, I have not worked that closely with her before, but we had a great cooperation and met at least once per week in the run-up to the workshop (often in front of a whiteboard).</div><div><br /></div><div>There were certainly many challenges in the communication between us and the City of Stockholm. Less than a week in advance we had no idea how many had signed up for our Friday and our Saturday workshops - or even if there would be a workshop at all. It later turned out the project leader did not herself have that information without reaching out to another part of the City of Stockholm organization. And while the design of the invitation (above) is great, it could have been even better (for example with a QR code!) if we had been able to provide just a little more input - but the design was also done by "difficult-to-reach people elsewhere in the organization". I have not worked a lot with City of Stockholm but based on this experience, it seems to be a mature compartmentalized bureaucracy. The event accepted sign-ups up until the very last minute, so it wasn't until Friday we found out that not enough people had signed up for our Saturday workshop and we had to pull the plug and cancel it. This was very unfortunate as we had planned to show some really cool things (Augmented Reality!) on Saturday that we couldn't show on Friday.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt9uiwZY2sa2lS5_qFdA7ia1l01UN9IdgsFzV0oUbuazMFKQrqhU9oQQ28HLiArpjBxZ2BqnbgrR39qwDiI4ihZ3fXgt-6QxknRRBqJ2JgUWQ4LPSSStE4n_1zk0RhBUUjiXJxczj3T48fmtZojz13XwiGY1eAkA7c3I0EHVtIuEPyGaHYbLiAL4TZ0A/s2276/IMG_2055.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2276" data-original-width="1384" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt9uiwZY2sa2lS5_qFdA7ia1l01UN9IdgsFzV0oUbuazMFKQrqhU9oQQ28HLiArpjBxZ2BqnbgrR39qwDiI4ihZ3fXgt-6QxknRRBqJ2JgUWQ4LPSSStE4n_1zk0RhBUUjiXJxczj3T48fmtZojz13XwiGY1eAkA7c3I0EHVtIuEPyGaHYbLiAL4TZ0A/w195-h320/IMG_2055.heic" width="195" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh31aNyF0MFs-9O7CiYQQpOTwB_zT0cylhuBRXMxyAaP6MOhFry6YRnV8dcHFfBZ7l_sbDY844ko3iE1c-7PvBGfAxGQdsmSdcWK1X4vuQa98frHM5W70o5PB84pNeP8gC33aGtly29wE6oDzmKTuezYfvimNAU-Zkmm0_yGHXrhQNMVbLfPVzixEuHjw/s3628/IMG_2060.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3628" data-original-width="2367" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh31aNyF0MFs-9O7CiYQQpOTwB_zT0cylhuBRXMxyAaP6MOhFry6YRnV8dcHFfBZ7l_sbDY844ko3iE1c-7PvBGfAxGQdsmSdcWK1X4vuQa98frHM5W70o5PB84pNeP8gC33aGtly29wE6oDzmKTuezYfvimNAU-Zkmm0_yGHXrhQNMVbLfPVzixEuHjw/w211-h320/IMG_2060.heic" width="211" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>Testing off-the-shelf Augmented Reality (not specifically adapted to our purposes and our project)</i></div><br /><div><br /></div><div>But also our Friday workshop was threatened at the very last minute. On my way to Kulturhuset at the day of the event, I called the school teacher who would show up with her class mid-day. Shen then apologized profusely as she told me on the phone (with just a few hours advance notice) that she had double-booked her school class and that they had to cancel our workshop. That was definitely the lowest point of the day. Me and Belinda (in a semi-panicked state) were very close to cancelling also the Friday the workshop at that point. </div><div><br /></div><div>BUT, this disaster was followed by incredible other-worldly luck. Our first stroke of luck was that we had two total heroes working as liaison officers between Kulturhuset and us, namely Åsa K (above) and Ingemar. As me and Belinda made emergency plans to reformat our workshop so it would work for more temporary walk-in passers-by, Åsa and Ingemar accustomed and propositioned a larger group of people who just happened to hang around outside (remember, this was in the very center of Stockholm) and they invited/convinced them to take part of the workshop - to which they agreed! This group returned one hour later since we (again) needed to rework and replan, including translating the workshop from Swedish to English on the fly. We thus in the end gave the workshop to a group of 16 who by an incredible stroke of luck consisted of 50% teachers and 50% students AND 50% of the teachers and students came from Sundsvall (northern Sweden) and the other half from Bogotá, Colombia (my father was born in Colombia! My uncle who just turned 80 lives in Bogotá! I've been Bogotá several times - but not in the last 25 years!). So we had a dream group of participants that was further strengthened by our specially invited guests Siri and Julia who works at <a href="https://www.tekniskamuseet.se/en/">Tekniska Museet</a> (the Stockholm Technical Museum) and Per who works in the Homo Colossus project but who had not been involved in planning the workshop.</div><div><br /></div><div>The workshop itself was planned together with Belinda and according to my recently-acquired Art of Hosting co-creation methods & skills (see more <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2022/03/art-of-hosting-harvesting-conversations.html">here</a> and <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2022/06/our-mid-department-research-day.html">here</a>), and, it was a success! Everybody loved it and everybody was thankful. Me and Belinda were thankful this particular group showed up and made the workshop possible, and they were thankful we organized a customized workshop "just for them"!</div><p></p><div></div><p></p><div>Siri and Julia from Tekniska Museet were also happy and they invited us to present our Homo Colossus project at a personell meeting at Tekniska Museet after the summer. We already cooperate with Tekniska Museet and we are interested in further developing this two-hour Homo Colossus workshop so that <i>they</i> can use it when school classes visit them. We hope to be able to work on this during the autumn, and having Siri and Julia experience the workshop themselves was a great start. All in all we went from the lowest low to the highest high and the workshop became a total success (by fluke of luck)!</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk5MsDblsZSSXJ13-HALMDDusiQinRgHK29_r00GK6-LGNG4PMF5cgyJyhHLt1tbTagA3ftC7Y3AmgC3pEsxS3dsCiaJ6PGv4n9bYRYXKeMj9G1R7IdJbdhi3L3TAYTt1pIfgbuAwlN5JiMDmsDV4iXg2WmqOSOpGaPC2nJONCHmsQ6XLz-S1eqrltvA/s2048/Kulturhuset%20HC1.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk5MsDblsZSSXJ13-HALMDDusiQinRgHK29_r00GK6-LGNG4PMF5cgyJyhHLt1tbTagA3ftC7Y3AmgC3pEsxS3dsCiaJ6PGv4n9bYRYXKeMj9G1R7IdJbdhi3L3TAYTt1pIfgbuAwlN5JiMDmsDV4iXg2WmqOSOpGaPC2nJONCHmsQ6XLz-S1eqrltvA/w400-h300/Kulturhuset%20HC1.gif" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Me, starting up the 15-minute mini-lecture to an audience of Swedish and Colombian teachers and students.</i></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLXJ2hQt5akBfT-GJ0cWl79I4skwleRhlwsN3T5ERolOqyWiAe3ygos74qHuteD5myK8UvV69sMBc2zl01Jl9O0r7EDy4oOuHYjcypnHXDlf8a4y-_9wHGnn0aCNVUCiTfw8U2zLUyQHTR3m0cSXZfg8obuARRv9G979eCsxFDwvFtvWlCp1w1ojfxvw/s1707/Kulturhuset%20HC2.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1707" data-original-width="1280" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLXJ2hQt5akBfT-GJ0cWl79I4skwleRhlwsN3T5ERolOqyWiAe3ygos74qHuteD5myK8UvV69sMBc2zl01Jl9O0r7EDy4oOuHYjcypnHXDlf8a4y-_9wHGnn0aCNVUCiTfw8U2zLUyQHTR3m0cSXZfg8obuARRv9G979eCsxFDwvFtvWlCp1w1ojfxvw/w300-h400/Kulturhuset%20HC2.gif" width="300" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>The core or the workshop consisted of a 15 minutes long mini-lecture and an hour-long World Café exercise with three separate discussion rounds that were structured around the questions:</div><div><ul><li>1) What is energy? What is energy for <i>you</i>?</li><li>2) How do you use energy in your everyday life?</li></ul></div><div>The third question was preceded by an exercise where participants self-sorted along an axis across the room and according to their answer to the following question: "As we heard [in the mini-lecture], we currently face a challenge that is a combination of 1) exchanging fossil fuels for renewable energy sources and 2) use less energy. Stand over there [at the other end of the room] if you think the answer is to aim for alternative 1 and over here if you think the answer is to aim for alternative 2 - or you can choose to stand somewhere in-between 1 and 2 according to your personal position on this question. I then divided the participants into four groups depending on where they stood in relation to the two alternatives. </div><div><ul><li>3) Based on your position in the self-sorting exercise, please discuss "ways forward".</li></ul></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgthWO3-Qmws97ZbJFpshLeQkoYuOl00SwWyzizUTPVkk220s_e0dJWCtbQSZ3bAD4pgZOf7-udTZo1COHJGjhxJ7cMODWxwqkDX50KMU63XgT_Ap5uEJHMXXAAPHkrGLz_D1VrfY9iccgD0yQUdBkjylVc9F8Ytj0dabns4ZVq3IBRAkC7N9ZqGNdzBw/s1707/Kulturhuset%20HC3.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1707" data-original-width="1280" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgthWO3-Qmws97ZbJFpshLeQkoYuOl00SwWyzizUTPVkk220s_e0dJWCtbQSZ3bAD4pgZOf7-udTZo1COHJGjhxJ7cMODWxwqkDX50KMU63XgT_Ap5uEJHMXXAAPHkrGLz_D1VrfY9iccgD0yQUdBkjylVc9F8Ytj0dabns4ZVq3IBRAkC7N9ZqGNdzBw/w300-h400/Kulturhuset%20HC3.gif" width="300" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>World Café round 2 (second color of post-it notes has just been put into play).</i></div><div><br /></div><div>The major part of the last half hour was spend on "harvesting"; on giving the participants the opportunityu to think and discuss the workshop (contents, format) based on these three questions:</div><div>- What was the best part of the workshop?</div><div>- Do you have any suggestions for improvements? [This is a more polite way of asking what they didn't like about the workshop.]</div><div>- What is the next step (for yourselves in terms of thinking/acting/doing)? Back-up question: what's the next step for society?</div><div><br /></div><div>Each person was encouraged to write one post-it note per question. We haven't really looked at the post-its yet but me and Belinda will go through and analyze the feedback we received after the summer!</div><div><br /></div><div>My workshop colleague Belinda <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/belinda-retourné_stockholmplus50-activity-6940629700222332928-3bgE">wrote a shorter and snappier text on LinkedIn</a> a week after the workshop. Hers is the better text (and a much faster read) than this "more complete" blog post and her first half reads like this (the second half has already been covered by the text above):</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">What is energy? This was the core question Daniel Pargman and I explored on Friday last week during our workshop "Don't be a dinosaur!" The title refers to the actual weight of a human, if we were to EAT all the energy we consume in a day (food, but also fuel, electricity, heat etc). Rather than weighing somewhere around 50-100 kg, it would turn us into a creature of around 20 000 kg. This is the aprox weight of a dinosaur or, as we like to call it, a HOMO COLOSSUS.</span></div><div>.</div></div>pargmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17208443783482286491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7165044694341896839.post-6080539560651100882022-06-02T19:24:00.040+02:002022-06-19T15:33:25.439+02:00Our MID (department) Research Day<p> .</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilCjpY5JyY0kwKn7X0cA-wWSQv6BxfLtITTITVRHEOziUYLO8zIRcaGdgyHGZFrtXxde1vZuTUXBb74S9gX0VD1sorXrm7cL1h9nxeXKUQvzUsxwP0T5xEgUxWdU7qH9XkuYU2jvIbEmUGdP4_2lR4W4Y_Q5sCCE9cYeMVNMQMMXxUUdjfx9OClT-GJQ/s2042/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-06-16%20kl.%2007.24.26.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1198" data-original-width="2042" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilCjpY5JyY0kwKn7X0cA-wWSQv6BxfLtITTITVRHEOziUYLO8zIRcaGdgyHGZFrtXxde1vZuTUXBb74S9gX0VD1sorXrm7cL1h9nxeXKUQvzUsxwP0T5xEgUxWdU7qH9XkuYU2jvIbEmUGdP4_2lR4W4Y_Q5sCCE9cYeMVNMQMMXxUUdjfx9OClT-GJQ/w400-h235/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-06-16%20kl.%2007.24.26.png" width="400" /></a></div><p>Me and <a href="https://www.kth.se/profile/armenon">Arjun</a> organized the "Research Day" at our department; Dept of Media Technology and Interaction Design (MID). This was the second time we had a Research Day and the previous was held 18 months ago during Covid so it was virtual and probably did not lead to many new friendships. Our goal was instead to make it as interactive and physical as possible and the goal was for people at our department to meet and get to know people in other research groups better. I think this is particularly important for phd students who have been cooped up for the better part of two years and who might not know or indeed even recognize everyone who works at the department!</p><p>Me and Arjun used some of the methods we picked up at <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2022/03/art-of-hosting-harvesting-conversations.html">the Art of Hosting course</a> we attended at the end of last year and most prominently we used Storytelling as a cornerstone for the event. We have six teams (research groups) at the department and each team has two team leaders. We invited one team leader from each group to become a "team storyteller" for a day and a large part of the schedule was structured around these stories. While neither Olle nor Olga could represent the <a href="https://www.kth.se/hct/mid/research/technology-enhanced/technology-enhanced-learning-1.780656">Technology-Enhanced Learning</a> (TEL) group, we had no less than five storytellers with us during the event (in order of appearance): <b>Madeline</b> representing the <a href="https://www.kth.se/hct/mid/research/interaction-design/interaction-design-1.921484">Interaction Design team</a>, <b>Elina</b> representing (my/our group) the <a href="https://www.kth.se/hct/mid/research/sustainability/sustainable-futures-lab-1.780653">Sustainable Futures Lab</a>, <b>Roberto</b> representing <a href="https://www.kth.se/hct/mid/research/smc">Sound and Music Computing</a>, <b>André</b> representing <a href="https://www.kth.se/hct/mid/research/cmt">Creative Media Technology</a> and <b>Eva-Lotta</b> representing <a href="https://www.kth.se/hct/mid/research/digital-and-physical">Social, Physical and Cultural Environments</a> (SPACE). All storytellers received the following instructions a week in advance:</p><h3 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 16pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.999999999999998pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #ffa400;">Homework</span></span></h3><ul style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #ffa400;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Each team has chosen a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">team storyteller</span></span></p></li><ul style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="2" dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: circle; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #ffa400;">This is someone who currently runs a research project (OR has previous run a research project OR has written a research grant application</span></span></p></li></ul><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #ffa400;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The team storyteller should prepare a (max) </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">10-minute story </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for the Research Day. </span></span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #ffa400;">You will have the privilege of talking uninterrupted.</span></span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #ffa400;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Do note</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that there is a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">strict</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> 10-minute limit. </span></span></p></li><ul style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="2" dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: circle; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #ffa400;">We will let you know when there are 3 minutes and 1 minute left</span></span></p></li><li aria-level="2" dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: circle; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #ffa400;">You might want to practice telling your story once in advance!</span></span></p></li></ul></ul><p><b id="docs-internal-guid-b576f52f-7fff-33ed-5ac9-21870a77ea76" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #ffa400;"><br /></span></b></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #ffa400;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Use these questions as starting points and for </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">inspiration</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">:</span></span></p></li><ul style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="2" dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: circle; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #ffa400;">Think of a current research project of yours (or alternatively a past project or a research grant application)!</span></span></p></li><li aria-level="2" dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: circle; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #ffa400;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">itch</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> gave rise to this research project?</span></span></p></li><li aria-level="2" dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: circle; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #ffa400;">What motivates you to pursue this/these kinds of projects/issues/questions together with your collaborators/team?</span></span></p></li><ul style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="3" dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: square; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #ffa400;">What drives you, what motivates you, what raises your pulse?</span></span></p></li><li aria-level="3" dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: square; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #ffa400;">Why is your research important to you, to MID, to society?</span></span></p></li><li aria-level="3" dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: square; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #ffa400;">Were there any specific persons who inspired or motivated you to do this research? What role did they play?</span></span></p></li><li aria-level="3" dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: square; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #ffa400;">What difficulties have you faced (or are you currently facing) in this line of research?</span></span></p></li></ul></ul></ul><p><span style="color: #ffa400;"><br /></span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #ffa400;">Be personal! Show people who you are, including what motivates you!</span></span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #ffa400;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There will be no slides</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to prop you up – it will be just you talking to your colleagues! </span></span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #ffa400;">Somewhere between 30-35 have signed up/will be present at the MID Research Day!</span></span></p></li></ul><p>During the event, everyone who listened to the storytellers chose to concentrate on one out of six Focusing Questions:</p><div><span style="color: #ffa400; font-family: Arial;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 164, 0); font-size: 14.666666984558105px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Choose one of these questions <b>before</b> you hear a story:</span></span></div><div><ul style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #ffa400;">What motivations did you find in the story?</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #ffa400;">Why is the research in question important to the storyteller, to MID and/or to society?</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #ffa400;">Were there any difficult decisions in the story?</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #ffa400;">What role did other people play in the story?</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #ffa400;">What ideas did you get from the story that you might be able to use in your current or future work?</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #ffa400;">Illustrate!</span></span></li></ul></div><p>Since Art of Hosting can (and in this case did) exude playful inclusiveness, I am certain very few participants understood how much time me and Arjun had put into planning the event (except those team-mates of ours who also attended the same course in Art of Hosting half a year ago). Most participants were just happy things worked and might not have spent a lot of time thinking about the work behind "making it work". While the portfolio of Art of Hosting methods is wonderful, it is still necessary to think about the purpose of an event (in this case a Research Day for colleagues at a department), to match that purpose to one or more methods, to think of a "workflow" and then customize the methods so they seamlessly latch on to each other, fit the event (purpose, venue, time, audience etc.) and fit the purpose of the event. So we started the planning process by stating goals we aimed for:</p><div><div><span style="color: #ffa400; font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px; white-space: pre-wrap;">What feeling(s) would we like participants to have when the day comes to and end:</span></span></div><div><ul style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li><span style="color: #ffa400; font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px; white-space: pre-wrap;">New creative ideas have been born in me </span></span></li><li><span style="color: #ffa400; font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Oops, what exciting questions person / group X is working on…</span></span></li><ul style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li><span style="color: #ffa400; font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-db1cec0b-7fff-1525-b59e-a95a5c92db95" style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">→ </span></span>New contacts across team boundaries</span></span></li></ul><li><span style="color: #ffa400; font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ohh, the (previously unknown to me) method I could use to…</span></span></li><li><span style="color: #ffa400; font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have nice colleagues</span></span></li></ul></div><p>We didn't ask participants to fill out a survey (the event was <i>about</i> our research, but we didn't <i>perform research</i> on our colleagues!). We just hope the participants enjoyed the event and made new friends among their colleagues and anecdotal evidence indicates at least some did!</p><p>The MID Research Day was followed by the MID Research Day mingle (with catered food at the department). I broke off and had an important meeting with a student <i>during</i> the mingle and then rejoined the ten or so participants who shot the breeze after others had left. I think the event might have finished around 10 pm at night and I would say it was a success - but I'm of course both partial as well as deeply implicated!</p><p><br /></p><p>At this point it will sound as we only did a storytelling event but here are some other Art of Hosting methods we used during the four-hour half-day event:</p><p>- We arrived in good time and prepared the room so there was a large open space and tables around the walls. We also brought some objects to furnish the room and make it less university-mandated sterile (yoga mats, a salt lamp, a sheep skin etc.)</p><p>- We then started the afternoon with a playful check-in exercise ("everyone who 100% prefers to work from home stand over there and everyone who 100% prefers to work from the office stand over there and then distribute yourselves in-between these poles" + asking a few people to explain why they chose what they chose).</p><p>- We divided the storytelling event into two parts (3 storytellers and later 2 more storytellers). Those who listened were divided into groups depending on what Focusing Question they had chosen and had time to discuss and later share their "findings" with the larger group. Everyone also wrote down insights on post-it notes that we collected on sheets of A3 papers (that we had hung on the walls). </p><p>- We then divided people into groups of 4 and had circle conversations and where we asked participants to discuss two questions:</p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;"><span> </span>- Question 1: What questions were awakened when you heard the storytellers?</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;"><span> </span>- Question 2: How do you position <i>your own work</i> in relation to what your team storyteller said?</span></p><p>At this point we gave these groups more than 30 minutes to discuss these questions and whatever else they wanted to talk about, and the majority of the groups follow Elina's lead and took an outdoor walk in the lovely weather.</p><p>- We had a final harvesting (feedback) exercise where we invited each participant to write one or two short personal letters (or notes, and by all means anonymous) with feedback to storytellers. These notes were framed as "gifts" to the storytellers and we later sorted them and put them in individual envelopes (some of the envelopes are however still waiting on my desk to be handed over to storytellers.</p><p>- We obviously had breaks throughout the day and various mini-exercises to liven things up.</p><p><br /></p><p>Me and Arjun came prepared with a <i>detailed</i> schedule for the 4-hours event (see image above) and with detailed instructions for ourselves and for the participants. We started planning the event more than two months in advance and met for an hour here and there (I can find <i>at least</i> five meetings in the preceding 5 weeks but it could easily have been more). But it turned out great and I hope my colleagues were happy with the Research Day. I would be willing to help/advise the people who take it upon themselves to organize the next Research Day but would prefer for the responsibility to pass to another research group at the department!</p><p>.</p></div>pargmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17208443783482286491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7165044694341896839.post-2267113175312892952022-05-31T20:28:00.295+02:002022-06-05T21:41:07.006+02:00May roundup<p> .</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnzYm0pevOII42Fuc2ylq4uerisINWuj3cKMyjMlT4jSBd1rt3x2JafQRZnxPsEyJ4N2ZRD2AfmP-qxOAXaiFy9M6-X661MKwWvco_so14y4VbbLNTruA82HBE4q8-x-qCCC_Gnmu0sRLBXCbVy8sbBJrazqxYWRQ5oH8RC7Nu8GzyRo82e4fhdUgrEw/s2170/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-06-05%20kl.%2008.51.09.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1414" data-original-width="2170" height="261" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnzYm0pevOII42Fuc2ylq4uerisINWuj3cKMyjMlT4jSBd1rt3x2JafQRZnxPsEyJ4N2ZRD2AfmP-qxOAXaiFy9M6-X661MKwWvco_so14y4VbbLNTruA82HBE4q8-x-qCCC_Gnmu0sRLBXCbVy8sbBJrazqxYWRQ5oH8RC7Nu8GzyRo82e4fhdUgrEw/w400-h261/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-06-05%20kl.%2008.51.09.png" width="400" /></a></div><p><br /></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">THIS IS BLOG POST #600!</h2><p>This is also unfortunately a testament to the fact that I haven't blogged very much during the last few years because <a href="http://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2018/01/blog-post-500.html">blog post #500</a> was published way back in January 2018. That's more than four years ago (while the gap between <a href="http://danielpargman.blogspot.se/2016/09/blogg-post-400-6th-anniversary-of-blog.html">#400</a> and #500 was instead less than 18 months). I certainly hope blog post #700 will be published before the end of 2023 rather than at the end of 2025...</p><p>These centennial blog posts have been an occasion to stop, reflect and write a text about writing texts, but I won't do that this time. Since it's the end of the month I will instead (<a href="http://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2022/04/april-roundup.html">just as I did a month ago</a>) do a roundup of things that happened in May that didn't merit full blog posts of their own (but that could have).</p><p><br /></p><h2>May Roundup</h2><div><span style="font-size: 18.719999313354492px; font-weight: 700;">- Explorative Drama Workshop - Teaching for Sustainability in Higher Education with Eva Österlind (May 10)</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.719999313354492px; font-weight: 700;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-YgOgEsqFukReVSg5_Kly2a_CCiRu7Lxh97dgvl2EodFytqkYPZ0qYAAkb7CFJxLNKvLxOf1iL73fBWIxq9W_d6Q5qU8bc5fCPqp3Z7kWs-jZRE0kifAhHkSk8KQqU1S957fZj1KM19DzA02PLQiNvs2pJO81VqnARUmMZVew8-qV1mtufJIPZ0vLzg/s301/O%CC%88sterlind.jpeg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" data-original-height="301" data-original-width="260" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-YgOgEsqFukReVSg5_Kly2a_CCiRu7Lxh97dgvl2EodFytqkYPZ0qYAAkb7CFJxLNKvLxOf1iL73fBWIxq9W_d6Q5qU8bc5fCPqp3Z7kWs-jZRE0kifAhHkSk8KQqU1S957fZj1KM19DzA02PLQiNvs2pJO81VqnARUmMZVew8-qV1mtufJIPZ0vLzg/w174-h200/O%CC%88sterlind.jpeg" width="174" /></a></div><span style="font-style: italic; text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: center;">Eva Österlind, <span style="text-align: left;">Professor in Applied Drama</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div></span><div>Me and my colleague Leif Dahlberg participated in an autumn 2021 two-day course at Stockholm University about using drama to teach sustainability in higher education. The course was very interesting and it resulted in me inviting Eva Österlind to visit our research group and give a talk earlier this year (in February). This talk created a lot of interest in our group as well as this excellent hands-on three-hour workshop. Ten persons attended, we learned a lot and we had a lot of fun! Here's the description/invitation:</div><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">An overarching purpose for all teaching is to facilitate connections between the content and each individual student. When it comes to climate change, it is a challenging topic for both teachers and students, due to the magnitude of the problem and the existential threat. In order to address the subject, but avoid simplistic approaches or defensive responses like denial, Drama for Learning seems promising.</span></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #ffa400;">From the global dimension to the individual </span></h3><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">The core idea with this drama workshop is to address the Big Issue of Sustainability with open eyes and mind without diminishing the scale of the problem – and avoid feelings of hopelessness or psychological defences. Another purpose is to explore the global – individual dimension, and begin to sort out questions of accountability. What is possible for a single person to do, and what requires decisions on a political level? The intention is that all participants acknowledge the global threats, stay open for individual responses in terms of thoughts and feelings, become more aware of systemic challenges, and still find energy to consider choices and actions within their own reach.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">The workshop is designed for university students/adults with no previous drama experience, and will take 3 hours. To address the content, no specialist knowledge is needed, although it is possible to qualify the discussions by having students prepare (lectures, readings) on the topic.</span></p><div>Our guest teacher for the day, Professor in Applied Drama Eva Österlind, teaches Drama in Teacher Education, leads a Master program in Drama and Applied Theatre and tutors PhD-students. Her research focuses on the potential of Drama for Learning and especially <i>Drama in Education for Sustainable Development in Higher Education</i>. Our research group is very interested and excited to work together with Eva to develop our education and this is something that will 100% happen during the next academic year!</div><p> </p><h3><b>- Collective rhizomatic analysis workshop (May 14)</b></h3><div><b><br /></b></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWZlG9xYkaYh3Mvxpke16vrx__7sXn15nscueIe6_CzyezNz9vEoHz4oVmX68RqwF3ygm_dZYzkdrmsZSIasSwCHp_450912h9XD4aCYveIFzxbMQhd9VGXyKr2HpVsJYIjJ2RDx2F4SuLBpIjxrB24xisYBKb_U2jdBg37VNfg4YQnZ4x3YMFATe2TA/s4032/Paper%20chaos.HEIC" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWZlG9xYkaYh3Mvxpke16vrx__7sXn15nscueIe6_CzyezNz9vEoHz4oVmX68RqwF3ygm_dZYzkdrmsZSIasSwCHp_450912h9XD4aCYveIFzxbMQhd9VGXyKr2HpVsJYIjJ2RDx2F4SuLBpIjxrB24xisYBKb_U2jdBg37VNfg4YQnZ4x3YMFATe2TA/s320/Paper%20chaos.HEIC" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>Workshop participants were welcomed by an organized mess!</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><p>Eva Österlind's phd. student Julia Fries participated in and taught in the autumn 2021 two-day course I wrote about (above), and she invited me to participate in an experiment/workshop, a "collective rhizomatic analysis" (with inspiration from Deleuze and Guattari). A dozen researchers participated in the workshop of which half had a drama background and the other half had a sustainability background. </p><p>It was a fun, but also a strange workshop where Julia both presented material she had previously collected but also used the workshop itself to collect new material. She even invited workshop participants to become co-authors of a future article. (I declined because I have too much to do and didn't understand what exactly the topic of the article would be and how I could contribute.)</p><p>An interesting coincidence is that her thinking have many points in common with our research project <a href="https://www.kth.se/hct/mid/research/sustainability/projects/event-horizon-1.970914">Beyond the Event Horizon</a> (that I have recently written about on the blog <a href="http://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2022/05/even-horizon-counterfactual-workshop.html">here</a> and <a href="http://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2022/05/counterfactual-thinking-as-strategy-for.html">here</a>), e.g. of using methods from drama to imagine a better more sustainable future as something that we have already attained and then explore and probe what that results in in terms of both thoughts and feelings. </p><p>Julia's advisor, Eva Östergren (see above) also participated in the workshop but took the role of an observer.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOkxgLBRCtuPFJZHrDHKSEyOwPV36gJJryzt-KZYROBJsJkgZiHmFulq0C3qheucjz95sxMLvt4gQGfFGgQxtMWxEe7KP1aclMEUi8Jq3H7X-7_ujnovfam18our9qgqIImvBvVovsCtJnkt0UNyNqm8wYrMVwM2nqKLBtcHs3mn30WrlbNKX9-FbaXg/s4032/Rhizome.HEIC" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOkxgLBRCtuPFJZHrDHKSEyOwPV36gJJryzt-KZYROBJsJkgZiHmFulq0C3qheucjz95sxMLvt4gQGfFGgQxtMWxEe7KP1aclMEUi8Jq3H7X-7_ujnovfam18our9qgqIImvBvVovsCtJnkt0UNyNqm8wYrMVwM2nqKLBtcHs3mn30WrlbNKX9-FbaXg/w150-h200/Rhizome.HEIC" width="150" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid1iBudXysLkVKmQXgWSHz5ja6mFQNUjiHqJlkh6QcsAoE1buV_Zzm2IAvVxcVEZI7AFLFSChwstahGp8XLCERp0trM-pws3y5X6Xb4Dy1HF_0TTLdcnxCA_cYHkBv8_8j2wdTc3R7aeWvPrER-0eS1i60fWjTgSzKf6hqP3aZawZsYdumOGFY4bTVaQ/s4032/Red.HEIC" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid1iBudXysLkVKmQXgWSHz5ja6mFQNUjiHqJlkh6QcsAoE1buV_Zzm2IAvVxcVEZI7AFLFSChwstahGp8XLCERp0trM-pws3y5X6Xb4Dy1HF_0TTLdcnxCA_cYHkBv8_8j2wdTc3R7aeWvPrER-0eS1i60fWjTgSzKf6hqP3aZawZsYdumOGFY4bTVaQ/w150-h200/Red.HEIC" width="150" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCZsWumt6fdyWwVcEApKDppXYcDY53yU2jnwYkvDgZORL-bsKboqLcNAh2ut-YaAEBr6yDtpyjgvt2C8T0aqKSOqwmiIA1Cbuxi5uyaKXj7c6bXEHwIax-y-_aZN9slzxXC3mtbGyRp2QOCfo67gvgEbHcrYoIAg_-bE_BmanQ-cDQAW6hxIPM-VbaWA/s4032/Pretending%20towards%20new%20realities.HEIC" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCZsWumt6fdyWwVcEApKDppXYcDY53yU2jnwYkvDgZORL-bsKboqLcNAh2ut-YaAEBr6yDtpyjgvt2C8T0aqKSOqwmiIA1Cbuxi5uyaKXj7c6bXEHwIax-y-_aZN9slzxXC3mtbGyRp2QOCfo67gvgEbHcrYoIAg_-bE_BmanQ-cDQAW6hxIPM-VbaWA/w150-h200/Pretending%20towards%20new%20realities.HEIC" width="150" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5UfMq4gGb_y13MpK51LdG0D6xEy-9Sh3naQqEOhKeGzKochpvhz6EHDw_sLrvN0Svh0MvcvoHsot9FsXkYExOw8KscV44719nJ9udKecyQz1GVfwbResR7x4e3D7Aq0j8iipRIOz1TnpMg3VJ-7_TSZs079Qb2BFY6HMXZum5cgei8tqnBhE40GrMOQ/s4032/Space%20for%20emotions.HEIC" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5UfMq4gGb_y13MpK51LdG0D6xEy-9Sh3naQqEOhKeGzKochpvhz6EHDw_sLrvN0Svh0MvcvoHsot9FsXkYExOw8KscV44719nJ9udKecyQz1GVfwbResR7x4e3D7Aq0j8iipRIOz1TnpMg3VJ-7_TSZs079Qb2BFY6HMXZum5cgei8tqnBhE40GrMOQ/w150-h200/Space%20for%20emotions.HEIC" width="150" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div><h3><b>- Stand-up final exam (May 15)</b></h3></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7pC6UfipKQAyBfso9JQCJ6i1Ocy_kKpqv4pYCBMB8gdzHSc5NgYqUoqrJ6JwTo9bxby_0jJioaqGT0cUpIS3kcv-5W8VFtxkbUzkQuQHZkhsFn9LfvyOzR1I73JJn8GhdTMhVujit3ms27o9Kn7qb4-n5Z_q2tCDizwKdpi6Wu3akLfpYfddvVBP7Rg/s1290/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-06-05%20kl.%2019.52.13.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1290" data-original-width="986" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7pC6UfipKQAyBfso9JQCJ6i1Ocy_kKpqv4pYCBMB8gdzHSc5NgYqUoqrJ6JwTo9bxby_0jJioaqGT0cUpIS3kcv-5W8VFtxkbUzkQuQHZkhsFn9LfvyOzR1I73JJn8GhdTMhVujit3ms27o9Kn7qb4-n5Z_q2tCDizwKdpi6Wu3akLfpYfddvVBP7Rg/w154-h200/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-06-05%20kl.%2019.52.13.png" width="154" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6EdmMAj-ZqLxZjH8d9gU25v7xqPoqbTf_dwPESoO9AW25j9Y1dsEqdbmmLX9WawGLg4KVkeEBKt4Sksca0bZ_siiO5emI8nHYjb2ejDCIslk-Bje-xeAuXH66g8xs2X5B_R0acqAYQ1zWGc1AT_V_DTomjArIFZOXjuBtDe1IZlfC-LGmDHh2hI4AsA/s1266/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-06-05%20kl.%2019.52.35.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1266" data-original-width="990" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6EdmMAj-ZqLxZjH8d9gU25v7xqPoqbTf_dwPESoO9AW25j9Y1dsEqdbmmLX9WawGLg4KVkeEBKt4Sksca0bZ_siiO5emI8nHYjb2ejDCIslk-Bje-xeAuXH66g8xs2X5B_R0acqAYQ1zWGc1AT_V_DTomjArIFZOXjuBtDe1IZlfC-LGmDHh2hI4AsA/w157-h200/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-06-05%20kl.%2019.52.35.png" width="157" /></a></div><b><br /></b></div><p><a href="http://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2022/04/my-career-as-stand-up-comedian.html">I have previously written</a> about the course in stand-up comedy I have taken during the spring and as all things must come to an end, so too did this. It ended with a final exam where we performed on stage in front of invited guests that we (the course participants) ourselves had invited.</p><p>I asked at the second to last occasion and the teacher said that we should invite as many as we could, since we would never have a better and more kind audience who would want nothing but to support us by laughing at us. So three days before the show I went bananas and invited lots and lots of people. There were thus 20 persons in the audience who came there because of me and they might in fact have constituted the major part of the audience!</p><p>It was great but also very different from the kind of talking I'm used to (lectures and seminars) and I learned so much. I have since listened to stand-up at Big Ben, a pub that has stand-up every day of the week and where I will stand on the stage after the summer (I was inspired after visiting them and I have already written new material for that occasion)!</p><p>I have also participated in another event twice in May, "public speaking". It has nothing to do with stand-up but still shares characteristics and it's organized every Sunday in central Stockholm (including during the summer!). </p><p><br /></p><div><h3><b>- Universities total climate footprint - walking the talk (May 19)</b></h3></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXtl0TzvL5YKlpinLX6zKwe-_7tZJIlKgYkeEEboZflrP7DLWLYZWZlMMioQ559X__T7_BaDPEUrwHNcjqwtxjGg2hGEIuNr4pgh8V4cQmnF_LB_HPpmOtI8jKNVr5JFCV_y24JI2x5XAogPqBa_UmOxGar5mz2UG86gCndVmYRep9GdA0ioysdifOOw/s2298/NUAS.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1288" data-original-width="2298" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXtl0TzvL5YKlpinLX6zKwe-_7tZJIlKgYkeEEboZflrP7DLWLYZWZlMMioQ559X__T7_BaDPEUrwHNcjqwtxjGg2hGEIuNr4pgh8V4cQmnF_LB_HPpmOtI8jKNVr5JFCV_y24JI2x5XAogPqBa_UmOxGar5mz2UG86gCndVmYRep9GdA0ioysdifOOw/w320-h180/NUAS.png" width="320" /></a></div><b><br /></b></div><div>I participated in an online Zoom seminar on "<i>Universities total climate footprint – walking the talk</i>" that was organized by the The Nordic Association of University Administrators (NUAS) <a href="https://www.nuas.org/group/sustainability/">interest group for sustainability</a> and the Nordic Sustainable Campus Network (NSCN).</div><div><br /></div><div>I unfortunately could not listen to the whole seminar but found a talk by Danish phd student Thomas Stridsland from Aarhus University about "<i>Danish universities' joint work on total climate footprint accounting</i>" very interesting!</div><div><br /></div><div>The connection to my research is of course our Flight research project. Flying constitutes a substantial part of universities' CO2 footprint and it's interesting to listen to universities' (methodological) challenges of trying to figure out how to measure their total CO2 footprint.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div><div><h3><b>- The invisible dinosaur (May 22)</b></h3></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeeEQTXdvderzv-WEjX0qn0I52wHPcUKen5iOOxJLoKNpQmU96rQtiZRbPJGLtRT-DhwPEF0AKSaFD6xTxZpzkGqH2CzE7K7u2bKQbzgjU5QPOTb-lhOYPcpjVy4xgPFpU9qltUUI8nOKLEsSjpugHn9HrT6ZTdtbnq5Xlzs0-weyJqp7hV9XG0BGwSQ/s1024/Wormbs.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="1024" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeeEQTXdvderzv-WEjX0qn0I52wHPcUKen5iOOxJLoKNpQmU96rQtiZRbPJGLtRT-DhwPEF0AKSaFD6xTxZpzkGqH2CzE7K7u2bKQbzgjU5QPOTb-lhOYPcpjVy4xgPFpU9qltUUI8nOKLEsSjpugHn9HrT6ZTdtbnq5Xlzs0-weyJqp7hV9XG0BGwSQ/s320/Wormbs.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>Nina Wormbs, KTH p<span style="text-align: left;">rofessor in history of technology.</span></i></div><b><br /></b></div><div></div><div>Our science + art + communication project "<i><a href="https://www.kth.se/hct/mid/research/sustainability/projects/homo-colossus-1.951728">From Homo Sapiens to Homo Colossus</a>: Visualising our energy footprint</i>" was on national Swedish Radio! It was my KTH colleague, <a href="https://www.kth.se/profile/nina?l=en">Nina Wormbs</a>, who talked about it in the weekly news show "<a href="https://sverigesradio.se/godmorgon-varlden">Godmorgon Världen</a>" [Good morning World]. Nina had previously sent a draft of the talk to me for fact checking and I also had some suggestions for how to make the project and our results more compelling. She took my advice and did a stellar job of explaining it!</div><div><br /></div><div>The episode is almost 5 minuts long and it's called "Den osynliga dinosaurien" [The invisible dinosaur] <a href="https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/nina-wormbs-jag-konsumerar-som-en-dinosaurie?fbclid=iwar22wye9u6hy_rptifkot9ab46zt58yeeklbyvlvc0adfin1cg-i1fxqxk8">and it is available here</a> (NOTE: it's in Swedish). My project colleagues are: Mario Romero (KTH visualization center), Åsa Andersson Broms (The Royal Institute of Art), Per Hasselberg (The People's Movements for Art Promotion/Konstfrämjandet) and Belinda Retourné (Changency).</div></div><div><br /></div><div><h3><b>- Decreased CO2 emissions from researchers' flying - what could Formas do? (May 30)</b></h3></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiucW2eex87MtglUh-XQ31PhcoW2KpDdUNKg6Hb8haFLOr0VxMApO03N76VCDC-1SRDKSowKUIZV5iblgcMwq4h6EJY-0CfP2kZ8u52V2wPD9fp3oUJtxmF8P52E_UkEcEpUswI1tGqjg8QDmDiW3eSBkEm-QW9_lbXlg7vwxeR9qqxndNFgf2ff9pt1A/s3508/220530%20Formas-presentation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2479" data-original-width="3508" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiucW2eex87MtglUh-XQ31PhcoW2KpDdUNKg6Hb8haFLOr0VxMApO03N76VCDC-1SRDKSowKUIZV5iblgcMwq4h6EJY-0CfP2kZ8u52V2wPD9fp3oUJtxmF8P52E_UkEcEpUswI1tGqjg8QDmDiW3eSBkEm-QW9_lbXlg7vwxeR9qqxndNFgf2ff9pt1A/s320/220530%20Formas-presentation.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><b><br /></b></div><p>This is a talk that has been long in the making! I can track mails about this talk more than two years back, but the proposed talk was postponed several times due to Covid complications. We picked up the thread again and started to plan for the talk three months ago, back in February! Perhaps it was good that we waited because we nowadays don't just have intriguing results, but in fact also a message and perhaps even a challenge for Formas.</p><p>Formas is a government research council for sustainable development. They hand out 1800 MSEK per year (1 SEK ≈ 0.1 € / 0.1 $) and has a portfolio of ≈ 2000 ongoing research projects. We love the fact that they support research, but since (some) research is carbon intensive (because researchers fly a lot), we suggested Formas should do their part to reduce the CO2 footprint of research. So we suggested they should ask for a CO2 budget for travel when researchers submit grant applications. Formas would then be able to calculate a new metric (CO2/MSEK) for how research funds they hand out is used and take that into account when they evaluate the research grant applications. Just asking for an estimate would most probably have a self-cleansing effect among <i>sustainability researchers</i> asking for funds to support <i>sustainability research</i>. </p><p>There is in fact a great example of this already happening since the large research programme <a href="https://www.sustainableconsumption.se/en/start-eng/">Mistra Sustainable Consumption</a> have formulated a climate target for travel, e.g. the emissions from travel should not exceed 0.5 tons of CO2e per full-time equivalent per year. It's 2022 and <i>all</i> (sustainability) research should be able to do the same!</p><div><br /></div><div><div><h3><b>- Bureaucrat mingle (May 30)</b></h3></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDqz7ta5CPlZ6d-3s8FXI9gPFUOYIg4rm34wb5VVYb7VYnvpw46t-h9lQ9TSRkOfAFuZcZfQSaxoaeqQgW-7xxx2wuYM9vUtKOtxe1MamL4id0MK4QGmk8JiNasowzWrGpzr2bdttUKHCOsYN8_5K00OA3rM7Pm0mn2LaSX_3GQYiwOHblwTp-nDFcHw/s4032/Akavia%201.HEIC" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDqz7ta5CPlZ6d-3s8FXI9gPFUOYIg4rm34wb5VVYb7VYnvpw46t-h9lQ9TSRkOfAFuZcZfQSaxoaeqQgW-7xxx2wuYM9vUtKOtxe1MamL4id0MK4QGmk8JiNasowzWrGpzr2bdttUKHCOsYN8_5K00OA3rM7Pm0mn2LaSX_3GQYiwOHblwTp-nDFcHw/w150-h200/Akavia%201.HEIC" width="150" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqwmvMOurtmhWI9BR2eL_D3dPsqiQ9IswYz6OOgZR4uk95MfzwWKuzE8_CRs4WUA6TaCUmEjPQTSNBYxVBsrRTbe5akWtzQDmQ7EtT41m1LPzmnGA_a4xzbhcXPKQsarLaZSWc5v_UIR3mGitVr1GZgdTT0O_zKhOMl9hKt4AovUc0MBwUiKM8SHLzZg/s3812/Akavia%202.heic" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2558" data-original-width="3812" height="134" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqwmvMOurtmhWI9BR2eL_D3dPsqiQ9IswYz6OOgZR4uk95MfzwWKuzE8_CRs4WUA6TaCUmEjPQTSNBYxVBsrRTbe5akWtzQDmQ7EtT41m1LPzmnGA_a4xzbhcXPKQsarLaZSWc5v_UIR3mGitVr1GZgdTT0O_zKhOMl9hKt4AovUc0MBwUiKM8SHLzZg/w200-h134/Akavia%202.heic" width="200" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>The bureaucrat's ten key words (left) and one of the key words, "curious" (right)</i></div><b><br /></b></div><p>I thought it was hilarious when my union sent me an invitation for a "bureaucrat mingle". Since KTH is not only a university but also formally a governmental agency, I am employed by the state and can thus pass as a bureaucrat. I wanted to check out other bureaucrats and see if they (we!) were as boring as they (we!) are reputed to be.</p><p>My verdict is partly "yes" in terms of interests (many people knew a lot of rules), but they were also very interesting and the event was nice. A well known Swedish historian, <a href="https://www.gunnarwetterberg.se">Gunnar Wetterberg</a>, gave a talk where he lauded bureaucrats. The union handed out a small booklet that he had written, "The bureaucrat's ten key words",<b> </b>and the key words were: 1) In the citizens' best interest, 2) Reflection and development, 3) Competence and knowledge, 4) Curious, 5) Brave, 6) Independent, 7) Integrity, 8) Legal certainty/rule of law, 9) Good judgement and 10) Responsibility.</p><p><br /></p></div><div><div><h3><b>- Last SF Lab meeting for the spring term (May 31)</b></h3></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGDYaMdDFdUT8IMQbJK49MJ2Sn_V9gjCKkTJWjfM-l5vjG_RkZCQAgEnI9kmR1Q2rifrJn2oZ6aU2iQgdeiOL4b3DsAJwPDYHRUcAnMwlEra90gwAdtx2ZTN7g4ekt0QdJ4v_Cig0T6THT2ahXDwgD4Fu3de24-ik_v9hQuQKMOgB5T5r0OQsyYyCSZg/s2874/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-06-05%20kl.%2020.57.59.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="2874" height="143" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGDYaMdDFdUT8IMQbJK49MJ2Sn_V9gjCKkTJWjfM-l5vjG_RkZCQAgEnI9kmR1Q2rifrJn2oZ6aU2iQgdeiOL4b3DsAJwPDYHRUcAnMwlEra90gwAdtx2ZTN7g4ekt0QdJ4v_Cig0T6THT2ahXDwgD4Fu3de24-ik_v9hQuQKMOgB5T5r0OQsyYyCSZg/w400-h143/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-06-05%20kl.%2020.57.59.png" width="400" /></a></div><div><br /></div><p>We had our 10th and last team/research group lunch meeting on May 31. We would surely have had another meeting if not for the fact that many of us will be at <a href="https://conf.researchr.org/home/ict4s-2022">a conference in Bulgaria</a> in mid-June. </p><p>We changed our name from MID4S to SF Lab this spring! We had grown out of "Media Technology and Interaction Design for Sustainability" and are now instead the "Sustainable Futures Lab"! Also, we are at the cusp of announcing our new blog (see image above).</p><p>Here is a very short summary of the spring term in the form of a list of the many great guests we had who visited us and gave talks at our team meetings:</p><p>- <b>Martin Lindrup</b> (PhD student at the Computer Science Department, Human-Centred Computing group, Aalborg University, Denmark) talked about "<i>Insights about meaningful data in environmentally sustainable food consumption</i>".</p><p>- <b>Eva Österlind</b> (Professor in Applied Drama, Department of Teaching and Learning, Stockholm University) talked about "<i>Teaching for Sustainability in Higher Education - Interactive Drama Workshops</i>".</p><p>- <b>Emile Roch</b> & <b>Daphné Hamilton-Jones</b> (Master Students in Design Research at the Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris Saclay, Télecom Paris (Institut Polytechnique) and ENSCI Les Ateliers) talked about "<i>Exploring Co-design for Sustainibility through Design Fiction</i>"</p><p>- <b>Ola Leifler</b> (PhD, Linköping University, Department of Computer Science) talked about "<i>Reorientating an academic career to become an agent for meaningful change to societal transformation</i>".</p><p>- <b>Katka Katerina Cerna</b> (Senior lecture at MDI/Applied IT, Gothenburg University) talked about "<i>Co-design of enabling entanglements: fostering connection between people through (plant) care and sensing technology</i>"</p><p><br /></p></div><div><h3><b>- Books I've read</b></h3></div><p>This is yet another month when I only had time to read two books. This is less than I usually read but I again have to blame stand-up comedy. It really took a lot of my time and in particular the time when I commute. I usually reserve that time for reading, but have spent the last month thinking about stand-up, memorizing and revising stand-up texts, practicing my stand-up performance in my head and so on. The two book I read in May were anyway:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;">Helen Pluckrose & James Lindsay (2020). Cynical theories: How activist scholarship made everything about race, gender and identity.</li><li style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;">Peter Boghossian & James Lindsay (2019). How to have impossible conversations: A very practical guide.</li></ul><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifQ0TTyz-4bl4jjAXksZrYl68rZj5MR21XEFWWYUCcj4wiFxGC1yIYdm-5IRoGlv8XCT6tG1K8f-vEgYEHv7TxovGBmmVqoNIOJB5xvY9_n2SoddcCHdL62m6OQUe13w384WPykgFWLNg1mf4xj_l19nW3fQ7DBTgpIlixkomEz0RU_4EKGzNl2OvlTA/s1080/Pluckrose.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="763" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifQ0TTyz-4bl4jjAXksZrYl68rZj5MR21XEFWWYUCcj4wiFxGC1yIYdm-5IRoGlv8XCT6tG1K8f-vEgYEHv7TxovGBmmVqoNIOJB5xvY9_n2SoddcCHdL62m6OQUe13w384WPykgFWLNg1mf4xj_l19nW3fQ7DBTgpIlixkomEz0RU_4EKGzNl2OvlTA/w141-h200/Pluckrose.jpeg" width="141" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOU8uimXQ4KHgcwtWbrQLRL6lAVRWfAqh-DrYMMtQIfREOURJnUceTo7nPZ7oKeBE33-8oqiA92CHQ4wMXXUIspO6Z0sLKdKa1cbWgmEynBi8xhl7s-VQJJdc9F9TWa0aSNnPoFFZPp_9FPqQGLKr91iqSTZS1-sc_GhS0z2MqksxaYW8KKMeqRZQYiw/s499/Boghossian.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="331" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOU8uimXQ4KHgcwtWbrQLRL6lAVRWfAqh-DrYMMtQIfREOURJnUceTo7nPZ7oKeBE33-8oqiA92CHQ4wMXXUIspO6Z0sLKdKa1cbWgmEynBi8xhl7s-VQJJdc9F9TWa0aSNnPoFFZPp_9FPqQGLKr91iqSTZS1-sc_GhS0z2MqksxaYW8KKMeqRZQYiw/w133-h200/Boghossian.jpeg" width="133" /></a></div><p>.</p></div>pargmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17208443783482286491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7165044694341896839.post-65728153217249160282022-05-25T20:36:00.038+02:002022-05-28T11:15:24.407+02:00Spring 2022 bachelor's theses<p> .</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3xekb7BVU7MTN2lTZCwi7ypoVPesgoi-MdUqkTZiD9thulg7JzMRdjBDlRvMdJDAVOQEM1jgmfGgtuJQTWf33tzEdokr7tFG8d42vUPFw2twfC_VwBIpBq-erDaAJa1lt-2WKBmxoX8N2Jq6nV5jqblgwvXZXivnSyyloM3XxY_NA7CqfdWTygzZYsw/s1694/In%20situ.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="898" data-original-width="1694" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3xekb7BVU7MTN2lTZCwi7ypoVPesgoi-MdUqkTZiD9thulg7JzMRdjBDlRvMdJDAVOQEM1jgmfGgtuJQTWf33tzEdokr7tFG8d42vUPFw2twfC_VwBIpBq-erDaAJa1lt-2WKBmxoX8N2Jq6nV5jqblgwvXZXivnSyyloM3XxY_NA7CqfdWTygzZYsw/w400-h214/In%20situ.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="text-align: left;"><i>An interactive installation could for example be placed in KTH's library.</i></span></div><div><span style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></span></div></div><p></p><p>I have supervised five bachelor's theses during the spring term and the students just handed in their theses to the examiner. The students work in pairs so these 10 students will have one last chance to correct or change their thesis after the examination (next week), but the version they just handed in is what will be examined and graded (pass/fail), so it's pretty official. </p><p>I usually supervise two groups of students but I had only one group this year. Having 10 students (5 theses) is on the other hand a quite large group. Three pairs worked with thesis proposals that came from my/our Flight research project ("<a href="https://www.kth.se/hct/mid/research/sustainability/projects/flight-1.920661">Decreased CO2-emissions in flight-intensive organisations</a>"). That means I have been both "client" as well as "advisor" and I present these three theses first. </p><p>I have used the students' thesis abstracts as a starting point for the texts below and have shortened and simplified them, but then also added text when I felt it was necessary and also added images as I have seen fit. DO NOTE that despite the fact that these "processed abstracts" use "we" (signifying "we the students"), I have made significant changes compared to the real abstracts (primarily by shortening them but sometimes by clarifying things etc.).</p><p>The last time I wrote about the bachelors' theses I supervised was in 2020. I supervised two groups of students and wrote two blog post (one about each group; <a href="http://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2020/02/flight-spring-2020-bachelors-theses.html">Flight theses</a> and <a href="http://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2020/02/homo-colossus-spring-2020-bachelors.html">Homo Colossus theses</a>).</p><p><br /></p><div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #ffa400;">KTH’s Fastest Professor: An Analysis of Academic Flying (Vivi Andersson & Gustav Sundin)</span></b></h3><p>This thesis is inspired by KTH professor Metsola van der Wijngaart's <a href="https://www.kth.se/profile/wouter/page/a-practical-guide-to-academic-air-travel-reduction">proposal regarding academic flying</a>, i.e. "only fly if per 0.1 ton of CO2e you emit, you spend one efficient workday at your destination". This perspective focuses on emissions per day of traveling and thus differs from (only) looking at an individual's total emissions. Based on an anonymized data set of all 2019 air travel at KTH, we analysed academic flying at KTH in terms of "emission speed" (CO2e per travel day). This thesis thus examines 1) the top 10 KTH employees who have the highest emission speed (CO2e per travel day) and 2) the 10 "top emitters" who fly the most (who rack up the most air miles and have the highest total CO2e emissions). If these groups differ, what are the travel patterns that underlie these differences?</p><p>Our analysis shows that these two lists differ significantly, with only one individual having a top 10 position in both lists. Those with high emission speeds often made a small number of trips that were often long distance, sometimes in business class, and had a short duration (e.g. traveling far and staying away for only a few days). Top emitters had made a larger number of trips, but a few short-distance long-duration trips lowered their 2019 average emission speed. Our conclusion is that emission speed can provide a <i>different</i> perspective compared to total emissions, and that the CO2e-per-travel-day index can be used to analyze individual trips to find candidates that might represent "unnecessary" trips, e.g. trips that could or should be avoided.</p><p><br /></p></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif5XYvmLRC3sQXL04-GMyz1bcglzYvN5yVwZufqWqUkv9NVZJy2r_gbz5o-FPe__peX5mnraaDUeCiLrTVNwIX93J_jJVQxaWngKyutzZ2ojfb1QG13kj1SaB-Jr2b-d9FJud9Stk7ElufgoS9d4t5XVSCgC3dBdv_hBVuY1hGU4tNQQFiQpU0CrtGhg/s1436/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-05-27%20kl.%2000.39.58.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1168" data-original-width="1436" height="325" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif5XYvmLRC3sQXL04-GMyz1bcglzYvN5yVwZufqWqUkv9NVZJy2r_gbz5o-FPe__peX5mnraaDUeCiLrTVNwIX93J_jJVQxaWngKyutzZ2ojfb1QG13kj1SaB-Jr2b-d9FJud9Stk7ElufgoS9d4t5XVSCgC3dBdv_hBVuY1hGU4tNQQFiQpU0CrtGhg/w400-h325/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-05-27%20kl.%2000.39.58.png" width="400" /></a></div><p><i>Top 10 KTH employees who have the highest emission speed (from 1200 to 650 kg CO2e per travel day). Professor C (third column) is the only person who are both this list and the list of top 10 emitters at KTH (clocking in at 21 000 kg of CO2e emissions from business trips during 2019).</i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtZoZztnxzWJr_0SDa-1fOTQUTgl11LS0htiQT3Dw_AKgc4VNYayeFGjDQ0ZByzIMVwtPgd3qrazMjZlYBh-cN453CYZTnbIYH5VJFFqojYx5D9T74eMX9gYZlzQQbyyLoNqqDuSP0rQV5_og7W6v-4Qkhp-E_SOilKxmjhDTwAeGep-IdMig6kSmKiQ/s1262/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-05-27%20kl.%2000.40.29.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1262" data-original-width="1250" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtZoZztnxzWJr_0SDa-1fOTQUTgl11LS0htiQT3Dw_AKgc4VNYayeFGjDQ0ZByzIMVwtPgd3qrazMjZlYBh-cN453CYZTnbIYH5VJFFqojYx5D9T74eMX9gYZlzQQbyyLoNqqDuSP0rQV5_og7W6v-4Qkhp-E_SOilKxmjhDTwAeGep-IdMig6kSmKiQ/w398-h400/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-05-27%20kl.%2000.40.29.png" width="398" /></a></div><p><i>Professor D is the top polluter at KTH with total of 53 000 kg of CO2e emissions from business trips during 2019. With 32 trips made during 2019, this professor has more than twice as large CO2e emissions as the second highest polluter.</i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #ffa400;">Visualizing flight data for heads of departments: A tool to decrease academic flying (My Andersson & Fanny Erkhammar)</span></b></h3><div><p>To live up to the promises made in the Paris Agreement, all countries and all organisations need to reduce their flight-related emissions. Universities (including KTH) are among the top polluters among Swedish governmental agencies. We have therefore built a prototype of a visualization tool with the aim of providing KTH heads of departments with an overview of their departments' flying. We more specifically asked "how can we, by visualizing flight data, help KTH heads of departments get an overview of their department’s air travel for the purpose of supporting decision-making that can help reduce the carbon emissions?". </p><p>We performed interviews with participants from the target group, developed a prototype and then performed user tests with the target group. Participants were interest in the tool and came with suggestions about additional functions they would like to have. The study also however showed that the implementation and use of a tool such as this is not currently relevant due to the lack in clear guidelines from KTH about individuals or departmental CO2 emission reduction targets. This means that heads of departments currently have no foundation upon which they can base their decisions on. Such guidelines need to be developed and integrated into the tool for it to be of use to KTH heads of departments.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdFYEn5FEeyhRGhL2HzYLJyeDepkNOyUWilbYroV1XQnT271LFb0gCDZDYJm24WT2iTnUGcyXPnYuKi7_tWNz6RwkMp3JcNPe9hWEls_ulB9_xZ0vDAC1-wuoh-XG4VHbB4w5ugbW8zx5gtzrWN633-rt47gW3iahBS7Qoilr-qXcce6WK5vDj3iQ-Eg/s1038/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-05-27%20kl.%2001.02.58.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="598" data-original-width="1038" height="231" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdFYEn5FEeyhRGhL2HzYLJyeDepkNOyUWilbYroV1XQnT271LFb0gCDZDYJm24WT2iTnUGcyXPnYuKi7_tWNz6RwkMp3JcNPe9hWEls_ulB9_xZ0vDAC1-wuoh-XG4VHbB4w5ugbW8zx5gtzrWN633-rt47gW3iahBS7Qoilr-qXcce6WK5vDj3iQ-Eg/w400-h231/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-05-27%20kl.%2001.02.58.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><p style="text-align: left;"><i>A large department with dozens of employees. Color = total CO2 emissions, height = number of trips. The blue figure represents KTH's goal and dark red = > 5 times more emissions that KTH's (blue) goal.</i></p><div><br /></div></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirx1q17AjfrEOnR9oOibxTu1ItH3ZW_5BKlVDW25qF11ZBrKh9tgfNgPu_UL8zSHKyw7S2nOT213UBUwF8d_LqAQOKr6kASohoDJ4L1J4jO91wRDyjY1oZtXlWz7EMjg3LMLPy5OHPXMnVvkgyEuBD47DtNLLked_tn4nZlxOaRFA05ZA4RwtJaiSYVA/s1056/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-05-27%20kl.%2001.03.14.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="622" data-original-width="1056" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirx1q17AjfrEOnR9oOibxTu1ItH3ZW_5BKlVDW25qF11ZBrKh9tgfNgPu_UL8zSHKyw7S2nOT213UBUwF8d_LqAQOKr6kASohoDJ4L1J4jO91wRDyjY1oZtXlWz7EMjg3LMLPy5OHPXMnVvkgyEuBD47DtNLLked_tn4nZlxOaRFA05ZA4RwtJaiSYVA/w400-h235/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-05-27%20kl.%2001.03.14.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><p style="text-align: left;"><i>The head of the department can zoom in on individual employees. Orange windows in the plane = number of trips made this year. Grey bar (right) = average emissions at the department.</i></p><div><i><br /></i></div></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #ffa400;">80-20: A visualization of business travel habits at KTH (Jackie Hellsten & Saga Oldenburg)</span></b></h3><p>Aviation releases large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and it is the norm in the academic world to travel around the world to network and to spread one’s research results (and CO2 into the atmosphere). This does however not align with global attempts to lower emissions. To break the norm of flying, discussions must be held about how universities can lower their emissions from aviation. At KTH, 20% of all scientists currently contribute to 80% of <i>all</i> researchers' flight-related CO2 emissions. </p><p>Our aim has been to investigate the following question: “In order to evoke reflection and discussion regarding the uneven distribution of carbon dioxide emissions from aviation amongst scientists, how can an interactive installation be designed to achieve this?”. The thesis uses Research Through Design and critical design to examine this question. Multiple interviews were held with employees at different universities in Sweden to test and evaluate how effective the prototype installation was at evoking discussion. Users guessed how aviation-related emissions are distributed amongst KTH researchers (in the installation's interactive interface) only to then have the actual distribution visualized (with dramatic effects) and where the goal was to invoke reflection through the addition of a number of provocative elements. The interviews indicated that the installation would be successful at evoking reflection and discussion about the distribution of aviation-related emissions if it were to be placed in a public space at the university.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMN6m-i9zxa0QqB03KwnRUVzw9C-PeuHZLHGbMitRjIpsqDKDlI-ezJgVkswEH0kcVlAqlXfBNshA-UiXVEkNzAn_QsONhyYgG5aIvEU0EEBnlCtgjQ0y-py5XbbmEuuIjqPXHWzySAMrYXCqZHpfCFOBTx9qBrg6hB6oIic-5QR0TSt2OZ8wlEc2oAA/s1708/Splash.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="1708" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMN6m-i9zxa0QqB03KwnRUVzw9C-PeuHZLHGbMitRjIpsqDKDlI-ezJgVkswEH0kcVlAqlXfBNshA-UiXVEkNzAn_QsONhyYgG5aIvEU0EEBnlCtgjQ0y-py5XbbmEuuIjqPXHWzySAMrYXCqZHpfCFOBTx9qBrg6hB6oIic-5QR0TSt2OZ8wlEc2oAA/w400-h225/Splash.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>This screen is an invitation to use the interactive <span style="text-align: left;">installation.</span></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3xekb7BVU7MTN2lTZCwi7ypoVPesgoi-MdUqkTZiD9thulg7JzMRdjBDlRvMdJDAVOQEM1jgmfGgtuJQTWf33tzEdokr7tFG8d42vUPFw2twfC_VwBIpBq-erDaAJa1lt-2WKBmxoX8N2Jq6nV5jqblgwvXZXivnSyyloM3XxY_NA7CqfdWTygzZYsw/s1694/In%20situ.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="898" data-original-width="1694" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3xekb7BVU7MTN2lTZCwi7ypoVPesgoi-MdUqkTZiD9thulg7JzMRdjBDlRvMdJDAVOQEM1jgmfGgtuJQTWf33tzEdokr7tFG8d42vUPFw2twfC_VwBIpBq-erDaAJa1lt-2WKBmxoX8N2Jq6nV5jqblgwvXZXivnSyyloM3XxY_NA7CqfdWTygzZYsw/w400-h214/In%20situ.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><i>The interactive installation could for example be placed in KTH's library.</i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXFclq3s30yiqMGCDEKjRuME5ItmhXgdzxE8qhxvhWMBxrerNppQPBd-VRw-4UmxQ-uT-3cuN_ra6OmE43706Y7y-ZoA-GmKjxzOamHCLhHOMQviL9U5gMMQm9IbJKWoxrDwxz3C1U0iZSRmnAeY16u-kEp8Q7MwGp-gvCkhgZ1ZURgr9VAMHjympgGg/s1706/Guess.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="956" data-original-width="1706" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXFclq3s30yiqMGCDEKjRuME5ItmhXgdzxE8qhxvhWMBxrerNppQPBd-VRw-4UmxQ-uT-3cuN_ra6OmE43706Y7y-ZoA-GmKjxzOamHCLhHOMQviL9U5gMMQm9IbJKWoxrDwxz3C1U0iZSRmnAeY16u-kEp8Q7MwGp-gvCkhgZ1ZURgr9VAMHjympgGg/w400-h225/Guess.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><p style="text-align: left;"><i>The installation invites you to guess about the distribution of CO2 emissions from flying for three groups at KTH (based on 2019 pre-Covid data, see the image below); low-fliers, medium-fliers and super-fliers (in green, orange and red, and with the latter group representing 20% of all KTH researchers.</i></p><div><i><br /></i></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRsTyLp75RhwlQ_zmuUgQjf6bT6TFhqQJ6ylzbrv-XMHq7RJaK45F6oEAokirnwbQ4R7FETOpNk3Gbf3eCpw_OKW-hLK8bj4KE-FYUL2dlKpk4WKx0Gi_yvnJ1dt3ILy8-sO0efmlugZGMYZqYp-NwrobSObVR2brcx0PiKx-Y-yXK10TTqDhLzylMMA/s1698/Lorenz.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="988" data-original-width="1698" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRsTyLp75RhwlQ_zmuUgQjf6bT6TFhqQJ6ylzbrv-XMHq7RJaK45F6oEAokirnwbQ4R7FETOpNk3Gbf3eCpw_OKW-hLK8bj4KE-FYUL2dlKpk4WKx0Gi_yvnJ1dt3ILy8-sO0efmlugZGMYZqYp-NwrobSObVR2brcx0PiKx-Y-yXK10TTqDhLzylMMA/w400-h233/Lorenz.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><p style="text-align: left;"><i>This Lorenz curve describes the distribution of CO2 emissions from flying among 2600 KTH researchers in 2019. These (yet-unpublished) research results comes from the Flight research project (see above) and constituted input to this thesis. In the previous image someone guessed the distribution of CO2 emissions from low-, medium- and super-fliers were 20% - 30% - 50%. The real distribution is 0% - 20% - 80%.</i></p><div><i><br /></i></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilxfU2rxzFjHAb9HSJZJdByM6fnPTl4oAtDaP_7-D9UeupMdtZs6EwdFV4oGn2yc-w-fSyzljsJyevxssXgSE9ZM9FmwK234ktclX42wVF74NFmR22ZMSjd3xI-WlsDYx2MG7hOnulmEM7tZmukTqkJQaljhMKhSnlUZfgQjDzAICKBlgvm6nnoocs_g/s1706/Start.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="1706" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilxfU2rxzFjHAb9HSJZJdByM6fnPTl4oAtDaP_7-D9UeupMdtZs6EwdFV4oGn2yc-w-fSyzljsJyevxssXgSE9ZM9FmwK234ktclX42wVF74NFmR22ZMSjd3xI-WlsDYx2MG7hOnulmEM7tZmukTqkJQaljhMKhSnlUZfgQjDzAICKBlgvm6nnoocs_g/w400-h225/Start.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>This is KTH with a blank slate at the beginning of a year.</i></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgku6niQS-_93ZxkOp02uSVe2iuQMKMcfOQ3z1HtRIPr8vBSljLnb_zAYJBVE-EzJK-MUpI2BpoKJwzrbHS4m2bIWtsqZVUBGfi_hnZMeVu5NfaavsU7fPZJezlTJD4woIcf-P59r8cob2Xwlxk9wHKL6Gkb66N0bIaFKSHNm6hFuEguo6vRHilNvm3JA/s1706/Crash.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="956" data-original-width="1706" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgku6niQS-_93ZxkOp02uSVe2iuQMKMcfOQ3z1HtRIPr8vBSljLnb_zAYJBVE-EzJK-MUpI2BpoKJwzrbHS4m2bIWtsqZVUBGfi_hnZMeVu5NfaavsU7fPZJezlTJD4woIcf-P59r8cob2Xwlxk9wHKL6Gkb66N0bIaFKSHNm6hFuEguo6vRHilNvm3JA/w400-h225/Crash.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>This is KTH at the end of the year, not reaching our CO2 emission reduction targets.</i></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtoidRnfg8F1zUVEIas2QLxHytSd3JaPjueOTTlIrhr0cqrgeyBNkOJQK2eprngNLGzhKZoq8WyomVNG3oGSCOO7MaoXeeqv4ee5aaf3ioBUiCiu7E464Xxa0ySql7TaO9pdX3B7teMq-jkq3RHFN0fuy1Kllog3VzLF_KCHt1CXtbiobKcHBV54cVcw/s1618/Magnified%20crash.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1438" data-original-width="1618" height="284" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtoidRnfg8F1zUVEIas2QLxHytSd3JaPjueOTTlIrhr0cqrgeyBNkOJQK2eprngNLGzhKZoq8WyomVNG3oGSCOO7MaoXeeqv4ee5aaf3ioBUiCiu7E464Xxa0ySql7TaO9pdX3B7teMq-jkq3RHFN0fuy1Kllog3VzLF_KCHt1CXtbiobKcHBV54cVcw/s320/Magnified%20crash.png" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><p style="text-align: left;"><i>The flight tower doubles as a ruler (with percent of current emissions to the left and absolute numbers - tons of CO2 - on the right side of the ruler/flight tower). The red flag represents KTH's targets for CO2 emissions from flying eight years from now (in 2030).</i></p><div><i><br /></i></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #ffa400;">Adding social comparisons to carbon footprint calculators? A study in comparisons of carbon footprints between individuals (Malin Lundstedt & Marcus Gåhlin)</span></h3><p>The Paris Agreement stipulates that average emissions of CO2e per person should be reduced to below 1 ton in 2050. In 2019, the average Swede's emissions from transport alone accounted for 1,7 tons of CO2e. Carbon footprint calculators are used to calculate an individual’s carbon footprint. Some calculators have added social comparisons (between individuals or within a group). This functionality is promising but further studies are needed and we have investigated how to add social comparisons to climate calculators' carbon footprint of transport. We more specifically examined four sub-questions among people with a strong interest in sustainability:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Their attitude towards finding out their carbon footprint from transport.</li><li>Their attitude towards comparing that footprint with others.</li><li>What influences their attitude.</li><li>What their attitude is based on.</li></ul><p></p><p>In this qualitative study, 9 people who were intensely interested in sustainability participated in semi-structured interviews. The results showed that they were less interested in the footprint from transport and much more interested in their total carbon footprint (and how to reduce it). There was an interest in comparing their emissions with others, but this interest was also affected/tempered by 1) the level of detail in the carbon footprint (touching on privacy issues), 2) who you compare with (friends, strangers) and 3) your own emissions compared to the average. </p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-WBQD1fjXdQkjO8t-pe-iZ6blmw2CIFzoHOP0cyrhyDymMiXT_KEsbEHXe1D2wx8Kpfjgh5PRJZDN2_txiDpbySVma8rkbypayZUK5K12XeUuwqnO8rEPObUa1pBGO6pavrZlBqqWKozxvanZwD0H5apmvkymyuGJjn8hZhBRxRRcr8ij3JIRSK0oRQ/s1732/Habits.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="696" data-original-width="1732" height="161" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-WBQD1fjXdQkjO8t-pe-iZ6blmw2CIFzoHOP0cyrhyDymMiXT_KEsbEHXe1D2wx8Kpfjgh5PRJZDN2_txiDpbySVma8rkbypayZUK5K12XeUuwqnO8rEPObUa1pBGO6pavrZlBqqWKozxvanZwD0H5apmvkymyuGJjn8hZhBRxRRcr8ij3JIRSK0oRQ/w400-h161/Habits.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>An example of output from a climate calculator - in this case the climate calculator Habits.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinRBfhMayoYZvBSLzvrXKgmVh4MUPQ3WV9C042Xh5QpuMZSzyXZWtSElaUvt9NIw_xmqmE-n47m8tJGPbcQ-CTFr5K2HOxihMUzT3t-AFg3EcKboY5wUgfGmaE4o9miAJRpnDt3lp1_VINCiEhbZpG6cy-Lv2PQa19Pxbjvue0muNzq1F4UBKfxPoSiw/s1740/Strava%20&%20Svalna.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1146" data-original-width="1740" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinRBfhMayoYZvBSLzvrXKgmVh4MUPQ3WV9C042Xh5QpuMZSzyXZWtSElaUvt9NIw_xmqmE-n47m8tJGPbcQ-CTFr5K2HOxihMUzT3t-AFg3EcKboY5wUgfGmaE4o9miAJRpnDt3lp1_VINCiEhbZpG6cy-Lv2PQa19Pxbjvue0muNzq1F4UBKfxPoSiw/w400-h265/Strava%20&%20Svalna.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>Examples of social comparisons from Strava (a training app, left) and Svalna (a climate calculator, right).</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8ETtEW_QXGYxZTXHIvdWEXjfPuFMLRsDeGoOxPqWOVSYFoW7d5MEwp6W0j7LG3y0Io5SZ6qp8caLaU89gXvjxAmLzkmiHlrJvKPuw9e7_-YxHE5UKaruWFGHVi4OD8w2q9zj0VF7c8JvObMfseKwxzZu3AzXNa_35YjeuzmOwBFcFak_2EKjdExGubQ/s1394/Profile%20view.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1342" data-original-width="1394" height="385" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8ETtEW_QXGYxZTXHIvdWEXjfPuFMLRsDeGoOxPqWOVSYFoW7d5MEwp6W0j7LG3y0Io5SZ6qp8caLaU89gXvjxAmLzkmiHlrJvKPuw9e7_-YxHE5UKaruWFGHVi4OD8w2q9zj0VF7c8JvObMfseKwxzZu3AzXNa_35YjeuzmOwBFcFak_2EKjdExGubQ/w400-h385/Profile%20view.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>Proposal (prototype) of a profile view in a carbon calculator for travel.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjocbX_aI-mM_mEkuJvIpc65mLgz0xRB-XC1yhanHJs3_acPSVzbNXwheM2eI_VvynU0_ZtsLwIEGxWnL4jVXOSwaEvpRk0BZXKeU0G_JX0Gz6WFubmrjGy09kXKShJVVB3GBFVqrJiaMz8t2CSz9TJRYvWZ8ADDkt5kz2Vk0IIAyyu7uOx4D5NZMnHww/s1922/Group%20view.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1622" data-original-width="1922" height="339" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjocbX_aI-mM_mEkuJvIpc65mLgz0xRB-XC1yhanHJs3_acPSVzbNXwheM2eI_VvynU0_ZtsLwIEGxWnL4jVXOSwaEvpRk0BZXKeU0G_JX0Gz6WFubmrjGy09kXKShJVVB3GBFVqrJiaMz8t2CSz9TJRYvWZ8ADDkt5kz2Vk0IIAyyu7uOx4D5NZMnHww/w400-h339/Group%20view.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Proposal (prototype) of a group view for comparing your carbon footprint for travel with others.</i></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #ffa400;">LCA on E-sports in Counter Strike (Henric Andersson & Nathalie Lock) </span></h3><p>Competitive gaming, E-sports, have become very popular, including an interest in watching competitions live and a massive interest in watching competitions over the Internet. Something that has garnered less interest is the environmental impact of these events. No life cycle assessment (LCA) of an E-sports event has been published this far, so it is impossible to say anything specific about the environmental footprint/impact of these massive events. </p><p>We have aimed at helping to create the foundation for making a life cycle assessment of an E-sports event. Our case is a very large 13-day event around the very popular e-sports game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO). The event we chose was the Pro Gaming League (PGL) Major in Stockholm 2021. Our main question is: how can 1) system function, 2) functional unit and 3) system boundaries be chosen in order to carry out a LCA of the PGL Major Stockholm 2021? This is to a large extent a literature study but two persons with deep expertise in the field have also been interviewed (the head of the national Swedish CS:GO team/captain of <a href="https://www.sesf.se/">The Swedish E-sports Association</a> (SESF) and the head of sponsorship (both e-sports and traditional sports such as football and ice hockey) at SESF's main sponsor <a href="https://om.svenskaspel.se/international/">Svenska Spel</a>). </p><p>The proposed choices (system boundaries etc.) we made resulted in a model that includes the majority of everything that occurs within the arena during the 13-day event, as well as flights, electricity consumption and water consumption from the hotels.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDPHe4P2fuvadkDA-MBzTy-nfmk852BP8NEXzvbL-0_sqIh0irAo6F9YT6rQrq0K-gVs6WVIn2XhpwXa8ZvycBlp4e8bQZ_BzfBsX5YeUFyRyczXyrXgp0OqZPjA8dnFxZiFS3-MIs8EHvKMHAH_w1TgwJ4eY_BpYlPjCJTu_KPaz2BN0jsOI8_Ufzvw/s1660/Env%20conf.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="918" data-original-width="1660" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDPHe4P2fuvadkDA-MBzTy-nfmk852BP8NEXzvbL-0_sqIh0irAo6F9YT6rQrq0K-gVs6WVIn2XhpwXa8ZvycBlp4e8bQZ_BzfBsX5YeUFyRyczXyrXgp0OqZPjA8dnFxZiFS3-MIs8EHvKMHAH_w1TgwJ4eY_BpYlPjCJTu_KPaz2BN0jsOI8_Ufzvw/w400-h223/Env%20conf.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><p style="text-align: left;"><i>Earlier LCA studies of specific events provided input and inspiration, including a study of the environmental footprint of holding a three-day international academic conference (Neugebauer, Bolz, Mankaa & Traverso (2020), "How sustainable are sustainability conferences?–Comprehensive Life Cycle Assessment of an international conference series in Europe". Journal of cleaner production, 242, 118516). </i></p><div><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtKCgYhozhnhfXs6RiZp6JU9XUZPfNIq-332RxeDn6bynB3HejrxvsEDJLwviFlZm1m7PjkoyY2yYu1uCFxQZ7uDMHywVQbv1MCiiaAMFqWX9Q8Q7MiJ6SEs_tuB81soJvfwRZ4BuDf6oCgCvkH0_ArK53Ievuz4xM3n6TeikM3QfA0fLNpvBbum06Tg/s1702/E-sports%20even.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="876" data-original-width="1702" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtKCgYhozhnhfXs6RiZp6JU9XUZPfNIq-332RxeDn6bynB3HejrxvsEDJLwviFlZm1m7PjkoyY2yYu1uCFxQZ7uDMHywVQbv1MCiiaAMFqWX9Q8Q7MiJ6SEs_tuB81soJvfwRZ4BuDf6oCgCvkH0_ArK53Ievuz4xM3n6TeikM3QfA0fLNpvBbum06Tg/w400-h208/E-sports%20even.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Proposed model for studying the environmental footprint of holding a thirteen-day E-sports event.</i></div></div><p><br /></p><p>--------------------</p><p>Besides the five bachelor's theses that I have supervised (above), my colleague and phd student Aksel Biørn-Hansen has, during the spring term, also supervised two master's theses that have been written within the Flight research project (<a href="https://www.kth.se/hct/mid/research/sustainability/projects/flight-1.920661">Decreased CO2-emissions in flight-intensive organisations</a>):</p><div style="text-align: left;">"<b>Exploring the Problem Space of Implementing a Cap and Trade System in a flight-intensive academic institution</b>" by Leo Bergqvist and "<b>Plan, visualize, realize - a tool for budgeting and following-up a carbon budget for heads of division at a fly-intensive organization</b>" by Albin Matson Gyllang.</div><p style="text-align: left;">.</p>pargmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17208443783482286491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7165044694341896839.post-34969863833269343402022-05-22T20:31:00.001+02:002022-05-27T14:26:00.589+02:00Counterfactual thinking as a strategy for engaging with desirable futures (paper)<p> .</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3-H3K8louAxxS_Z0-gWZzQip4UkC-mbZeZHJKrXFhzb-PIWT-LPppLfL3c-wt0pE6DXZyfFjbPgLVN79Pn21_S18ebFbH2CpXqQG-w64FUqVk88xLkoiL-GM7wYlZAjed-tmBqsSPPFskAuNwnLXKgyZf0kKYzssdkYP5U0irR6bJpT4ZVL776Yat1w/s2716/NESS.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1450" data-original-width="2716" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3-H3K8louAxxS_Z0-gWZzQip4UkC-mbZeZHJKrXFhzb-PIWT-LPppLfL3c-wt0pE6DXZyfFjbPgLVN79Pn21_S18ebFbH2CpXqQG-w64FUqVk88xLkoiL-GM7wYlZAjed-tmBqsSPPFskAuNwnLXKgyZf0kKYzssdkYP5U0irR6bJpT4ZVL776Yat1w/w400-h215/NESS.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>I recently wrote <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2022/05/even-horizon-counterfactual-workshop.html">the first-ever blog post</a> about our research project "<a href="https://www.kth.se/hct/mid/research/sustainability/projects/event-horizon-1.970914">Beyond the event horizon</a>: tools to explore local energy transformations", but the blog post was for the most part about the prehistory and the run-up of the research project. This blog post instead treats the first output from that project in the form of an scientific article. We recently handed in a draft version of a full article to an upcoming conference that will be held in Gothenburg a few weeks from now.</p><p>The Nordic Environmental Social Science Conference (<a href="https://www.gu.se/en/globalstudies/ness-nordic-environmental-social-science-conference-emergency-and-transformation#NESS-Workshops">NESS</a>) at the University of Gothenburg is primarily a "container" for upwards to <a href="https://www.gu.se/en/globalstudies/ness-nordic-environmental-social-science-conference-emergency-and-transformation#NESS-Workshops">20 parallell 3-day "workshops"</a> between June 7-9. Participants attend one single workshop for the duration of the conference. </p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">The Nordic Environmental Social Science Conference (NESS) workshops follow a standing session format, which allows for substantive discussions on research in progress. The conference invites scholars from multiple disciplinary backgrounds in environmental social science. The overall objective of the workshop is to facilitate and encourage collaboration between younger and more established scholars.</span></p><p>I got an invitation to submit a contribution to the workshop "Imagining transformation: Urgency, emergency and hope in a time of multiple crises" from one of the workshop organizers (Alexandra Nikoleris, Lund University) already at the end of October last year. The Call for Papers (<a href="https://www.gu.se/sites/default/files/2021-12/CALL%20FOR%20PAPERS%20Imagining%20transformation_0.pdf">full pdf here</a>) was very interesting:</p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">Living in an era of multiple ongoing crises – climate change, mass species extinction, pandemics, economic instability to name a few – requires that the imagining of alternative futures is encouraged, to enable a perception of how actions in the present can shape the world to come. There are a range of ways in which such transformations can be imagined, for example as scenarios, creative design, fiction, participatory performances, or experimentation. While diverse in their aims, they all invite us into a world that is different to the one we experience today, and help us rethink the crises that unfold in the present. But how can such imaginations of transformation catalyse the forms of political, economic and cultural responses required to move beyond, and out of, these crises? Which are the techniques of imagination that become most effective for certain audiences, in certain contexts? How do different narratives, and the techniques by which they are employed become engaging? What are the dangers and advantages with a multiplicity of stories and hegemonic visions? Papers that reflect on these and similar questions are invited to this workshop. Both theoretical/conceptual contributions and reflections on empirical cases of specific interventions are welcome.</span></p><p>The workshop invited papers about (among other things) "exploration of different techniques of imagination" and "participatory future-making", so the fit with our research project was excellent. We therefore submitted a 300-word abstract in December and found out it had been accepted to the workshop a few months ago. We then had until May 20 to write a (draft of a) full-length article (5000 - 10000 words), and we just submitted our 7000-word article, "Counterfactual thinking as a strategy for engaging with desirable futures" this past week! </p><p>The authors are Minna Laurell Thorslund, Daniel Pargman, Elina Eriksson and Mia Hesselgren (the exact order of the authors has not yet been determined). Our article will be discussed at the conference and we will then have the opportunity to improve it. The workshop organizers in fact hope to be able to publish workshop submissions in a special issue of the journal Futures. I have not seen any of the other papers. but some of the (preliminary) titles are very intriguing:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Artists on climate change: imaginations of futures </li><li>Effects and Effectiveness of Climate Imaginaries</li><li>Beyond the Fossil Era: Post-fossil pedagogies and speculative futures in Swedish education</li><li>From imagining utopia to enacting it: a role for Utopian Demands?</li><li>The 8th continent</li></ul><p></p><p>Although I would have liked to go to Gothenburg, my son graduates from high school during the very same days, so only Minna will attend the conference and represent our research project.</p><p><br /></p><p>This is the first time we write about the counterfactual/allohistorical workshop methodology we have developed in the research project and that we by now have used in a number of workshops. In that way it was an easy paper to write (we have so much to say about the topic), but it was also hard to write because we are all pressed for time at this time of the year... </p><p>Here's the abstract to our just-submitted draft paper, "Counterfactual thinking as a strategy for engaging with desirable futures":</p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">Given that the world’s multiple crises take place elsewhere and elsewhen (e.g. not right here and not right now), it is hard to engage with them and go from knowledge to action. We become paralyzed – think of a rabbit caught in the headlights – when it comes to formulating radical alternatives. It is painful for all of us - albeit to varying degrees - to step away from our own comfort and formulate, willingly accept and mentally inhabit low carbon practices and lifestyles. How can we break away from practicalities such as norms, politics, professional roles and built infrastructure, which limit our thinking and prevent us from discovering futures that are not merely extensions and timid variations of business as usual?</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">In this paper we describe how we have developed a workshop methodology, using counterfactual scenarios of low carbon societies. This methodology is promising for concretizing and bringing urgently needed societal transitions closer to people and their communities. By collaboratively imagining an alternative, more desirable present – a sustainable society that could have been – workshop participants are freed from practical aspects of modern life and the modern world. Furthermore, the participants also explore what needed to happen in the recent past in order to reach that more desirable present. When brought back from the counterfactual world, the participants are introduced to the notion that what they have formulated is a blueprint for what must actually be done in the decade(s) to come. We have run the workshop in two local settings, and our experience so far is that addressing hard issues as if they have already been fixed in an alternative, more desirable present, and then imagining what we “did” to fix them in the recent past, is liberating and generative of ideas for action.</span></p><p>This is a key paragraph from the Background (about Counterfactual Scenarios) and a compact description of what we have been up to for quite some time:</p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">A central tenet in allohistorical narratives is the establishment of a divergence, a point in time where the world took a different turn (Duncan 2003). After a divergence has been established, the second and larger task is to explore the “timespace cone” (Gilbert & Lambert 2010)) of ripple effects that follow from that divergence. The process of establishing a divergence in the past and then “unconditionally” exploring the ripple effects forward in time is equivalent to “a forecasting exercise that is set in the past”, or, what Bendor et al. (2021) refer to as “recasting”. We are however interested in exploring <i>normative</i> scenarios, much like what is done in backcasting exercises (Wangel 2011) where a future desirable goal is posited and the (research) question becomes one of exploring how we can steer or veer away from business as usual in order to reach that more-desirable future. The equivalent counterfactual/allohistorical version of a backcasting exercises is to posit a more-desirable alternative <i>present</i> (of for example a more sustainable Sweden of 2022) and work our way backwards to a point of divergence in the past from which we chose a better path - a path that led to a more-desirable present. This is what Bendor et al. (2021) refer to as “pastcasting”, e.g. a backcasting exercise that is set in the past and that ends up in the present (albeit an alternative more-desirable present).</span></p><p>Here is a key paragraph from the Method section of the paper:</p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">The process of developing the workshop format can be divided into three phases, or “loops”. In the first loop, we gathered initial knowledge and used this knowledge to create a prototype workshop format. The second loop involved testing and developing the prototype workshop format. In the third loop, we have held the workshop multiple times in its intended context (e.g. with local participants in different parts of Sweden). We describe the three loops below as well as outcomes of the third loop and of running a number of workshops in different parts of Sweden. The work process has been extensively documented mainly through a collaborative research diary that we revisited and drew from when we wrote this paper.</span></p><p>.</p>pargmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17208443783482286491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7165044694341896839.post-25789492361922681132022-05-19T23:24:00.022+02:002022-05-25T07:55:08.446+02:00SICT Summer School (Aug 29 - Sept 2)<p> .</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz7cSuMObC9xCgyv988ym7jMIC340eGDXfo-bImGxegX7qYPMBOtZ79xQHuriXn6soKdzJK4ftEQq6XJW1YGdO7iBincLlxszd3QjgHkHBSfpb5A1Rr2mbFy716ja1b0PQY3Zu1HWGnfJ7BAB30ytcMehdzeV3CopOf6aDx5nTS_O3mk4cTngGiekqzA/s2442/SICT.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1562" data-original-width="2442" height="259" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz7cSuMObC9xCgyv988ym7jMIC340eGDXfo-bImGxegX7qYPMBOtZ79xQHuriXn6soKdzJK4ftEQq6XJW1YGdO7iBincLlxszd3QjgHkHBSfpb5A1Rr2mbFy716ja1b0PQY3Zu1HWGnfJ7BAB30ytcMehdzeV3CopOf6aDx5nTS_O3mk4cTngGiekqzA/w400-h259/SICT.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>The <a href="https://www.sictdoctoralschool.com">Third Doctoral School on Sustainable ICT</a> (SICT) will be organized in Grenoble (France) between August 29 and September 2. I will go to Grenoble by train and I will be there for the duration of the summer school (do get in touch if you would like to <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Stockholms+Centralstation,+Centralplan,+Stockholm/Grenoble,+1+Pl.+de+la+Gare,+38000+Grenoble,+Frankrike/@51.819747,1.2421557,5z/data=!4m15!4m14!1m5!1m1!1s0x465f9d5ca75686c9:0x6aa646c4a2f92ac!2m2!1d18.0586789!2d59.3303621!1m5!1m1!1s0x478af4896a1c8a6b:0x6b66ca90fff6d6f!2m2!1d5.7137839!2d45.1911984!3e3!5i3">coordinate your train trip to Grenoble and to meet up on the way there</a>!). </p><p>I will give a keynote talk on Monday and on Thursday and Friday I will run a six-hour workshop where we will work with <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328718305123?casa_token=4i_YMFiSnqQAAAAA:ruXaPgnYOjnmvm67jbu-e3t71B7TcqmGD49M4dbzOas9S8g5Qxnx_xFLRWXW0LjB8iswQ-f7Pb0">Fictional Abstracts</a> (200-300 words long statements about fictional research that has not yet been conducted). I have plenty of help planning the workshop primarily from my colleague Elina Eriksson, but also from my phd students Minna Laurell Thorslund and Petra Jääskeläinen, my ex-colleague Tina Ringenson and from SICT 2022 organizer Jan Tobias Muehlberg. Elina and Minna will not come to the summer school, but Petra will come to help organize the workshop and Tina and Jan Tobias will be there all week.</p><p>This is the third year in a row that the SICT summer school is held, but I didn't know about it two years ago, and I primarily learned about SICT it a year ago 1) because my colleague Elina and other people I know were invited as speakers and 2) because it sort of competed (nearly collided!) with the <a href="https://www.lorentzcenter.nl/international-summer-school-on-ict-for-sustainability-2021.html">Second International Summer School on ICT for Sustainability</a> (ICT4S) that I helped organize. We even sent a mail to them to inquire how our two summer schools should relate to each other and got an interesting answer, which among other things said this (which contextualizes SICT and its history):</p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">At first, we saw the SICT doctoral summer school as an opportunity to support different ways of thinking within our University [<a href="https://uclouvain.be/en/index.html">Université catholique de Louvain</a>]. We saw it as a local response to support the need to consider sustainability challenges at the very core of our research. We have several professors and researchers motivated by socio-environmental challenges and the role of technological solutions we are working on every day. </span><span style="color: #ffa400;"> </span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">SICT2020 emerged from this context and COVID-19 pandemic forced us to move the date later as well as targeting only Belgian participants. SICT2020 focused mainly on extraction of materials, production and recycling impacts, almost not at all on the use phase impacts. We focused on the sustainability within ICT rather than using ICT for sustainability (similarly to the nuance between Green IT and IT for Green).</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">For the second edition (SICT2021), we aim at discussing more the use phase impacts but we keep a similar mindset.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">[...]</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">even though SICT is fully run in English, we have close interactions with the French community (especially France, Belgium and Switzerland at the moment, Canada to come). For instance, we are in contact with Grenoble (university and CEA-leti) and other French universities/initiatives showing an interest on these topics. Several initiatives are also popping in there and we think that it would be valuable to increase connections for the benefits of the community. Regarding local collaborations, we are happy that KULeuven joined us for organizing SICT2021.</span></p><div><br /></div><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;">Elina apparently made an impression because she said something about Fictional Abstracts that made organizer Jan Tobias Muehlberg get in touch with her earlier this spring, but since she can't go we plan it together but go there in her stead. And I invite all phd students (and post-docs) to come to the summer school! I think it will be really nice and very interesting! I also personally look forward to meet other speakers <a href="https://www.sictdoctoralschool.com/speakers/2022">although some of the confirmed speakers</a> from North America (Jay Chen, Bill Tomlinson, Alan Borning) will surely participate remotely.</p></div><p>The theme is definitely provocative enough, "Rethinking the Roles of Information and Communication Technologies in the Anthropocene: Towards a Post-Growth World?", and the summer school is not limited to only engineers and computer scientists:</p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">"Far from limited to researchers with an engineering background, the event wishes to promote trans-disciplinary interactions on ICT topics by bringing together individuals with a broad range of expertise."</span></p><p>Each day has a different theme and the five themes are:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="color: #ffa400;">Systemic view of ICT impacts and perspectives</span></li><li><span style="color: #ffa400;">Interdisciplinarity meets sustainable ICT for rethinking mobility</span></li><li><span style="color: #ffa400;">Between post-growth and degrowing science: how to research for the future?</span></li><li><span style="color: #ffa400;">Building bridges for practicing transdisciplinarity</span></li><li><span style="color: #ffa400;">Visions for the road ahead of ICT</span></li></ul><p></p><p>I was blown away by the organizers' travel policy in the invitation as I have never seen anything like it before. What if all scientific conferences wrote <b><i>this</i></b> in the invitation:</p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">*Logistics:* We plan for SICT 2022 to be an in-person event for the attending PhD students. Additionally, we invite all speakers that are willing and able to reach Grenoble, France, by train or public transportation to join us on-site. [...] If arriving by train or public transportation is not an option for you, we invite you to participate remotely via a digital conferencing solution for presentation and discussion that we will agree on with you ahead of time. Please note that we strongly discourage air travel for the sake of this event.</span></p><p><a href="https://www.sictdoctoralschool.com/program-2022">The program is now in place</a>, but it is also evolving as new information is put into place. The cost of registering is 250 Euros until July 15 (travel and accommodation not included). Here's the official info to disseminate (slightly shortened by me):</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">Dear colleagues, dear researchers,</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">- Do you often wonder if our increasing numbers of electronic devices, gigantic data centers, and ubiquitous global networks support or endanger a future that is a sustainable and just world for everyone to live in?</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">- Are you interested in rethinking how we research, design, deploy, use Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for a world within planetary boundaries?</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">- Are you curious to look beyond the established ways to do things and excited about a place to learn, discuss, and reimagine ICT research with fellow curious minds from different academic fields?</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">If these questions made you curious, we are inviting you to register for the 3rd Doctoral Summer School on Sustainable ICT (SICT) that is discussing the question: <b>Rethinking the Roles of Information and Communication Technologies in the Anthropocene: Towards a Post-Growth World?</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;"><b>SICT 2022 will take place in-person from August 29 to September 02, 2022, at the Université Grenoble Alpes in Grenoble, France.</b> All details are <a href="https://www.sictdoctoralschool.com">available on our website</a>.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">During SICT 2022, we aim to rethink the roles we grant Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to play for a future within planetary boundaries. Among all our technologies across the individual, collective, and industrial level, ICT are particularly striking in their duality of societal enablers (e.g., connectivity, access to data, and automation) and planetary damages from their lifecycles as well as political inaction due to green growth and decoupling illusions. We are far away from bringing the impacts of ICT (and technologies in general) into balance with our planetary boundaries, yet time is running out on us. Against this backdrop and with a post-growth mindset, we are setting out to question the road ahead for ICT and their roles in humanity’s necessary transition to sustainable societies in the 2022 edition of our doctoral summer school on sustainable ICT.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;"><b>We engage you as PhD students from diverse fields in an inter- and transdisciplinary setting</b> with talks, debates, and collective works to take on this challenge and rethink how we will research and use ICT in the future. For further information on the theme of SICT 2022, <a href="https://www.sictdoctoralschool.com/media/sict2022-abstract.pdf">please take a look at our abstract</a>.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;"><a href="https://www.sictdoctoralschool.com/registration"><b>Registrations are now open!</b></a></span></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">The registration fee covers SICT 2022 organizational costs, lunches, a social event, caffeinated breaks, and snacks in the morning. Please mind that transportation and accommodation are not covered by this registration fee, and you will need to make your own arrangements for this. <a href="https://www.sictdoctoralschool.com/venue-grenoble">We list accommodation options on our website</a>. SICT 2022 will be an in-person event at Université Grenoble Alpes in Grenoble, France.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">If you have any other question, feel free to contact us by email at info@sictdoctoralschool.com.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">We hope to see many of you there!</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">Kind regards, SICT 2022 Organizing Team</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;"><a href="https://www.sictdoctoralschool.com">https://www.sictdoctoralschool.com</a></span></p><p>.</p>pargmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17208443783482286491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7165044694341896839.post-90459726314375076812022-05-15T20:12:00.316+02:002022-05-24T02:25:41.909+02:00The Climate Change Megagame (the after part)<p> .</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNkLYAhDLzZywmP_gdZ7TfFQWuC09GeJ0I-Rle_KKB2f225qSI4sTM4QHKod_LTvHYA9URgrALlx1dAPDH3XpOMh7NY_q6mqbSHgxxopu7Xlx7D36InpEwUlAM6Apw_7z9DCRSy_J42SIi_r9pX_MTAbD_u_MU2VBe9mN7krUeLD2VE1WStd1OC9kbnA/s4032/MO%CC%88GA%20official.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNkLYAhDLzZywmP_gdZ7TfFQWuC09GeJ0I-Rle_KKB2f225qSI4sTM4QHKod_LTvHYA9URgrALlx1dAPDH3XpOMh7NY_q6mqbSHgxxopu7Xlx7D36InpEwUlAM6Apw_7z9DCRSy_J42SIi_r9pX_MTAbD_u_MU2VBe9mN7krUeLD2VE1WStd1OC9kbnA/w300-h400/MO%CC%88GA%20official.HEIC" width="300" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><a href="http://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-climate-change-megagame-before-part.html">I wrote a blog post <i>before</i></a> I played the The Climate Change Megagame (CCM) in the beginning of the week. I was very excited, the concept and the instructions were hilarious and I went overboard and ran with it. After I played the Megagame (all day Monday) I am not quite as enthusiastic, so this blog post will be an exercise in trying to understand what happened (including figuring out why I was frustrated).</p><p>The rules had already in advance stated that you shouldn't try to understand the whole game (it's too complex), but rather concentrate on understanding your own role and then "talk to people". I respect that but I found several different types of complexity that can't possibly have been part of the planned game experience:</p><p>- Technical platform complexity. Most people participated on location in Linköping but it was a hybrid game and I participated from Stockholm through my computer. I had not used Discord before - at least not for a task that was as complex as this, and there were unfortunately various technical issues with the platform during the first half of the day, including basic stuff like hearing what was said during the walk-throughs in the room where it all happened in Linköping. We also used a Miro board that I was comfortable with but that was very complex (see images below). </p><p>- Hybrid meeting complexity. I can totally understand that people who are on location try to round remote (online) players, because it's a hassle to deal with us. I played a politician, but it was unclear why people would want to talk to me except to beg me for money to solve sudden emergencies that flared up in the game or to get money so their company could solve specific-problem-X. The instructions I had received indicated that it was important to me to have good relations with and try to influence the university and its' researchers, so I posted a message on the researchers' online message board two minutes after the game started. I tried again 45 minutes later but still didn't get any answer. One hour later I instead decided to start to profusely thank the researchers for having done what I had requested two hours earlier in the game (a decade or so had then passed in the game at that time). </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #ffa400;">MÖGA is very happy that Linköping University decided to start up a slew of transition-compliant educational programs! The students from Linköping are doing miracles and we welcome even more transition engineers, transition economists, transition psychologists, transition teachers and so on! You are needed and you are welcome to continue the Good Fight for a better future for our children!</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #ffa400;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #ffa400;">It is unfortunate but expected that there is some resistance to large (lifestyle) changes but as long as most people understand the need for these changes and work together to reach our climate targets, we are proud of the support from the generous, hard-working, salt-of-the-earth citizens of Östergötland!</span></span></p><p>To conclude, the researchers basically ignored me (or didn't notice me) because they didn't need me. But if they didn't need to talk to me and perhaps I didn't need to talk to them, who in the game did I actually then need to talk to and who actually needed to talk to me? This was not clear to me also after the game had finished. I even tried to use the media to "wake the researchers' up" in the game, for example by making this statement:</p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #ffa400;">@Ferm Media - Johanna G#4018 We have tried to reach the research community. Are they asleep? They don't read their message board and don't attend to us politicians - despite us picking up the bill for their ivory-tower navel gazing. That's at least what it seems like to us politicians because they are very non-responsive to the needs of the region and are apparently off doing their own things at the taxpayers' expense!?</span></span></p><p>- Linguistic and temporal complexity. It doesn't make sense to have a game with dozens of Swedish participants and a single player who participates remotely from nine time zones away who doesn't speak Swedish. I cooperated a lot with fellow in-game politician Bryan, but really, he shouldn't have been in the game. And perhaps I shouldn't have been in the game as a remote participant either. I was sometimes drafted to translate to my fellow politician Bryan (representing the political party "Forest Muppets"). He represented a different political party so me translating to him was perhaps not optimal, but we had a great cooperation during the first half of the game - mainly because the one representative from the third political party, Market Prophets, didn't show up at all due to illness. Forest Muppet Bryan predictably zoned out and dropped off halfway through the game very late at night or very early in the morning in California. Me summarizing what happened in the room in Linköping to Forest Muppet Bryan:</p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #ffa400; font-family: Arial;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 164, 0); font-size: 14.666666984558105px; white-space: pre-wrap;">- This is a huge change but MÖGA can make it happen </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #ffa400; font-family: Arial;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 164, 0); font-size: 14.666666984558105px; white-space: pre-wrap;">- The Forest Muppets are more than welcome to help us attain those goals, Bryan!</span></span></p><p>- Rule complexity. If you are going to play a complex game for a whole day, it's good to start off by going through the rules (or at least the parts I needed to understand). While there was a practice round of sorts, as an online participant I did not get enough help and was instead to a large extent left to my own wits to try to figure out how to play the game, what it was (really) about, what a politician in the game was supposed to do etc.</p><p>The three main tasks that I set myself during the game was to:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Understand how the game worked</li><li>Understand what I could do in the game that would make a difference</li><li>Role-play and enjoy myself</li></ul><div>I only fully succeeded with role-playing. </div><div><br /></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-cbba2a09-7fff-d589-3f72-e8b08645338f"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #ffa400;">@Ferm Media - Johanna G Policy statement for the media: Make Östergötland Great Again (MÖGA) and the Forest Muppets feel ready to take responsibility for trying to solve the climate crisis mess we are in. Market Prophets might not in fact be traitors, but their megalomanic growth-promoting policies are misguided and constitute a treason of generations to come!</span></span></p></span></div><div><br /></div><div>I did come to understand that the Regional Council board was very important for me as a politician:</div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYFsIo29_G3EszyJpbiwdnc2hmPCNNpm-9OEuMLK8VJ8PEIBfD_-ZHodW0f26ulKwpFwGSALnX1yjiSLK1euPDrCDDfjlhwL_jiAQEEGYxfRbBMvRXl3Y_BYoNqckTbuym7NYFlN-FXr-274zYxxktATkp4QkKLyXT8zRVQUu7KubGipYBtIb6A-YCWw/s824/Regional%20council.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="824" data-original-width="788" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYFsIo29_G3EszyJpbiwdnc2hmPCNNpm-9OEuMLK8VJ8PEIBfD_-ZHodW0f26ulKwpFwGSALnX1yjiSLK1euPDrCDDfjlhwL_jiAQEEGYxfRbBMvRXl3Y_BYoNqckTbuym7NYFlN-FXr-274zYxxktATkp4QkKLyXT8zRVQUu7KubGipYBtIb6A-YCWw/w383-h400/Regional%20council.png" width="383" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>The regional council board is where me and fellow politicians negotiate about how to spend our money. </i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div><span style="text-align: center;">Us politicians could only chose to invest in four different areas (</span><span style="text-align: center;">food, goods, transport and housing) but these </span><span style="text-align: center;">four areas turned into 8 "tracks"</span><span style="text-align: center;"> (</span><span style="text-align: center;">yellow = research </span><span style="text-align: center;">technological solutions or blue = </span><span style="text-align: center;">research on lifestyle changes). These in turn became </span><span style="text-align: center;">24 pre-determined inventions that could be unlocked in the game. It's unclear to me exactly what effect "unlocking" an invention had in the game. These 24 </span><span style="text-align: center;">pre-determined inventions can</span><span style="text-align: center;"> be compared to the more complex and nuanced political platform I had developed for my political party, Make Östergötland Great Again (MÖGA), </span><i style="text-align: center;">before</i><span style="text-align: center;"> the game started (</span><a href="http://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-climate-change-megagame-before-part.html" style="text-align: center;">see my previous blog post</a><span style="text-align: center;">):</span></div><div><span style="text-align: center;"><br /></span></div><div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">1) Linköping University needs to urgently educate an "army" of "transition engineers" to help with the transition to a net zero society. And transition economists, transition teachers, transition psychologists, transition lawyers etc.</span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">2) Shift from efficiency to sufficiency by immediately performing a carbon audit for the region (baseline data) and then decrease the region's carbon budget by (at least) 7% CO2 reductions year-on-year.</span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">3) Create a local regional currency (possibly algorithmic, for example a GPS-aware currency that loses value the further you go from the geographic region). </span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">4) Universal Basic Income that is handed out to each citizen in the region but that can only be used to pay for locally produced products and services (see 2).</span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">5) Policies that incentivizes the development of not-for-profit forms of business that instead works towards maximizing (regional) social benefit.</span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">6) Compulsory one year long societal service for 18 year olds. It's possible to choose to do military service, to do unarmed military service (in, say, a school)</span><span style="color: #ffa400;"> </span><b style="color: #ffa400;">OR</b><span style="color: #ffa400;"> </span><span style="color: #ffa400;">to aim for "planetary stewardship service".</span></div></div><div><span><br /></span></div><div><span>I think this made me into a difficult-to-please participant/politician - since these suggestions for the most part didn't match with how the game worked. Most of it would anyway probably have turned out to be utterly irrelevant to the game and how it was supposed to be played/played out. My reason for wanting to immediately get in touch with the research community in the game was because I wanted to order them to immediately do #1 in the list above. But even had I been more successful in getting hold of them, we could perhaps have enjoyed a bit of role-play and we might even have decided on a crash course in transition eduction - but it's doubtful even an army of transition engineers (etc.) could have made a difference in the game itself since the game was complicated but as far as I understand, couldn't really handle these types of initiatives well. An army of transition engineers could for example not have added new technological solutions to the regional council board above nor (easily) have made it less costly to develop certain (but not other) new technologies/lifestyle changes. </span></div><div><span><br /></span></div><p>My player briefing stated in the first paragraph that "<span style="color: #ffa400;">Playing different actors in the region, we travel through the next three decades to lay the foundation for a sustainable region characterized by high quality of life. Hence the key challenges in the game is to reach net zero, and then negative, climate impact and adapt to climate change while maintaining or improving the quality of life for the population</span>". </p><p>When a city council member approached me (regional politician) about this or that emergency (flooding, climate refugees etc.), I tried to understand how big our budget was and it if was reasonable to meet the city council member's demands fully or partially. I sometimes role-played and said that "we can give you this much now and more next year" when I should probably have been more generous and just handed over the money, but I wanted to use money on <i>my</i> political platform (above), but was pretty sure my fiscal discipline did not at all benefit me in the game. In fact, I wasn't very interested in having these kinds of conversations at all - they were below my pay grade as a <i>regional</i> politician whose most important goal was to reach net zero emissions thirty years down the road. There was thus a tension between the short term (solve immediate problems) and the long term (reach our climate targets). I wanted to spend as little of my time as possible solving "practical" problems here-and-now and instead wanted to create policy and make decisions that would solve the stated "<i>key challenge</i>" of the game (net zero emissions by 2050). I let my coalition partner, Forest Muppet Bryan, handle many of these issues, but this was probably a mistake since I think he came out as more "<i>kind</i>" and got more votes that I did later in the game because he had "<i>helped</i>" people and I hadn't (as much). Later in the game, after Bryan had left, I made quick decisions, allocated money and specifically told city council members and others to "work out the details with the civil servants who worked for me" (just like a real politician would have done). </p><p><br /></p><p>After the game was finished, I realized that it would have been much better for <i>all</i> involved parties if I had instead just been a puppet - a politician who<i> only</i> reacted to local emergencies as they happened, gave away all the money that was asked for (budget allowing) and settled for letting the game decide where and at what pace we were going on a strategic level. As far as I understand, the game just <i>pretended</i> to give agency to the players and instead was scripted to disregard any input from individual players that didn't fit the pre-made script. At one point I asked where all these climate refugees came from and if I really had to dish out money to pay for them every time I was asked to. I couldn't get a straight answer so I decided (in line with my Make Östergötland Great Again political party platform) to refuse to give any more money to help climate refugees:</p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #ffa400;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">@Ferm Media - Johanna G. Make Östergötland Great Again (MÖGA) believe that the interests and priorities of Östergötland should go first. We understand the climate refugees' plight, but we have </span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px; white-space: pre-wrap;">welcomed enough of them and are </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">not prepared to accept any more. </span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px; white-space: pre-wrap;">It's now time for our neighbors in Västergötland to step up and take responsibility! </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">We will pay for ads communicating this message! From now on it's Östergötland first, Östergötland first, Östergötland first!</span></span></p><p>That was fun and I partly did it to see if this act of mine would upset the game's script, but it didn't have any consequences whatsoever in the game so my guess is that <i>most</i> of what I did had no effect at all on what happened in the game. Which made me fell powerless and frustrated. What was my role in the game? Was I just a pretty face? Why am I here and what difference can I make in the game, if most of what I say and do is ignored and/or irrelevant in relation to the game's outcome? </p><p>I instead gradually came to a realization during the game - but especially after the game was finished - that forests and forestry apparently had been <i>the</i> key to reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 - not food, goods, transport, housing or anything else. But there was no hint about the importance of forests in the instructions I received (except for the fact that a competing political party was called "Forest Muppets"), so I definitely felt cheated or even kidnapped into a storyline that I didn't know existed and failed to notice until the game was over. I don't personally see forests as the overarching key issue to solve the multiple sustainability challenges of the 21st century - but the game and the underlying model apparently do. I don't know how many of the other players had an inkling about this unexpected twist before or during the game?</p><p><br /></p><div style="text-align: left;">So this and many other things made the game feel scripted to me. I felt like I didn't have agency and that my decisions didn't matter because a strong model about what sustainability is, and how we are to go about to achieve it had been built into the very fabric of the game. This model was not verbalized so I didn't notice it and couldn't prepare in any way (as a regional politician), but the model still pretty much determined the outcome of the game. That might mean that me and the other players could not affect very much at all in the game. Perhaps it wasn't really an interactive "game" at all, but some kind of lesson/class that just masqueraded as a game? This left me confused and I really have no idea why the instructions asked me and the other players to role-play - including adapting a specific "personality" and a "hidden agenda". Why role-play when everything that is important in the game was far removed from our role-play? My personal secret agenda was that I was an animal-rights activist. I don't know what difference that could have made in the game because I didn't find any opportunities at all to be animal-activistic. So I have no idea what difference this could have made in the game and the question then is why was I was given a secret agenda in the first place? There is so much I don't understand about this game experience...</div><p>My conclusion is that the game was exceedingly complicated, but not in the intriguing way I had hoped and had been led to believe beforehand (when I read the instructions). I understand that different stakeholders got different information and different objectives and that all players need to talk, negotiate, find overlapping interests and compromise - and that is fun. But I don't see how any of that could have made a dent in the underlaying assumptions that drove the game in one (and in only one) pre-determined direction. That the game board was exceedingly complicated (see the images below) and the fact that I never <i>really </i>understood even the small part that was supposedly important to me as a politician (the Regional Council board, see above) is not a good thing. <i>A game should be as complex as necessary but as simple as possible</i>, and it is my conclusion that this game did not succeed on that account. It was, as far as I can tell, overly complicated for no particualar reason at all. It had boards and charts and rules galore (see images below, but there were more...), and while we were supposed to role-play and be imaginative, the game very much seemed to be overly static and scripted. This didn't make sense to me and there was a mismatch between what I thought the game was about (based on the instructions I had received) and the actual game (session). The instructions were humorous, open-ended and invited role-playing while the game itself seemed to be opaque, complicated, scripted and role-playing didn't much matter as individual initiatives didn't fit/were hard to incorporate into the gaming session.</p><p><br /></p><p>The game was in the end very exhausting - a whole day online with background noise and a need to concentrate deeply floored me. We have previously discussed starting a course at KTH and have our students work together and/or in parallel with the students in Linköping, but I honestly don't know how that is supposed to work out based on my own experiences of playing remotely. I don't understand how two remote sites are supposed to cooperate. I do however understand that despite the fact that the gaming session wasn't great, the course might have been. To have students (re)design parts of the game means they have to learn <i>a lot</i> about climate change, agriculture, forestry, urban planning, economy and so on, even though I currently have few insights about <a href="https://liu.se/en/education/course/ete367">the university course</a> itself.</p><p>I do feel that Megagames could be interesting, but I can also imagine that it would be better for KTH to work with a game designer (just as Linköping does) but instead design a much smaller and simpler game that emphasizes player interaction and acting/role play, rather than aim for gratuitous complexity for (seemingly) its own sake. </p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirdry-3bqa9ZxlzyuAjXThX4JtFaZ4WsAseKDkgtmal-BcfzSIwwj5fWgcfdY7tXFb61_eagGm0tzrLAgKSKXFUUiPqtvG8c9rJSITWHCqAyBi7O_qXuqLMTQSDYVDHSylewFqlm7AUyqId3-IMh6zCbqMZtIp6z6kMDlQTj_YiZ97eeih1L-q29qnaA/s719/Regional%20map.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="719" data-original-width="693" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirdry-3bqa9ZxlzyuAjXThX4JtFaZ4WsAseKDkgtmal-BcfzSIwwj5fWgcfdY7tXFb61_eagGm0tzrLAgKSKXFUUiPqtvG8c9rJSITWHCqAyBi7O_qXuqLMTQSDYVDHSylewFqlm7AUyqId3-IMh6zCbqMZtIp6z6kMDlQTj_YiZ97eeih1L-q29qnaA/s320/Regional%20map.png" width="308" /></a></div><i>Regional map with 8 municipalities (only two were part of the game I played since there weren't enough players). I can not imagine what I would have done as regional politician had there been more municipalities in play. Perhaps each political party would then have been represented by several players?</i><div><br /><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZxDIxToGJfo9QKuhgTKrD8B327xjpZRXrwX0IHr-itwUOUS1zrbmxCNG_qAXIsCXROTf9uQra1RqGqA8HsEBgctaoqAlVPPI_1rcFyf5nY5swXwGVkH9JJRmd9pngC31ZIPenkUN0LpKFIpCDfM0N8c5tUoE4gMJFLFuHJ2fVUeTY4wokW-tysiJTXA/s1435/Regional%20map%20detail.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="899" data-original-width="1435" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZxDIxToGJfo9QKuhgTKrD8B327xjpZRXrwX0IHr-itwUOUS1zrbmxCNG_qAXIsCXROTf9uQra1RqGqA8HsEBgctaoqAlVPPI_1rcFyf5nY5swXwGVkH9JJRmd9pngC31ZIPenkUN0LpKFIpCDfM0N8c5tUoE4gMJFLFuHJ2fVUeTY4wokW-tysiJTXA/s320/Regional%20map%20detail.png" width="320" /></a></div><i>Detailed map of farmland, forests and water in the region. Sometimes someone came to me to suggested that "tile F11 and G11" should be a nature reserve. I said "sure, I guess" - at least if it cost nothing or not so much. I didn't understand what difference a nature reserve made for the climate nor if it was money well spent from the budget I had to husband as a politician.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivJdzp6Uj0VW9aXMR9tknRjjkYgW9tW4-CEpK_IDaw-JM8Q1l-a6-yeEHdyqZCUd1RqnoGLcRwWz-GwyG2ZfXGi3xcw9W80zEjndsW8apNmxqDSG7q-puRReSxJIHntuyY-qYHMZtWs3l2DmW7jFwX-P2HbvNobzqCrwKR9BbxEud4rhRK3AusrKK-lQ/s1252/Regional%20council%20cards.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="746" data-original-width="1252" height="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivJdzp6Uj0VW9aXMR9tknRjjkYgW9tW4-CEpK_IDaw-JM8Q1l-a6-yeEHdyqZCUd1RqnoGLcRwWz-GwyG2ZfXGi3xcw9W80zEjndsW8apNmxqDSG7q-puRReSxJIHntuyY-qYHMZtWs3l2DmW7jFwX-P2HbvNobzqCrwKR9BbxEud4rhRK3AusrKK-lQ/s320/Regional%20council%20cards.png" width="320" /></a></div></div><div><i>More information that was probably important for me to read about how the Regional Council worked. The card about how new laws are made was apparently deemed to not be relevant and I didn't really have time to read all the text. </i></div></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn9x1yS4voTZcEuMYWsnQthHXjkcX2HKtivcAaaedL6IRHACv06Dl4yu9QIoVIIyFinz3m5I6w9Y2i8tcNXhvj6RatodIBI9JrX-3wI7cgUSmUyWtVqNzauCxPAhwg6yAXuUFopi5XIrpOigMFq1j0LRyWZkZdJtSBTfbgA9yNgvqXekkc3zDUfnE8DQ/s991/Scientific%20explanation.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="716" data-original-width="991" height="231" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn9x1yS4voTZcEuMYWsnQthHXjkcX2HKtivcAaaedL6IRHACv06Dl4yu9QIoVIIyFinz3m5I6w9Y2i8tcNXhvj6RatodIBI9JrX-3wI7cgUSmUyWtVqNzauCxPAhwg6yAXuUFopi5XIrpOigMFq1j0LRyWZkZdJtSBTfbgA9yNgvqXekkc3zDUfnE8DQ/s320/Scientific%20explanation.png" width="320" /></a></div><div><i>This, a scientific explanation of the Regional Board, was probably also important or at least useful for me to read, but I again didn't have the time (or the inclination) and it's not really reasonable to expect a player to read this during the game when so much else is happening.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1xMAnMkV2w7E0CZDLV2dOCO9F-XFXzYDJieZZxOqHIlSK47XeW8PZ0PA8ZnJ9CEMnvTv9xLnR3ZiCzogKCJyl3WgdoWbNAta_a_kf_DS734nxen1qdy8T7KMg-Cb_CsyiQTo7iCXuKYp1-dDSJ_MFiQU5leZv7g4miLizuQ0pxdmNYvWSmHliMGi1Tw/s1045/Regional%20board.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="863" data-original-width="1045" height="264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1xMAnMkV2w7E0CZDLV2dOCO9F-XFXzYDJieZZxOqHIlSK47XeW8PZ0PA8ZnJ9CEMnvTv9xLnR3ZiCzogKCJyl3WgdoWbNAta_a_kf_DS734nxen1qdy8T7KMg-Cb_CsyiQTo7iCXuKYp1-dDSJ_MFiQU5leZv7g4miLizuQ0pxdmNYvWSmHliMGi1Tw/s320/Regional%20board.png" width="320" /></a></div></div><div><i>I have no idea what this was but it seems that it could have been important for me as a regional politician.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8o0_DKZuFShtM62bRzI0mrqPKCp3TRPg3zYYGrL2oN-MZqSkkGfwt3pwYKuGv-C2PYOFS_A9_IRqWUyH7VLo8SKjMMMyU6-2vSTI3DHg64mTkDNAWMW5zbP2Yd7YfsktM7UvLJnj7a_kJxMf-w6c0sPbQa2Lizd2Da-OSFAZKN6nof_DDqVezVzcm2g/s1350/Linko%CC%88ping%20board.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1186" data-original-width="1350" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8o0_DKZuFShtM62bRzI0mrqPKCp3TRPg3zYYGrL2oN-MZqSkkGfwt3pwYKuGv-C2PYOFS_A9_IRqWUyH7VLo8SKjMMMyU6-2vSTI3DHg64mTkDNAWMW5zbP2Yd7YfsktM7UvLJnj7a_kJxMf-w6c0sPbQa2Lizd2Da-OSFAZKN6nof_DDqVezVzcm2g/s320/Linko%CC%88ping%20board.png" width="320" /></a></div></div><div><i>This is an example of one of the 8 municipalities' board. Linköping was part of the game I played and it's the largest city in Östergötland together with Norrköping. The same 24 pre-determined inventions are on this and several other boards too.</i><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGK4zvU_sT39LdOJ9Ut9A_1tW1pwFLtaTl-dRfs5ogmoiD4YUdHEHk8b7UXAZZZk0YAqCvrq2FsYv_7BpalzQ_ulvfVqW1-aNloxx1SHYn7iA8jYtfAGHrfCZ7smnLE7jVhDC5sGssT6f7bju9ptTuM1TH4O7ca97lQ5CN9n1ThNZXjF8fZXJWgY8U9A/s4032/MO%CC%88GA%20folksy.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGK4zvU_sT39LdOJ9Ut9A_1tW1pwFLtaTl-dRfs5ogmoiD4YUdHEHk8b7UXAZZZk0YAqCvrq2FsYv_7BpalzQ_ulvfVqW1-aNloxx1SHYn7iA8jYtfAGHrfCZ7smnLE7jVhDC5sGssT6f7bju9ptTuM1TH4O7ca97lQ5CN9n1ThNZXjF8fZXJWgY8U9A/w300-h400/MO%CC%88GA%20folksy.HEIC" width="300" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Me as a populist politician. Vote for me!</i></div><p>.</p></div></div>pargmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17208443783482286491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7165044694341896839.post-20260015983764541972022-05-11T20:12:00.439+02:002022-08-17T16:45:36.503+02:00Event Horizon Counterfactual Workshop<p> .</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4B1V_Dlb5aq1Rjfz8dI3rfXwXqgkStvN252kxWeTkCzqGK51Ko4rBeA7mMRk3_RCXoC9hRrA0dod1H3_aYO0U_Rn_QFE6Acy_UqDFCvlpKNL_n4R6ZT3SVfkSGMVsyJv5ytDTZ7RxbgN75isR9YMAqGzgGQ9Ztvwil1iylqAAXX9SyE_esgxDMFRi2g/s3504/220508%20O%CC%88rebro%20poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3504" data-original-width="2479" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4B1V_Dlb5aq1Rjfz8dI3rfXwXqgkStvN252kxWeTkCzqGK51Ko4rBeA7mMRk3_RCXoC9hRrA0dod1H3_aYO0U_Rn_QFE6Acy_UqDFCvlpKNL_n4R6ZT3SVfkSGMVsyJv5ytDTZ7RxbgN75isR9YMAqGzgGQ9Ztvwil1iylqAAXX9SyE_esgxDMFRi2g/w283-h400/220508%20O%CC%88rebro%20poster.jpg" width="283" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div><br /></div>I have been interested in counterfactual scenarios for quite some time but I notice I haven't written a single blog post about our current research project "<a href="https://www.kth.se/hct/mid/research/sustainability/projects/event-horizon-1.970914">Beyond the event horizon</a>: tools to explore local energy transformations", despite the fact that it's been going for over two years. And despite the fact that my and Elina's interests in counterfactuals currently are focused on that project. So I 1) searched for all my previous blog posts with the tag "counterfactual", 2) looked up other linked posts that are relevant and 3)<span style="color: #fcff01;"> list a few events that should have garnered blog posts but for some reason didn't</span> - so here is a blog-centric and quite complete history/summary of my (our) interests in the area during the last six years:<div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><a href="http://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2016/06/limits-day-zeroconsider-half.html">Consider Half - greatest project idea ever?</a> (June 2016). The basic idea of a rich counterfactual scenario (that I originally though of two years earlier) is spelled out in this blog post.</li><li><a href="http://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2016/07/on-effects-of-early-1970s-global-peak.html">On the effects of the early 1970’s global peak in oil production</a> (July 2016). This is our "Coalworld" proposal/abstract (based on "Consider Half") for writing an article to a special issue on "Narratives and storytelling in energy and climate change research" in the journal Energy Research and Social Science (ER&SS). The title was later changed.</li><li><a href="http://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2016/11/coalworld-envisioning-world-with-half.html">Coalworld: Envisioning a world with half the oil</a> (paper) (Nov 2016). A conference submission. Can't remember what happened, it could have been rejected or accepted-but-withdrawn, but I anyway didn't go to the conference.</li><li><a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2017/01/shifting-away-from-oil-article.html">Shifting away from oil</a> (article) (Jan 2017). The proposal for a second Coalworld article was submitted to an ER&SS special issue on "Energy and the Future" (while we were still working on writing the first article). This proposal was rejected, the article has since been revised, but despite the fact that little work remains, the article lies in the drawer for now (other things have come between, see below).</li><li><a href="http://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2017/09/what-if-there-had-only-been-half-oil.html">What if there had only been half the oil?</a> (article) (Sept 2017). <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214629617301792">Our article</a> was published in ER&SS. YES! Our first article about counterfactual scenarios describes the peak oil Coalworld scenario.</li><li><a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2017/12/my-intellectual-breakthrough.html">My intellectual breakthrough</a> (Dec 2017). I had a great idea and tried to convey the excitement but still be secretive about the content. This idea later turned into the article "Looking backward to the future" (below). </li><li><a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2018/02/studying-future-with-counterfactuals.html">Studying the future with counterfactuals</a> (application) (Feb 2018). This blog post describes our bid to do a one-week workshop at the <a href="https://www.lorentzcenter.nl/home.html?PHPSESSID=6ffd4edd9a19e2ce3f324691e7879fcf">Lorentz Center</a>. It was approved and we held a one-week workshop in The Netherlands one year later.</li><li><a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2018/02/petrocultures-paper.html">Petrocultures</a> (paper) (Feb 2018). Hastily written submission to the <a href="https://petrocultures2018.wixsite.com/transition">Petrocultures conference</a>. The submission was accepted, but I had to withdraw as the conference clashed in time with another conference (on Degrowth).</li><li><a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2018/02/turning-black-swans-white-application.html">Turning black swans white</a> (application) (Feb 2018). A research grant application that was submitted to the Swedish Energy Agency's call "Humans, energy systems and society" but that was rejected.</li><li><span style="color: #fcff01;">Looking Backwards to the Future: Studying the Future with Counterfactuals</span> (Feb 2019). Our week-long workshop on counterfactual scenarios with invited academics from various disciplines (as well as the Science Fiction writer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._M._Stirling">S.M. Stirling</a>)</li><li><a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2019/06/blog-post.html">Narrative science</a> (workshop) (June 2019). Based on our article "What if there had only been half the oil?" I was invited to the workshop "Does time always pass? Temporalities in scientific narratives".</li><li><a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2018/03/using-counterfactual-history-to-imagine.html">Using counterfactual history to imagine computing futures</a> (paper) (March 2018). Elina and me submitted this "What if there had only been half the oil?" spin-off paper to the Fourth Workshop on Computing within Limits. It was later accepted and presented and is <a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3232617.3232621">available online here</a>.</li><li><span style="color: #fcff01;">Beyond the event horizon (application)</span> (March 2019). Based on last year's failed application, a new research grant was submitted to the Swedish Energy Agency's call "Humans, energy systems and society".</li><li><span style="color: #fcff01;">Looking backward to the future (article)</span> (August 2020). "My Intellectual Breakthrough" (Dec 2017, above) had been turned into an article that was submitted to the journal Futures.</li><li><span style="caret-color: rgb(252, 255, 1); color: #fcff01;">Beyond the event horizon (approved) </span>(September 2019). Our project was approved! The project will run between 2020-2022.</li><li><a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2020/01/imagining-alternative-futures.html">Imagining Alternative Futures</a> (application) (Jan 2020). I was part of an application that was led by principal investigator (PI) Michael Boyden (associate professor of American literature at the Department of English at Uppsala University). Distinguished Professor Emerita Katherine Hayles (University of California/Uppsala) was also part of the application.</li><li><span style="color: #fcff01;">Minna Laurell Thorslund is our new phd student!</span> (April 2020). We hired Minna to work in the project "Beyond the event horizon". She was a bit unlucky and started as a phd student at KTH just after Covid restrictions hit Sweden.</li><li><span style="color: #fcff01;">Looking backward to the future (article)</span> (December 2020). The article we submitted to Futures was finally published (16 months after it was submitted). It is <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328720301567">available online here</a>.</li></ul><div>I have unfortunately not blogged about many of the most important events in the list above. But we have by now worked for more than two years with the project "Beyond the event horizon: tools to explore local energy transformations". The persons working in the project besides me are: Elina Eriksson, Minna Laurell Thorslund and Mia Hesselgren (KTH), Mikael Höök (Uppsala University) and Pella Thiel, Martin Hedberg and Amanda Martling (The Transition Network - our civil society project partner). Much has happened since the project started, but it's not until now that we have started to write articles for real and we are currently writing two articles in parallell about the project. </div><div><br /></div><div>The most important thing we have done in the project however is to develop a workshop format; a three-hour workshop that takes the participants on a co-created journey to an alternative and more sustainable Sweden of 2022 where we only use half the oil, and where we figure out how life has been transformed. We present the scenario and it's up to the workshop participants to figure out how it came to be. Here's a short description of what we do in the workshop:</div><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">The fundamental benefit of counterfactual scenarios in this study is to make the future more present in the present. If there are goals and targets we should reach 20 years from now, it is possible to develop ambitious plans and roadmaps and settle for having these goals, targets, plans and roadmaps. It’s as if the difficult part was developing the roadmap - rather than the long, hard, thankless job of making it all happen! If decision makers perceive that they have already done the heavy lifting by formulating ambitious goals or plans, they might easily feel less inclined to follow through. This is on top of already feeling less inclined to act as concrete action can be expected to meet resistance in the present, and the benefits will happen in a far-away future where the decisions makers have left their positions of power (or might indeed not even be alive). </span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">We have solved this thorny problem by stating that the goals and targets in question were in fact formulated 20 years ago (in a counterfactual scenario) and today, 2022, we have in fact reached those goals! We thus start an exercise (workshop) by authoritatively stating that we have indeed reached our targets. This sets the frame for the workshop and it also means we will not and indeed can not fail to reach our goals (it is thus impossible to participate in our workshop and fail to reach the targets that have been set). After presenting the scenario as a (non-negotiable) “fact”, we then spend the remainder of the workshop ferreting out 1) what it actually means to have reached the target (in what ways are society and everyday life different from our world?) and 2) what the “journey” between then (20 years ago) and now (an alternative 2022) looked like. </span></p><div>We held a workshop in Örebro (200 km west of Stockholm) during the weekend (see image above). We were forced to change our plans and develop a digital workshop format during Covid but have now, post-Covid, developed a workshop format that works for physical workshops. The workshop in Örebro was the second physical project workshop and the first physical workshop I myself have attended. The workshop was run by Elina Eriksson and Amanda Martling and I was more of an observer and note-taker. It was great to attend the workshop and much more could be said about it but this will have to do for now. This blog post doesn't describe a lot about the just-held workshop or our workshop format, but it's a much-needed update about our activities around counterfactual scenarios during the last six years.</div><p>.</p></div>pargmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17208443783482286491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7165044694341896839.post-86317475624820323642022-05-08T07:40:00.002+02:002022-05-09T00:10:00.855+02:00The Climate Change Megagame (the before part)<p> .</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit0vLslBHm_OJ24xs6mi91tTPMDhJyBga73pZhM7heB2wr--WUbguFaSUb9274SByNGQzIw-ONrA2ieOiUu8cn9o2hScAneRKg3coxyawrb5Y9lYnkXTYn7yTLLdWuYsvaFQkgxRNWo3y_Ub5D5vy3rr8KBfwOgx9VztOIixGOP5mo7vhAdoVhVchKXA/s846/CMM%20Regional%20Council%20Board.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="842" data-original-width="846" height="399" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit0vLslBHm_OJ24xs6mi91tTPMDhJyBga73pZhM7heB2wr--WUbguFaSUb9274SByNGQzIw-ONrA2ieOiUu8cn9o2hScAneRKg3coxyawrb5Y9lYnkXTYn7yTLLdWuYsvaFQkgxRNWo3y_Ub5D5vy3rr8KBfwOgx9VztOIixGOP5mo7vhAdoVhVchKXA/w400-h399/CMM%20Regional%20Council%20Board.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">The Climate Change Megagame Regional Council Board (prototype, may change) is where us politicians will battle things out (show political leadership, allocate money) when we play this game tomorrow!</span></i></div><p><br /></p><p>I was invited to participate in a Megagame (a game with many participants) a month ago. The Megagame was at first a sidetrack, since the main event was planning a visit to KTH by <a href="https://liu.se/en/employee/olale55">Ola Leifler</a>. Ola gave a great talk at our SF Lab team meeting on May 3: "Reorientating an academic career to become an agent for meaningful change to societal transformation". This is how Ola described himself in the invitation to the talk:</p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">Ola Leifler got a PhD in AI and decision support in 2011. Upon returning to academia 2013, he quickly wanted to realign his teaching (which occupied most of the time) with his personal commitment to sustainability, and create space for research aligned with his values to that end. When he’s not doing academic stuff, he’s a compulsive sourdough baker, a manic organic gardener, medieval hobbyist, and serial boardgamer. There’s probably an acronym for that.</span></p><div>This blog post is however not about his visit, but about his Linköping University course "<a href="https://liu.se/en/education/course/ete367">Megagame-design for societal transformation in the light of climate change</a>". The course has two different course codes and the "second course" (same course but a different course code) is aimed at all engineering students and Linköping University. The course itself is centered on "<span style="color: #ffa400;">designing large-scale games for understanding the complexities, power relations and social dynamics related to societal transformations</span>". </div><div><br /></div><div>The students who take the course have spent the whole spring term designing the game and it will be played all day tomorrow (8.30 - 17.00). It's possible to play on-site (in Linköping) or online and have signed up to play it online. Blocking a whole day in my calendar a month in advance was tough, but boy am I glad I did it! I only yesterday (Saturday) started to read through all info and rules I have been sent and was blown away by the inventiveness, by the pure fun and by the underlying seriousness in trying to understand how to solve complex societal problems. </div><div><br /></div><div>I have more specifically read the 5-page briefing document aimed at "Politicians", because I will be a politician tomorrow (vote for me!). The key sentences that blew me away were:</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">There is a Regional Council [in the game], home to those playing the three political parties in the region; Forest Muppets, Market Prophets and Make Östergötland Great Again (MÖGA). These politicians need to form coalitions if they are to support an overall strategy for the region. Influence over the regional governance can be important to promote one’s own agenda.</span></div><p>I hadn't at this point read the mails I had gotten and assumeed (hoped) I would be a Forest Muppet. I'm not. I instead represent Make Östergötland Great Again (MÖGA) and their position is very interesting because they (we!) <span style="color: #ffa400;"><i><b>would like the region to be self-reliant and therefore promote policies that do not rely on global market solutions for sustainability</b></i></span>. </p><p>The interesting thing is that I have both received enough info to start to imagine, to think and to plan, but not enough to really understand very much about how the game works. Some key pieces of information that has helped me to make sense of things are:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="color: #ffa400;">We will play in the region Östergötland in the East middle Sweden. The region has about 500 000 inhabitants and is one of the countries agricultural areas. The region and especially the two main cities are also centers for advanced industrial production (e.g. airplanes) and education.</span></li><li><span style="color: #ffa400;">Playing different actors in the region, we travel through the next three decades to lay the foundation for a sustainable region characterized by high quality of life.</span></li><li><span style="color: #ffa400;">The key challenges in the game is to reach net zero, and then negative, climate impact and adapt to climate change while maintaining or improving the quality of life for the population.</span></li><li><span style="color: #ffa400;">Do not try to understand the whole game. Instead, the best overall strategy is to focus on your role and what is relevant for that. Therefore, we will only present to you what is needed to play your part, others will have different priorities and instructions. Talk to them during the game and you will find out. The challenge in the game is to cooperate with the others to achieve your goals.</span></li><li><span style="color: #ffa400;">Your specific goal in the game is to promote your preferred policies at the politicians’ board and among the participants to get their support in the election before the final round. You will need to negotiate with other politicians to form coalitions for or against certain policies.</span></li><li><span style="color: #ffa400;">Knowing your voters, their desires and challenges is of central importance along your way. Remember the slogan “Don’t ask what the region can do for you but ask what you can do for the region.” The ability to use media to reach out to your supporters might also be crucial.</span></li><li><span style="color: #ffa400;">The game is played over 3.5 turns: 2015-2020 (tutorial), 2020-2030, 2030-2040, 2040-2050. Each full turn is about 60 minutes long and divided into an Interaction Phase (≈ 50 min), and then a Team Phase (≈ 10 minutes).</span></li><li><span style="color: #ffa400;">As politicians, you will belong to one of three parties: the Market Prophets, the Green Muppets or Make Östergötland Great Again. There are several members of each party, each one with an individual vote. Each party has a set of preferences for which policy they would like to promote, but of course you will also need to be responsive to the needs of the population, researchers and the business community.</span></li></ul><p></p><p>There are also many other roles in the game (besides politicians). I can't make out all roles, but there are certainly representatives of the eight municipalities in the region (surely with different agendas and priorities), a business community, a research community, two media corporations as well as role for Nature (<span style="color: #ffa400;">Nature represents the natural world that has powers that allows it to react against the human society of the region. It is strengthened by resilient ecosystems, and may punish players as the climate becomes harsher</span>).</p><p>This is also <i>very</i> intriguing: <span style="color: #ffa400;">Just as real politicians, you get to rewrite the rules of the game</span> [and while we provide you with some examples]<span style="color: #ffa400;"> you are free to come up with your own ideas. No money is required if you propose new laws</span>.</p><p><br /></p><p>It is impossible to read the very intriguing briefing/rules without having your thoughts wander in many different directions. My political party will have to work together with one other party to get whatever we want to happen to happen. That made me realize that a very important task is to understand what issues the other two parties don't agree on and make the most of it (splinter and sabotage their attempts to work together). If the other two parties (Forest Muppets and Market Prophets) will not and can not work together, then that's a golden opportunity for my party to work with one of them (probably the Forest Muppets if we can neutralize the Forest Muppet ecomodernist fraction). I have lots of thoughts about this but very hazy ideas of how I can work with others in the game. I understand that "<span style="color: #ffa400;">The ability to use media to reach out to your supporters might be crucial</span>", but I currently have no idea of how the two media corporations work and what they want in the game. How do I manufacture "news" that they will be interested in?</p><p>I did however do something I thought was very smart and that is to reach out to my colleagues, friends and acquaintances online. I put together a job ad for a position as my policy advisor, i.e. someone who could "<span style="color: #ffa400;">help me develop a socio-environmental economic policy platform that will benefit citizens and nature alike</span>" (see below). My idea here is that I am willing to set of time tonight to bounce ideas with someone (or more than one person) about what I as a MÖGA politician want besides and beyond the sparse instructions I have received. This is what I came up with (<b>NOTE: it is now Sunday morning and the position remains open! Interviews will be conducted tonight - read the job ad below for more info</b>):</p><div><br /></div><div><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #ffa400;">THIS IS A JOB AD!</span></h2><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">WANTED: RADICAL HETERODOX ECONOMIST TO DEVELOP SUSTAINABILITY-PROMOTING REGIONAL ECONOMIC POLICIES (that support my political platform and my political career in a Climate Change Megagame). </span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">I am looking for an unconventional economist/policy wonk who can help me develop policies to reach net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050 while simultaneously maintaining (or improving) quality of life for the good citizens of Östergötland. The Östergötland region in east middle Sweden has ≈ 500 000 inhabitants and is one of Sweden’s main agricultural areas. The region and in particular the two main cities, Linköping and Norrköping, are also centers for advanced industrial production (e.g. airplanes) and higher education. </span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">In order to create a better and more sustainable society for the generous, hard-working, salt-of-the-earth citizens (voters) of Östergötland, it is crucial that we develop a political coalition (under my leadership) that can support our vision of making Östergötland more self-reliant and less dependent on global market solutions. Your goal is to help me develop a socio-environmental economic policy platform that will benefit citizens and nature alike (and that will also maximize my political influence in the region by 2050 - the end of the game). </span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">While I am not an economist, I have read widely and been inspired by and could imagine developing a socio-environmental economic policy platform that builds on these four radical proposals:</span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">1) Shift from efficiency to sufficiency by immediately performing a carbon audit for the region (baseline data) and then decrease the region's carbon budget by (at least) 7% CO2 reductions year-on-year.</span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">2) Create a local regional currency (possibly algorithmic, for example a GPS-aware currency that loses value the further you go from the geographic region). </span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">3) Universal Basic Income that is handed out to each citizen in the region but that can only be used to pay for locally produced products and services (see 2).</span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">4) Policies that incentivizes the development of not-for-profit forms of business that instead works towards maximizing (regional) social benefit.</span></div><div><span>Addad later (but before playing the Megagame):</span></div><div><span>5) Linköping University needs to urgently educate an "army" of "transition engineers" to help with the transition to a net zero society.</span></div><div><span>6) Compulsory one year long societal service for 18 year olds. It's possible to choose to do military service, to do unarmed military service (in, say, a school) <b>OR</b> to aim for "planetary stewardship service".</span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">These principles have in particular been inspired by David Jonstad (#1), Alf Hornborg (#2 and #3), Neil Gershenfeld (#2), Jennifer Hinton (#4) and Christian Felber’s Economy for the Common Good (#4) as well as by the writings of many others (Sahlins, Schumacher, Gorz, Graeber, Raworth, Kallis etc.).</span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">If we leave the nerdy stuff aside and concentrate on what is important, I am happy to state that I proudly represent Make Östergötland Great Again (MÖGA). My political opponents are the Forest Muppets and the Market Prophets. A crucial part of your job consists of helping me identify thorny issues that these two parties ought to disagree on, and then help me find arguments that will help me splinter and sabotage any possible relationship between these parties (so we instead can tie one of these parties to our coalition and to our political platform). Other actors/stakeholders of interest are: the 8 municipalities, the business community, the research community, the two media corporations as well as Nature itself.</span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">You would work in close cooperation with me (regional up-and-coming politician) and with a think-tank of economists and policy wonks (other job applicants). I believe you are imaginative, hardworking and dedicated to your job. You for example don’t shy away from working on a Sunday night (Central European Time) when it proves to be necessary. It is a plus if you live in Östergötland and have local knowledge about the region, but this is not a requirement and it could be that you live in another country or even on another continent!</span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">If you would like to contribute to a better future for your children and grandchildren, please apply to the position by filling out this Doodle: <a href="https://doodle.com/meeting/participate/id/en5WxK7d">https://doodle.com/meeting/participate/id/en5WxK7d</a></span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">Please fill out ALL time slots that works for you (the meeting might be more than 1 hour long). Please also send me an email so I can provide you with additional background information (ca 4 pages of text that should be read before tomorrow’s meeting).</span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">PS. Only serious candidates should get in touch! Pie-in-the-sky activists or ivory tower academics need not apply. I am looking for someone who puts the wholesome interests of the hard-working people of Östergötland first, and who is willing and ready to roll up the sleeves and already tomorrow help create a better future together - to Make Östergötland Great Again!</span></div></div><p><br /></p><p>Four concluding notes: </p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>I just now saw that I have received a link with optional reading materials, <a href="https://paxsims.wordpress.com/2021/04/18/building-a-climate-change-megagame-part-i/">Building a Climate Change Megagame</a> (three-part blog series). </li><li>I am asked to dress in a way that will make it easier for other participants to understand who I am. Do you have any suggestions? Since I am a remote participant (through Zoom), I am specifically asked to chose a Zoom background image that makes it easier for others to understand who I am and what I want. Do you have any suggestions? </li><li>I will be not be available for large parts of the day today Sunday (except through text messages to my phone for those who have my phone number), but I <b>will</b> show up tonight if someone is interested in helping me hash out ideas for a socio-environmental economic policy platform! Sign up by <a href="https://doodle.com/meeting/organize/id/en5WxK7d">answering this Doodle</a> and by sending me a mail! NOTE: You don't even have to live in Sweden to be my policy advisor!</li><li>We so much have to make sure KTH students will be able to take this course next year. We're working on it, but it won't actually be me who will make the magic happen but rather <a href="https://www.kth.se/profile/aro">Anders Rosén</a> and <a href="https://www.kth.se/profile/jonerikd">Jon-Erik Dahlin</a>.</li></ol><p></p><p>.</p>pargmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17208443783482286491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7165044694341896839.post-15178508064873886512022-05-05T20:00:00.001+02:002022-05-10T07:35:38.527+02:00Reduced emissions from business travel (presentation)<p> .</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi76Wj2YNxNX4VrZGPAnsPVf_CFcIfj-D06NhWPrRSe-xVPHelNVZO7OQtxlPzb97dC5yOWI9k3aCgwNvbgaP3_92mi2tN81UgH0WMqbl8wYUeVQZmPP3hHqmJ7D2DE3WChBfsARhASgSDlbTvB8BHzun_fav1uFrfq58_cwQ_VqJkyvWXU-rWbx0J9GA/s1822/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-05-10%20kl.%2007.16.56.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="698" data-original-width="1822" height="154" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi76Wj2YNxNX4VrZGPAnsPVf_CFcIfj-D06NhWPrRSe-xVPHelNVZO7OQtxlPzb97dC5yOWI9k3aCgwNvbgaP3_92mi2tN81UgH0WMqbl8wYUeVQZmPP3hHqmJ7D2DE3WChBfsARhASgSDlbTvB8BHzun_fav1uFrfq58_cwQ_VqJkyvWXU-rWbx0J9GA/w400-h154/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-05-10%20kl.%2007.16.56.png" width="400" /></a></div><p>I recently published <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2022/04/april-roundup.html">a round-up of things</a> that happened in April (blog-worthy but didn't make it to the shortlist of stand-alone blog posts). That list included no less than two April talks about our Flight project. Well, we just held a third talk to a very particular audience and this time I was joined on stage by my project colleague <a href="https://www.kth.se/profile/mrobert">Markus Robèrt</a>. </p><p>The Flight project (formally "<a href="https://www.kth.se/hct/mid/research/sustainability/projects/flight-1.920661">Decreased CO2-emissions in flight-intensive organisations</a>") has cooperated with KTH's Sustainability Office for a long time. Ours is a research project but we are interested in and can provide data and insights that supports the Sustainability Office in their efforts to transform the ambitious KTH targets into policy and then into action. The Sustainability Office similarly has an interest in supporting our research project (e.g. make sure we get the data we need etc.).</p><p>While there might not always be a Sustainability <b>Office</b>, but sometimes perhaps only a Sustainability <b>Officer</b>, each Swedish Higher Education Institution (HEI, "lärosäte") has someone who is responsible for sustainability, and these persons have a network and a distribution list. I'm not sure exactly what "MLUH" stands for but it's a combination of environment ("miljö"), management ("ledning") and HEI ("universitet och högskolor"). They also meet up now and then (I believe it's twice per year) and they just met for two days in Stockholm. KTH hosted the first day and Karolinska Institute (KI) hosted the second day. Me and Markus gave a talk at the tail end of the first day and then stayed to mingle and have dinner. </p><p>Our talk didn't have any description and hardly a title, it was just presented in the program as "Research project about business travel", but most of the people in the audience already knew of us and something about what we do, since we have recruited no less than 16 higher education institutions to our research grant application, "<a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2022/03/reduced-emissions-from-business-travel.html">Reduced emissions from business travel</a>" <i>through their own distribution list</i>. That also meant that for the first time, the focus of our presentation wasn't on results from our current research project, but on our upcoming, not-yet-approved research project - that many in the audience were part of and wanted to know more about.</p><p>This was the most knowledgable and enthusiastic audience we have ever talked to! And we would love work with them! Me and Markus only talked for 15 minutes before we opened up for questions - and the questions never ended. Someone in audience asked what would happen if our application was not approved and suggested that perhaps the HEIs could pitch in money to make it happen anyway. My answer was that we had not considered that option but a more realistic option would be that we would rework the application and send it elsewhere - since the project idea itself is too good to be abandoned.</p><p>What has amazing was the extremely high level of collective knowledge in the audience. Some of them knew more than we do in the research project about how a travel agency works (but assumed we already knew everything they knew). For gods sake, some of them had colleagues who had <i>worked</i> at travel agencies and who had intimate knowledge of intricate details in the travel agencies' booking systems! The mingle and the dinner was a delight, and it was also fun to put faces to persons that I had mailed or talked to on the phone when we rallied support and partners for our application. </p><p>The very best thing though was that two persons in the audience, representing two different big Swedish universities stated on the spot that they were interested in joining the application. Another person in the audience represented a university that had gotten in touch with us and wanted to sign up on the very last day (but it proved too hard to add them to the application since the budget would then have had to be updated and we were short on time). Yet another university had gotten in touch with us and wanted to join one week <i>after</i> the application was handed in! All in all we now have four additional universities who are interested in joining and that is an increase by 25% (from 16 to 20 higher education institutions). </p><p>So I have these four universities to sign Letters of Intent and sent to me (preferably signed by the president or a vice-president). I will then get in touch with the funding agency and ask if it is possible to "adjust" (update) the application to add these four (for the most part Big) universities. I'm not sure we will be allowed to do that, but it can't hurt to ask. Also we now have <b>20 Higher Education Institution as prospective partners in our application</b> and that is <b>more than 50% </b>of all HEIs that have signed the Swedish "<a href="https://www.kth.se/en/om/miljo-hallbar-utveckling/klimatramverket-1.903489">Climate Framework for Higher Education Institutions</a>". This is basically the same as having more than 50% of all Swedish Higher Education Institution being part of our research grant application. </p><p>I think our application is pretty unique. After having done research in the area of "academic flying" for just about three years, I have certainly never heard of anything similar in any other country - and what is amazing is that the environmental officers at 20 Swedish universities hope that this project will be approved just as much as we ourselves do!</p><p>.</p>pargmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17208443783482286491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7165044694341896839.post-73077767915760862692022-04-30T17:04:00.180+02:002022-05-08T06:16:10.368+02:00April roundup<p> .</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl2C_8hjK3ROW7lkyFqFr5q0DurKf5TXk9tIOtWtl6U2KjIVdXuvvev2CnBKkMA4sTjxsGpGdWkacvvTclFokejnoJ1emELqtcQ6D_01tVOXo4kHzmHreNH0qafi-JLI8JRwwtKcAWNCSiJvWdmtiViG67VJqiUv2AjzlpO8jwamQyjh9N3cpEhmDguA/s2862/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-05-07%20kl.%2017.15.51.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1414" data-original-width="2862" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl2C_8hjK3ROW7lkyFqFr5q0DurKf5TXk9tIOtWtl6U2KjIVdXuvvev2CnBKkMA4sTjxsGpGdWkacvvTclFokejnoJ1emELqtcQ6D_01tVOXo4kHzmHreNH0qafi-JLI8JRwwtKcAWNCSiJvWdmtiViG67VJqiUv2AjzlpO8jwamQyjh9N3cpEhmDguA/w400-h199/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-05-07%20kl.%2017.15.51.png" width="400" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p>This blog post summarizes could-have-been blog posts from April, i.e. some of the things that happened in April but that did not merit blog posts of their own (but that could if there had there been fewer other things happening). </p><p>I wrote a <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2022/03/reflections-on-taking-up-blogging-again.html">March roundup blog post</a> a month ago so this the second in the series. It might become a regular genre of blog posts or it might not, the jury is still out.</p><p><br /></p><h2>April Roundup</h2><h3><b>- Adrian Friday will be a SF Lab Scholar in Residence this autumn (April 1)</b></h3><div><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEGCd1KsrJ7U13nqKc4zRbxq8F21tdUeE87BHZnt8mVJFRh5_U5SJ9gzrBQAojroCL8T-7cVuv9_M-gAS1ADIblzjN_Zbd7bjjKQvB9fl6N83hoIMwaqqQc8TuBml5TRz1gbe7xS8Y53Vy19pkW29W3O7qEUq7e7R4vgRoGg_xcQpNs_s2mLw3tjpiXw/s451/Friday.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="451" data-original-width="411" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEGCd1KsrJ7U13nqKc4zRbxq8F21tdUeE87BHZnt8mVJFRh5_U5SJ9gzrBQAojroCL8T-7cVuv9_M-gAS1ADIblzjN_Zbd7bjjKQvB9fl6N83hoIMwaqqQc8TuBml5TRz1gbe7xS8Y53Vy19pkW29W3O7qEUq7e7R4vgRoGg_xcQpNs_s2mLw3tjpiXw/w183-h200/Friday.png" width="183" /></a></div><br /></div><div>Me and Elina sponsored an application from professor Adrian Friday (Lancaster University) to come to KTH later this year and it was approved! The application was sent to the cross-disciplinary research centre <a href="https://www.digitalfutures.kth.se">Digital Futures</a> and their <a href="https://www.digitalfutures.kth.se/research-calls/open-calls/open-call-digital-futures-scholar-in-residence-programme/">Scholar in Residence</a> program which "<span style="color: #ffa400;">aims to provide scholars at non-Swedish universities with financial support to enable short and longer-term visits to the Digital Futures environment (minimum 1 month, maximum 12 months)</span>". You need to be an associate or full professor to apply and the funding covers housing, travel and other costs associated with the residency (but not salary). Upcoming deadlines for the program this year are <b>June 6 </b>and <b>September 5</b> (hint, hint; get in touch if you would like to visit us!). </div><div><br /></div><div>Adrian is Professor of Computing and Sustainability since 2015 and was Head of School of Computing and Communications at Lancaster between 2017 and 2021 but is now on a sabbatical and will visit us for a month sometime after the summer (in August and September). We have met Adrian many times and me, Elina and Adrian also wrote a paper together back in 2016, "Limits to the sharing economy" (<a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/2926676.2926683?casa_token=yTk6Czgb-EAAAAAA:nX6w8_B-DT6olabQQUqNoaep8-ELvzgQhXidOFAaI39GhZvBqkyIfsIn5k--3wSJq23ae9ap5I5zRA">pdf</a>). From Adrian's proposal:</div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">"Adrian Friday is Professor of Computing and Sustainability at Lancaster University, UK. My work focuses on how ubiquitous systems, data and empirical studies reveal the environmental and energy impacts of everyday life, and offer new and more sustainable ways of doing. I am passionate about understanding the relationship between the digital and the future, and how to promote sustainabilty. My collaborative and multidisciplinary projects in this area have focused on various sites of energy demand aligned with 'digital futures'. These have included energy use in the home, thermal comfort, sustainable food shopping ('rich and healthy life'); and understanding last-mile logistics to promote sustainability ('smart society'). My ongoing projects are focusing on environmental and social justice for gig economy, and a significant new programme exploring a combined statistical, machine learning and qualitative approaches toward net zero from energy and IoT data, co-designed with commercial stakeholders.</span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;"><br /></span></div><div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">Possible collaborative activities aligned to digital futures during my visit could include:</span></div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="color: #ffa400;">Presentations, engagement, and mentorship of research students on topics relating to sustainability and digital futures (energy demand, impacts of ICT, thermal comfort, digitally mediated services).</span></li><li><span style="color: #ffa400;">Joint author papers, for example repeating and extending research into academic flying practice [2], bringing a point of comparison from UK data.</span></li><li><span style="color: #ffa400;">Explore specific funding opportunities, likely as part of Horizon Net Zero/ smart society calls.</span></li><li><span style="color: #ffa400;">Contributing to the design of a new sustainability Masters programme, leveraging my 10+ knowledge and experience of research in this area.</span></li></ol></div></div><div>We are extremely happy Adrian has chosen to visit us on his sabbatical and we are also thankful for Digital Futures Scholar in Residence program that made his visit possible! This will obviously be a topic to return to in the blog later. </div><div>Welcome Adrian!</div><div><br /></div><div><div></div></div><div><h3><b>- Invited talk, </b>“Academic mobility - Who gets to fly?”<b> (April 8)</b></h3></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9eiQaicCA60zWAlzEZgvlWEDYsMJf5ikeAUwufE8b6Tlojx6XHG6fc-Q4yOmt9C5Q5eHEAXfHMGER5Q8XjtRNkpKCJZlx64ydR3D_hSYijwcrIzwlGIH0No0EHI308zHfaoUFuieNNKMXzByyrtdDA6XISTluPSD5-omM75DdTb6C9QSTpWV3q32G7Q/s4032/MOB%20flights.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9eiQaicCA60zWAlzEZgvlWEDYsMJf5ikeAUwufE8b6Tlojx6XHG6fc-Q4yOmt9C5Q5eHEAXfHMGER5Q8XjtRNkpKCJZlx64ydR3D_hSYijwcrIzwlGIH0No0EHI308zHfaoUFuieNNKMXzByyrtdDA6XISTluPSD5-omM75DdTb6C9QSTpWV3q32G7Q/s320/MOB%20flights.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">An unnamed high-flying division at the KTH <span style="text-align: left;">Department of Learning in Engineering Sciences</span>. </span></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Each post-it note represents an employee and each poker chip represents a one-way trip </span></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">(green = short trips, red = medium-length trips, black = intercontinental trips)</span></i></div><b><br /></b></div><div>On April 8, I gave a <a href="https://www.kth.se/social/group/higher-seminars-depa/page/2022-04-08-daniel-pargman/">Higher Seminar</a>, “Academic mobility - Who gets to fly?”, at the KTH <a href="https://www.kth.se/en/larande/institutionen-for-larande-1.804157">Department of Learning in Engineering Sciences</a>. </div><div><br /></div><div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">Academic flying constitutes a large part of KTH's total carbon emissions. We need to reduce our flying if we are to reach our own climate targets, but how? To start with; who at KTH flies when, where and why? And how can we reduce ”unnecessary” flying? Welcome to a seminar about academic flying and the (many and varied) challenges of reducing academic flying.</span></div></div><div><br /></div><div>I was invited by an old acquaintance, Associate Professor in Engineering Education Development <a href="https://www.kth.se/profile/kristina/">Kristina Edström</a>. She had read our open access book chapter "<a href="https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-981-16-4911-0_6.pdf">Who gets to fly?</a>" and invited me to give a talk based on that text. While the first hour was open to all (at the Department), the second (Q-and-A) hour was reserved for phd students who took her course. The Department of Learning in Engineering Sciences consists of four divisions, "<a href="https://www.kth.se/en/larande/stem">Learning in STEM</a>" (STEM = Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), "<a href="https://www.kth.se/en/larande/dl">Digital Learning</a>", "<a href="https://www.kth.se/en/larande/sprak">Language and Communication</a>" and "<a href="https://www.kth.se/en/larande/vh">The House of Sciences</a>". Most participants came from the first division and a few from the second.</div><div><br /></div><div>The most impactful part of the talk was when I presented the participants with data of their own divisions' flying in 2019 (the last year we flew like there was no tomorrow). It took quite a lot of time to prepare the data - but it was worth it! The image above comes from the division what flew the most at the Department of Learning in Engineering Sciences.</div><div><br /></div><div>Parts of the Zoom talk was recorded and I asked Kristina for a copy. She thought it was easiest for her to put it on a USB stick and pass me by. When she delivered the USB stick only an hour or so after the talk, she told me how much they had enjoyed the talk - and especially the fact that they could see <i>their own data </i>(image above). My talk would surely be the number 1 topic to chat about at the lunch table the coming week and she also gave me a huge bouquet of flowers! </div><div><br /></div><div>What we realized only later was that I believe she stated that the talk had convinced her that a Very Big International Conference she helps organize from now on <i>should</i> be held online every second year. I would need to confirm this but <i>if</i> that is what she said, then our project has had a huge impact in terms of decreased CO2 emissions due to the outsized footprint of such conferences.</div><div><br /></div><div></div><h3><b>- Roch and Hamilton-Jones visited SF Lab (April 19-22)</b></h3><div><b><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghoCCV2KwVo-UebeGTWbKNOe3nPTeIN9IFPM3iDhhoofnwIEG77zN_y2xrRlRfBeAA2VaRlNG0F1ggnueP6x9oDmG54AQTCEM3w5zGpSsAdfbXYRA2KLV_dNRFNApZlqXEFXSlBKMiCHdYHLqjd6OAVfduSmrMKBQkpXEf36VoeK4iDUWyseqVtfOlMg/s1558/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-05-07%20kl.%2017.02.10.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1366" data-original-width="1558" height="176" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghoCCV2KwVo-UebeGTWbKNOe3nPTeIN9IFPM3iDhhoofnwIEG77zN_y2xrRlRfBeAA2VaRlNG0F1ggnueP6x9oDmG54AQTCEM3w5zGpSsAdfbXYRA2KLV_dNRFNApZlqXEFXSlBKMiCHdYHLqjd6OAVfduSmrMKBQkpXEf36VoeK4iDUWyseqVtfOlMg/w200-h176/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-05-07%20kl.%2017.02.10.png" width="200" /></a></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>The Sustainable Futures Lab had two guests from France, Emile Roch and Daphné Hamilton-Jones, visit us for a week. Emile and Daphné are Master Students in Design Research at the Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris Saclay, Télecom Paris (Institut Polytechnique) and ENSCI Les Ateliers, and while they study in Malmö for the whole spring term, they came to visit our research group at KTH for a week. This is how they presented their research interest and themselves when they gave a talk to our research group:</div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;"><br /></span></div><div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;"><b>Title</b>: Exploring Co-design for Sustainibility through Design Fiction</span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;"><b>Our work</b>: Responding to the environmental crisis as an individual demands agency. Hoping to facilitate the creation of that agency in individuals looking to have a real impact on this crisis, we have created a workshop using the stereotypical trope of the island. In our collaborative design fiction, participants work together to create tools for their survival. In that fictitious space, participants practice at responding to their basic needs through fictitiously embodied practice, collaboratively. The historical tradition of codesign in Swedish culture offers an interesting perspective for this kind of practice. Our work aims to investigate these questions throughout the time we are spending in Swedish cultural and academic communities.</span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;"><b>About Emile</b> : Formerly trained in professional computer science studies I decided to reorient myself toward a more critical and academical practice. I specifically looked into design that surround the notion of agency through my technical perspective but more and more by the designer point of view. </span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;"><b>About Daphné</b>: Trained in multidisciplinary design in London, I worked as a pedagogical designer before transitioning towards design research. I am particularly interested in the place of design in democratic practices and sustainability, convinced that one cannot exist properly without the other. Imaginaries of the Environmental crisis, fiction and co-design offer a response to this that I am eager to explore today.</span></div></div><div><br /></div><div>They set up meetings with many members of our group, but since they also sat in my room, I also had several conversations with them throughout the week. They also visited <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2022/04/hoffice-home-office.html">a Hoffice event</a> in my home. It was very nice to have them with us and I hope to meet them again, for example at some upcoming conference.</div><div><br /></div><div><div><h3><b>- Popular Science lunch lecture, </b>“Who gets to fly? <b>in the KTH Library (April 25)</b></h3></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0G7GzdxmkFPdsPRv8Rbcwlxw2cZVBhGpRtfMO8ib0tUOZU05iE90o0lr3WCc6YDYHR7iHUT-NghWsdlFnUrnw6_U4-uoHeH37LArYLSAYCt5Qe_ws7kyh3iTWNEN89lkVaieLGWg9ybdiaKAcKb59ca9gyLPataqZ2O5HBMgr2yfUsBVWMRJw5vWoHw/s962/pokerchips2.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="373" data-original-width="962" height="156" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0G7GzdxmkFPdsPRv8Rbcwlxw2cZVBhGpRtfMO8ib0tUOZU05iE90o0lr3WCc6YDYHR7iHUT-NghWsdlFnUrnw6_U4-uoHeH37LArYLSAYCt5Qe_ws7kyh3iTWNEN89lkVaieLGWg9ybdiaKAcKb59ca9gyLPataqZ2O5HBMgr2yfUsBVWMRJw5vWoHw/w400-h156/pokerchips2.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">I showed this image to the audience but am not sure I was allowed to do it. Nor to post it here</span></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">This information might be sensitive in several different ways according to KTH's Data Protection Officer.</span></i></div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>I gave a lunch lecture at the KTH library (<a href="https://www.kth.se/en/biblioteket/kalender/evenemang/vem-far-flyga-nar-utslappen-ska-ner-1.1129259">Web info</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/487414636253567/">Facebook event</a>):</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">KTH has ambitious goals for decreasing CO2 emissions from flying – but few governmental agencies fly more than we do. So how can we decrease our flying?</span></div><div><br /></div><div>This particular talk had a twist since I only talked for 15 minutes and was then followed by 5-minute "rebuttals" from <a href="https://www.kth.se/profile/rosa">Rosa Lönneborg</a>, KTH's Research Data Coordinator, and <a href="https://www.kth.se/profile/rroy">Robin Roy</a>, KTH's Data Protection Officer. I then had 5 minutes to answer them before we opened up for questions from the audience. </div><div><br /></div><div>The KTH Library had invited me to give this lunch talk a long time ago and I had specifically suggested they should invite these two persons so that we could discuss issues having to do with "GDPR, research data, ethics etc.". I ended my 15-minute talk by handing over these questions to my discussants:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="color: #ffa400;">Do the poker chip visualization display information that is sensitive?</span></li><ul><li><span style="color: #ffa400;">Who should be allowed to see this data?</span></li><li><span style="color: #ffa400;">Was it wrong to show it here?</span></li><li><span style="color: #ffa400;">Would it be wrong to use non-anonymized data?</span></li><li><span style="color: #ffa400;">Would it be wrong to make the data publicly available?</span></li></ul><li><span style="color: #ffa400;">Can I as a researcher ask KTH not to disclose info about my flying</span></li><li><b style="color: #ffa400;">If so, how can KTH reach its climate targets?</b></li></ul><div><br /></div><div>I ended the talk by summing up the differences in perspective and the resulting clash between 1) following the (GDPR and other) rules (little will happen and the easiest thing is not to even try), 2) trying to change the rules (an arduous and slow process where changes could take years of effort with no guaranteed success) and 3) doing what is necessary to actually solve the problem (decreasing KTH's CO2 emissions from flying). My conclusion is this: it could be that no one wants us to fail to reach our climate and CO2 reduction targets - but that will still be the result if we stick to the rules/restrictions about who is allowed to see what "sensitive and potentially integrity-invading" info. Like where I (as a civil servant) fly in my line of duty. </div><div><br /></div><div>Is this sensitive data and can I an employee choose who will see it or not?</div></div><div><br /></div><div></div></div><h3><b>- </b>Expert Workshop on "Digital Sufficiency: A new perspective on digitalization as a driver for sustainability? (April 26)</h3><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN_1AtdgCUKd6hwBTewF-P19KoWLidviafVEj6IK_qI-sFO09ufSQVkz1CxG6CWAt-Ka4HY2AqYkXV3SthkidaQrcdAsZ31lk4fdu5qaSJxEj2HHCReWNTXrG3_Xfg5WVm_-r0W5WsaX6yDCz0tMhYa_DZL-EOINFwx2FaRXYunxO_LfKiHxk3iSiFtQ/s1562/Digital%20Sufficiency.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1366" data-original-width="1562" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN_1AtdgCUKd6hwBTewF-P19KoWLidviafVEj6IK_qI-sFO09ufSQVkz1CxG6CWAt-Ka4HY2AqYkXV3SthkidaQrcdAsZ31lk4fdu5qaSJxEj2HHCReWNTXrG3_Xfg5WVm_-r0W5WsaX6yDCz0tMhYa_DZL-EOINFwx2FaRXYunxO_LfKiHxk3iSiFtQ/w320-h280/Digital%20Sufficiency.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div>It's quite embarrassing to write about this workshop because while I was invited and signed up two months in advance, I was extremely surprised when I got an email on April 25 welcoming me to the workshop on Digital Sufficiency "tomorrow". I then realized I had mixed up the dates and blocked time in my calendar two days later, on April 28. That meant I couldn't attend the workshop despite having looked forward to it. </div><div><br /></div><div>So I had to opt out of the workshop with short notice and this was a real pithy since I had in fact <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2022/04/ict-for-sustainability-ict4s-reading.html">read the book</a> that the workshop organizers Steffen Lange & Tilman Santarius had written ("Smart Green World? Making Digitalization Work for Sustainability"). </div><div><br /></div><h3><b>- Our Limits paper was accepted (April 30)</b></h3><div><b><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM5vpGtBTl3XGt-ONFGX6uCsRlqmyzI_fPGun1cDZH7OCd776HMNfSNUvA0FnMvqzzh-iskyRaD2OhACX0G8h0iwm2CHgB-tPJPB3nUWxlrY6wnLYAd8-wmgDtVkFcERiGX-kFc6fruKaFBXbzcm627zIS2qTYpMNtMfoEJssgcnqcvibZJr2dZBH-dQ/s2872/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-05-07%20kl.%2016.59.40.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1572" data-original-width="2872" height="174" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM5vpGtBTl3XGt-ONFGX6uCsRlqmyzI_fPGun1cDZH7OCd776HMNfSNUvA0FnMvqzzh-iskyRaD2OhACX0G8h0iwm2CHgB-tPJPB3nUWxlrY6wnLYAd8-wmgDtVkFcERiGX-kFc6fruKaFBXbzcm627zIS2qTYpMNtMfoEJssgcnqcvibZJr2dZBH-dQ/w320-h174/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-05-07%20kl.%2016.59.40.png" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div><div>Our paper "On the environmental sustainability of Ai art(s)" has been accepted to the Workshop on Computing within Limits (LIMITS 2022). The paper is written by Petra Jääskeläinen, André Holzapfel and Daniel Pargman. We are all at KTH and Petra is a phd student (we share room) whose advisors are André (main advisor) and me (co-supervisor). </div></div><div><br /></div><div>Petra is a relatively new phd student (she started to work at KTH in the autumn) and this is her first paper (as well as her first paper as first author). Petra works in a research project that André leads, "<a href="https://www.kth.se/hct/mid/research/sustainability/projects/ai-and-the-artistic-imaginary-1.1100143">Ai and the Artistic Imaginary</a>: Creative-Ai Technology in Sustainable, Ethical and Legitimate Practice". Here is the paper abstract:</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">"A wide variety of creative practitioners are currently exploring the use of Ai in their work processes, for instance in poetry, music, performance and visual arts. In this paper, we discuss the relationship between Ai and sustainability in general, but focus on the relationship between the emerging area of Ai art and sustainability in particular. We highlight the importance of pursuing research concerning the sustainability of Ai art and take initial steps towards understanding how Ai art practices may save or waste resources. Based on online fieldwork, we provide a conceptual approach that can be used to map the environmental sustainability of Ai art and use the resulting framework to analyze the environmental impact of three specific cases of Ai artworks. With this paper as a basis, we hope to elicit awareness among scientific and artistic communities about the environmental sustainability of Ai art."</span></div><div><br /></div><div></div><h3><b>- Beyond Stockholm+50 (application) (April 30)</b></h3><div><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span> </span></b><img height="320" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/j1mktTYCPhrfca1r-qK6v5lP0b5zQsfixrBtgybgs-T6fUrGt75fHFA0MoEgX7LK8y6VkgT4Mg5OlZMoVZHfXnWkWgWgVnzoj7gqrBgCE3LKkG4Q61_MTgvrVwhVlyB-FHbj6GMj1oBE4UyWiA=w211-h320" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" width="211" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-8594dba8-7fff-ec63-a85d-67e9afcfaeb0"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></span></div><div>KTH has a <a href="https://www.kth.se/climateactioncentre">Climate Action Center</a> that was launched at the beginning of the autumn. The "<span style="color: #ffa400;">KTH Climate Action Centre is a multidisciplinary research centre where we work together to speed up climate action in synergy with the UN Sustainable Development Goals</span>". Me and my colleague Elina are somewhat involved (Elina more than me) in their activities. </div><div><br /></div><div>The Climate Action Center recently launched its first call for smaller projects. The projects must address Climate Action, meaning solutions for advancing climate mitigation or adaptation, and they were looking for project applications that either proposes new projects or that adds a “climate lens” to an already existing project. The call also invited project proposals "<span style="color: #ffa400;">addressing the communication of research-based climate action knowledge to different target groups</span>" and one of the criteria for evaluation project applications was: "<span style="color: #ffa400;">Does the proposed project communicate research based knowledge to the public or stakeholders in order to raise awareness and speed up action?</span>" We think our application, "Beyond Stockholm+50", fulfills those goals and we handed in our 3-page application on the very last day (April 30):</div><div><br /></div><div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">This application is connected to but separate from the science + art project described above. During the beginning of June, there will be a high-level UN meeting in Stockholm, <a href="https://www.stockholm50.global/about/about">Stockholm+50</a>. In relation to that meeting, there will be numerous activities that are organized by civil society and other actors, including the City of Stockholm. We have been invited by the City of Stockholm (through project leader Helene Mårtenson), to in cooperation with the City of Stockholm and Kulturhuset (Stockholm House of Culture) be part of the upcoming Stockholm+50 activities at Sergels Torg and in Kulturhuset in central Stockholm during June 2-5, and we have already participated in a planning meeting together with the City of Stockholm and other actors. We would more specifically design, develop and implement a 2-hour workshop format (multiple times) as part of the Stockholm+50 event and in cooperation with the City of Stockholm and Kulturhuset.</span></div></div><div><br /></div><div>While we aim for creating a workshop format that works for youths and young adults for the Stockholm+50 activities in the beginning of June, our project has a tail that extends all the way until the end of the year and the project can be divided into four phases:</div><div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">Phase 1 (May). In cooperation with the City of Stockholm and Kulturhuset, design and develop a Homo Colossus workshop format and contents aimed at 14-25 year olds for the upcoming Stockholm+50 activities in central Stockholm.</span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">Phase 2 (June). Implement the workshop format (multiple times) as part of the City of Stockholm's and Kulturhuset’s Stockholm+50 activities. Phase 2 also includes observing, analyzing and redesigning the workshop format from one day to the next at the Stockholm+50 activities, as well as documenting workshop activities.</span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">Phase 3 (early autumn). Analyse the experiences from the Stockholm+50 activities and work together with Tekniska Museet (or another museum) to (re)design a workshop format that could be used with school classes that visits the museum. In phase 3 we aim to together with Ingemar and Esther “transfer” and incorporate the Augmented Reality app from the Formas project into the workshop format. Since our own students at KTH also fall within the target group of 14-25 year olds, we would furthermore in parallell adapt the workshop format and use in our own education at KTH.</span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">Phase 4 (late autumn). Based on experiences from phases 1-3, design a final “kit” with materials and instructions on how to use the workshop format. Teach/hand over the workshop kit to museum personnel so they themselves can host and lead workshop activities for visiting school classes without support from KTH. It will furthermore be possible to formulate bachelors and masters thesis proposals that our students could do in relation to this project during the spring of 2023. e.g. perform user studies at a museum or further develop, adopt and integrate the Augmented Reality app and the workshop format.</span></div></div><div><br /></div><h3><b>- Books I've read (April 30)</b></h3><div><b><br /></b></div><div>I have read very few books this month for two different reasons. The first is that my workload has been very heavy (at times extreme) and I haven't been able to muster enough energy to read on my way to KTH or when I go back home (by subway). The second is that since I started my course in stand-up comedy, I have used the subway ride (and other short breaks) to write, enhance and practice my stand-up routine again and again and again. I have in fact only finished two books during the month of April and that is little in comparison to my usual tempo.</div><div><ul><li>Jem Bendell & Rupert Read (eds) (2021). Deep Adaptation: navigating the realities of climate chaos</li><li>Ami Hallberg Pauli (2018). Stand up Handboken</li></ul><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRCdwPE13mjeXoCnT4PcvexohdfpGzk9kTSFb87dVcnzqxU0bs8z0RExOehgZ1kIC1kFpOC_5EZcbSr0ozLAQZ62Bq4DGGX5JzD8xDnQsQY2z9X2cNnirv_3_NfSp9wL_SWD7Akj4LayHNZu9OQQYztoGEyzMI3q56SR8qyW0-IlaC_DE8IfO-0CRmZQ/s450/Bendell%20Read.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="300" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRCdwPE13mjeXoCnT4PcvexohdfpGzk9kTSFb87dVcnzqxU0bs8z0RExOehgZ1kIC1kFpOC_5EZcbSr0ozLAQZ62Bq4DGGX5JzD8xDnQsQY2z9X2cNnirv_3_NfSp9wL_SWD7Akj4LayHNZu9OQQYztoGEyzMI3q56SR8qyW0-IlaC_DE8IfO-0CRmZQ/w133-h200/Bendell%20Read.jpeg" width="133" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDoRn2w8tt3jMTM8zt_CMCTmyB_yIizvbIedVLg_r87lRCj_xUhqttP_yW0opx0zAJR-Zu8A_TLUBSVaKmD1d7V9OzA1ll6oLL-TEPR4YY4N7TOFo_uBzhv2ey8oWcOUgCHeoIDki9vSLCzDZ2F_ACcEH6eo9z0DK717uFYz3c70aoqojWWGN66vIl5w/s323/Pauli.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="323" data-original-width="201" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDoRn2w8tt3jMTM8zt_CMCTmyB_yIizvbIedVLg_r87lRCj_xUhqttP_yW0opx0zAJR-Zu8A_TLUBSVaKmD1d7V9OzA1ll6oLL-TEPR4YY4N7TOFo_uBzhv2ey8oWcOUgCHeoIDki9vSLCzDZ2F_ACcEH6eo9z0DK717uFYz3c70aoqojWWGN66vIl5w/w125-h200/Pauli.jpeg" width="125" /></a><br /></div>.</div>pargmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17208443783482286491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7165044694341896839.post-86097269710914396212022-04-28T23:05:00.057+02:002022-05-05T23:43:41.417+02:00My career as a stand-up comedian<p> .</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicajXksxkHi-ORRLeb1mEYshznIOYcZ74CVp57Dc9-tD7N0WJofgDX7yBQA7iLLqwgyxNcFBCH8S4_x6R3HPmrJctsC3h1iGOcOKI4J_8sdhd4WzqsRB5dR-nxYMM4BAtKE0UKZnhaUgQr6NzZgJd8duylT2MHXc5NK76YXY_-z5-REik9AFBQhmB2TQ/s4032/IMG_2722.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicajXksxkHi-ORRLeb1mEYshznIOYcZ74CVp57Dc9-tD7N0WJofgDX7yBQA7iLLqwgyxNcFBCH8S4_x6R3HPmrJctsC3h1iGOcOKI4J_8sdhd4WzqsRB5dR-nxYMM4BAtKE0UKZnhaUgQr6NzZgJd8duylT2MHXc5NK76YXY_-z5-REik9AFBQhmB2TQ/w152-h200/IMG_2722.jpeg" width="152" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiasSVrEesB8thzfebhIjDpFeT8p6DJkRDpGeoMAajFl7LyAGNGqBXJa0EOnHvQg3SnaCgkeVglnaRXXEUIWssbJG0AkoW9trN3iGB-FiJenIT6GfuVkujn1tPD5JOyoDE9rCCJ2Tlzl1kG0V5PEb_WO0zc979U00tlmZ8V1HKsRqZEmPiA6gNaF-NFGA/s4032/IMG_2729.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiasSVrEesB8thzfebhIjDpFeT8p6DJkRDpGeoMAajFl7LyAGNGqBXJa0EOnHvQg3SnaCgkeVglnaRXXEUIWssbJG0AkoW9trN3iGB-FiJenIT6GfuVkujn1tPD5JOyoDE9rCCJ2Tlzl1kG0V5PEb_WO0zc979U00tlmZ8V1HKsRqZEmPiA6gNaF-NFGA/w242-h320/IMG_2729.jpeg" width="242" /></a> <br />Me, learning the secret secrets of stand-up. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Here joking about transgressing boundaries and not knowing where the limits are.</div><br /><div><br /></div>Life is't fair - my career in stand-up has at this point been postponed by two years - but is now back on track because I recently started an evening course! I in fact signed up for an intensive week-long course two years ago and wrote a blog post about it in January 2020 ("<a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2020/01/starting-up-my-second-career-in-stand.html">Starting up my second career (in stand-up comedy)</a>"). I listed several reasons to take that course, and the best reason is still this:<div><br /></div><div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">4) After modern capitalistic industrial society inevitably succumbs to the mounting pressure of the inescapable climate catastrophe, people will need to be cheered up now and then; a career in stand-up ("will entertain for food scraps!") will thus become an obvious fall-back option when it no longer is viable to be a researcher and a university teacher. Also, stand-up is more fun and less back-breaking than tilling the soil.</span></div><div><br /></div><div>This prediction (again from January 2020) sadly didn't come play out due to Covid:</div><div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">I expect that you can book my new show before or otherwise after the summer. To make the magic happen, do get in touch with my agent and then get in line.</span></div></div><div><br /></div><div>The one-week intensive course I signed up to <i>would</i> have been possible to attend (in Feb 2020) but for the fact that it was cancelled due to insufficient interest. I therefore signed up for another course (March 2020), but it was cancelled due to the Covid outbreak. I'm not sure what to make out of this and I have in fact considered the possibility that higher powers don't want me to stand on the stage. It could be that I have set out on a dangerous path...</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>I went to my first class a week ago and I was hooked. I've taken several courses in improvisational theatre, but immediately recognized that it's stand-up and not improv that is my thing! We were asked to prepare 3-4 minutes of material for the first class. It didn't have to be particularly funny, but it should represent material we wanted to work on during the course. I talked for a few minutes (about exactly the topics <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2020/01/starting-up-my-second-career-in-stand.html">I mentioned in my 2020 blog post</a>) and then directly got feedback from the teacher that blew my mind away. It was on point and it cut through the crap; here's the set-up, the punchline should always be last (to build up tension) and a minimalist ethos should guide what comes between the set-up and the punchline. Take away all qualifications, explanations, detours and everything else that doesn't build towards the punchline. It's that simple, but it can still be a difficult lesson to learn for a researcher who is used to support every statement and slowly and methodically build up an argument. The logic of the argument might be unassailable - but as a joke it fails miserably.</div><div><br /></div><div>Here's an example: I exchanged <i>all</i> my material between the first and the second class and one part of the new act was to enumerate a list of things that characterizes an incel. It was an instant and huge relief to realize that could say whatever I wanted (that builds towards the joke) instead of having to read <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incel">the Wikipedia article</a> and do an hour of additional desktop research in order to put together an itemized list ("according to Schmelzerpfeffer et al. (2021), "incels" are characterized according the principles that were laid out in..."). You can instead basically just make shit up ("Schmelzerpfeffer") and get away with it - as long as it builds towards a joke and it gets laughs. It could be that the more absurd, the better and it's the laugh that is the currency, but it's elusive and hard to get hold of for rookies like me (to get smiles are easier). </div><div><br /></div><div>Stand-up is anyway so much my thing that I will create brand new material for my third class (next week) and have also started to write new material also for my fourth class. Compared to most of my classmates, I'm probably insanely over-ambitious since I think about and work with my stand-up routine every single day, but I really feel I need to get the most out the class and out of the excellent feedback we get from the teacher, <a href="https://malinappeltofft.wordpress.com">Malin Appeltofft</a>. The other seven course participants joke about political correctness and woke culture, religious upbringing, social anxiety, defective boyfriends, being an immigrant from Germany, mental illness and riding trains.</div><div><br /></div><div>When I explore a new topic I start by writing down ideas for jokes in a google document. Something I find stupid, fun, or weird is a good start, but exaggeration is your best friend and exploring ways to make it even more stupid, fun or weird is a fun activity in itself. Over the course of a few days I then add passages and jokes, change the order and fine-tune by adding, changing or subtracting sentences, formulations and individual words. To find the joke is a process that starts with some promising raw materials (an idea I have thought about, or a feeling that it's possible to find a joke in something that recently happened to me or that I read/heard about). I then have to do the equivalent of what a diamond cutter does to uncover, get at and refine the joke. And sometimes I fail to get the joke-in-waiting to fulfill its promises and it has to be shelved or discarded. </div><div><br /></div><div>Since I only have to talk for 3-4 minutes (which turns out to be around 400 words), I don't have any problems whatsoever to come up with jokes. The most boring part of the process is however to memorize the material verbatim. To have it all memorized and then work with the delivery (including pauses and gestures and trying out how to emphasize specific words) is much more fun, but I still have a lot to learn here. With little routine it is very hard to know in advance what an audience will understand/think/feel, and I can authoritatively say that after two classes I am not yet fully trained. </div><div><br /></div><div>But I could definitely imagine standing on the stage at a rookie club after the course ends. Or at that event <b><i>you</i></b> will organize next month. I do believe I could have a niche as dinner entertainment at scientific conferences (or departmental Christmas dinners etc.). I've attended more than my fair share of conferences and academic events and my assessment is that the competition isn't very fierce not to say nearly non-existent so this might be space I can monopolize!</div></div><div><br /></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb8YaOO9fPrnewXEsdksm3ZNJxtHAb1lQ0rJ-ZJfikIQA_j8BBuIMiDRBCzEqCPFwxVWqcGBzA1MUKsVZ3SqB6l3C63XFJ_WYZaF-ErACtl1sn47kqAuXIyPX-40ICrKOhua2M8SulIJ7FEhapeoFcKHM9yXWtwuanffSZw-OoT1o3WLuvHiX6gK3hlw/s600/stand-up-comedy.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="334" data-original-width="600" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb8YaOO9fPrnewXEsdksm3ZNJxtHAb1lQ0rJ-ZJfikIQA_j8BBuIMiDRBCzEqCPFwxVWqcGBzA1MUKsVZ3SqB6l3C63XFJ_WYZaF-ErACtl1sn47kqAuXIyPX-40ICrKOhua2M8SulIJ7FEhapeoFcKHM9yXWtwuanffSZw-OoT1o3WLuvHiX6gK3hlw/w400-h226/stand-up-comedy.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This image used to be a placeholder at very the top of this blog post. <br />It was replaced after I thought to ask stand-up classmate (and citizen) to take of photo of me in class.<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div>.</div>pargmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17208443783482286491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7165044694341896839.post-29488553549795080752022-04-24T18:38:00.077+02:002022-04-26T23:35:19.838+02:00Hoffice (home office)<p> .</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKePSRY1AEkpO8VuduP3LjuwjnVytwmbKfTdrYI0_kf-RU39TGp5AVwuzY5JAM-3dO9GIKKgfNle_GNNODXAlUJ-SDykbd-MOKOqI22S4DuKwZZ0x4K4_xBbkK_FKWEpXh7WF72q_VMF3ai6lIdoePPaSoY7aI4eqCg9Bn8Q8vdXbFijGT99S7aIUIrA/s4032/Hoffice.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKePSRY1AEkpO8VuduP3LjuwjnVytwmbKfTdrYI0_kf-RU39TGp5AVwuzY5JAM-3dO9GIKKgfNle_GNNODXAlUJ-SDykbd-MOKOqI22S4DuKwZZ0x4K4_xBbkK_FKWEpXh7WF72q_VMF3ai6lIdoePPaSoY7aI4eqCg9Bn8Q8vdXbFijGT99S7aIUIrA/w400-h300/Hoffice.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Hoffice with Tina, Martin, Arjun, Elina, Daphné, Emile and me (empty chair)</div><br /><p>Hoffice (home office) is an excellent concept that was started in 2013 by <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2013/05/cohero-playing-games-at-work.html">Christofer Gradin Franzen</a>. My kitchen table (and balcony) became a pop-up office for a day this past week when I invited my colleagues to come and work in my home (<a href="https://storm.mau.se/hoffice/">here's a good Swedish-language description</a> of the methodology). I'd say most people mostly worked with tasks that required reading and writing (including mail etc.) in work sessions that were interspersed with coffee breaks. More specifically we initiate 40-minute silent work sessions that are preceded by "pledges" that we follow up (e.g. "for the next 40 minutes I will work with revising and shortening the paper I will submit to a conference next week").</p><p>I really like the Hoffice concept and it works well for our (extended) research group. It also for example means I get to meet with Tina now and then (see image above) - despite the fact that she doesn't work at KTH any longer and have few reasons to go there and meet up with old colleagues. It's also nice to meet your colleagues in a different setting and in a different <i>way</i> than what we usually do. Finally many things can be worked out or new ideas can be generated when many people work together or when you meet someone you haven't talked with much lately. I would want to extend the invitation to Hoffice a bit broader (e.g. to other friends I have in Stockholm) but haven't figures out how to practically make that happen without setting up some cumbersome administrative structure. Perhaps I should announce an upcoming Hoffice among my friends on Facebook (but not to the whole world)? </p><p><br /></p><p>This was anyway the second Hoffice during the month of April when I invited colleagues to my home, and I have scheduled two more full-day Hoffices in my home during the month of May. We meet between 9 and 17 and then have lunch together in one of the nearby restaurants. Sometimes people can only come for half the day and that's ok as long as there is space left around the table.</p><p>I currently operate on the assumption that 8 persons can fit around my maximally extended kitchen table - because I only have 8 kitchen chairs. But it could in be possible to squeeze another few persons in if I had a few more chairs or if it's ok for some to sit in the sofa or the chaise longe or on the balcony. There has this far only been 7 persons attending the April Hoffices. </p><p>I have considered using the official Hoffice Stockholm Facebook group to "fill up" a Hoffice event if few colleagues of mine sign up, but it also feels silly to write an "ad" and offer a workspace for, say, an additional two persons, so I will have to think a bit more about that. But nothing stops <b><span style="color: #fcff01;">you</span></b> from signing up to the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/240395772788705">Hoffice Stockholm Facebook</a> group and then organize a Hoffice of your own around <i>your</i> kitchen table (or attend someone else's)!</p><p><br /></p><p>Looking through the blog, I was reminded of the fact that I submitted a paper (actually an "extended abstract") about Hoffice to a conference 5 years ago, "<a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2017/03/strangers-are-welcome-hosting-pop-up.html">Strangers are welcome</a>: hosting pop-up offices in the Hoffice network". It was written together with a master's student, Emma Lundin, whom I supervised when she wrote her thesis and we then wrote the extended abstract together. It was accepted, but we had to retract it because in the end it turned out none of us could go to the conference and present it. But the abstract in fact describes Hoffice neatly and here's the two paragraphs that are most relevant to this blog post:</p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">Hoffice was started in Stockholm at the end of 2013 and it is based on offering the possibility of working for free in other people’s homes. Hoffice helps people arrange impromptu “home offices” where hosts share their kitchen table and other workspaces resources (internet connection, microwave oven and not the least their company!) with people who can “book” a seat for the day. The purpose of these work events is to create free workspaces as well as social, structured and disciplined work environments that allows individuals to benefit from others’ support and intelligence. While Hoffice groups nowadays exist in many different cities and countries, the Stockholm group is the largest and most active group with almost 2000 members and multiple Hoffice events being organised each week.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">In order to organise Hoffice events, many resources must come together of which some are more obvious than other. There must of course be a sufficient number of members, suitable dwellings and a digital (online) platform that supports the coordination of the activities in question. Other, more intangible resources must also exist such as trust in strangers, goodwill to open up your home to others and a belief in the Hoffice idea itself. It is hard to know what the greatest bottlenecks are, but one thing that is crucial for making Hoffice work is the presence of enough people who have the resources and the will to open up their homes to others by hosting Hoffice events.</span></p><p>Karin Bradley and me also used Hoffice as one of three cases in our paper "The sharing economy as the commons of the 21st century" back in 2015. <a href="https://academic.oup.com/cjres/article/10/2/231/3003399">Here's the (open-access) published article</a> and <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-sharing-economy-as-commons-of-21st.html">here's a blog post</a> about the article. We submitted the article in November 2015 and it was published 20 months later, in July 2017.</p><p>.</p>pargmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17208443783482286491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7165044694341896839.post-4575677284144862752022-04-20T20:55:00.001+02:002022-04-23T12:04:58.829+02:00Sustainable Futures Lab (SF Lab): We have renamed our research group!<p> .</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="border: none; display: inline-block; height: 371px; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; overflow: hidden; width: 497px;"><img height="371" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/fl4j2lpi44DPeDnZiJcSFajTRCuaK5gdiS6BuLZA8mUYMybMFi5ZGN9cErXr9DU33s2qhrDQ91DLWJmQlMzSjBnXAwZSQsmOFkkVhgzlvxWcOjIqz_E6SN75MexmfJguI5Xazd_5" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" width="497" /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">Image: Brainstorming a new name for our team/research group</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p>On January 1, 2020, I wrote a blog post, "<a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2020/01/2019-year-mid4s-levelled-up.html">2019 - the year MID4S levelled up</a>". That blog post included the history of our team - a team which, during the last few years, has turned into a research group with a portfolio of <a href="https://www.kth.se/hct/mid/research/sustainability/projects">ongoing research projects</a>.</p><p>In a blog post from December 2013 ("<a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2013/12/mid4s.html">MID4S - MID for sustainability</a>"), after we had had our second annual kick-off, I wrote that the team started in mid-2012, but we only named ourselves MID4S (Media Technology and Interaction Design for Sustainability" at that end-of-the-year 2013 workshop. </p><p>A lot has happened since then and this is not the place to summarize it all, but, we have for some time felt that we have grown out of our name, MID4S, which suffers from the fact that the name makes very little sense if you don't already know that MID is the name of our department ("Media Technology and Interaction Design"). The "4S" ("for sustainability") certainly comes out of the fact that many of us had attended <a href="http://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2013/02/ict4s-conference.html">the first International Conference on ICT for Sustainability (ICT4S)</a> in Zürich in early 2013 (the upcoming <a href="https://conf.researchr.org/home/ict4s-2022">Eighth ICT4S conference</a> will be held in mid-June in Plovdiv, Bulgaria). </p><p>MID4S works well internally at our department, but the problem now is that we need to be able to talk about and present our research group with people outside our own department, outside of the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and with people at other universities (including abroad) and "MID4S" then just doesn't cut it and that we have grown out of it. </p><p>I think we started to discuss a name change in the autumn but it has only seriously become an item on the agenda this year. We had a team meeting in the beginning of the year that resulted in (I kid you not) 30 proposed names that team member Minna Laurell Thorslund documented (the majority of the suggestions came from her). It's great to have options, but how do you go from 30 names to one?</p><p>I don't know how you would go about but we are researchers so we advance slowly and systematically. We thus obviously created a short list of criteria to use for evaluating the various suggestions ("Suggested requirements for the new name"):</p><ul><li>Easy to say/pronounce </li><li>Easy to remember </li><li>Easy to understand </li><li>Not too long! Is an acronym good?</li><li>Conveys the scope of research that we do</li><li>Conveys the driving force/stance/values of what we do </li><li>Creates a clear association between our team and the greater context of our work </li><li>What is missing at the department?</li><li>How can we “brand” ourselves all the way from the division to “the world”</li><li>Possible to use both internally and externally (MID4S is bad as nobody understands the name outside of MID)</li></ul><div>Some might feel that a list with 10 different criteria is exaggerated, but during the last month us sloth-like academics have moved into supersonic overdrive!</div><div><br /></div><div>Individual workshop preparations before our March 24 Reboot (documented <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2022/03/reflections-on-taking-up-blogging-again.html">as part of this blogpost</a>) included figuring out our personal favorite and formulating a justification of our choice of name. Rob Comber then shepherded us through a step-wise process where we concluded that our name should start with "Sustainable" or "Sustainably". The advantage is that you can then zone out or go to sleep after you've heard the first word but still know something about what we do. It was considerably harder to figure out what comes after "Sustainable" (see the image at top). Is "computing" (broadly interpreted) what we do and something that can unite all of us? After a long process that involved many persons we finally landed on "Sustainable Design Lab".</div><div><br /></div><div>The very day after, co-team leader Elina Eriksson suggested a name that came to her when she was out running and team member Leif Dahlberg (who was absent from the Reboot) contributed with yet another name. That meant we had ballooned from one to three names again and before our April 5 MID4S team meeting I sent out these following instructions:</div><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">We had a physical "MID4S Reboot” 10 days ago and I wrote a little about it in this blog post. This was a meeting only for the people who currently work at the Division of Media Technology and Interaction Design (MID) and one of the things on the agenda was to choose a new name for the group.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">We did choose a new name, ”Sustainable Design Lab”, but after the meeting, two new suggestions appeared so there are now three suggestions:</span></p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="color: #ffa400;">Sustainable Design Lab</span></li><li><span style="color: #ffa400;">Sustainable Futures Lab</span></li><li><span style="color: #ffa400;">Sustainability Lab</span></li></ul><p></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">At tomorrow’s MID4S meeting, the main point will be to discuss what name we should choose. While everybody is welcome to listen and talk</span> [...]<span style="color: #ffa400;">, deciding upon a new name is the main action point on the agenda and if it comes to voting, then only people who currently work at the department have a vote!</span></p><div>It still proved too painful and to make the final choose at that meeting, but we did manage to remove "Sustainability Lab" from the shortlist. Elina then put it to a vote among the MID4S core members (in our Slack channel) that very same day, but a few persons were very slow at responding so it wasn't until yesterday that Elina finally put her foot down and announced that our new name will from now on be "<b>Sustainable Futures Lab</b>" (SF Lab).</div><div><br /></div><div>We will from now on use this name and we will also start a new team blog. We have a plan for making the blog a hip place to go instead to learn more about what we do instead of a stagnant backwaters - which for the most part is what <a href="https://mid4s.wordpress.com">our current blog</a> has turned into. We might migrate a <i>small</i> part of the contents of our current blog, but will for the most part start with a clear slate.</div><div><br /></div><div>So there it is. </div><div>The king is dead - Long live Sustainable Futures Lab!</div><div>.</div>pargmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17208443783482286491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7165044694341896839.post-80607829075785916162022-04-18T12:25:00.026+02:002022-04-18T12:36:14.329+02:00ICT for Sustainability (ICT4S) Reading Group<p>.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbzyeOHQTWa9H3jFj-xSLz_KCbkdncD4y4vHDmLhmm7MHhuxlRaXdIjut9dz74UkLK7EH9_U1LaiU8wATI3LF79gtUGX4SPsdZwy9kZYDItCQ221NzzyxO_LS91I8lfeWlQZDb1E7nP21bS8AneURswwh9ESsBDhHNK4Dbidxcbamc1xuCGS739WMHYw/s450/Bendell%20Read.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="300" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbzyeOHQTWa9H3jFj-xSLz_KCbkdncD4y4vHDmLhmm7MHhuxlRaXdIjut9dz74UkLK7EH9_U1LaiU8wATI3LF79gtUGX4SPsdZwy9kZYDItCQ221NzzyxO_LS91I8lfeWlQZDb1E7nP21bS8AneURswwh9ESsBDhHNK4Dbidxcbamc1xuCGS739WMHYw/s320/Bendell%20Read.jpeg" width="213" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Image: On Friday this past week we discussed an extremely interesting book in the ICT4S Reading Group</div><p><br /></p><p>I briefly mentioned the ICT4S (ICT for sustainability) Reading Group <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2022/03/reflections-on-taking-up-blogging-again.html">in a recent blog post</a>. The Reading Group (book circle) is a spin-off from <a href="https://www.lorentzcenter.nl/international-summer-school-on-ict-for-sustainability-2021.html">the second ICT4S Summer School</a> that was held in August last year. I was one of the five organizers of the Summer School but it was fellow co-organizer <a href="https://chenjay.org">Jay Chen</a> who came up with the idea and took responsibility for hosting and coordinating the Reading Group.</p><p>We have met once per month - a breakneck speed for reading academic books for most folks - but you don't have to join all meetings and can instead pick and choose what books to read and which meetings to join. There have been seven meetings since the Reading Group started (Sept-Dec and Feb-April) and the eighth and last meeting for the academic year 2021-2022 will be held in mid-May.</p><p>The Reading Group exists in the form of a mailing list, an online collaborative document (padlet), regular votes for what books to read next and of course the actual monthly meetings when we discuss the books. We seem to have stabilized at around 10 participants per meeting (down from 20 or 30 and the very first meetings when enthusiasm ran high). The books we have read and discussed this far are: </p><h3>Autumn 2021:</h3><p></p><ul><li>Jason Hickel - <b>Less is More</b>: How Degrowth Will Save the World (2021)</li><li>Lance Bennett - <b>Communicating the Future</b>: Solutions for Environment, Economy and Democracy (2021)</li><li>Kate Raworth - <b>Doughnut Economics</b>: Seven ways to think like a 21st-century economist (2017)</li><li>Wendy Liu - <b>Abolish Silicon Valley</b>: How to Liberate Silicon Valley From Capitalism (2020)</li></ul><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWUUCqchlifCeQaIM6gp6_t0_boOx8mW3mQk5ivgKinmehj1d101iJDTKJSDytgkBtc2BgyN0tvZ6NrgatSB4bwvLpCZVkMh2IHlf_kyILof1uo9kx8FHcJFXkJt3nIffFGPpCZkhubUqn6a2A-TQidR5iUC3op9zs_XEIAtILAVThNgKF30ha7TEfQQ/s676/Hickel2.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="676" data-original-width="440" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWUUCqchlifCeQaIM6gp6_t0_boOx8mW3mQk5ivgKinmehj1d101iJDTKJSDytgkBtc2BgyN0tvZ6NrgatSB4bwvLpCZVkMh2IHlf_kyILof1uo9kx8FHcJFXkJt3nIffFGPpCZkhubUqn6a2A-TQidR5iUC3op9zs_XEIAtILAVThNgKF30ha7TEfQQ/w130-h200/Hickel2.jpeg" width="130" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz9Rf9oALrwCvfWCeEZj1CScvRDIM5rz_SvJDao5eOib_uZrjVKxsHBC4qfGrpmExzBA7PL0t-ZAHBz6D3rqj-MMObDMF_3AetfRcHopiDS2kqDo5xGFVXtc6gc4-4zosQlP8JeB8_ShWXnqYD9efbwK9NN0C0oodnZN3b3pgtaMQtNJs7ZIX6F4jSzQ/s470/Bennett.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="470" data-original-width="300" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz9Rf9oALrwCvfWCeEZj1CScvRDIM5rz_SvJDao5eOib_uZrjVKxsHBC4qfGrpmExzBA7PL0t-ZAHBz6D3rqj-MMObDMF_3AetfRcHopiDS2kqDo5xGFVXtc6gc4-4zosQlP8JeB8_ShWXnqYD9efbwK9NN0C0oodnZN3b3pgtaMQtNJs7ZIX6F4jSzQ/w128-h200/Bennett.jpeg" width="128" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmHFMMEPhdI1p7BimGga4cJ4g6KFmz1nmByMKacWzGb4WAJ8DuZdXVN6YCVZVHNM53M_AFuPRJVdvOwoSapLi0so17K7R9xqRVVoWC49S92Ww0LCwm1hk38YGWNnwvog179_Aa3vF4CPV---_ifyjN5GeTvn0q_LbqDQpbtqmD_9yL7V7sMENTeyuBEg/s400/Raworth.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="266" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmHFMMEPhdI1p7BimGga4cJ4g6KFmz1nmByMKacWzGb4WAJ8DuZdXVN6YCVZVHNM53M_AFuPRJVdvOwoSapLi0so17K7R9xqRVVoWC49S92Ww0LCwm1hk38YGWNnwvog179_Aa3vF4CPV---_ifyjN5GeTvn0q_LbqDQpbtqmD_9yL7V7sMENTeyuBEg/w133-h200/Raworth.jpeg" width="133" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2VjWw4RjRERWUd_yPngB3NAA8cejPy9MrKpQqRmvTGJGNkP9FIdGdoay19MrWlRBAmK7oCJULF2LhUyTwspMxs826vDmKU6yYN9oBxgI0N6QJGv7fBsM7PUQUYhjLTkJwgM3KaKzss2N0bm-00xeIjX7kKMKLdpjFB1Isy0ZKWPTOsL_ZB1Q0vHuAWw/s450/Liu.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="297" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2VjWw4RjRERWUd_yPngB3NAA8cejPy9MrKpQqRmvTGJGNkP9FIdGdoay19MrWlRBAmK7oCJULF2LhUyTwspMxs826vDmKU6yYN9oBxgI0N6QJGv7fBsM7PUQUYhjLTkJwgM3KaKzss2N0bm-00xeIjX7kKMKLdpjFB1Isy0ZKWPTOsL_ZB1Q0vHuAWw/w133-h200/Liu.jpeg" width="133" /></a></div><div><br /></div><p></p><h3>Spring 2022:</h3><p></p><ul><li>Sasha Costanza-Chock - <b>Design Justice</b>: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need (2020)</li><li>Tim Jackson - <b>Post Growth</b> - Life After Capitalism (2021)</li><li>Jem Bendell & Rupert Read (eds.) - <b>Deep Adaptation</b>: Navigating the Realities of Climate Chaos (2021)</li><li>Steffen Lange & Tilman Santarius - <b>Smart Green World?</b> Making Digitalization Work for Sustainability (2020) - <span style="color: #fcff01;"><b>NOTE</b>: to be discussed on Friday May 13 at 17.00 Central European Time (08.00 Pacific Time)</span></li></ul><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU-qPXb5f5jPBVk5jihY1uVtoxcDZZnYjzSQJ_q_avDTQh494_btY4sBALDKUjClQTfK1FPNfbqnj417Hnqxmp6PZ2fjxT6LNzheNuXv1tPdvAq6KR_2fhn4x5WEB7Ax0FWOuXsgRhKdinoeJZlGl9P4iFQ7TLOI1YiPdGU6jBno0f9BDqDsajLu4L2g/s825/Costanza-Chock.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="825" data-original-width="550" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU-qPXb5f5jPBVk5jihY1uVtoxcDZZnYjzSQJ_q_avDTQh494_btY4sBALDKUjClQTfK1FPNfbqnj417Hnqxmp6PZ2fjxT6LNzheNuXv1tPdvAq6KR_2fhn4x5WEB7Ax0FWOuXsgRhKdinoeJZlGl9P4iFQ7TLOI1YiPdGU6jBno0f9BDqDsajLu4L2g/w133-h200/Costanza-Chock.jpeg" width="133" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKL73gXiSLEJ83N1XYeqzh-crWOaY5Jd3XB3Ox_Zm9e1phPh2XV1qJTI73S038uXEitwIolEIFY1g5T9qcq_ny3NVv2-oEk719703nQH4djYusZyU27b_R0jEM7BC6h9LuE-41DmB9rd70vmTH9wmVKRy7Oc58lW4LK4AAM00XP0rrHWlvslcDIXpdCA/s781/Jackson.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="781" data-original-width="500" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKL73gXiSLEJ83N1XYeqzh-crWOaY5Jd3XB3Ox_Zm9e1phPh2XV1qJTI73S038uXEitwIolEIFY1g5T9qcq_ny3NVv2-oEk719703nQH4djYusZyU27b_R0jEM7BC6h9LuE-41DmB9rd70vmTH9wmVKRy7Oc58lW4LK4AAM00XP0rrHWlvslcDIXpdCA/w129-h200/Jackson.jpeg" width="129" /></a><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0000ee;"><span><u><br /></u></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0000ee;"><span><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaIMQ0OsaYUctGn32YlpSS3KRJdeuYPPd9UgFDk1AAt-eAxOTNgi2MLOC6WlLmoyPby58pPdRhdVxJIssTH8JjjHJsKPmKsq36PdvGF3ng9SrwYxBxEtZ57TbO2TN9oDvMO1Sfogj0ZoFbFMb2kjHrjv-zLMIXidUf-OkXqsejoBv2Kxcit8VqfDABfA/s450/Bendell%20Read.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="300" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaIMQ0OsaYUctGn32YlpSS3KRJdeuYPPd9UgFDk1AAt-eAxOTNgi2MLOC6WlLmoyPby58pPdRhdVxJIssTH8JjjHJsKPmKsq36PdvGF3ng9SrwYxBxEtZ57TbO2TN9oDvMO1Sfogj0ZoFbFMb2kjHrjv-zLMIXidUf-OkXqsejoBv2Kxcit8VqfDABfA/w133-h200/Bendell%20Read.jpeg" width="133" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix8hIjTz-PwO09gGPr6B2EIZF2SUQAQbpA_Oi4xCGcKN5m4vu1tNRN15lOyyoFhg2RnfeWx0uUQPJBFAbnQ-zjQPApTY4IwEbB2QXoxy9Lifv4nJOZyYw0_EhvwNjUYZNO0k5H5GZLKWqq3bT6xitMXe_r1P8Tmmr7bosO1ZTq1GhfR9DbLqAekjDEvg/s525/Lange.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="525" data-original-width="350" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix8hIjTz-PwO09gGPr6B2EIZF2SUQAQbpA_Oi4xCGcKN5m4vu1tNRN15lOyyoFhg2RnfeWx0uUQPJBFAbnQ-zjQPApTY4IwEbB2QXoxy9Lifv4nJOZyYw0_EhvwNjUYZNO0k5H5GZLKWqq3bT6xitMXe_r1P8Tmmr7bosO1ZTq1GhfR9DbLqAekjDEvg/w133-h200/Lange.jpeg" width="133" /></a></div></span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Out of the eight books/meetings, the last meeting hasn't happened yet but I have read and participated in six of the seven meetings (the December book didn't fit my schedule). </div><div><br /></div><div>Looking at the books in the list above, you would be excused if you thought this was a reading group about economics (or ecological economics or heterodox economics). Only one out of of the eight books decidedly treats ICT head-on (Lange & Santarius). Two other books are slightly more peripherally related to ICT and more related to business/society (Liu) and to design (Costanza-Chock). Out of the eight books, I had personally read three books before and independently of the Reading Group (Hickel, Raworth, Lange & Santarius). It was in fact me who proposed we should read Lange & Santarius and the suggestion to read Bennett was also mine (I had wanted to read it but hadn't yet at the time). <b>Author Lance Bennett in fact joined us when we discussed his book!</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Something that has been slightly stressful for me is that we have sometimes decided on the next book(s) to read very late, thereby reducing the time available to order the book and to read it. I prefer to buy books in batches and would thus have liked more foresight. I have therefore hounded Jay so that we will choose which books to read for the autumn at the last meeting before the summer. I would then order the books and might also read one or more already during the summer. </div><div><br /></div><div>Out of the books above, I can wholeheartedly recommend Hickel as well as Bendell & Read. They were both amazing. Hickel has a way of explaining very complex matters in simple yet convincing ways and I can easily see students reading parts of all of his book. Bendell & Read was also amazing since they present arguments I have seldom seen elsewhere (e.g. "<i>Deep adaptation</i> is an agenda and framework for responding to the potential, probable or inevitable collapse of industrial consumer society due to the direct and indirect impacts of human-caused climate change and environmental degradation").</div><div><br /></div><div>Also very good and well worth reading are Bennett, Raworth, Jackson and Lange & Santarius. I didn't read Liu and I didn't think much of Costanza-Chock for more than one reason; while the basic ideas were intriguing, I found that the book was quite extreme in how these ideas were presented and developed and didn't agree with some of the conclusions and suggestions. I also felt like parts of the book did not represent very good writing as they were boring. It sometimes felt excruciating to read with pages upon pages of arcane "who's who" lists that could only be of interest to those activists and groups mentioned in the text, or possibly to a "community historian" who want to track down detailed info about matters that are of great interest only to very few people. </div><div><br /></div><div>On the whole, the Reading Group has been great though! The experience of coordinating your reading and then discussing the book you just read with others increases the value of reading a book, and I have surely, due to the added value, read books that I wouldn't have read otherwise. This text thus ends with an invitation: <span style="color: #fcff01;">if you want to join the Reading Group, do send an email to Jay Chen (jchen@icsi.berkeley.edu) with "ICT4S Reading Group" in the header!</span></div><p>.</p>pargmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17208443783482286491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7165044694341896839.post-41705593715234996362022-04-10T13:27:00.002+02:002022-04-11T06:53:35.339+02:00Edu-Rail (application)<p> .</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiv5i6QdPSOXmg5tpkQsDKnrrXvDfj-qpXM3WMK7D-BPZ1OwpLfM7sBuzgNx6l0BkhU9Lgj2oCuRtKZbtDVHEW6ZAY7Sqd1zPzusBK5OJEN-wQh_Q8O3ltpoaIwy6eXNsHrpT_y52s7gpLQk7xr-_QWW4QIZ16u3bSWa0alM3d6602vY2Fd-q0r_JbTw/s600/Salongen.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="600" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiv5i6QdPSOXmg5tpkQsDKnrrXvDfj-qpXM3WMK7D-BPZ1OwpLfM7sBuzgNx6l0BkhU9Lgj2oCuRtKZbtDVHEW6ZAY7Sqd1zPzusBK5OJEN-wQh_Q8O3ltpoaIwy6eXNsHrpT_y52s7gpLQk7xr-_QWW4QIZ16u3bSWa0alM3d6602vY2Fd-q0r_JbTw/w400-h266/Salongen.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Image: Imagine a multi-day rolling academic conference where you take a break to catch up on your reading in this train carriage (it looks like a paining, but is in fact a photo from <a href="http://www.bluetrain.co.za">The Blue Train</a> in South Africa).</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div><br /></div>I recently "slipped" into an application, "Edu-Rail", that was handed in earlier this week. The principal investigator (PI) is professor Per-Anders Hillgren at the School of Arts and Communication at Malmö University. In this blog post I will write about 1) the research grant application, 2) the Vinnova call for "future prototypes" and 3) the project partners.<div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>The goal of the project is to: <span style="color: #ffa400;">"Gain better knowledge of how research work can be carried out during train journeys and create a vision and concrete solutions for how this can be made possible." </span>Here's the longer (250-word) summary of the project:</div><div><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">Summary</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">The international research community rely on knowledge exchange, where researchers criticize and build further on each other’s work. This often take place through international conferences and scholars have had privileges to travel a lot. Although the pandemic has facilitated the development of more online events, many researchers emphasize the importance of physical meetings. In the suggested scenario, the flight industry has not succeeded to become carbon free. The Universities in Europe have therefore invested in Edu-Rail, a jointly owned train company with daily departures between the north and south, and the east and west of Europe.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">The train offers opportunities to host academic work such as seminars, workshops and smaller labs and supports the emergence of multi- and interdisciplinary research where scholars can network and exchange knowledge during the journeys. In the scenario Edu-Rail started as jointly owned by the European universities, but later evolved into an experimental cooperative directly owned by the European research community. The onboard facilities, maintenance and services are all characterized by collaborative services and an extensive sharing culture. The purpose with this project idea is to balance a tough future (Scenario 4) that limit our opportunities to travel, with a concept that can offer services that is not present in today’s transport systems.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">Edu-Rail will be prototyped through service- and co- design and scenarios that elaborates on possible implications and values. It will also be tested through a train journey where a group of researchers will engage in research by holding seminars and workshops. The material will then be used at public seminars to discuss the future of work travel.</span></p><p>The research project is small - it will run for just three months between mid-August and the end of November this year. The process of handling the applications is thus also unusually short and we'll know if the application will be granted money already before the end of April. While the project is small (both in terms of time period and money), the burn rate is quite high, e.g. a lot will happen in short amount of time and the application consists of no less than six different activities. One of the very first activities is to prototype Edu-Rail by organizing a train-bound six-person two-day miniature research conference (with seminars and workshops) in September. The train trip will contribute to the creation of knowledge about<span style="color: #ffa400;"> "lived and embodied experiences of how research work can look like on a train"</span>.</p><p>This is reminiscent of the Norwegian Centre for Energy and Climate Transformation's (CET) "<a href="https://www.uib.no/en/cet/130157/all-aboard-cet-conference-train">conference train</a>" back in October 2019. CET organized the conference "<a href="https://www.uib.no/en/cet/123851/beyond-oil-2019-deep-and-rapid-transformations">Beyond Oil: Deep and Rapid Transformation</a>" in Bergen October 16-17, but the conference was preceded by a separate 7-hour train ride + conference from Oslo to Bergen on October 15. The conference train had its own conference committee (people we should obviously talk to!) as well as a very ambitious program with three talks/debates/discussions: </p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>"Low-Carbon academic practices: what does cultural change look like?"</li><li>"Embodied knowledge: How can the arts deepen the scope of academic engagement" </li><li>"What is the role of academia in supporting deep and rapid culture transformations in relation to climate change?"</li></ul><div>The Centre for Energy and Climate Transformations also has a very ambitious "<a href="https://www.uib.no/en/cet/120490/cet-low-carbon-travel-policy">Low-Carbon Travel Policy</a>" that more institutions should look at and be inspired by! </div><p></p><p>I'm part of three of the six project activities, including the train trip as well as an activity that I myself am responsible for - organizing an international workshop in mid-September (more info on that later). I will in fact make <i>two</i> business trips to the continent by train in June and August/September - so I would bring some recent and concrete experiences of extended train trips with me into the project. </p><p>Some of the questions we aim to explore in the project are: <span style="color: #ffa400;">How can the research community continue to exchange experiences when we can't fly the way we do today? How can we travel sustainably in the future? How can work and travel be better integrated? How can academic culture be developed in an Edu-Rail scenario?</span></p><p>The project is really fun and it fits very well together with my research project "<a href="https://www.kth.se/hct/mid/research/sustainability/projects/flight-1.920661">Decreased CO2-emissions in flight-intensive organisations</a>". We only look at (CO2 emissions from) air travel in that project and do thus not spend a lot of time looking at current alternatives to air travel (e.g. trains, video conferencing), but this project represents a really interesting way of prototyping what travel in a low-flying academy could look like <i>10-20 years from now</i>. Thinking about an academy where we have stopped flying altogether was also the topic of a workshop I participated in back in 2016, "Fly or die", and many wild and exciting ideas came out of that exercise (<a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2016/05/fly-or-die.html">and are documented in this blog post!</a>).</p><p><br /></p><p>The Vinnova call for "<a href="https://www.vinnova.se/en/m/emerging-innovations/future-prototypes/">Future prototypes</a>" ("when the future comes to visit the present") is also very interesting. They describe their call as:</p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">A project ... where Vinnova through new methods tries to understand and visualize objects from a possible future. Together with designers and visionaries, we want to create designs that stimulate dialogue about which direction we are going, and how we get there. </span><span style="color: #ffa400;">The project is about creating future prototypes. Future prototypes are objects from the future visiting the present with the aim of creating thoughts, feelings and discussion about what society we want in the future and the best way to get there.</span></p><p>So some people at Vinnova are having a go at welcoming and encouraging Swedish researchers to do speculative design and we [e.g. the people working at Vinnova and possibly also researchers in the funded projects] "<span style="color: #ffa400;">are coached by Elliot Montogomery, founder of Extrapolation Factory and teacher at Parsons School of Design, one of the world's leading organizations in speculative design</span>" (linked 30-minute video by Elliot on "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpia8c5vyRo">Thinking as a futurist</a>). There is surely an interesting story behind this call - but it's hard to figure out how this came to be without inside info. It's quite clear that some people at Vinnova are very enthusiastic about speculative design and they have even set up a helpful page on "<a href="https://www.vinnova.se/en/m/emerging-innovations/future-prototypes/speculative-design/">What is speculative design</a>" (machine translated from <a href="https://www.vinnova.se/m/framtidsomraden/framtidsprototyper/spekulativ-design/">the Swedish-language page</a>). I very much hope the call will results in a success internally at Vinnova so that they will continue to fund research like this also in the future! I hope someone came in with an application for a Future prototype of Vinnova funding more Future prototypes...</p><p><br /></p><p>The proposed research project, "Edu-Rail", is led by professor Per-Anders Hillgren who works in the research platform "<a href="https://mau.se/en/research/research-platforms/collaborative-future-making/">Collaborative Future-Making</a>":</p><div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">"The Collaborative Future-Making research platform explores how we can envision inclusive and sustainable ways of living and thriving together. We do this through prototypes and discussions where people from all sectors of society are involved."</span></div></div></div></div><div><br /></div><div>The project group consists of eight persons:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Three persons are associated with he Collaborative Future-Making platform at Malmö University. This of course includes the PI, Per-Anders Hillgren, and also his colleague Ann Light who in fact is part of the reference group for our research project "<a href="https://www.kth.se/hct/mid/research/sustainability/projects/event-horizon-1.970914">Beyond the event horizon</a>: tools to explore local energy transformations".</li><li>One person is a sustainability co-ordinator at Malmö University and works with integrating sustainability into research and education. It just so happens that she is also the contact person at Malmö University in our recently-submitted research grant application, "<a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2022/03/reduced-emissions-from-business-travel.html">Reduced emissions from business travel</a>".</li><li>One person is a project leader for "Future work" (reskilling/<a href="https://socialinnovation.se/reskilling/">Arbete i Framtiden</a>) at <a href="https://socialinnovation.se/">Mötesplats Social Innovation</a> (Meetingplace Social Innovation), a national knowledge node for social innovation and social entrepreneurship that builds capacity for a sustainable society.</li><li>One person is Head of Department at the <a href="https://mau.se/en/about-us/faculties-and-departments/faculty-of-culture-and-society/school-of-arts-and-communication/">School of Arts and Communication</a> (K3) and a member of the Malmö University <a href="https://mau.se/en/about-us/global-engagement/">advisory board for Global Engagement</a> (internationalization). </li><li>One person, <a href="https://liu.se/en/employee/steho87">Stefan Holmlid</a>, is a professor in design with a focus on service design at Linköping University. I know Stefan from when I was a phd student at Linköping University a long time ago, but we have hardly met since so I look forward to the possibility of catching up! </li><li>I'm at KTH and I'm a "travel expert" in the application. I would in fact agree that that designation could nowadays be true and in particular if we specifically talk about (sustainability) problems and challenges that are associated with flying (rather than travel in general).</li><li>Two yet-unnamed project assistants (ex-students) will also be hired in the project to work on the Edu-Rail scenarios.</li></ul><div><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4FnSUDFLY1jNZRVHpZVPXRlC8_5bX8Lpp7sfGxGWE3tZv93j_HbzRXTEEFI-twqpK5khFLb-nBbKiDIvGBFxbMHOWbHVf2yD4DVICUuyfQnaV-gXUqYADb6ofzIbUNjaoiSppGGdFbk7DCzrIJQ5NvkxI8OLOa8i9RtsUUevMC-Aq295GL5m-nYrhXw/s790/Observation%20Car.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="790" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4FnSUDFLY1jNZRVHpZVPXRlC8_5bX8Lpp7sfGxGWE3tZv93j_HbzRXTEEFI-twqpK5khFLb-nBbKiDIvGBFxbMHOWbHVf2yD4DVICUuyfQnaV-gXUqYADb6ofzIbUNjaoiSppGGdFbk7DCzrIJQ5NvkxI8OLOa8i9RtsUUevMC-Aq295GL5m-nYrhXw/w400-h203/Observation%20Car.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div>Image: Imagine organizing an academic conference on <i>this</i> train! Perhaps an academic speed dating exercise around two dozen tables? Do note that this is in fact the same train carriage as in the image at the top of the page.</div><div>.</div>pargmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17208443783482286491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7165044694341896839.post-64415674526703431272022-04-06T22:41:00.003+02:002022-04-07T01:41:08.979+02:00My docent lecture (here it is!)<div class="separator"><p style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-a9b7ff8c-7fff-2ccc-b412-c93b7f722870"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-a9b7ff8c-7fff-2ccc-b412-c93b7f722870">.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-a9b7ff8c-7fff-2ccc-b412-c93b7f722870"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4EEUS-H60cnApyLZFXYfjqZPiJEzTF94QRxlFvzkdAZvq04M3XG2KVWuLWZdIwGm5y2dAD-oZDmgz1qVew9hR67_FESf6mHvOAmt_yDItYDkQsXT23wIul9SBws9FMndS4GEnY2Bg3luQlTlQTLT2EXLxMC62sDeMJvqc-lqYyfz89rpKL5SW9aShPQ/s960/220316%20Pargman%20Docentfo%CC%88rela%CC%88sning.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="960" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4EEUS-H60cnApyLZFXYfjqZPiJEzTF94QRxlFvzkdAZvq04M3XG2KVWuLWZdIwGm5y2dAD-oZDmgz1qVew9hR67_FESf6mHvOAmt_yDItYDkQsXT23wIul9SBws9FMndS4GEnY2Bg3luQlTlQTLT2EXLxMC62sDeMJvqc-lqYyfz89rpKL5SW9aShPQ/w400-h226/220316%20Pargman%20Docentfo%CC%88rela%CC%88sning.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Image: The chaordic framework (Hock 1999)</div><p></p></div><p> </p><p>I recently <a href="http://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2022/03/my-docent-application.html">wrote a blog post</a> about the process (in general) as well as a bit about <i>my</i> process of becoming a docent. The official decision (signature on paper) was taken om February 4, but the public memory of the event will instead be associated with the public docent lecture that was held on March 16. Here's the official invitation to my docent lecture:</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidsyr1ghaPXvNHEnG7ZkXGGyuXf1YO9JfVmK9CxAQ6DbxzTNIzjgQqJr2eefPyUQhybhbF9Ltw4X3IaKS4H3goiiWYX3-wEdDgWsTfz9-XKCi2GjgIM6ZcSDnI_gWzbzj76bjMX70p4gqaIub9O_GjIwgItZatJNu2e4pFb5zeXyB8TAgek7rFf4U6KA/s1842/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-03-20%20kl.%2001.35.49.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1538" data-original-width="1842" height="334" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidsyr1ghaPXvNHEnG7ZkXGGyuXf1YO9JfVmK9CxAQ6DbxzTNIzjgQqJr2eefPyUQhybhbF9Ltw4X3IaKS4H3goiiWYX3-wEdDgWsTfz9-XKCi2GjgIM6ZcSDnI_gWzbzj76bjMX70p4gqaIub9O_GjIwgItZatJNu2e4pFb5zeXyB8TAgek7rFf4U6KA/w400-h334/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-03-20%20kl.%2001.35.49.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Image: The invitation to my docent lecture (March 16)</div><br /><p>The lecture was held in the <a href="https://www.kth.se/cs/cst/research/vicstudio">KTH Visualization Studio</a> and it was recorded (thank you Ingemar Markström and Björn Thuresson!). Even if you couldn't attend the lecture then-and-there, it's still possible<b> </b><a href="https://youtu.be/HGTSv6zw7P4">to watch it on YouTube</a>. <b>Or you can watch it right here!</b></p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://youtube.com/embed/HGTSv6zw7P4" width="480"></iframe></p><p><br /></p><p>I guess this blog post could end here, but you won't get away that easy! I'm thinking I have various audiences and objectives (e.g. people to convince) at this point:</p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>You heard the docent lecture but would like to hear all or part of it again.</li><li>You wanted to hear the docent lecture but couldn't at the time.</li><li>Someone told you to watch it (see 1 or 2 above).</li><li>You just stumbled in and needs to be convinced to watch it.</li></ol><p></p><p>I believe I don't have to work too hard to convince people in category 1 and 2. For people in category 3 and 4 I can disclose that I originally wanted to call the docent lecture "<i>Why KTH sucks - and how we can save it!</i>". That's a title that could definitely intrigue and draw in an audience, but who knows, perhaps there are some people who work at KTH who don't have a sense of humor? In the end I got cold feet and renamed the docent lecture "<i>Complexity, systems thinking, collective intelligence and stupidity</i>", but the lecture still has same contents (the "stupidity" part of the title could be seen as answering the question "Why does KTH suck?"). I also posted a dozen questions in the invitation (see above) of which I in the end got around to answer (or grapple with) about half, including the questions "<i>How big are you?</i>", "<i>Why can control be bad?</i>" and "<i>What is the downside of complexity?</i>". See the lecture to learn the answers to these and other questions!</p><p>Much of the talk uses different variations of the image at the top of this page as a starting point for discussion about the relationship and tensions between "<b>control</b>", "<b>order</b>" and (creative) "<b>chaos</b>" - or between "<b>management</b>" and "<b>innovation</b>". </p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWa06pWPLY6j5TOJPGocn_Mq-6myxwsBpmJBkAn2EXAhkXfeD1srq4HbCchse86RNKGHGiAtZP6nWhkawpja5uKOWsVtro_TDHGfpgbGFjo6VR6lJdhclQTSMS2N2Lyq4_hU7iHiBo1B2T9c9X-1tmA930zSYTaRbVb3EhPmL-jheAnKoqWVkpKJQ-7Q/s960/220316%20Pargman%20Docentfo%CC%88rela%CC%88sning-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="960" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWa06pWPLY6j5TOJPGocn_Mq-6myxwsBpmJBkAn2EXAhkXfeD1srq4HbCchse86RNKGHGiAtZP6nWhkawpja5uKOWsVtro_TDHGfpgbGFjo6VR6lJdhclQTSMS2N2Lyq4_hU7iHiBo1B2T9c9X-1tmA930zSYTaRbVb3EhPmL-jheAnKoqWVkpKJQ-7Q/w400-h225/220316%20Pargman%20Docentfo%CC%88rela%CC%88sning-2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Image: This is an illustration of an organisation that strives towards (the illusion of) control. This is however not an image of an organisation where innovation thrives.</div><p><br /></p><p>A jumping-off point for these musings are (yet again) the course "<a href="http://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2022/03/art-of-hosting-harvesting-conversations.html">Art of Hosting</a>: Harvesting conversations that matter" that I took back in December. But I have to say (for the protocol) that I have been thinking about these topics for much longer and that I wrote a series of blog posts on more or less the same topics more than 10 years ago (in June 2011), e.g. <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2011/05/folly-of-our-education-assessment.html">The folly of our Education Assessment Exercises (EAE)</a>, <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2011/05/top-down-vs-bottom-up.html">Top-down vs. bottom-up</a>, <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2011/06/paradox-of-planning.html">The paradox of planning</a> and <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2011/06/on-fallible-nature-of-tests-and-testing.html">On the fallible nature of tests and testing</a>. </p><p>This is also a topic I have circled back to many times, including in a blog post from December 2011, <a href="http://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2011/12/gripe-session-vs-course.html">Gripe session vs course evaluation</a>, in two blog posts from September 2012: <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2012/09/applying-for-research-grants-wasted-time.html">Writing research grants applications = wasted time?</a> and <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-price-of-my-time.html">My price tag</a>, in the blog posts <a href="http://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2016/06/mid-department-retreat-and-reflections.html">MID department retreat and reflections of organisation</a> (June 2016), <a href="http://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2016/08/open-letter-to-my-dean-spare-us-from.html">Open letter to my dean - spare us from excessive administration!</a> (Aug 2016) and <a href="http://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2017/12/leadership-for-associate-professors.html">Leadership for associate professors</a> (Dec 2017). And probably also as a sub-topic in other blog posts that I have forgotten about, including in the notes for a proposed blog post, "Bureaucracy 2.0", that was never finalized but that was/would have been heavily inspired by Jonas Söderström's <a href="https://www.adlibris.com/se/bok/javla-skitsystem-hur-en-usel-digital-arbetsmiljo-stressar-oss-pa-jobbet-9789187207525">Swedish-language book</a> and his blog posts from back then (<a href="http://javlaskitsystem.se/2013/03/goda-nyheter-sa-skapar-man-battre-service/">here</a>, <a href="http://javlaskitsystem.se/2013/02/nu-dokumenterar-vi-soporna/">here</a>, <a href="http://javlaskitsystem.se/2013/07/byrakrati-2-0-driver-sverige-mot-en-administrativ-infarkt/">here</a> and <a href="http://javlaskitsystem.se/2013/07/fem-sorters-okande-administration/">here</a>) - and he keeps going with these brand new 2022 texts about idiocracy and documentation frenzy in the Swedish public school system (<a href="http://javlaskitsystem.se/2022/01/skolan-ingen-hejd-pa-okad-dokumentation-och-strulande-teknik/">here</a> and <a href="http://javlaskitsystem.se/2022/01/nar-xyz-tranger-ut-abc-byrakratins-vasen-i-skolan/">here</a>).</p><p>No one has explained this outpouring of collective stupidity better than <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Conquest">historian Robert Conquest</a>, whose third law of politics sensibly and insanely states that "<i>The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies</i>".</p><p><br /></p><p>I believe that I have written less about these topics during the last five years <i>not</i> because I have less to complain about, but because I have become <i>more tolerant</i> and/or found <i>other ways to handle idiocy</i>. By "more tolerant", it could be that I have become more laconic and have come to regard brainless adminstrations as a regrettable but inevitable part of the job, sort of like a farmer might regard bad weather, e.g. something unfortunate that is part of life and that has to be overcome with a minimal work effort. As apart from the weather (can't be fought), brainless administration can perhaps be resisted and then possibly with inspiration from "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Weapons-Weak-Everyday-Peasant-Resistance/dp/0300036418">everyday forms of peasant resistance</a>" (including foot dragging, lateness, false compliance, dissimulation, unpredictability, feigned ignorance, non-communication and so on). When it comes to "other ways to handle idiocy", it could be that I have developed better tactics or become more skillful at handling, rounding or evading brainless administration, <i>or</i>, that I have found alternative ways of <i>personally</i> handling brainless administration (e.g. humor, laughter, ridicule, derision, irony and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Environmentalism-Irony-Irreverence-Ecological/dp/1517903890/ref=sr_1_1?crid=31VYF56V5AR21&keywords=bad+environmentalism&qid=1649284157&s=books&sprefix=bad+envioronmentalism%2Cstripbooks-intl-ship%2C122&sr=1-1">carnivalistic irreverence</a>). Such strategies don't solve the problem or change the world per se, but they make it easier to handle idiocy on a personal level. It could however be that I am now leveling up and raising the bar - since I will start a course in stand-up comedy later this month! I hereby vow to make this fight public, and I can already feel how the powers-that-be are starting to shake with fear at that scary prospect! More on this later - and don't forget to keep your eyes open for my upcoming Netflix Christmas Special where I mercilessly ridicule excessive administrative routines to an audience that roars with laughter!</p><p>My own suggestion for a goal worthy of striving for, "admin sufficiency", is (with inspiration from <a href="https://www.amazon.se/Smart-Green-World-Digitalization-Sustainability/dp/0367467577">Lange and Santarius</a>) instead:</p><p></p><ul><li>As many rules as necessary, but as few rules as possible <b>and</b></li><li>As much admin as necessary, but as little admin as possible</li></ul><div>This is both my recipe for a better world and for "how we can save KTH"!</div><div><br /></div><div>Oh, and I also made <i>two</i> abstracts for my docent lecture. This is the one I did not use:</div><div><b>Abstract</b>: In his long-awaited docent lecture, Daniel Pargman will be spinning a complex web of cryptic obviousness, spanning a campus wide web of collective sensemaking, spamming a tight web of contagious nonsense, spoofing a comprehensive tale of counterfactual could-have-been’s, spearheading a singular contribution of clarifying visualizations, scouting a chaordic path to systemic intelligence and spurning the spurious idols of static stupidity. And more.</div><div>And while the abstract might be whimsical, the docent lecture doesn’t have to be. And whoever comes is the right people.</div><div>Welcome!</div><p>.</p>pargmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17208443783482286491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7165044694341896839.post-12876930450334299192022-04-03T17:41:00.003+02:002022-04-03T17:41:00.178+02:00Leading complex change processes (new course)<p> .</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyk9gEBgIzjjoEN8HLRp9_yKBNYMeY3vpbgFUI7UYNR_CUE2P9U-PjkpBa2so6xzAdVpOs1mcJ_bmDEd3PxrCbWHD26ye79gve6FQ2-K-yrfOuVrQD3BKyshW8cjWr9Ae5mZt3bxMNAGg4u-NwjBIpwQZ8IkNqyPrR3mBh4v-BzZstNUD4bfeoyiGLnQ/s640/AoH%20bigcircle.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="135" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyk9gEBgIzjjoEN8HLRp9_yKBNYMeY3vpbgFUI7UYNR_CUE2P9U-PjkpBa2so6xzAdVpOs1mcJ_bmDEd3PxrCbWHD26ye79gve6FQ2-K-yrfOuVrQD3BKyshW8cjWr9Ae5mZt3bxMNAGg4u-NwjBIpwQZ8IkNqyPrR3mBh4v-BzZstNUD4bfeoyiGLnQ/w181-h135/AoH%20bigcircle.jpeg" width="181" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcGN7F2-cBliHIwCqKyjlT0iJrJ4ky90ZlR2NNd0RN1u0wJ2gfwugM6-zv4O_Ps-p7SnwBrowboJGHGqwBN1LjTpr3ZPwZNWhsf1lETDXbZw2rZEYv_3rTHCwZSJz3XHUyq2fousAILEM0XEoPjA8FvgVj3qKqAIVcbm8Ta99g0JVkJv8JuPl3l8xIlA/s864/complex-change-Center-for-Creative-Leadership-infographics.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="486" data-original-width="864" height="137" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcGN7F2-cBliHIwCqKyjlT0iJrJ4ky90ZlR2NNd0RN1u0wJ2gfwugM6-zv4O_Ps-p7SnwBrowboJGHGqwBN1LjTpr3ZPwZNWhsf1lETDXbZw2rZEYv_3rTHCwZSJz3XHUyq2fousAILEM0XEoPjA8FvgVj3qKqAIVcbm8Ta99g0JVkJv8JuPl3l8xIlA/w242-h137/complex-change-Center-for-Creative-Leadership-infographics.jpeg" width="242" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Two different visions of managing complex change processes</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div><p><a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2022/03/addressing-students-eco-anxiety-when.html">I recently wrote a blog post</a> about an article of ours that will be presented at the upcoming ICT4S conference, "Addressing students’ eco-anxiety when teaching sustainability in computing education". That article came out of a "small pedagogical project" that was funded by the KTH School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). There was a new call for "small pedagogical projects" back in February and we (me, Elina Eriksson and Björn Hedin) handed in a new application called "Develop the course Leading Complex Change Processes (7.5 hp)". </p><p>This past week we found out that <b>the project will be funded</b> and this means that me and Elina each can "legitimately" spend around 5% of a man-year/person-year (e.g. 2 weeks each) during the following 12 months on developing a new masters-level course. Björn's function is as a sounding board and he funds himself (being a sounding board is part of his new job as an "Associate professor in Learning in Engineering Science with a focus on Integrating Sustainable Development"). </p><p>This course will be part of <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2022/03/digital-transformation-for.html">the new masters programme</a> we are pitching - but the course could also be given as a stand-alone course if the masters programme is delayed, and the idea is thus that it will be offered to students after next summer (e.g. autumn 2023). The application was written in Swedish but I have translated some of the central parts:</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">KTH's sustainability goals for education indicate that we should not only teach students to know and understand sustainability problems, but that KTH students should also be able to lead the development towards an equal and climate-neutral society. But how can one “lead the development” if we now face several interconnected “super wicked problems” (Levin et. Al., 2012)? For some types of complex problems, traditional engineering methods have often proved to be as much of a problem as a solution, e.g. Sevareids lag, “The chief source of problems is solutions” (Raghavan 2015). It is thus possible to state that many of today's problems are the result of yesterday's solutions. We therefore need to think in completely new ways about "super wicked" sustainability and climate challenges.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">We claim that far too many courses on leadership, project management and change (also at KTH) are based on a mechanistic, linear worldview which mainly presupposes that the complexity that exists in the world (including in terms of sustainability challenges) is manageable and can be captured and tamed by traditional methods (Snowden 2005). As an engineer, it is easy to look for solutions to complex problems by digging deeper, analyzing more and making more calculations. We instead believe that the global sustainability problems we face instead require other methods and completely new ways of thinking (Raghavan & Pargman 2016, Raghavan & Pargman 2017). The course we requesting funds for developing is about exploring and communicating these new ways of thinking, as well as training engineering students to use them practically. The course aims to learn by and together with the engineering students explore and co-create a journey from efficiency ("doing things right") to effectiveness ("doing the right things").</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">[...] The course is planned to be part of a new masters programme in digital transformation and sustainability. A large part of the course will be based on systems thinking (Meadows 2008) and complexity theory and it will especially be based on the Cynefin framework (Kurtz & Snowden 2003, Snowden 2005) as well as theories about chaordic organizations (Hock 1999/2022). In the course, the focus will be on leading co-creative processes (Quick & Sandfort 2014) with inspiration from MITx U.lab and Theory U (Scharmer 2018). In the spring of 2022, we (Daniel and Elina) participated as co-trainers in a commissioned/contracted course [uppdragsutbildning] at Karlstad University ("<b>The Art of Hosting</b>: Education and training in co-creative process management") which specifically focused on learning and collaboration in higher education. </span></p><p><br /></p><p>It's thus not unfair to say that we plan to develop and teach a 7.5 credit (10-week half time) university course about <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2022/03/art-of-hosting-harvesting-conversations.html">Art of Hosting</a> - although the proposed course title "Leading complex change processes" makes it more socially acceptable and fitting in a KTH context! </p><p>We are happy about the funds we got and very much look forward to developing and giving this course next autumn!</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxKI9B-KDulTxGrx91qNBseV_pQSdWzAWFijOO52QwKm5Tw-DE7Sgc-G45swTvFoOe0yjji3slM0Wb0y0AAIcPRiZRQPUAgZz63JCUnT7hR7GMEsA24egMHOGYUtMe-00Xo_AEDhiJV5JwCzOpPPUNHhqwUi-mwDe_lZa15YyNV6kif_L8AV3H4qMkJQ/s980/Missing%201a.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="735" data-original-width="980" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxKI9B-KDulTxGrx91qNBseV_pQSdWzAWFijOO52QwKm5Tw-DE7Sgc-G45swTvFoOe0yjji3slM0Wb0y0AAIcPRiZRQPUAgZz63JCUnT7hR7GMEsA24egMHOGYUtMe-00Xo_AEDhiJV5JwCzOpPPUNHhqwUi-mwDe_lZa15YyNV6kif_L8AV3H4qMkJQ/w200-h150/Missing%201a.png" width="200" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbLhM7LlUaD1st-oKHBFz3bl-WZSGrEYzKbeG1gvbnGAJs2_k2wjI6vVFNPO4fHQAjRRendQVcqHjBSzPV7nW1HqkcuqUzIV0Y6560a3zhIuaZJ8CECH42J1SclWvBhZhF-BFoTGr-yJampxcv6M32Rhh-FZX2x14jfGEpw1oeSbuY7QEuJGcd3r4YYA/s1100/aoh-circle%20way.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="392" data-original-width="1100" height="146" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbLhM7LlUaD1st-oKHBFz3bl-WZSGrEYzKbeG1gvbnGAJs2_k2wjI6vVFNPO4fHQAjRRendQVcqHjBSzPV7nW1HqkcuqUzIV0Y6560a3zhIuaZJ8CECH42J1SclWvBhZhF-BFoTGr-yJampxcv6M32Rhh-FZX2x14jfGEpw1oeSbuY7QEuJGcd3r4YYA/w410-h146/aoh-circle%20way.jpeg" width="410" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Two different visions of managing complex change processes</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQhGEbS2BsuL75FBTceX7sShETduQJxYlbbLRxQJBNQfvuSJxqRLiyLgPCgPfmRpdYEGsTZ-0u8jaCpldCeM6AddT8XRuUpUAFYvfNYUb1x8kwlQeX_hrcYNrUBDyJXxtb3n_pqmBHhp_-ZU4LC2RWn4SNDUs1iI22r_DWePkKoWFP_w7BpqTXQ3KzLA/s1200/Missing%201b.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="1200" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQhGEbS2BsuL75FBTceX7sShETduQJxYlbbLRxQJBNQfvuSJxqRLiyLgPCgPfmRpdYEGsTZ-0u8jaCpldCeM6AddT8XRuUpUAFYvfNYUb1x8kwlQeX_hrcYNrUBDyJXxtb3n_pqmBHhp_-ZU4LC2RWn4SNDUs1iI22r_DWePkKoWFP_w7BpqTXQ3KzLA/w332-h133/Missing%201b.png" width="332" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2tvXAqkebfAxhiguJaB48v4Y-6UOwt6oopCvZXJqjIV-sNMaek9TryWZMyKY5qUV3lOr3cD0WTTw80Ttjj9MlJMJ2uCBZUfjDx1Uln7bsqY1ZEMWyyx9Rv_gask9EbpxEuGOnIb5SsVGWhMUn65NPW-Ayi8hU87TgUIek8xncla1g_Z1yuE6yqasoIQ/s1500/aoh+Bowen+center+pics.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1500" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2tvXAqkebfAxhiguJaB48v4Y-6UOwt6oopCvZXJqjIV-sNMaek9TryWZMyKY5qUV3lOr3cD0WTTw80Ttjj9MlJMJ2uCBZUfjDx1Uln7bsqY1ZEMWyyx9Rv_gask9EbpxEuGOnIb5SsVGWhMUn65NPW-Ayi8hU87TgUIek8xncla1g_Z1yuE6yqasoIQ/w200-h133/aoh+Bowen+center+pics.jpeg" width="200" /></a></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">Two different visions of managing complex change processes</div></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiPgOjMX5kcbHPAxrk6tk4RXBT-AaG7DKH-fqkD1HPubXNzRjF4QMN61G-rnba116z_100i2yg3_AhtHZKs3m09UX8pnos_Cne8Z2fg9KtVdKjN8E8Muxzxb7pNm2dvjIceoYIbDEupPqQLdVaFgcoIcH9gMcTggUhi5MAzktqgsLrH5lTv-gBvFO01Q/s2480/Primary-colours-model-2-min.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2480" data-original-width="2048" height="188" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiPgOjMX5kcbHPAxrk6tk4RXBT-AaG7DKH-fqkD1HPubXNzRjF4QMN61G-rnba116z_100i2yg3_AhtHZKs3m09UX8pnos_Cne8Z2fg9KtVdKjN8E8Muxzxb7pNm2dvjIceoYIbDEupPqQLdVaFgcoIcH9gMcTggUhi5MAzktqgsLrH5lTv-gBvFO01Q/w156-h188/Primary-colours-model-2-min.jpeg" width="156" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgao8Qbv3wKMbz1HhSDdmNc6qZTkEHxcXCYDQ-QU7jm5O6Zl92_KwAaiE2LpnmayGQUEgo4LqxK7xWXj3WCfZ-WpYgsS4EJ3fMJ-d3zC-sz012DDH39nQ6ZuicrxPSIfav8dKpuzZZzQ1yneCZlaTOXt9x03EyxhS48KkZyy7rqHBgRDiARO7mFagNc4Q/s514/artofhosting_oct13_sml.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="366" data-original-width="514" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgao8Qbv3wKMbz1HhSDdmNc6qZTkEHxcXCYDQ-QU7jm5O6Zl92_KwAaiE2LpnmayGQUEgo4LqxK7xWXj3WCfZ-WpYgsS4EJ3fMJ-d3zC-sz012DDH39nQ6ZuicrxPSIfav8dKpuzZZzQ1yneCZlaTOXt9x03EyxhS48KkZyy7rqHBgRDiARO7mFagNc4Q/w264-h189/artofhosting_oct13_sml.png" width="264" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Two different visions of managing complex change processes</div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR9QswqaFzGjq14qBB265iN2-ArGHar-yirgCVAuEKadxWm-k5mB8t0EHKkXyfIbOuQYfqXerfEpkLyyuHjwy3_SUIMs9T9Wnckm6dKBUTmTAbLrrrcYOqOdKaFMtpqj2gkmEuAcMDgEKYmkSR1C35lLH8TcGax_OSIjb0EEScobgLAeOodVqhHshT6A/s1421/Primary%20colors%202.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="967" data-original-width="1421" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR9QswqaFzGjq14qBB265iN2-ArGHar-yirgCVAuEKadxWm-k5mB8t0EHKkXyfIbOuQYfqXerfEpkLyyuHjwy3_SUIMs9T9Wnckm6dKBUTmTAbLrrrcYOqOdKaFMtpqj2gkmEuAcMDgEKYmkSR1C35lLH8TcGax_OSIjb0EEScobgLAeOodVqhHshT6A/w290-h200/Primary%20colors%202.png" width="290" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_ieZfoqsNusNXDrp062L-WO-xyyrT4SCJneH37mQCZpjUqsKBTGF2NnDdWoxL72esDbk9GBEXMTnkwIloQc98Sku80ou2SlPMcF41KDwzY7T6dFFT4_f6NuIBUsssC_FWYcdl13kinPa_mMMwoNzEbZ6y8y0MM41vtt2FG02jfcQZVOvNMRJy27uGQQ/s2163/AoH%20Circle%20Way%20book.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2163" data-original-width="1400" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_ieZfoqsNusNXDrp062L-WO-xyyrT4SCJneH37mQCZpjUqsKBTGF2NnDdWoxL72esDbk9GBEXMTnkwIloQc98Sku80ou2SlPMcF41KDwzY7T6dFFT4_f6NuIBUsssC_FWYcdl13kinPa_mMMwoNzEbZ6y8y0MM41vtt2FG02jfcQZVOvNMRJy27uGQQ/w135-h209/AoH%20Circle%20Way%20book.jpeg" width="135" /></a></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">Two different visions of managing complex change processes</div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh92kiFtaw-tkcTFR8iXx7clHigFXli8xWXY9YX0UTst8n7aDMd49-ZKL8yWIZnKIlmG0nAz8HC5LaWt0u1IUV3bOee8MhN0GaEkJVpSERV_RAo6ny77NTiPRv3GOe0U7atVAspJLENRx9e0DZm7xfE4-Enca6ufsF7THuJdE9naAEliXyPPkE9NwtQvg/s1024/wlh-ls-5cs-flat-1024x683.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="683" data-original-width="1024" height="152" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh92kiFtaw-tkcTFR8iXx7clHigFXli8xWXY9YX0UTst8n7aDMd49-ZKL8yWIZnKIlmG0nAz8HC5LaWt0u1IUV3bOee8MhN0GaEkJVpSERV_RAo6ny77NTiPRv3GOe0U7atVAspJLENRx9e0DZm7xfE4-Enca6ufsF7THuJdE9naAEliXyPPkE9NwtQvg/w228-h152/wlh-ls-5cs-flat-1024x683.png" width="228" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivSsVkh0fudnAt9XQGUHzd7z5Cxkikb4cGQCOPq4GtvNiHFQRfqRBCQi8td55gjN9727jp9u9A6sY1P8PYqeuYQtBfjt1C4lAyKgyCGkayPN6EwnQoj3F5ZEKJAjeQwuchP7iuWVO67YIWuT2akB88i0gYwMIRKrV68oDWj6QyI3jjnw5hflhFUoGUgg/s468/AoH%20daycare%20circleway.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="352" data-original-width="468" height="151" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivSsVkh0fudnAt9XQGUHzd7z5Cxkikb4cGQCOPq4GtvNiHFQRfqRBCQi8td55gjN9727jp9u9A6sY1P8PYqeuYQtBfjt1C4lAyKgyCGkayPN6EwnQoj3F5ZEKJAjeQwuchP7iuWVO67YIWuT2akB88i0gYwMIRKrV68oDWj6QyI3jjnw5hflhFUoGUgg/w200-h151/AoH%20daycare%20circleway.jpeg" width="200" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: center;">Two different visions of managing complex change processes</div><div>.</div></div></div></div>pargmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17208443783482286491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7165044694341896839.post-26980493772785358312022-03-31T23:18:00.005+02:002022-04-03T08:00:00.572+02:00Reflections on taking up blogging + March roundup<p> .</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYCADq0hhmEbmn3cb7cIhcPKNu6EuCWVJ1IjlaA6fdUGS0LsNe-j2Vw-Qi-Jd1u-RWJVI12L176mjlZI1wlv7Vv2xBLW9_lIgVrTjMf3rB8JFXxEutJrs4tHKnRtPXN9EKjN-8GGmMGF1gA-dCS8cL7RDfcJHldNdleLLfLbMuJ9pwZmAsSx16_bQk-w/s2854/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-04-01%20kl.%2004.28.05.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1552" data-original-width="2854" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYCADq0hhmEbmn3cb7cIhcPKNu6EuCWVJ1IjlaA6fdUGS0LsNe-j2Vw-Qi-Jd1u-RWJVI12L176mjlZI1wlv7Vv2xBLW9_lIgVrTjMf3rB8JFXxEutJrs4tHKnRtPXN9EKjN-8GGmMGF1gA-dCS8cL7RDfcJHldNdleLLfLbMuJ9pwZmAsSx16_bQk-w/w400-h217/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-04-01%20kl.%2004.28.05.png" width="400" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p>I started this blog in 2010 and my level of ambition - <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2010/09/blog-post.html">then</a> as now - has been to:</p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">post (low-volume, aiming for a minimum of one message and a maximum of two messages per week) about my academically-related activities - for the benefit of those who wish to keep up with what I do and also for me to remember what I did last week!</span></p><div>Already back in 2011, I wrote a blog post about "<a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2011/11/on-many-functions-of-this-blog.html">the many functions of this blog</a>" that has stood the test of time. <span style="color: #ffa400;">When I started the blog, I had three specific uses of it in mind </span><span>[</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 164, 0);">the lists below have been shortened]<span style="color: #ffa400;">:</span></span></div><div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">- <b>A record, or a diary</b> of my work-related activities. Not all of them, but since I have a job that is very varied, something interesting worth writing about happens every week. </span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">- <b>A way for people to follow me</b> </span><span>[I had a fuzzy idea about who might want to follow me but I primarily thought about work colleagues]</span><span style="color: #ffa400;">.</span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">- A place ("webpage") where I could start to <b>keep track of and collect work- or career-related information</b> (papers written, courses taught etc.). </span><span>[An easy-access archive where I can go when I need to update my CV]</span></div></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;"><br /></span></div><div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">During the first months, a couple of new functions appeared:</span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">- When I went to a workshop on "Digital media and collective action" a year ago, I found it useful to <b>write about some highlights and to link them up</b> in the blog. [Loose pages or links in a] notebook is soo much less useful than a blog post.</span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">- Later, I also directed a master's student to that blog post and to some of the links. So the blog is not only a way for me to write things up and/or to allow others to follow me, but also <b>a permanent archive to which I can direct others to specific posts</b>.</span></div></div><div><br /></div><div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">Other functions that have appeared over time are:</span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">- Very usual nowadays is that I write up a blog post and then, directly after it has been published, <b>send of a link to one or half a dozen people I think or I know will be interested</b> in the topic of that blog post.</span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">- I also know that <b>a few colleagues </b><b>read my blog and this can make some of our meetings very effective</b>. We can take the discussion from there instead of from scratch. </span></div></div><div><br /></div><div>Since I have a tendency to write very ambitious (e.g. too long) blog posts, I sometimes burn out and it becomes too much of a chore to blog. I don't know which is my longest blog post but <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2014/05/design-fiction-workshop.html">this report from a workshop about Design Fiction</a> at the 2014 CHI conference is almost 7000 words (40 000+ characters) long - same length as an article in an academic journal! I therefore have to guard against spending too much time writing too ambitious blog posts, and the maximum-two-blog-posts-per-week rule is a <i>necessary</i> (but not fail-safe) speed limit. A burn out usually results in a vacation from writing - until I feel like doing it again - and I just came back from an almost two years long break that coincided with the Covid pandemic (by far the longest break ever). But I started to blog again earlier this month and this is blog post number 584 since the start.</div><div><br /></div><div>Something that has struck me this month is that I have more to write about now than ever before, and that's true in two different ways. There seems to be more bloggable events happening in my life now than before <i>and</i> it feels like the things I have written about this month have been "bigger" and more important than the contents of the average blog post from yesteryear. I think that's an effect of 2019 being the year <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2020/01/2019-year-mid4s-levelled-up.html">when my research group "leveled up"</a>. That means that a few years down the road (e.g. now) there's just more things - and more important things - happening in my academic life than before. </div><div><br /></div><div>This being the case, I thought I would invent a new category of blog posts, "roundups", where I shortly write about stuff that happened during the month that I <i>could</i> have written about ("blogworthy") but didn't. These might then be things that <i>could</i> have become blog posts, but that for one or another reason (not overworking, not exceeding two blog posts per week) didn't. This is the first round-up and I might experiment some with the format during the following months.</div><div><br /></div><h2 style="text-align: left;">March Roundup</h2><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b>- MID event (March 7)</b></h3><p>For the first time in two years the division of Media Technology and Interaction Design (MID) had a get-together in our kitchen with catered food and the kitchen was <i>crowded </i>and people spilled over into neighboring spaces. It was really nice to see so many people together after all the cancelled Summer parties, Christmas dinners and <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2018/01/our-writing-camp-workshop.html">writing</a> <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2020/01/writing-camp-workshop.html">camps</a> during the last two years! There was no particular reason for the get-together besides the fact that we were allowed and haven't had a party for (literally) years</p><p>.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b>- Artificial Intelligence and Ecocide Law (March 10)</b></h3><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzxlUk2cFlk2xBpq6unFCLo9TUn181OjElBn3Oe8o0CMToYE1kLAPhTTEIGj1RzZ5BnQwWUgRqm03k_oa-R79MUfajz33ANAGiFjshmM6b09zeZwaDbqz319t5uVi839kLN811lTSVYoMYHWtMsWHarna1PaJyDUvy6Kfu1i88yQThMpw_6MWkkEmRWQ/s1438/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-03-29%20kl.%2023.45.53.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="714" data-original-width="1438" height="159" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzxlUk2cFlk2xBpq6unFCLo9TUn181OjElBn3Oe8o0CMToYE1kLAPhTTEIGj1RzZ5BnQwWUgRqm03k_oa-R79MUfajz33ANAGiFjshmM6b09zeZwaDbqz319t5uVi839kLN811lTSVYoMYHWtMsWHarna1PaJyDUvy6Kfu1i88yQThMpw_6MWkkEmRWQ/s320/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-03-29%20kl.%2023.45.53.png" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p>One of the panelists, Pella, invited me to this event and although it was nice, this event happened in the run-up to possibly my most hectic week ever (March 14-18, see other published blog posts), so my mind was unfortunately not 100% in the seminar. This was unfortunate because what I heard sounded really interesting!</p><p></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">Artificial Intelligence is an exponentially growing field of technology, a powerful force for source control and new pathways. But how do we secure that it is used in a benign way for humans and nature? Could AI be the new plastic? Can Ecocide Law be the ethical framework to govern AI in a benign direction, as a force for sustainable development?</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">Andre Uhl, Technology and Innovation Fellow, Harvard Planetary Health Alliance; Chair, IEEE Earth Lab.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">Pella Thiel, ecologist, expert in the UN Harmony with Nature knowledge network.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">Jonas Roupé, Ecocide Law Alliance.</span></p><p>.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b>- Minna 30% seminar (March 18)</b></h3><p>My phd student Minna Laurell Thorslund presented her 30% seminar in mid-March and her presentation was awesome! Her seminar really <i>should</i> have generated a blog post of its' own, but this text will have to do as soo much else was happening that week in particular! Here's the invitation thought:</p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">Title: HCI in service of imagination: Exploring how to support transitions toward sustainable collective practices beyond the individual</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">Abstract: Environmental challenges are forcing humans to rethink their place in the world. This is no small task, especially when it has been argued that we collectively suffer from a “crisis of imagination”, limiting our collective imaginaries of the future to apocalyptic disasters or dystopian technofutures. The HCI community, with its rich knowledge base and ideological advocacy of human-centred systems and values, is well positioned to facilitate important collective explorations of what it means to live and build a good life in a future of uncertainty, complexity and upheaval. Minna’s research explores how HCI, in its various forms and functions, can support collective transitions toward more sustainable practices and constellations, beyond individuals as consumers. </span></p><div>.</div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b>- ICT4S reading group (March 18)</b></h3><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf5VKTkFRHXdHmB2Z09Joc2ucjm9lJ4t47B4gh19LpJIwMFmybHxTlK9ceAhxG5uWAAAdMB2WgjopBB1rKny1CSDuKl7dzjQCxt0YX9SjqYY07QfP72MUxjNrk0JjHiVpmM26Ut-Xm1O9aHVS7Hz9iwk4T_XVpxDEU3cqHXbVwhfqGYE5BHRYiuhFcIw/s848/international-summer-school-on-ict-for-sustainability-2021-poster-pic-x600.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="848" data-original-width="600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf5VKTkFRHXdHmB2Z09Joc2ucjm9lJ4t47B4gh19LpJIwMFmybHxTlK9ceAhxG5uWAAAdMB2WgjopBB1rKny1CSDuKl7dzjQCxt0YX9SjqYY07QfP72MUxjNrk0JjHiVpmM26Ut-Xm1O9aHVS7Hz9iwk4T_XVpxDEU3cqHXbVwhfqGYE5BHRYiuhFcIw/s320/international-summer-school-on-ict-for-sustainability-2021-poster-pic-x600.jpeg" width="226" /></a></div><div><br /></div>I was one of the organizers of the (delayed-by-a-year) <a href="https://www.lorentzcenter.nl/international-summer-school-on-ict-for-sustainability-2021.html">Second International Summer School on ICT for Sustainability</a> this past summer (2021). I'm not going to write about the summer school seven month after it happened, but one delightful spin-off from the summer school is a book circle where we meet online (at the breakneck speed of) once every four weeks. Jay Chen is the coordinator and this was the sixth time the book circle met. I've attended five of these meeting (and have of course read all five books!). This month we discussed Tim Jackson's book "Post growth" (see "Books I've read" below!).<p></p><p>.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b>- Workshop: Academic aero mobility in a post-pandemic future (March 22)</b></h3><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5V9SVt43qKIifkdoZJorXgFD2c8P7OG3Eod4Al195VG1TutI2kchX7h3y6JMHvF6X-lIWFCU_N_zwgjND82ErQMse7UmvbqriYYw6btlUQ8gbMik1EvWMlhHf8rKR1zHKpzfVQYngxsn52BxaN0vpppnUwcBlD8x8BNGVGLJs2uy2Fa8hE1Z6gwbQbA/s2156/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-03-29%20kl.%2023.43.26.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="728" data-original-width="2156" height="108" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5V9SVt43qKIifkdoZJorXgFD2c8P7OG3Eod4Al195VG1TutI2kchX7h3y6JMHvF6X-lIWFCU_N_zwgjND82ErQMse7UmvbqriYYw6btlUQ8gbMik1EvWMlhHf8rKR1zHKpzfVQYngxsn52BxaN0vpppnUwcBlD8x8BNGVGLJs2uy2Fa8hE1Z6gwbQbA/s320/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-03-29%20kl.%2023.43.26.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><b><br /></b><p></p><p><a href="https://tyndall.ac.uk">The Tyndall Centre</a> for Climate Change Research in Manchester organized a workshop on academic flying. This of course fits neatly with my research project, "<a href="https://www.kth.se/hct/mid/research/sustainability/projects/flight-1.920661">Decreased CO2-emissions in flight-intensive organisations</a>", so me and phd student Aksel Biørn-Hansen attended this online seminar together with 50+ other persons. </p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">This workshop aims to spark/leverage changes on the academic structures and systems, helping to build institutional alliances that leverage the requests for changes, transparency and common frameworks to work on implementing air travel policies in academic institutions. It will focus on discussing three main topics:</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">Group 1: Reducing academic aero mobility: Gains in accessibility, inclusivity and Justice. Ways to deliver broader access, equity and justice in research collaborations, through air-travel reductions.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">Group 2: Cultural changes to decouple aero mobility from academic work. Required institutional and social changes to decouple aero mobility from international collaborations and the need for academic united alliances.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">Group 3: Effective reporting to reduce academic air travel carbon emissions. Options to achieve transparent and systematic reporting of carbon emissions related to air travel associated with academic institutions;</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">It is expected that participants [will be] sharing their experiences, hearing and understanding others, and developing potential actions and strategies for a less flight intensive future in Academia.</span></p><p>I joined group 3 and Aksel joined group 2. My group produced a nice board with suggestions for actions, but the tool itself (padlet) was a bit limited and awkward to use (see image below). I could move my own post-it notes but was not allowed to move around other participants' notes, so the only person who could effectively cluster (and change shape etc.) of the notes was the organizer. That also meant we spent too little time actually talking to each other and too much time describing which note should be moved where... I don't know enough to know if this was a problem with the tool or a problem with the setup of the tool. With so many interesting people in the Zoom room, it definitely felt like we could have used the time better, but the workshop was still very good! </p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-p1cHNGtWwz6B-JveYi9oBnHJzTYlTWupcim3m-a-X4eisN-OUE00YjZZoZyZGVrtGmpKxhYXAENUku9IIf5VeVGbxlDv8jOPr8FQPosIDoiJ3jM6TfGzt1CyV1eQ9I4Ds-VwsRMveMDmtHJzsdIPC9kOf-RGiTA6JAHSnX7icIl6of08oIihNkOwPw/s1597/Padlet%203.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="955" data-original-width="1597" height="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-p1cHNGtWwz6B-JveYi9oBnHJzTYlTWupcim3m-a-X4eisN-OUE00YjZZoZyZGVrtGmpKxhYXAENUku9IIf5VeVGbxlDv8jOPr8FQPosIDoiJ3jM6TfGzt1CyV1eQ9I4Ds-VwsRMveMDmtHJzsdIPC9kOf-RGiTA6JAHSnX7icIl6of08oIihNkOwPw/s320/Padlet%203.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>One super-great outcome of attending this workshop though was that we decided we (our research project) would organize our own online workshop in September. More on that later...</p><div>.</div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b>- MID4S Reboot (March 24)</b></h3><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAjkGkN82jYCHs1kyOuKAAmqPxFBf7tB9CMzWjwBQ6lu7me0H3A9vkUrmfP3mGqxbo6lL0o6bsEgwkFF2C-kvNHeUKJ7CafT6oIv5GQ4VBXaVftWDQs3DI0PZJeRr6tfxd682efp-k464W4v8LWgNVWbw5iRpywGhsLk6uKUpHQqOSULbeVWU0GqzPTw/s4032/IMG_1879.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAjkGkN82jYCHs1kyOuKAAmqPxFBf7tB9CMzWjwBQ6lu7me0H3A9vkUrmfP3mGqxbo6lL0o6bsEgwkFF2C-kvNHeUKJ7CafT6oIv5GQ4VBXaVftWDQs3DI0PZJeRr6tfxd682efp-k464W4v8LWgNVWbw5iRpywGhsLk6uKUpHQqOSULbeVWU0GqzPTw/s320/IMG_1879.HEIC" width="320" /></a></div><b><br /></b><p></p><p>As with the MID event (above), our team/research group hasn't met physically altogether for a very long time, so we had a half-day "Reboot" that my colleague Elina and phd students Aksel and Arjun organized according to <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2022/03/art-of-hosting-harvesting-conversations.html">principles from Art of Hosting</a>. There were nine persons at the event and the organization was excellent! We all felt welcome and seen and it created a lot of can-do energy in the group! </p><p>Two very concrete outcomes of this workshop was that we will restart our research group blog next month <i>and</i> we will change the name of the group. The name MID4S - Media Technology and Interaction Design for Sustainability - has served us well within the department (MID) for the better part of 10 years, but is not so great when we want to communicate within the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, to say nothing about communicating who we are and what we do outside of our School and outside of KTH. I will write more about the new blog and about the new name later!</p><p>.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b>- Data Workshop (March 29)</b></h3><p>We have a guest in our research group, <a href="https://vbn.aau.dk/en/persons/martin-lindrup">Martin Lindrup</a>, who is a phd student at Aalborg University, Denmark. Martin arrived in the beginning of February and will stay until the summer and he is hosted by my colleague Rob Comber. Martin organized a workshop that I attended about "how to make data more meaningful in the context of sustainability", a topic that is very much in line with his 2021 article "<a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3461778.3462121">One Byte at a Time</a>: Insights about Meaningful Data for Sustainable Food Consumption Practices". </p><p>Referring to Martin's workshop is however just a pretext for presenting Martin (something that should have been done in a February blog post - except I didn't write any blog posts in February). Martin gave a talk at one of our semiweekly research group lunch meeting in the beginning of February and here's how he presented himself and the topic of his research:</p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;"><b>Speaker</b>: Martin Lindrup, PhD student at the Computer Science Department (Human-Centred Computing group) at Aalborg University, Denmark.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;"><b>Title</b>: Insights about meaningful data in environmentally sustainable food consumption</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;"><b>Description</b>: Environmental data have been fundamental in shaping our perception about the state of the world. In the form of e.g. carbon footprints, food miles, organic labels, data (note: using the term data is to emphasize the strangeness and different interpretations that people have toward these concepts) have also been used for informing environmentally (un)sustainable ways of eating. However, these data may not fully capture the experiences that people have with food and sustainability. With this talk, I seek to provide insights about how to make data about food sustainability more meaningful for people from the perspective that data are formed by socio-technical circumstances.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;"><b>About me</b>: I am a PhD student working within the field of Human-Computer Interaction. My background is a mix between techno-anthropology and IT development and design. The project that I work on revolves around digital technologies, data, and sustainable food consumption. I do mainly qualitative research from a Research through Design approach. </span></p><p>.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b>- Books I've read (March 31). </b></h3><p>For a very long time I wrote blog posts about "Books I've read". That's another task that went out of hand and in the end became too ambitious (and arduous). Not only did I write about the books I had read, but I started to post one or two quotes from book I currently reading on Facebook each day. I then wrote about the books I had recently read and also pasted literally a dozen or more quotes from each book. So then it became too much and I stopped. The last blog post about "books I've read" <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2018/04/books-ive-read-february-april-2017.html">can be found here</a>, but do note that I at that time was one year behind in writing about the books I had "recently" read, i.e. that blog post was published in April 2018 but treated books that I had read one year earlier (Feb-April 2017)... </p><p>I have continued to read books since 2017, and since I read 30-35 books per year on average, that's upwards to 150 books I <i>haven't</i> written about at all on the blog and <i>won't</i> write about - which is the pity. It is however possible to find out what books I read for the better part of a decade by following the last blog post backwards in time (each such blog post is linked backwards). I <i>might</i> start to write about "Books I've read" at some point, but will for now only <i>list</i> the books I have finished reading during the month in question. Since March has been an <i>extremely</i> hectic month work-wise (just <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2022/03/">read all the blog posts</a>!), I have now and then slacked off a bit and not kept up the schedule that guides <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2011/04/on-my-nerdiness.html">my book reading habit</a>, and have thus "only" finished two academic books this month:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Steffen Lange & Tilman Santarius (2020). Smart Green World?: Making Digitalization Work for Sustainability</li><li>Tim Jackson (2021). Post growth: Life after capitalism.</li></ul><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjq1BD0hgaU0qC8KA3rsb8A5BgQsHszfMdf13IPDOleVsIY_LAEoN56IOMWGjbFLZwt2EESbMYXcUyxpIOlfxk8koT-V3go6LuxD1M7_g9uX_gbU6PnF44hlp1uE8YkiaBtLYNoj2kRLQlmxayL1HU6HN2hD51htzpr-P0hjfj7pSaXvnZ99PGflwGug/s525/Lange.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="525" data-original-width="350" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjq1BD0hgaU0qC8KA3rsb8A5BgQsHszfMdf13IPDOleVsIY_LAEoN56IOMWGjbFLZwt2EESbMYXcUyxpIOlfxk8koT-V3go6LuxD1M7_g9uX_gbU6PnF44hlp1uE8YkiaBtLYNoj2kRLQlmxayL1HU6HN2hD51htzpr-P0hjfj7pSaXvnZ99PGflwGug/w133-h200/Lange.jpeg" width="133" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9tj5IR0I_tvF3lN-1jhP2X_FRQlSW_zjsyslRXQUroFUYD1_zfzAzXC5obirs20aBtD4zPyyzwCcpfwqpwzPUKpP7aetevXHJCl8_Rq6pLZ-wSl7rYiOqF0TvKZgwGcri4aSYBH0sKxzNIae7sc06-Eqp0Gm4EAckfR5rku5P3txk3PAGH7Vfohqk9w/s781/Jackson.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="781" data-original-width="500" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9tj5IR0I_tvF3lN-1jhP2X_FRQlSW_zjsyslRXQUroFUYD1_zfzAzXC5obirs20aBtD4zPyyzwCcpfwqpwzPUKpP7aetevXHJCl8_Rq6pLZ-wSl7rYiOqF0TvKZgwGcri4aSYBH0sKxzNIae7sc06-Eqp0Gm4EAckfR5rku5P3txk3PAGH7Vfohqk9w/w129-h200/Jackson.jpeg" width="129" /></a></div><div>.</div>pargmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17208443783482286491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7165044694341896839.post-40520885643399331862022-03-27T14:30:00.038+02:002022-03-27T16:57:39.408+02:00From (e-)wasteland to Repair Society (paper)<p> .</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUxDWBFQ9reKfig8r3emSXlM7lGuZdFwCj8IPgbA4IxzWfTQlvhmVRkpuj1zK1GMBHsFHIx32wwpKbjhACTBy_R7DZ3Qde-iyQKi6Q6Q1NJbWTJgpBlUyaBSyrrhJpNVWdlEjPBFJZus_ajFZDB720kn9sNdaEIT-MQJOe8ozY4ChEULlLdRHJFCy0kA/s2874/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-03-24%20kl.%2021.49.23.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1128" data-original-width="2874" height="158" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUxDWBFQ9reKfig8r3emSXlM7lGuZdFwCj8IPgbA4IxzWfTQlvhmVRkpuj1zK1GMBHsFHIx32wwpKbjhACTBy_R7DZ3Qde-iyQKi6Q6Q1NJbWTJgpBlUyaBSyrrhJpNVWdlEjPBFJZus_ajFZDB720kn9sNdaEIT-MQJOe8ozY4ChEULlLdRHJFCy0kA/w400-h158/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-03-24%20kl.%2021.49.23.png" width="400" /></a></div><div><br /></div><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;"><a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2022/03/addressing-students-eco-anxiety-when.html">The previous blog post</a> was about a paper of our that has been accepted to the upcoming <a href="https://conf.researchr.org/home/ict4s-2022">8th International Conference on ICT for Sustainability</a> (ICT4S). </span><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">The conference will (still) be held in Bulgaria between June 13-17 and we (still) plan to go there by train.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">Well, it turns out we actually had a second paper accepted to the conference, "</span><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;"><b>From (e-)wasteland to Repair Society: Exploring ICT repair through speculative scenarios</b>". (Our research group in fact had a <i>third</i> paper accepted to the conference but I don't know the title of phd student Yann Seznec's paper, nor am I a co-author so I won't write about that paper in my blog). </span><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">"From (e-)wasteland to Repair Society" is written by <b>Minna Laurell Thorslund, Sahra Svensson-Hoglund, Daniel Pargman and Elina Eriksson</b>. This is my phd student Minna's first paper as first author!</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">This paper builds on (step 1) a cooperation between Minna and repair and circular economy and sustainable biomaterial Virginia Tech phd student </span><a href="https://futureearth.org/contacts/sahra-svensson-hogslund/" style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">Sarah</a> <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sahrasvensson/" style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">Svensson-Höglund</a>. They both took a<span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;"> phd course in September - October last year, "</span><a href="https://www.slu.se/en/education/programmes-courses/course/MX0150/10331.2122/Making-sustainable-futures-An-introduction-to-futures-studies-and-scenario-techniques/" style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">Making sustainable futures</a><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;"> - An introduction to futures studies and scenario techniques" (taught by our ex-colleague Josefin Wangel). I think it's fair to say that Sarah took the lead in writing the course paper in the futures studies course since it concerned "her topic" (repair). Minna however also took the phd course that me and Elina were teaching all through the autum, </span><a href="https://www.kth.se/student/kurser/kurs/FDM3506?l=en" style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">FDM3506 ICT and Sustainability</a><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">, and for the (step 2) course paper she then reworked and extended her and Sarah's previous work and also made it more about ICT (e.g. reframing their work and and placing it in an ICT context). Step 3 happened when me and Elina stepped in (e.g. after our phd course had finished) and helped develop Minna's course paper into a full conference paper. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">I'd say this paper is very much a service to the community. By analyzing what (little) has been published in the area of repair and outlining issues and questions that we as a community could (should) look into. Why recycle <i>materials</i> when we can intercept the waste stream at an earlier stage and recycle (repair) <i>devices</i> that have a much higher value (than the materials they consist of)?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;"><span style="color: #ffa400;"><b>Abstract</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;"><span style="color: #ffa400;">Circularity in how we handle resources and materials is a key ambition in many sustainability initiatives and policies. Yet, when it comes to the circularity of ICT, much research tends to focus on how raw materials are sourced and later recycled. E-waste has represented the fastest growing waste stream globally for years, and the vast majority is not handled appropriately. In a society where repair is possible, accessible and the normative response to the breakage of devices, this waste stream could be dramatically reduced. In this paper, we describe and discuss the results of a literature review of how repair of ICT has been approached in the proceedings of previous ICT4S conferences (2013–2020). The findings are then analysed in relation to a set of speculative future Repair Society scenarios, which were developed to inform policy recommendations. The paper contributes to the ICT4S community by: 1) identifying aspects of ICT repair that have been studied to date; 2) using the Repair Society scenarios to generate insights and reflect on gaps in the research; and 3) outlining insights and suggestions of areas that could fruitfully be explored by the ICT4S community in future research.</span></span></p><p>.</p>pargmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17208443783482286491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7165044694341896839.post-17324905335777107882022-03-23T21:46:00.043+01:002022-03-27T11:20:37.430+02:00Addressing students’ eco-anxiety when teaching sustainability in computing education (paper)<p> .</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLSmP157vOju-SRtS1-3lOQMXaFZON5U8-QkVuP5srAHGtNsQR3CTAZfvIYBBweQmDjtSD1CjbG83jAX9peUoS53a_PmWE-4b2Gj3uCmVcm5pADkFUKdKLoHFYLJTML-pM9AMibPl1G-jJ_aVPkomi1JoqElMSV16RCxyrHEM2rCWES-_TQPFZLXYxaA/s2876/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-03-24%20kl.%2021.48.53.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1130" data-original-width="2876" height="159" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLSmP157vOju-SRtS1-3lOQMXaFZON5U8-QkVuP5srAHGtNsQR3CTAZfvIYBBweQmDjtSD1CjbG83jAX9peUoS53a_PmWE-4b2Gj3uCmVcm5pADkFUKdKLoHFYLJTML-pM9AMibPl1G-jJ_aVPkomi1JoqElMSV16RCxyrHEM2rCWES-_TQPFZLXYxaA/w400-h159/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-03-24%20kl.%2021.48.53.png" width="400" /></a></div><div><br /></div>Our article, "<b>Addressing students’ eco-anxiety when teaching sustainability in computing education</b>" has been accepted for publication at the upcoming <a href="https://conf.researchr.org/home/ict4s-2022">8th International Conference on ICT for Sustainability</a> (ICT4S). The conference will be held in the second largest city in Bulgaria, Plovdiv, between June 13-17 and some of us plan to go there by train (more info to come).<div><br /></div><div>The article has no less than six authors: <b>Elina Eriksson, Anne-Kathrin Peters, Daniel Pargman, Björn Hedin, Minna Laurell Thorslund and Sandra Sjöö.</b> Elina, me and Minna work at the <a href="https://www.kth.se/hct/mid">Division of Media Technology and Interaction Design</a> (MID), while our co-authors Anne-Kathrin and Björn work at the <a href="https://www.kth.se/en/larande">Department of Learning in Engineering Science</a>. Sandra is a KTH master's student, she was our Teaching Assistant in November - December and she has also been involved in the mini-project that generated material for this paper.</div><div><br /></div><div>The background of the paper is that we wrote an application for a small pedagogical project at the end of May last year, "Sustainability and the emotionally competent engineer". We asked for a sliver of money (125 000 SEK) to further develop our course DM2573 Sustainability and Media Technology. To be able to define and implement small projects based on our own pedagogical interests is one of the most rewarding ways of taking responsibility for furthering my/our own pedagogical education! It's also very rewarding to document what we have learned in a project like this, to analyze our pedagogical insights and to write a paper that might inspire other teachers! </div><div><br /></div><div>In this particular case, a successful project also harbored the promise of beneficial effects not just for us but also for KTH more generally, since we teamed up with researchers a the unit Learning in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) at the Department of Learning in Engineering Science (KTH/ITM School). Björn Hedin (Associate professor in Learning in Engineering Science with a focus on Integrating Sustainable Development) helped write the application and we also invited Anne-Kathrin Peters to join the project (she was hired as an Associate professor in Technology Education with a focus on Sustainability <i>after</i> we wrote the application). Both Björn and Anne-Kathrin worked for free in the project since their work efforts could be construed to be part of their ordinary jobs (and thus paid for by their own division). There's thus the benefit of possibly being able to incorporate results from this project into KTH’s pedagogical courses, for example LH215V Learning for Sustainable Development which Björn is responsible for.</div><div><br /></div><div>The text below constitutes about 30% of the text in the application (translated from Swedish):</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">"To acknowledge and accept facts about the challenges we face by reading texts about species extinction (Almond et al. 2020) or tipping points for the climate (Steffen et al. 2018) can provoke strong emotional reactions. This is something we ourselves have experienced among our students and in our sustainability education; some students feel it's “unfair” that their future probably does not look as bright as that of the parent generation (Pargman & Eriksson 2013), and some students have said that course materials that describes major problems that humanity face have made them feel at least some degree of climate anxiety (Eriksson & Pargman 2017).</span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">KTH is at the forefront of integrating sustainability into our educational programs, but then usually with a focus on technological or societal transformations and on verifiable facts. In our own teaching, we have however allowed for and encouraged discussions also about opinions and values (Eriksson & Pargman 2014). However, we have not seriously considered the necessary "inner transition" or the competencies that today are often placed outside of the conventional role of engineers, but that are needed to be able to approach, take on and speed up the transition into a more sustainable society (see for example <a href="https://gdee.upc.edu/en">www.gdee.eu</a>). There is also research that indicates that engineers need to become better at both theoretical and practical skills, e.g. concerning empathy (Rasoal et al., 2012). [...]</span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">With this application, we want to apply for funding to develop a course module that will help students reflect on sustainability challenges on a deeper level [including but not limited to intergenerational justice, social sustainability, gender equality etc.]. At the same time, we want to highlight the importance of issues related to emotional reactions of being confronted with images of the future that are characterized by increased complexity and uncertainty."</span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div>We got the funding we applied for and the money basically paid for 10% of phd student Minna's annual salary. This meant she could legitimately spend something like 150 - 200 hours working on this project (e.g. reducing her ordinary teaching load correspondingly). The activity Minna led was about planning a parallell and voluntary "side-track" or “intervention” in the course, as well as a study of this intervention. The side-track activity was offered to all students who took the course and seven students chose to sign up for it. It also generated a lot of materials, but <i>this</i> paper is however not about the side-track but about the changes and the effects that acknowledging eco-anxiety had in the <i>ordinary</i> course that around 80 students took. So there will be (at least) one more paper written about the cutting-edge, experimental side-track activity/intervention that happened in Nov-Dec and in parallell with the ordinary course (which is the topic of this paper). </div><div><br /></div><div>Below is the abstract of the just-accepted paper. The paper will be available to read sometime this coming summer.</div></div><div> </div><div><p><b><span style="color: #ffa400;">Abstract</span></b></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">The widespread awareness, sense of urgency and helplessness regarding the ongoing sustainability crisis (climate change, biodiversity loss etc.) can evoke feelings of grief, sorrow, despair and anxiety. Those emotions are seldom discussed in computing or in computing education. They can have detrimental effects on the well-being of students and others, and also lead to inaction. But concern can on the other hand also be a catalyst for learning. In this paper, we present results and reflections from a research and development project in our introductory course to sustainability and ICT focusing on emotions in sustainability education. We focus on “eco-anxiety” and ask: 1) How is eco- anxiety communicated by students and teachers?, 2) In what ways do students receive support to deal with eco-anxiety?, 3) What could be done to better address eco-anxiety in computing education? We here present an analysis of how we have seen, and responded to eco-anxiety, which activities that have been added to the course, and an evaluation of these interventions. The results are based on joint reflections that have been guided by literature, a small-scale ethnographic study as well as a course evaluation. The paper will end with recommendations for other ICT4S educators on how they can start addressing eco-anxiety in their education.</span></p><p>.</p></div>pargmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17208443783482286491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7165044694341896839.post-50590832899107702602022-03-20T07:19:00.011+01:002022-03-24T21:13:04.451+01:00My docent application<p> .</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMfuf5C7cGRoymcbCM6CPlCXXMoZxMmJRq4bOlzEDXqsTs3du4mb15sbjn19qyduUYLZ_4VisKmvAozaFvCYZYLTz_jDJpYnPaRh178GI9p9PoteY8GDjWIRneu4UJmDVs3c84qsJJYMDgIOUhW3Z9MgmOpr6s3VxPVA05DU82ZF36_TkMks4EHPYyQw/s1938/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-03-23%20kl.%2007.16.32.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1938" data-original-width="836" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMfuf5C7cGRoymcbCM6CPlCXXMoZxMmJRq4bOlzEDXqsTs3du4mb15sbjn19qyduUYLZ_4VisKmvAozaFvCYZYLTz_jDJpYnPaRh178GI9p9PoteY8GDjWIRneu4UJmDVs3c84qsJJYMDgIOUhW3Z9MgmOpr6s3VxPVA05DU82ZF36_TkMks4EHPYyQw/w279-h640/Ska%CC%88rmavbild%202022-03-23%20kl.%2007.16.32.png" width="279" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p>I held my docent lecture last week (it will be the topic of an upcoming blog post), but since becoming a docent is a pretty big thing, I have divided this event into two separate blog posts where this blog post discusses the docent application process (and my own docent application) and a forthcoming blog post treats the docent lecture (which was recorded and will be made available on the Internet). </p><p>I submitted my docent application at the end of October, e.g. five months ago and the official document (the actual decision) was signed on February 4. So processing the application takes a few months, but some might have heard through the grapevine that the application itself was delayed by several years. Is there any truth to those rumors? Yes there is. But after having put it off for years - apparently <i>eight</i> years according to the calculations done by my current <i>and</i> my previous head of the department - I'm now officially a docent. <b>So what's a "docent" </b>(you might ask)? First of all it's an academic title and a mark of competence rather than an employment, so I'm still also an associate professor, and nothing has changed in my job description or my day-to-day activities and responsibilities. It can be compared to having completed your ph.d. studies - you then have a new title but it doesn't necessarily confer you with a job. Being a docent in a Scandinavian country is (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docent#Sweden">Wikipedia</a>) "the second highest grade in the Swedish academic system, the highest being (full) professor" and it is often translated into English as "Reader" and into French as "Maître de conférences" (MCF). While the term "docent" is widespread in German-speaking countries, it apparently means something slightly different there ("having the right to teach" etc.).</p><div><p>"<i>In Sweden [...] The title is [...] awarded to people employed as [...] Associate Professor [...] with a distinguished international reputation after a rigorous review of their research.</i>" I can attest to the rigorousness of the review - and that is one of, if not the main reasons it took me so long. Another reason is that I haven't felt a great need to have a title that doesn't actually change any part of the job I do. The main reason I finally went through the process is however that I <i>have</i> to be docent in order to officially be the main supervisor of my two doctoral students, Aksel Biørn-Hansen and Minna Laurell Thorslund (I'm currently also the co-supervisor of two other ph.d. students, Petra Jääskeläinen and Joe Llewellyn). Being the main supervisor of doctoral students (and pulling in the money to hire them in the first place) is also one of the main requirements to becoming a full professor in Sweden. Also very cool is that I had the opportunity to alter my job title in the process so that I am now not only an "associate professor in media technology" but <i>also</i> a "<i>docent</i> in media technology <i>with a specialization in sustainability</i>"</p><p>Wikipedia also states that "<i>For conferment of the title, there is a requirement that the researcher has a good overview of their research area and has demonstrated both the ability to formulate research problems and to independently carry through research programs. It is a requirement that the researcher should be able to lead research projects. The researcher must have substantial scientific research experience and be well published in scientific journals</i>." I have heard that the rule of thumb is that you have to have published something that is equivalent to or exceeding two "additional" ph.d. theses. I did that years ago but have at each point in time preferred and prioritized writing yet another article rather than jumping through the hoops and completing a very detail-oriented application where I have to write one page about my "profile as a teacher in higher education" as well as exhaustively describe 1) Teaching experiences, 2) Teaching aid production, 3) Education administration and management, 4) Collaboration within study programme, 5) Teaching of general skills, 6) Bachelor’s and master’s level supervision, 7) Supervision at doctoral level, 8) Other pedagogical activities, 9) Education and outreach presentations, 10) Development of e-learning, 11) Other pedagogical merits, <i>as well as</i> demonstrating my theoretical knowledge (2 pages), my "approach" (1/2 page), my "proficiency as a teacher" (besides everything already stated and at this point I wrote "I don’t want to repeat myself and believe that everything that needs to be said has already been said in the preceding half a dozen pages") and "educational development work/projects" (1.5 pages). The whole application (without appendices) was around 16 500 (extremely carefully chosen and lovingly assembled) words broken down into research (>50% - most important), education (35%) and management (10%). </p><p>Proving that you are a competent (or dare I say "good") teacher here involves writing pages upon pages of text about how good a teacher you are, how your ideas about teaching have been shaped by experiences, thoughts and readings and how much you have read and thought about teaching (which pedagogical theories/traditions you align with - I chose to emphasize constructivist (Piaget and Bruner) and socio-cultural (Vygotsky, Lave, Wertsch, Cole, Säljö) theories of learning in my application), how experienced and successful you are as a teacher, how many courses you have developed and/or taught, how much you have cooperated with other teaches in your teaching, how many students you have supervised, how much you like to teach, how much you like and care about your undergraduate, graduate and ph.d. students, how much you love to deliver high-quality content/help students grow intellectually/teach things that will be useful in their future jobs and make them more employable when they graduate from KTH. I could go on...</p><p>Absent from this process is however any kind of process to try to ascertain that what I write is actually true - for example by attending a lecture or a seminar of mine, sitting down to discuss a course that I'm currently responsible for, talking to colleagues that I work with or interviewing current or previous students that have taken my courses or that have been supervised by me. Any and all of these methods would seem to represent common sense "low-cost" and "quality-assured" ways to go about to ascertain my qualities as a teacher - but what do I know about these things? I'm sure nobody would <i>say</i> they are a good teacher if they actually weren't (or at least <i>thought</i> they were). I'm also quite sure KTH would never confer the title of being a docent to a "bad" (non-top talent) teacher who doesn't much care for the students - and I can prove it! In the process of writing my docent application, I have looked at several <i>other</i> applications, and my unequivocal conclusion is that I'm fortunate to work with what must obviously be some of the <i>very best teachers</i> in all of Sweden! I'm also quite certain this impression of mine would not be weakened no matter how many additional docent applications I read!</p><p>As to writing about teaching, I'm quite happy about this paragraph (which fits with my inspiration from and support of constructivist and socio-cultural theories of learning):</p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">"While Covid restrictions and Zoom teaching has been an interesting challenge, the fact that some now believe that much or all education could be moved online without any detrimental effects on the quality of teaching and learning is in my opinion a rash conclusion</span> [note: I could have used stronger words than the very diplomatic term "rash", e.g. "less well thought through" or hinting that people who believe this sometimes lean towards being "unlucky" in their thinking]<span style="color: #ffa400;">. That fact that <i>some</i> teaching easily can be moved online might say less about the general quality of “Zoom education” and more about missed pedagogical opportunities of ordinary routinized campus-based teaching and learning. If there is little difference between activities on Zoom versus activities in a physical classroom, it might very well be the case that we have not utilized all affordances that co-presence in classrooms has to offer."</span></p><p>I apparently also practice early 1980's management philosophies in/around my teaching:</p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">"The Media Technology engineering students have their own premises (“section room”) on campus and during intensive periods of teaching, I take the opportunity to pass by a few times to make myself available for students in an informal setting</span> [e.g. at the weekly student-organized pub]<span style="color: #ffa400;"> and with the added possibility that I might receive invaluable informal feedback on the course I teach (e.g. not usually captured in course evaluations </span>[e.g. "I hated your course, there was too much to read but you should try stand-up comedy"]<span style="color: #ffa400;">). This approach shares similiarities with the management philosophy “management by walking around” (Peters & Waterman 1982)." </span></p><p>Note: I have taken the comment about stand-up to heart and will start the course next month. I am currently negotiating the terms for a gig at the media technology student pub sometime before the summer (end of May?). <i>Remember where you heard it first when I have my own Netflix Christmas comedy stand-up special! </i>Also; thanks to Rob for helpful input (already at this early stage of my career) about creating my very own rags-to-riches storyline (struggling to get gigs, overcoming these obstacles [student pub], struggling to get people to laugh, overcoming these obstacles [using my lectures at KTH and any conversation with colleagues as practice session], struggling to get airtime, overcoming these obstacles [bribing or going to bed with the right people], struggling to get Netflix to agree to my non-negotiable conditions for a Christmas comedy stand-up special, overcoming these obstacles [haven't figured that one out yet but you bet I will be merciless in the negotiations], struggling to become prime minister of Sweden, overcoming these obstacles [close study/deep reading of the classic 1980's BBC political satire "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Minister">Yes Minister</a>", Julia Louis-Dreyfus as "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veep">Veep</a>" and obviously also Zelensky's "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servant_of_the_People_(TV_series)">Servant of the People</a>"]). <b>After that, the sky is the limit!</b></p><p><br /></p><p>Writing the management part of the application was also a bit painful; "describe your leadership profile" (2+ pages), "management education", "management tasks and administration" and more. But I wrote some about a topic that has fascinated me for 20+ years, namely what what constitutes a creative environment and how I can contribute towards the goal of creating and supporting such (research) environments. I also managed to sneak in some not-very-covert critique in my application (which represents my idea of having fun). Here's my favorite formulation (backed up by references a-plenty):</p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">"Academic leadership has been compared to the task of “herdig cats” and despite the fact that such questions have been a long-term interest of mine, I have to admit that I am still undecided about the appropriate balance between a top-down line organization and bottom-up creative self-organizing research groups</span> [possibly true (?) when I wrote the application quite some months ago but definitely less so now - I used to be undecided but now I'm not so sure any longer]. <span style="color: #ffa400;">I have read up on what characterizes creative (scientific) environments (Leebaert & Dickinson 1991, Törnqvist 2004) and on the perils of New Public Management and “admin society” (Strathern 2000 </span>["<span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 164, 0);">Audit cultures: Anthropological studies in accountability, ethics, and the academy"]</span><span style="color: #ffa400;">, Forsell & Ivarsson Westerberg, Graeber 2015</span> ["<span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 164, 0);">The Utopia of rules: On technology, stupidity, and the secret joys of bureaucracy"]</span><span style="color: #ffa400;">, Paulsen 2015, Alvesson & Spicer 2016</span> ["<span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 164, 0);">The stupidity paradox: The power and pitfalls of functional stupidity at work" - which is a follow-up to their 2012 article "</span>A Stupidity‐Based theory of organizations"]<span style="color: #ffa400;">, Bornemark 2018, Bornemark 2020), and I lean towards believing that KTH and Swedish higher education currently is over-regulated and over-administered (e.g. sharing several well-know problems with Swedish health care, public education and the police). It sometimes seems like we have perfected our processes at KTH to such a degree that they become nearly unworkable (for exampel recruiting new faculty, a process that can be so rigorous and slow that other faster universities snatch our best applicants). At other times there seems to be broad agreement that “something doesn’t work”, but actual change is exceedingly hard. This has led me to acknowledge (but not embrace) a cynical view of leadership (not restricted to the academic environment) where it’s easier to kick in open doors (spend much energy on easy or uncontroversial problems) while simultaneously avoiding harder, more important but “inconvenient” problems. In this I have been inspired by readings from “critical management studies” (Boltanski & Chiapello 2005) and in particular by Mats Alvesson’s texts (2012, 2013, 2016, 2019)."</span></p><p>I also used the docent application as a vehicle to try to make sure I would not easily be promoted to an academic leadership role beyond leading a research group. A UK full professor and previous Head of School stated that this text could have stopped my promotion at his university, so I guess I'm lucky it probably got lost among all the verbiage I produced:</p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">"When I took the Life- and Career planning course (LoK) that KTH offers through the HR consultancy Starck & Partners, I thought long and hard about my strengths and weaknesses as an academic leader. One conclusion I have drawn is that while I enjoy leading a research group, my inclination is to stay out of positions of (higher) management. I am well aware of my own limitations and while I can be diplomatic, I do have a hard time dealing with that which is illogical or unreasonable, or to turn a blind eye to issues than an organization might find inconvenient and would prefer not to deal with."</span></p><p>I certainly hope that others see that I try to prove this (and back it up) on a near daily basis as well as in blog posts such as this! I would obviously be a terrible head of [X], director of [Y] or member of committee [Z] because who knows what I might write about X, Y and Z on my blog? I'm literally the definition of a "loose cannon" and I join Richard Feynman in suggesting that we should instead "<a href="https://www.quora.com/What-did-Richard-Feynman-think-of-academia">Let George do it</a>"!</p><p><br /></p><p>The last part of the process involved listing and submitting 10 publications of mine. Selecting them and justifying the selection was actually a lot of fun! I wonder though if <i>anyone</i> actually read any of these papers in the docent application process, or if the act of listing them was enough to "prove" what a good researcher I am?</p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">Below are ten selected publications. My reasoning for choosing these specific publications are as follows:</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">- Four texts are published in academic journals and the other six texts are published at conferences. Three of the conference papers have been published at the most prestigious conference in my field (CHI).</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">- I am the first author of six of these publications, the second author of two publications and the third author of the remaining two publication. I have either lead the work or had a large impact on all of these texts. Three of texts have more than three authors, but I was the first author and led the work on all of these texts.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">- All ten publications are the result either of international collaborations (6 have co-authors in other countries), national collaborations (6 have co-authors at other Swedish universities) or collaborations with researchers at other Schools at KTH (2 texts).</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">- Both the papers that were mentioned in “2.3. Evaluation of own scientific field” are listed below (#3, #7) and one of these papers (#7) got an “Honorable Mention” (top 5% of papers) at the prestigious CHI conference.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">- Nine publications are situated in the intersection of sustainability and computing. Eight of these have been published during the last five year (2017-2021) and thus represent recent reseach output of mine.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">- One text (#10) represents my earlier research interests (social media, computer games) and it is one of my most cited papers. </span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">In terms of the three research areas mentioned under “3.2 planned research activities”, four texts (#1, #6, #7, #9) represent my interest in “conceptualizing the relationship between HCI/computing and sustainability” and four texts (#2, #4, #5, #8) represent my methodological contributions in the intersection of HCI and Futuring/Futures Studies. Three of the texts below (#1, #3, #9) represent contributions to Sustainable HCI design concepts. </span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">- Not well represented below (with the exception of #2) are publications that represent output from the three research projects I lead (which all started either at the end of 2019 and in 2020. Such publications are either in press, e.g. one book chapter [REF] and one journal article [REF], or in preparation (several).</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">#1. Hansson, L., Cerratto Pargman, T. & Pargman, D. (2021). <i>A Decade of Sustainable HCI: Connecting SHCI to the Sustainable Development Goals</i> In Proceedings of the CHI 2021 Conference. ACM. </span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">#2. Bendor, R., Eriksson, E., & Pargman, D. (2021). <i>Looking backward to the future: On past-facing approaches to futuring</i>. Futures, 125, 102666. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2020.102666</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">#3. Widdicks, K., Pargman, D., & Björk, S. (2020). <i>Backfiring and favouring: how design processes in HCI lead to anti-patterns and repentant designers</i>. In Proceedings of the 11th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Shaping Experiences, Shaping Society (NordiCHI). ACM </span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">#4. Pargman, D. S., Eriksson, E., Bates, O., Kirman, B., Comber, R., Hedman, A., & van den Broeck, M. (2019). <i>The future of computing and wisdom: Insights from Human–Computer Interaction</i>. Futures, 113, 102434. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2019.06.006.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">#5. Pargman, D., Eriksson, E., Höök, M., Tanenbaum, J., Pufal, M., & Wangel, J. (2017). <i>What if there had only been half the oil? Rewriting history to envision the consequences of peak oil</i>. Energy Research & Social Science, special issue on Narratives and storytelling in energy and climate change research. Volume 31, pp.170-178. </span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">#6. Pargman, D., & Wallsten, B. (2017). <i>Resource Scarcity and Socially Just Internet Access over Time and Space</i>. Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Computing Within Limits, pp. 29-36. ACM. </span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">#7. Raghavan, B., & Pargman, D. (2017). <i>Means and Ends in Human-Computer Interaction: Sustainability through Disintermediation</i>. In Proceedings of the CHI 2017 Conference. ACM. Honorable mention.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">#8. Pargman, D., Eriksson, E., Höjer, M., Gunnarsson Östling, U., & Aguiar Borges, L. (2017). <i>The (Un)sustainability of Imagined Future Information Societies</i>. In Proceedings of the CHI 2017 Conference. ACM. </span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">#9. Pargman, D., & Raghavan, B. (2014). <i>Rethinking sustainability in computing: From buzzword to non- negotiable limits</i>. In Proceedings of the 8th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (NordiCHI). ACM, pp. 638-647. </span></p><p><span style="color: #ffa400;">#10. Pargman, D., & Jakobsson, P. (2008). <i>Do you believe in magic? Computer games in everyday life</i>. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 11(2), 225-244.</span></p></div>.pargmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17208443783482286491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7165044694341896839.post-61172693085573656952022-03-17T12:24:00.001+01:002022-03-27T11:19:39.603+02:00Reduced emissions from business travel (new research grant application)<p> .</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgonDE43m2lYJd1WVbrgadf_4WnpqBQCOW0m8xrs3cW8Hh_FeaAPJlRuaTHmx59pqblMeM1R80e8AL0xz94Jgu0sUN5xWaXYuadIYeaFoWIJ1dK9kcDSxfKtuuxT3SOsBrcfailfJDtzkpkKHnJmYCVpLmMT3PQCrq96ITqP-C1uLQtjWRtUHIeQxbLtw=s1894" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1478" data-original-width="1894" height="314" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgonDE43m2lYJd1WVbrgadf_4WnpqBQCOW0m8xrs3cW8Hh_FeaAPJlRuaTHmx59pqblMeM1R80e8AL0xz94Jgu0sUN5xWaXYuadIYeaFoWIJ1dK9kcDSxfKtuuxT3SOsBrcfailfJDtzkpkKHnJmYCVpLmMT3PQCrq96ITqP-C1uLQtjWRtUHIeQxbLtw=w400-h314" width="400" /></a></div><div><br /></div>I am the Principal Investigator (PI = "project leader") for a three-year research project, "<a href="https://www.kth.se/hct/mid/research/sustainability/projects/flight-1.920661">Decreased CO2-emissions in flight-intensive organisations</a>: from data to practice", but we usually just refer to it as our "FLIGHT" project. The other project members are Markus Robèrt, Elina Eriksson, Jarmo Laaksolahti and Aksel Biørn-Hansen, and despite the fact that I've had a two year long break in my blogging, I wrote a number of blog posts about this research project back then (see for example <a href="http://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2019/01/decreased-co2-emissions-in-flight.html">Jan 2019</a>, <a href="http://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2019/11/reducing-academic-flying-public-seminar.html">Nov 2019</a>, <a href="http://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2020/01/flight-project-presentation-test.html">Jan 2020</a>, <a href="http://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2020/01/flight-project-presentation-test.html">Feb 2020</a>, <a href="http://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2020/03/flight-visualization-tools.html">March 2020</a>, <a href="http://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2020/03/on-necessity-of-flying-and-of-not.html">March 2020 again</a>, <a href="https://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2020/04/who-gets-to-fly-proposed-book-chapter.html">April 2020</a>, <a href="http://danielpargman.blogspot.com/2020/05/from-moores-law-to-carbon-law-paper.html">May 2020</a>). That project will however end later this year, but we want to continue and to scale up our research! So when we saw there was a new call for applications in the very same research program (with the slightly-too-long title "Contribute to a faster transition to a transport-efficient society"), we jumped on it and I submitted our proposal on Wednesday - with 42 minutes to spare before the deadline (at midnight).<div><br /></div><div>Our new application is called "<b>Reduced emissions from business travel: Joint efforts to achieve Swedish universities’ climate goals</b>" ["Minskade utsläpp från tjänsteresor: Gemensam kraftsamling för att nå lärosätenas klimatmål"] and it is hands-down the most ambitions research grant application I have submitted this far. Here's the 150 words/1000 characters summary of the project:</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">"Flying accounts for a large part of Swedish universities’ GHG emissions and it has proved difficult to reduce them. In an earlier project we identified a gap between climate targets and action plans that actually meet the targets. Yet the Paris Agreement, the Climate Framework for Swedish Higher Education Institutions and the latest regulatory letter from the Swedish government stipulate that universities have to reduce their emissions. This project aims to build upon earlier work and in collaboration with 16 Swedish universities develop a toolbox that provides them with knowledge and concrete tools to reach their climate targets. This includes development of our workshop methodology, standardized ways to chart, measure, understand, visualize, present, and compare CO2 emissions from flying as well as tailored policy recommendations. Project results will be of value for universities in Sweden and abroad, as well as for other governmental agencies and flight-intensive organizations."</span></div><div><br /></div><div>Having poured over data and and having studied our own academic flying at KTH Royal Institute of Technology for a few years, we have come to wonder how representative KTH is compared to other Swedish universities (or other European universities, or other technical universities (polytechnics/institutes of technology)). So we now "go bigger" and we invited<i> all</i> Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Sweden to join our proposed research project - and 16 did! Our partnering HEIs/universities in this project are (from north to south and from east to west:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><a href="https://www.miun.se/">Mittuniversitetet</a></li><li><a href="https://hig.se">Högskolan i Gävle</a></li><li><a href="https://www.du.se">Högskolan Dalarna</a></li><li><a href="https://www.slu.se">Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet</a></li><li><a href="https://www.su.se">Stockholms Universitet</a></li><li><a href="https://www.kth.se">KTH Royal Institute of Technology</a></li><li><a href="https://ki.se">Karolinska Institutet</a></li><li><a href="https://www.sh.se">Södertörns Högskola</a></li><li><a href="https://www.oru.se">Örebro Universitet</a></li><li><a href="https://www.kau.se">Karlstads Universitet</a></li><li><a href="https://liu.se">Linköpings Universitet</a></li><li><a href="https://www.hv.se">Högskolan Väst</a></li><li><a href="https://www.hb.se">Högskolan i Borås</a></li><li><a href="https://www.gu.se">Göteborgs Universitet</a></li><li><a href="https://www.lu.se">Lunds Universitet</a></li><li><a href="https://mau.se">Malmö Universitet</a></li></ul></div><div>A 17th university got in touch and wanted to join the project on the very day the application was to be handed in, but I unfortunately had to turn them down (the budget would have needed to be reworked and resubmitted and there just wasn't time). We do however in fact have a 17th project partners that isn't a university, but rather the <a href="https://www.naturvardsverket.se/en">The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency</a>. What is cool about having them as a project partner is that all HEIs are mandated to report their climate data (including CO2 emissions from flying) to them on an annual basis. The majority of the top ten governmental agencies that flies the most in Sweden are in fact big universities - and most of those universities are project partners in our application. It's hard to see how the project consortium could have been stronger - but I did in fact try to also recruit the Ministry of Education, who, in their just-out annual "regulation letter" ["regleringsbrev"] to all Swedish HEIs <i>required</i> them to work with "reducing their emissions from business travel". The Ministry of Education however declined since they are "too political" and didn't think it was appropriate for them to be part of a specific research project - despite their interest in this specific issue. I totally understand them passing us up - no hard feelings - and especially with this being an election year and all...</div><div><br /></div><div>So we have 17 project partners, but we also have an 18th "cooperation partner" and that is "The Association of Swedish Higher Education Institutions", <a href="https://suhf.se/in-english/">SUHF</a>. The Association was founded in 1995 and 37 universities and university colleges in Sweden are members (16 universities, 17 university colleges and 4 university art colleges). That means we can reach the remaining HEIs (that are not part of our project) through SUHF. The Association of Swedish Higher Education Institutions in fact have various expert and working groups including a just-formed "The Climate Network" group. The Climate Network will work with various climate-related issues at <i>all</i> Swedish HEIs, and reducing CO2 emissions from flying is one of the specific issues they will work with - so we have heavily overlapping interests. It could even be that our research project (from their perspective) can be seen as their "extended arm". We obviously haven't worked out the details because the Climate Network is just now starting up, and we of course don't know if our application will be approved, but everything is set up, the stars are aligned - and this could be the start of a beautiful friendship. </div><div><br /></div><div>It in fact looks like several factors pulls this issue (reduced emissions from business travel/academic flying) in the same direction. There is of course 1) the Paris Agreement, 2) the 2022 regulation letter from the Ministry of Education, 3) the <a href="https://www.kth.se/en/om/miljo-hallbar-utveckling/klimatramverket-1.903489">Climate Framework for Swedish Higher Education Institutions</a> and 4) The Association of Swedish Higher Education Institutions' (SUHF's) Climate Network - as well as 5) our own earlier work that has helped us deepen our understanding of academic flying and hone our tools to practically work with these issues. So we hope our application will be approved - which we will find out sometime between June and October. If approved, our project would run for two years between 2023-2024. We think the project has the potential to help Swedish Higher Education Institutions lead the (necessary) transition to a sleeker future-proofed low-flying/low-emitting <i>Anthropocene Academy - </i>e.g. an academy where we do things <i>differently</i> (exact details remain to be figured out). We also hope the project results could serve as inspiration for universities abroad as well as for other Swedish governmental agencies and flight-intensive organizations in general. The Paris Agreement implies that we need to reduce our emissions by 50% every decade between 2020 to 2050 and if not <i>now</i> and if not <i>here </i>and if not <i>us </i>(in Sweden, at our Higher Education Institutions), then <i>when</i> and <i>where</i> will it happen and <i>who</i> will lead and speed up this (potentially painful but) necessary transition? I think it is time for a "<a href="https://hbr.org/2011/05/the-power-of-small-wins">small win</a>" here in Sweden that could inspire others to follow our lead!</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div>It's a bit hard to cut-and-paste text from the application since it is written in Swedish, but here's the most reference-heavy part for those researchers who want to know how we ground and orient ourselves in relation to previous research in the area:</div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;"><br /></span></div><div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">In recent decades, CO2 emissions from travel in general (Bows-Larkin 2015) and from aviation in particular have increased markedly (Chakravarty et al. 2009, Cohen et al. 2011, Gössling & Humpe 2020, Kamb & Larsson 2018) and flying has become a natural part of the academic culture and of the job of successful researchers (Baer 2019, Glover et al. 2018, Higham et al. 2019, Hopkins et al. 2019, Parker & Weik 2014, Storme et al. 2017). While it is necessary to reduce universities' emissions from business travel (Cames et al. 2015, Glover et al. 2017, Higham & Font 2020, Le Quéré et al. 2015), the problem is thus extremely difficult; there are, on the one hand, legitimate reasons for researchers to travel as part of their jobs (to network and disseminate research results, etc.), but researches are, on the other hand, "bearers of truth" and originators of formulated climate goals, and they should thus lead by example in order to remain credible (Attarai et al. 2016, Attarai et al. 2019).</span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">Academic flying is a topic that is increasingly discussed (Braun & Rödder 2021, Bjørkdahl & Franco Duharte 2022). In the last decade, a number of different studies have examined specific aspects such as the carbon footprint of a specific academic conference (Desiere 2016, Jäckle 2022, Orsi 2012), the carbon footprint of moving academic conferences online (Coroama et al. 2012, Jäckle 2021, Klöwer et al. 2020 ), the carbon footprint of a research article (Spinellis & Louridas 2013, Song et al. 2016), the carbon footprint of an individual research project (Achten et al. 2012, Waring et al. 2014, Aujoux et al. 2021), the carbon footprint of a research lab (Stohl 2008, Jahnke et al. 2020), carbon footprint in specific academic disciplines (Grant 2018, Eriksson et al. 2020, Chalvatzis & Ormosi 2020, Passalacqua 2021) and a single university's carbon footprint (Larsen et al. 2013, Wynes et al. 2019, Ciers et al. 2019, Ahonen et al. 2021). A large-scale French initiative is developing a set of (open source) tools to calculate the carbon footprint of a research lab (with tens or a few hundred members) (Mariette et al. 2021).</span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #ffa400;">Our own previous research shows that the CO2 footprint from flying is very unevenly distributed and that those 20% of employees who fly the most at KTH are responsible for 89% of the total CO2 emissions (Pargman et al. 2020, Pargman et al. 2022, see also Appendix 1). If we assume that similar patterns recur in other contexts (e.g. academic flying is very unevenly distributed both within and between departments), this indicates that it will not be possible to achieve universities' ambitious sustainability goals unless those who fly the most reduce their flying. A positive interpretation, however, is that if you can get a smaller number of individuals to reduce their flying, any university's emissions can be significantly reduced. The conclusions that we have drawn based on analyses of KTH flight data correlates with what others have written about but on a global level using terms like “carbon inequality” (Barros & Wilk 2021, Chancel & Piketty 2015, Gore 2015, Gore 2020, Ivanova & Wood 2020)."</span></div></div><div><br /></div><div>For more information about what we have done in the FLIGHT project, read our just-out 2022 book chapter “<span style="color: #fcff01;">Who gets to fly?</span>” (<a href="https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-981-16-4911-0_6.pdf">pdf here</a>) from <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-16-4911-0">the publicly available open access book</a> "Academic Flying And The Means Of Communication", or our 2021 paper “<span style="color: #fcff01;">Exploring the Problem Space of CO2 Emission Reductions from Academic Flying</span>” (<a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/21/12206/pdf">pdf here</a>).</div><div>.</div>pargmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17208443783482286491noreply@blogger.com0