Hi all, these are actually the rapporteur notes for the second half of this afternoon’s combined session, hosted jointly by Cristina and Graham.

Slides from Cristina’s original presentation are here

The second half of the session was devoted to the broadcasting of the very special ISDT edition of “Sounds from the Bazaar,” which went live at 6:30 pm Portugal time. Because of the time constraints of the combined session everyone was busy right up until we went live; in the minutes just before the broadcast one of the groups was doing a quick rehearsal outside, and Alison, as floor manager, reminded people to be careful about the cables behind the table.

Once the broadcast started, there was no time to think about much else. The broadcast started with Graham’s introduction to the series, and Chris’s introduction to the episode, followed by a tribute to Gary Chapman from Sharon, Leslie, and Fiorella.

The first topic of discussion was the potential for digital transformation in society; speakers included Diego, who gave a (really quick!) summary of his work on Hiperbarrio. Graham took advantage of the musical break to give a quick primer about microphone technique (don’t hold it too close or too far from your face).

The next group, taking up the topic of cultural change, started out with a heavy task from Gerard: “let us attempt to define culture.” The panelists offered several definitions, which helped frame a few thought-provoking comments on how culture can be changed.  The next subject, children and the internet, also started with an analytical question: “What is a child?” Kay explained that the United Nations takes a different view of the subject (anyone under 13) than, for example, Facebook (you supposedly have to be 13 to have an account, but not in practice). The panelists here noted that protected children on the internet goes both ways: you want to protect them from things, but you also have to protect their right to do things, such as to receive and impart information.

At this point Cristina took over the mic to get some vox pops from members of the tech group, who had spent the first session getting a (really helpful) tutorial from Rui. The next topic was the gamification of life, followed by social media & social activism.

Graham had said that these kinds of sessions are pedagogically effective partly because people get excited about doing something. One sign of this came during the musical transitions, with people complimenting the group that had just finished. At one point Al had to hush us because speakers were about to resume.

Then we went to free expression on the internet and the threats to the same, for which Andy gave an introduction seguing between the use of social media in activism and threats to the internet: does the rise of the former increase the risk of the latter? An interesting illustration of the fact that, despite the breadth and diversity of interests being explored this week, there are a lot of linkages between them.

Following some closing remarks about the music selected for the transitions, Graham closed up the show and then he and Christina gave us a quick debrief before dispatching us to drink wine (Graham’s instructions). He said there had been one technical malfunction at the beginning, while speakers were talking about Gary, and he’d like to re-record that bit tomorrow before the broadcast is archived online. But that was the only major issue and by the end, he added, we were getting pretty smooth. He said that there are three questions they’d like us to consider:

What have you learned?
How did you feel?
How can you use it in your practice?

These will be on the ISDT wiki and we are encouraged to go post our responses there.