The man flows into a black suit, unknowing of the heat attempting to suck the juices out of him later in the day... it's time for business. It's business time!
Going into a meeting in another country is certainly new to me, but I'm a culturally aware person who wants to do things the way they are done in the host culture. On tuesday this meant I was to wear a black suit. What I didn't realise that there weren't going to be any new people at the meeting and that the meeting was going to be quite informal. Oh well, it's nice to look smart every now and then.
We met in the lobby of our hotel with some of the group. We had already desided to travel to i2Cat by bus and so we headed towards Plaza de Universidad where the correct bus would depart from. The day seemed too good to be true - sun shining, soft mediterranean wind blowing from the sea and some 24 degrees warm.. oh dear. The busride went as expected, we admired the wonders of Barcelona and especially its main street Diagonal Avinguda. We arrived to the university area of Barcelona and started wandering towards i2Cat.. pretty regular south-European university campus by the looks of it and had a good feeling to it. When we finally arrived to our destination I was a bit dumbstruck by the building we were facing.
This building hosts i2Cats main offices where they co-ordinate their projects, but it has many other offices as well. Quite a sight.
The seminar was a complete success, we got alot of new ideas on the table and had an enormous amount of fixes to the website. We settled upon some dates for exhibitions and so, it looks like this is really going to kick-off!
In this picture you can see three Macbooks, but in the end we used a Windows 7 laptop (the one I had with me) to connect to the TV for presentations etc... go figure. ;)
I won't go into much detail as to the content of the meetings, since it's pretty boring stuff blog-wise. After lunch we headed towards Citilab, which is a much more interesting subject.
The Citilab of Barcelona is situated in the middle of a suburban area, about 10km from the city center if I'm not mistaken. We took the tram there from the university area. Since Barcelona uses paper ticket-cards you can buy a 10-trip ticket right from the tram-stop... Helsinki uses plastic-cards and thus they have to be purchased from a kiosk.
As you can see from the picture above, the neighbourhood where Citilab is located isn't exactly the Ritz. Alot of these buildings surround Citilab and built under Franco, they are hideous in both appearance and to live in. For the inhabitants of Cornella the Citilab is a godsend giving meaning and activity to their lives and a link to the world outside their neighbourhood. There is alot of immigrants also living in Cornella, some of the groups could be considered very indifferent to the rules and common sense of western culture, but of the two years Citilab has operated in the area, not a single window has been broken and not a single graffiti painted on its walls. Everyone in the area recognizes the importance Citilab and respects it as something of their own. Citilab truly functions as a part of the people of Cornella. Wonderful. Perfect. I was honestly impressed.
Before I go into detail as to the services Citilab provides, I have to say the way it works for a customer is very simple. You pay a 5€ fee for beloging to the Citilab ”club” per year. That's it. Five euros and you can use their services for a whole year. The fee is nominal, but it gives a sense of importance to the people – they are a part of something special and since they have paid for it, they respect it more than if it was free of charge. Citilab has considered raising the price to 10 euros, but not to raise more money, but rather to give even more importance to the desicion to join and an even increased sense of beloging.
The five euros doesn't give you access to everything, but it lets you use the basic services without reservation. Any courses held at Citilab usually have some attendance fee, again not necessarily to cover expenses nor raise money, but rather to ensure the customers actually attend the course – if the course is free, many people enlist but never arrive.
Open Surf is an area which functions partly as an Internet access point and partly as a place for social gathering. The idea as I understood it was to have the people use the laptops for whatever purposes they wish while conversing, teaching and having a good time with others doing the same. Later in our visit there I saw alot of teenage boys playing videogames and having fun together at OpenSurf.
FamilyLabs was something most amazing. In co-operation with Lego Citilab is using a Lego built gameplatform to teach children how to use computers, how to co-operate with other kids and gain results. The idea is simple. Robot Indiana Jones has to find the treasure before the time runs out, but in order to do that it has to be able to watch out for other robots trying to steal the treasure from it. This is done by the children by programming the actions of Indiana Jones on two laptops next to the gaming platform that are connected to the robot by bluetooth.
The FamilyLabs room was already full of Indiana Jones gameplatforms and so it had to be extended to the MediaLabs room next door. Here we found a round, around a meter thick table. But then again, its not a table but rather a computer with a large multitouch screen on top. Here children can play various puzzle etc games that again require alot of co-operation and thought to be successfully passed. The children sit around the round screen and can directly influence the game with their touch. I'd love to try that someday myself.. sounds fun!
Also in the MediaLabs were over 10 iMacs I forgot to photograph. This impressive setup is used for media themed courses and such.
While not shaped as an auditorium, this room serves the function well. All the furniture and elements are moveable and the room is equipped with two impressive videoprojectors.
This tag-cloud represents the tags associated with Citilab. As you can see, some of the tags are in Spanish, others in Catalan while some in English – probably for the lack of a good translation. And yes.. that's me on the floor while Minna is well connected with wifi. ;)
Upstairs along with their open offices is space for companies to rent and a space where performances can be held. What caught my eye was the studios. They have to small filming studios with green background to be able to project any scenery behind the actors. These studios are used by intrestgroups as well as customers. There is a project where the women of Cornella are creating their own Womens TV channel to be broadcast with IP-TV technology. I forgot to ask how much resources does it take from Citilabs to guide and teach the local women how to do this.
All and all an impressive facility. The building renovation costs to create Citilabs reach millions of euros with the best estimate being around 6 million euro. Not something we'll be seeing done in Finland anytime soon.
So.. after Citilabs we headed to our hotels for a quick refresh and then for an amazing tapas dinner at a restaurant our host frequents. Unfortunantely I don't have any photos from the evening due to the battery running out on my camera. After the restaurant our host took a couple of us to an absinth bar.. the rest of that evening is history.
