Aufbau Haus, Theater Space

Moritzplatz 1, 10969 Berlin-Kreuzberg
Tuesday, May 31st, 10 am- 6 pm

With: Heather Kelley, Alexander Rulkens, Paul Blazek, Ela Kagel, Peter Troxler, Nadia EL-Imam as facilitators
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Part of the Create Your Own - CYO2011 conference

Here is a documentation video of the workshop and conference:

with love from #cyo2011 from Choco Canel on Vimeo.
And the link to our Flickr photo stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/59271915@N06/sets/72157626950379752/

MC, or “  Mass Customization”– what is this all about and why might it matter to me?


Basically it is the use of a flexible production method or systems that support custom output. As a creative producer you might have a certain idea about the way your product or service should function or look like. What if a potential client likes your service or  product in general, but needs it tailored to his or her needs in order to make use of it? Many creative businesses could increase their sales (and thus get out more of what they do) if they just knew how to adapt their production methods to different markets and clients.

Get More out of what you Do – Mass Customization for Makers

The MC for Makers workshop aims to help people in different fields of practice explore how they to get more out of what they do as a creative producer and how they can meet their client’s diverse and changing needs. If you want to explore how you as a creative can get more out of resources, technology, materials or changing paradigms you are most welcome. The goal of the Mass Customization for Makers Worskshop is to help you figure out how to profit from peer-production models that promise to give actual control over consumption back to the consumers.

10:00  Opening presentation: Round of Introductions & Workshop Overview

11:00  Breakout sessions: Participants break up into small groups. Each group is led by one of our experts from the fields of culture, science and economy and has a dedicated illustrator to help visualise ideas and concepts. 
Facilitators: Heather Kelley, Alexander Rulkens, Paul Blazek, Ela Kagel, Peter Troxler, Nadia EL-Imam
13:00  Lunch
14:00  Group Sessions continue
16:00  Synthesis session: Each group has to prepare a five minute presentation of their results to present to a panel from the main CYO-conference in order to receive constructive critique from leaders in the field.

18:00  Closing Remarks: Drinks and snacks

These were the 4 user stories our participants have been working on:
 

•    My piece of cake: Ina has recently opened a small bakery shop. She is specialized in cupcakes (these wonderful, tasty little cakes with different ingredients and frostings). After she has started her business, she step by step learned about the various food requirements of her clients: some of them are vegan, others want to go low-fat and then there are those clients who ask for a marcipan rose on top. Ina would be really happy to adapt to her customer’s needs, but she simply has no idea how she can approach this with the resources she has at hand.

•    User Experience: Tom works as a freelance information architect. He gets hired by corporations and multimedia agencies to create the information design of large-scale websites and mobile devices. Tom finds himself very often confronted with job requests that involve new technical platforms which he is not familiar with. In order to get those jobs, he has to spend a lot of time with research and it is not easy to find all the info he needs online. Tom thinks of ways how he can continue to be a freelancer and get access to all the cutting-edge knowledge that is out there and that he needs for the different job offers.

•    Make your own stamp: Matt and Sabine are two product designers who have just started their showroom. They focus on postcard and paper design and they plan to create a highly individual range of selected paper items, from calendars over postcards to stamps. They just wonder how to deal with the production cost and time which every personalized item would require. Then Matt has the idea to involve the customers into the making process and offer workshops where everyone can produce their own product line. Sabine is not convinced: those workshops will be quite expensive. Is there a real market for that?

•    Art on Demand: An emerging art gallery collective thinks of ways how to produce “art on demand”. Their main questions and concerns are: will this still be art? How to advertise that? How to come up with a matrix for values and prices of the artworks? And how to estimate the time and conditions for an artwork to come into existence? And wouldn’t this lead to inviting more artists to work in the gallery in order to meet different customer’s tastes and requests? How to handle that?

Hosts: MC for Makers was organised by Cookies And Code and the Free Culture Incubator in partnership with the Federal Government’s Centre of Excellence for the Cultural and Creative Industries Initiative.