This fall, the MFA Interaction Design Department welcomes visiting lectures in an intimate twice-a-month series to inspire conversation, pursue change, and incite creation. 

Disruptive Organizing:  Collaboration and Innovation in the Open Source City

How can we reformat our cities and public spaces – and the architectures and technologies within them – as sites of collaboration and innovation?  The open source movement is known not only for the innovation of robust operating systems such as Linux and Internet browsers such as Firefox but also as an emergent form of organizing based on collaborative production.  Disruptive Internet technologies such as e-mail, blogging, instant messaging, Skype and Twitter have enabled the widespread availability of cheap, instantaneous global communication.  These same technologies have engendered emergent forms of organizing in physical spaces including MeetUp groups, BarCamps (unconferences) and coworking communities.  This presentation will discuss disruptive forms of organizing based on a current collaborative project, Breakout! Escape from the Office, which is being presented by The Architectural League of New York as part of the Situated Technologies: Toward the Sentient City exhibition. 

About the Speaker

Laura Forlano is Kauffman Fellow in Law at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. She received her Ph.D. in Communications from Columbia University in 2008. Her dissertation, “When Code Meets Place: Collaboration and Innovation at WiFi Hotspots,” explores the intersection between organizations, technology (in particular, mobile and wireless technology) and the role of place in communication, collaboration and innovation. Forlano is an Adjunct Faculty member in the Design and Management department at Parsons and the Graduate Programs in International Affairs and Media Studies at The New School where she teaches courses on Innovation, New Media and Global Affairs, Technology and the City, Technology Policy, Sustainable Design and Business Ethics. She serves as a board member of NYCwireless and the New York City Computer Human Interaction Association.