IGF 2018 WS #48
Collaborative roadmap to digital inclusion in remote areas

Issue(s)

Other
Sub-theme description: Rural areas & remote territories

Organizer 1: Elise Loeuille, In-oh
Organizer 2: Adrien Camp, Big Berry
Organizer 3: Lucie Di Biasi, Com'Un Pont
Organizer 4: Johanna Camp, Big Berry
Organizer 5: Jean-Marc Seynhaeve, In-Oh Design

Speaker 1: Elise Loeuille, Private Sector, Asia-Pacific Group
Speaker 2: Adrien Camp, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Speaker 3: Johanna Camp, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)

Moderator

Adrien Camp

Online Moderator

Lucie Di Biasi

Rapporteur

Johanna Camp

Format

Other - 90 Min
Format description: Creative Workshop - several options possible depending on number of attendees

Interventions

Culture, innovation and design - Elise Loeuille and Jean-Marc Seynhaeve
Elise and Jean-Marc will energize technical and process thinking by maintaining a creative, dynamic and engaging atmosphere throughout the workshop. They will introduce inspirational trends, guide and facilitate the findings within groups and teams, making sure individuals understand format, tools and material used. Moreover, they will ensure content and ideas are engaging and inspiring before, during and after the workshop.

Innovation and digital services in rural areas - Johanna Camp, Adrien Camp, Lucie Di Biasi
Johanna, Adrien and Lucie will present key rural and remote territories requirements and business opportunities around digital inclusion based on their personal and professional experience of innovation in French Berry and remote territories. They will provide meaningful and solid datasets to shape the right economic, technical and cultural context around digital inclusion. They will work with groups and teams to outline facts, issues and ideas that move discussions forward. They will participate to shape the creative roadmap as local subject matter experts (innovation, design and communication), making sure ideas and projects are relevant to their experience before, during and after the workshop.

Technical representative (remote participant from French Berry/Madagascar - to be confirmed):
A technical contact will work with us to define technological boundaries in rural and remote areas, acting as a single point of contact for network, connectivity and access questions. He or she will ensure output solutions remain technologically feasible and work with the team to define the best technological framework before, during and after the workshop.

Diversity

The team presents gender diversity (3 women and 2 men) and ensures roles and responsibilities on stage as well as in the room are dispatched regardless of gender, cultural or physical differences. With individuals living in urban, developed and connected areas in Australia as well as rural based French entrepreneurs, the team gathers a variety of cultural and professional standpoints to ignite creativity. The team gathers entrepreneurs with outstanding track records of business achievements in cultural, media, consumer electronics, telecommunications and consumer goods sectors, within rural, national and international companies. They are all first time IGF session speakers and organizers.

Up to 50 attendees:

Introduction: Inspirational trends - innovating in a rural context: key requirements, constraints and benefits (15 min)
A video and interview based introduction to set a creative scene and engage participants in specific and concrete needs.

Breaking the ice: "the business ID" - Create a knowledge wall in pairs or in threes to introduce each other. (15 min)
They interview each other and fill out an A3 Business Cards’ template provided.
The workshop team will take a polaroid picture on arrival to stick to the template.
They introduce their colleague in the report out or stick the template in an assigned area of the space to create a knowledge wall.

Round 1: Speed thinking session - a mental map towards digital inclusivity in rural and remote areas (15 min)
Participants write all the words that define digital inclusivity in rural and remote areas in 2030, with the creative challenge to generate 5 ideas per minute. They identify benefits, issues and process to create a mental map of ideas and link them to new possibilities.

Round 2: "Built a there" - Switch ideas to concrete and tangible solutions (15 min)
From Round 1, each team receives a chunk of the problem to design a the first draft of the solution/new scenario. They are asked to design the desired solution. This round will often be aimed at the “what”(ie. what we will do?) possibly also on the “how” (ie.how we will do it?) but we will push the attendees to think about the why we will move to this direction.

Round 3: "Create the gap" - Great picture of the journey to digital inclusion in rural areas and remote territories (15 min)
Split teams: each pair of teams tackles one domain, e.g. “technology”, “culture”, “competition”. One team looks at the current state of conditions in relation to that topic. The second looks at the future state conditions (they do this without knowledge of each others’ task)
Joined teams: the pair of teams is then combined and asked “to create the gaps” articulating the delta between the current and future states. Report out the gap and the future

Conclusion: presenting the collaborative roadmap to digital inclusion in rural and remote areas, key requirements and guidelines to proceed. (15 min)

From 50 to 100 attendees: the workshop will concentrate on Round 1 to build an inspirational roadmap with groups of 20-30 people. Follow-up communications will cover rounds 2 and 3. Participants will group around 3 identifiable items placed in the room and the organizing team will rotate material as the workshop proceeds.

The discussion will be facilitated by an inspiring and engaging workshop atmosphere and material, based on design-thinking and product development formats extensively mastered by the team. An entrepreneurial tone will trigger a creative yet bottom-line focused pace in discussions, facilitated by local subject matter experts as well as experience and dynamic workshop professionals. By producing and using physical material combined to digital tools for remote participation, the team seeks to highlight a rich diversity of standpoints to produce a highly creative and inspiring roadmap for participants to re-use in their own projects. The discussion will include content and material shared before, during and after the workshop to engage participants in the longer term.

Rural areas and remote territories offer a variety of digital opportunities: remote workers, research and development, communication platforms and digital businesses... Local cultures, skills and connectivity demand specific technological and cultural adaptations. This workshop seeks to inspire new ideas for inclusive digital tools and strategies, based on human centric needs and design thinking development.

The workshop will take participants through different technologically remote contexts to understand rural areas requirements as well as developing countries needs for digital solutions and economic, social, growth. Organized as break-out teams, participants will then collaboratively shape business and technical solutions to jointly outline 5 business opportunities to address digital inclusion and accessibility in rural and remote areas.

The workshop is facilitated by a team of entrepreneurs based in rural areas, developing countries and experienced international designers specializing in design thinking and collaborative solutions. By allowing experts to interact and develop joint solutions through their diverse skills, the team seeks to build an inspiring roadmap of opportunities for participants, as well as the wider online and offline audience. Videos as well as business collaterals will be produced to further spread those opportunities with the digital community, before, during and after the session.

Online Participation

Online participation will consist in the identification of remote stakeholders, prior to the workshop, who will be interviewed to shape inspirational trends and systemic context around digital inclusion in rural and remote areas. They will be invited to join the workshop remotely through a skype conference, and will comment and review findings along with participants throughout the workshop. Depending on the workshop format, they will participate as a jury to help select solutions. Our online moderator and the organizing team will ensure remote attendees are included in discussions by creating interactions with them before, during and after working sessions, potentially asking them to further develop one of the inspirational trends to guide participants during the workshop.