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Charles Landry, author of The Creative City, is the keynote speaker this morning. He notes how creativity has become something of a universal mantra, and is generally seen as entirely good and positive. It may be important to take a more critical view of creativity now, and especially of the claims to creativity which so many cities now make. Most creative city strategies are about enhancing the arts as well as the creative industries, which is fine, but what's important is also to expand from this - what would be a creative bureaucrat, or a creative environmentalist?

The idea of the creative community, the creative city, is different - it is far more all-embracing, and encourages openness and tolerance and thus has massive implications for organisational culture which must be addressed. It is important to create environments where we can think, plan, and act with imagination - where ordinary people can act in extraordinary ways if given the chance. One of the principles is to involve those affected in creative city plans. This means thinking on the edge of your competence rather than at the centre of it. Innovation happens at the boundary of difference, where things can really start to occur. This means asking practitioners to act in slightly different ways from their established practice. The creative city, then, is an attitude of mind; it is dynamic, not static. Landry argues for a culture of creativity to be embedded in the places in which people live.

Alan Webber, Irshad Manji, Roberta Bondar and Joe Berridge make up the first panel of the morning, and Joe begins by setting the tone.

Joe Berridge: Four Principles

So, what is a creative city - would we recognise it if we were in it? Is it simply determined by creative festivals - in which case becoming a creative city is a universal ambition. How can creative cities distinguish themselves in 'the post-Richard Florida world'? Joe suggests that the creative city of the future is a Creative City - where the entire organisation of the city is creatively designed. About 25% of employment in a city is in the public service, which usually is anything bit creative in its operation - so how can creative principles be introduced into the local government environment? The effective achievement of its ambitions combined with creative approaches will set apart the creative city from others, and local government has the greatest potential for creative chance. This is the case in Toronto itself as well, where local government still remains an unreconstructed area of the city, even amidst so many creative projects.

(Toronto) Well, we're here for the Creative Places + Spaces conference in Toronto now. Early this morning I set up my stall in the Creativity Marketplace, presenting some of the work we're doing with the Ipskay fictional environment in KKB018 Creative Industries, and there were already a number of interesting conversations with visitors. Now, we're on to the start of the conference proper, with the opening speech by Artscape CEO Tim Jones. He begins by noting the rising interest in creativity and innovation from a large number of stakeholders, also including governments and policymakers. But how to create the conditions for that creativity and innovation to thrive? How can the best and brightest in diverse fields be attracted to this environment? How can creativity bubble up from the bottom and be connected to global networks? In many of these issues, aversion to risk is what's holding us back. A mindshift, a movement, isn't enough - a revolution is what's needed: hence the subtitle of this conference: risk revolution.

(Buffalo) I went out to Niagara Falls this morning - just a 30 minute trip up the highway from Buffalo itself, right up to the Canadian border. In theory I could have just continued on from there to Toronto, my next stop on this trip, which wouldn't have been too much further to go, but strangely enough I'm booked on a flight this afternoon which takes me there via Toronto (adding a good three or four hours of transit time to my day). Not entirely sure my travel agent checked the map when we made the booking...

Niagara was beautiful, if windy and quite chilly - but the intermittent sun brought out multiple rainbows over the falls and really blew up the mist from the water cascades. I can't imagine what the falls would have been like before the power generation scheme reduced the flow over the actual falls themselves. It's clearly going towards autumn here - I saw plenty of squirrels (including one of the rarer black ones) burying their nuts and other goodies in the ground for the cold season.

(Buffalo) Well, that went well - some very good discussion at the 'Produsers and Produsage' workshop today, and a few critical questions which I'm looking forward to thinking about further. I recorded the workshop and will try to post an edited version soon after I'm back in Brisbane... The evening talk was great as well - excellent turnout, with people even sitting in the aisles and corridor. Again, some good questions, and I hope people found it useful. Check out the photos from the workshop and talk on the iDC site, too! Tomorrow Trebor and I will record a brief video summary of the produser idea - more details soon. And I capped off the day with a beautifully al dente Maine lobster ravioli. Good night!

(Buffalo) Well, today is my busy day here in Buffalo - with a workshop after lunch and my guest talk in the evening. I met some of the students here as Trebor Scholz showed me around yesterday, and I'm looking forward to the events. Some other interesting developments: I received an email yesterday from former La Trobe University MA student Derek Lackaff, whose thesis on heterarchical moderation schemes in Slashdot and elsewhere I had the pleasure to examine recently - turns out he's now based here in Buffalo doing his PhD... Also, an email from Mark Tribe at Brown University - he's invited me to do a guest lecture there as well, and I may be able to take a day trip to Providence during my week in New York City. And I phoned David Marshall at Northeastern University in Boston, who is also looking to set up something. More soon!

(Buffalo) Well, after 24 hours on progressively smaller planes I'm finally here in Buffalo, arriving late last night. An eventless flight on Qantas and American Airlines - a nice sunrise over the Californian coastline flying into LAX, and luckily none of the landing gear problems that occurred so dramatically and telegenically on a JetBlue flight at the same airport just a few days ago. Flying across the U.S. by daylight for the first time I was struck by the vast and barren expanses of land still left more or less untouched especially in the West (this would have been Arizona in particular, I guess) - perhaps its just me, but you don't think about America in such terms these days... Of course I also couldn't help but think 'Google Earth' at the same time - will have to revisit some of the sites along the way later (was that the Las Vegas or Phoenix speedway I saw from the air?).

• 28 Sep., 1 p.m.: Produsers and Produsage - workshop at SUNY Buffalo
• 28 Sep., 6 p.m.: 'Anyone Can Edit': Understanding the Produser - guest lecture at SUNY Buffalo
• 30 Sep., 1.30 p.m.: Teaching Creativity in a Creative Town - exhibition in the Creativity Marketplace at the Creative Places + Spaces conference, Toronto
• 8 Oct., 8.30 a.m.: Wikinews: The Next Generation of Online News? - paper at the Association of Internet Researchers conference in Chicago
• 11 Oct., 10 a.m.: 'Anyone Can Edit': Understanding the Produser - guest lecture at New School, New York City
• 11 Oct., 6 p.m.: Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production - guest talk at The Thing / Postmasters Gallery, New York City
• 12 Oct., 12 noon: Public/Private Intersections in New Media - panel guest at Northeastern University, Boston
• 12 Oct., 5 p.m.: 'Anyone Can Edit': Understanding the Produser - guest lecture at Brown University, Providence
• 14 Oct., 12.30 p.m.: 'Anyone Can Edit': Understanding the Produser - guest lecture at Temple University, Philadelphia

A number of elections took place over the weekend - in Afghanistan, New Zealand, and Germany - but it's the German one which stands to produce the most lasting effect (and entertainment, if the first days after the election are any guide). German voters have delivered a result which has puzzled many and has been described by some as unworkable - even though upon closer inspection it has opened up rather than closed down political options for those who are willing and able to realise them.

To begin with, however, the result (which has the conservative CDU/CSU and the progressive Social Democrats neck and neck at around 35%, and the three minor parties Free Democrats, Greens, and Left/PDS at 8-9%) is a clear demonstration of how significantly more representative and democratic the German electoral system is, especially when compared with British, Australian, or U.S. models. A look at the map of directly elected German representatives shows that a Westminster-style election would likely have produced a highly polarised parliament dominated by the major parties, however much their share of the votes has been slashed in the election - potentially with a small number of independents and minor-party candidates holding a tenuous balance of power. Instead, however, the German system adds list candidates to these directly elected representatives until the balance of parties in parliament represents the distribution of votes - and so the 35/34/9/8/8 split in percentages is reflected very accurately in the 225/222/61/54/51 distribution of seats.

With my host Trebor Scholz from the Institute for Distributed Creativity I'm now confirming the various talks and presentations I'm giving in Buffalo and New York City as part of my research residency at the iDC - my thanks for them for having me and organising these events. For any readers based over there, here's what we have planned so far:

Buffalo

• 28 Sep., 1-3 p.m. - Workshop at SUNY Buffalo
  Produsers and Produsage 
   
• 28 Sep., 6 p.m. - guest lecture at SUNY Buffalo (room 235):
  'Anyone Can Edit': Understanding the Produser
  The Mojtaba Saminejad Lecture (see announcement)

New York City

• 11 Oct., 10 a.m. - guest lecture at the New School:
  'Anyone Can Edit': Understanding the Produser
   
• 11 Oct., 6 p.m. - guest talk at The Thing:
  Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production

  Recent years have seen the emergence of collaborative publishing models in key news Websites ranging from the worldwide Indymedia network to the massively successful technology news site Slashdot and further to the multitude of Weblogs. Such sites have been instrumental in debunking political misinformation and providing first-hand coverage of unfolding events from 9/11 to Hurricane Katrina, but also provide an important corrective to the mainstream news media in their everyday coverage of current events.