I had promised to some of my friends and subscribers to report on the four p2p-related seminars I attended in Europe last month. I’m not so good at note taking, and with this two-week delay already, I’m only going to give a very general impression.

The P2P Un-Conference in Leuven

The first event was in Leuven, from April 21-23, and I can say with confidence that this was the first true P2P seminar to be held, specifically dedicated to the emergence of peer to peer practices. It was organized by WS Network, a Belgium-based consultancy that specializes in organizational dynamics, and is internally pretty much organized in a P2P spirit. The conference itself was conceived as a bottom-up process, an adaptation of the Syntegration process, led by Luc Hoebeke, who was a true master of the alchemy of the group.

The process can be summarized as follows. It starts with an open space session where anyone can put forward a poster on a white board, and seek undersigners and supporters for his chosen subtheme. A second ‘public auction’ session then decides which 12 subtopics will be selected, with every member having 100 points that he can scatter as he wish on the projects of his choice. Once the choice is made, a relative large number of microsessions are then held, with attendees moving from table to table, each time with a different mix of people, and the issues are trashed out. A surprising element is that the master of ceremonies then ‘listens’ in order to avoid the emergence of ‘dominant voices’. This insures that everyone feels included, and is prompted to participate, and tones down those that are used to take a high profile.An assistant, Jo Mattens, a Reiki master, monitors the ‘energy level’ of the meeting, and creates mini-events (energetic, meditative, dynamic) to re-infuse the meeting with renewed presence. Finally, the whole two days conclude with an action-oriented process, where again anyone can animate a poster on a white board, lobby for support, ending with a public process where participants can engage themselves with a chosen path of action.

On the emotive level, this was a very satisfying conference, there was no posturing, academic or expert jargon, just an open exchange; it was not just chatter, but geared towards understanding and action. I’m less sure about what I learned cognitively, but I was really energized, and impressed by the maturity of peer to peer processes already at work in the lives of the participants.

University of Amsterdam

These were two standard lectures, the P2P ‘spiel’ if you like, before an audience of information management students (in the context of a philosophy class), and for the ABS Seminars of Primavera, a post-graduate info-mgt. club. The attention span was fairly high, with some good critical interventions. I had the distinct impression that P2P is appealing to the new generation in Europe. Prof. Rik Maes did a great job in organizing those 2 lectures and was a great host.

The next item will be a review of the Immaterial Labour Conference in Cambridge University.