Reinventing the 'salon' as an ideas factory at universities?
How to use the university setting more productively to generate unusual ideas across disciplines?
Maybe it’s just me. But I am a professor at a university and I hardly ever meet people outside my subject area; like most people I meet people within my department or unit. That is, outside of those occasions where there is specific outside pressure to obtain funding and to get together to design large grants that span disciplines. Those are quite fun, at the beginning, during the ‘Idea and Discovery’ phase, because you hear about other perspectives on a problem with which you are familiar from your vantage point. But then, the process quickly is taken over by other considerations, like strategy, budget and planning, and then the magic is typically gone.
Thus, I have been wondering: is there a way to get people together in a university setting (or otherwise) just for the purpose of a truly free-flowing discussion that is not motivated by particular funding calls. Just for the fun of exchange and discovery. Where the only purpose is to become inspired and to generate ideas. Kind of like the salons in early modern France?
Universities would be excellent for this, because they offer such a wide range of subjects. I wonder: what would it take to get academics together for such informal exchanges? The main challenge is that many of the good people are typically quite busy. And they will ask, what’s in it for me? How do you win them for such salons?
The ‘traits’ of people are important. They would need to be self-selected because they are specifically interested in such broad, free-flowing exchanges. Not everybody will be, and that’s ok. Maybe there should be a questionnaire you would send to people that self-select, and if so, what would be important questions on this questionnaire?
Participants could of course not just include scientists, but also journalists, entrepreneurs, artists, or others from the general local community. In fact, that would probably be extremely enriching. It is perhaps more difficult to reach these people, since they are not part of the same organization. Perhaps they could join later.
If these are free-flowing discussions without a goal per se, how could one effectively structure them so that they are interesting for the the participants. What are some ways to structure the discussion to maximize participation from all members? How does one get to a goal? A first part that tries to define a problem, and then rest of the session to discuss approaches? Do you first need to have a general topic, or can it really just start somehow, without a pre-defined topic? How may people should participate? How often should the group meet? Could the group composition change, or should it be kept largely constant? If the discussion converges on a more specific topic, should a sub-group be formed?
Could this become a movement, could there be app-support? Perhaps if you’re interested in such exchanges, you can register that interest on an app, and then you can receive invitations.
While in-person meetings would probably be best, maybe there is also a very good way to do this online, where then people from different places could participate.
These have mostly been questions. I don’t have answers, I am just mostly curious. Maybe you do? Does anything like this exist at your university/ institution/ company? I would be intensely curious to learn about any experiences you may have had with something like an academic ‘salon’, how they worked or maybe also why they didn’t work out; please share in the comments!
that's interesting discussion. I am trying now with one beardist and art curator to make some of this kind project on the edge of science and art. I hope we will get something to show.
Sign me up :)