Kicking off The Format Project

I am very pleased that The Format Project, our new research project at Kitchen Budapest, is kicking off!

Several of my former projects, PechaKucha Night Budapest, The McLuhan Wikisprint and Subjective Atlas of Hungary, adopted existing concepts or 'formats'. Therefore I started to think of the role and adaptability of such formats in our increasingly networked, contemporary society.

The Format Project aims to collect, study and present a selection of collaborative formats, models and practices. It explores widely adopted practices of knowledge production, sharing and decision making. The project examines how these formats were born, how they work and how they help practices succeed and spread virally beyond their original contexts, locations and communities.

In the project we will study 40 cases from around the world. The cases will be presented on a website with text descriptions, interviews, visualizations and photos. Next to that we will shoot a short documentary movie featuring founders, initiators, adopters and users of specific formats as well as experts of the related fields.

The preliminary list of the formats to be featured in our study includes:

App Store, Airbnb, Couchsurfing, Kickstarter, Flattr, RSVP, Binary decision making, Kittenwar, User rating, Upvoting, Restaurant Day, Critical Mass, Complaints Choir, Flash Mob, Café Philosophique, BYOB, BarCamp, Likemind, Galaxy Zoo, The Johnny Cash Project, ReCAPTCHA, Fallen Fruit, Crowdmap, Atlas of Vacancy, Open Street Map, Github, Wiki, Stack Overflow, Book sprint, Instructables, Etherpad, NaNoWriMo, Startup Weekend, Fablab, Coworking space, Media Lab, Hackerspace,  Subjective Atlas, Use-It, TEDx, Meetup, Dorkbot, PechaKucha Night, CreativeMornings, Lange Nacht der Museen, One City One Book.

Want to read more? Check the project page here.