Meeting at a swiss think tank
Posted: September 10th, 2005 | 2 Comments »I had a refreshing meeting with people from Avenir Suisse (a swiss think tank working on the social and economic development of Switzerland). The point was to find and motivate some speaker for our january conference about Internet/Technologies. This lead us to an interesting discussion about innoavtion, creative class, consumer-based economy, ‘consommacteur’ (a french neologism that express the fact that consumer are now ‘actor’ of the system, e.g. for Amazon.com in which people’s review give more and more power to the platform).
Avenir Suisse defines relevant issues at an early point in time and shows where action is required. The think tank adds new impulses to the discourse and offers possible solutions. Avenir Suisse defines relevant issues at an early point in time and shows where action is required. The think tank adds new impulses to the discourse and offers possible solutions. In order to carry out this task Avenir Suisse cooperates with scientific institutes inside and outside Switzerland, employs experts to carry out specific investigations and organises conferences and debates on various topics. By communicating the scientific results in clear cut terms to a larger public Avenir Suisse enhances the circulation of relevant facts and stimulates the public discourse.
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Avenir Suisse is independent in its work. The sponsoring companies have fixed their financial contributions to the think tank ahead, and the scientific counsel watches over the independence of the output and guarantees the quality of the products. Avenir Suisse does not oppose or back any political party in Switzerland, but is open towards all forces that constructively work on the issues of the future.
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The operative team of Avenir Suisse is made up of academic project managers from the fields of economics, sociology and political science, supported by communication experts.
Why do I blog this? the meeting was interesting, I often have relevant discussion with people from think tank; moreover it’s a good node in the swiss network.
I love the neologism “consommacteur” – it sounds good and rather profound, probably because it’s in French. I’ve been trying to describe such an ‘actor’ for a while – in the sense of it being someone who is it once a producer/consumer as well as an enabler of ‘systems’ developing through their activity [borrowing a lot from the work of Latour] in web2.0 type activity.
I really like the concept too, this is derived from the word ‘consommer’ (french for consuming products/services) and ‘acteur’ (actor, someone who do something). The idea is that companies nowadays benefit from their consumers: Amazon is doing good partly because there are plenty of reviews on the website; plus this is related to the ‘Do It Yourself’ things (hacking stuff like the O’Reilly MAKE magazines), the french word ‘bricolage’ also applies to this. Personnaly I think the DIY trend is huge and interesting, that’s great to see that the punk subsculture is still alive in today’s socioculture…