Disclosures

Today I attended Disclosures, a project by Gasworks.

Disclosures seeks to scrutinise the notion of openness across fields of cultural production at large. A first reading of openness refers to situations in which the viewer, reader, listener or internet user becomes emancipated through egalitarian participation, collaborative authorship and/or the breaking down of hierarchical and social boundaries.

I didn' attend Saurday's presentations with seminars on Node.London and Open Congress. Instead I opted to attend sessions on 'Blue Skies, Grey Skies' to explore the limitations of FLOSS as a tool and as a model. I went to the morning seminar, presented by Toni Prug from LSE and attended a Resource Camp held by Critical Practice with the aim of drafting a set of guidelines for open budgeting.

The ResourceCamp will explore the ‘elephant in the room’ of open organisations and art institutions – the management of money and more generally the administration of resources. Through presentations, discussions and dissent we aim to draft ‘open’ budget guidelines for all.

The camp was similar to an open space technology event with participants setting the agenda for the sessions. Together the group explored issues concerning 'Opportunity Cost', generosity, exploitation, transitional practice, case studies of open budget participation, definition and balance of resources, issues of defining value.

Peter Dunn gave a presentation, providing some pragmatic advice on managing distributed budgets. I supported Peter when he mentioned measuring in-kind income/cost incurred during a project so that a 'real' monetary value is assigned to project budgets. The group concurred that if we gave value and budgeted for in-kind generated income the institutions we work for would be burdened with a heavy debt. Interesting thought ;-)

Jem McKay pointed out a useful report: open budget evaluation by Harrow Council. This sites Influence, Information, Diliberation, Feedback, Independence as the upholding principles for open budgeting. With this in hand Jem and Peter offered a a much needed practical view point.

A mailing list will be started with the aim of distributing notes from the days discussion, and carry it on - perhaps towards the stated aim of creating the guidelines. Lets see.

I just found an interesting report at infonomics.nl looks like it's also worth a read in the perspective of working with transactions that are not traded in monetary system.