Leaflet presenting the #Labso (Laboratory of Social Technologies) for identifying, amplifying and refracting participants' strengths by leveraging their social network.

1. Laboratory of Social
Technologies
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful,
committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's
the only thing that ever has.”
Margaret Mead
For more information, please contact
Nicolas STAMPF or Alexis NICOLAS
Nicolas.Stampf@labso.org
alexis8nicolas@yahoo.com
Creative Commons License
The Laboratory of Social Technologies by Alexis Nicolas and Nicolas Stampf,
is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Images © GapingVoid.com
QUAD v1.1 EN

2. Presentation
A Laboratory of Social Technology
(#Labso) is a place of individual
transformation. We come with our own
resources, strengths, questions and
experience to benefit from the power of
social technologies and use collective
intelligence to co-create solutions. In a
Labso, everybody’s a student and teacher
at the same time; a facilitator is present to
allow the collective to express all its
potential.
Instead of transferring knowledge, a Labso
allows to :
Connect the diversity of individual experiences;
Select the most relevant ones with respect to the issue under
consideration;
Co-Create solutions adapted to each participants;
Reflect on our own strengths, alone or in group.
Fablab of social technologies
The name of the Labso is inspired by the fablab movement that provides places to
collectively create technology-based products. Openness is what characterizes fablabs.
Labsos promote this openness by releasing all its sources and social networking based
facilitation techniques (under a “Free Culture” type of license).
Leveraging Legacy
The Labso is based on strength-based
approaches to change such as Appreciative
Inquiry and Solution Focus aimed at
identifying the best in participants to co-
construct a more attractive vision of the
future and, from that vision, find what’s
already happening to do more of it. Its
organization is derived from Positive
Deviance as far as discovery and co-creation
is concerned.

3. A generative approach
This table compares classical education
and training with that of the Labso.
The added value of a Labso resides in:
Peer-based co-construction
Peer-based prediction of
success
Social networking
Collective challenge
Mutual support
Experiential learning
Typical operations
A typical Labso session goes through four main steps
1. Connect: connect participants between each other and reveal all their ideas and
experiences on the chosen theme for the Labso.
2. Select: inquire into participants’ stories and their successes and personal
strengths with respect to the theme. Select which ones are to be further
investigated and transformed in pair work. Experiment in the protected space of
the laboratory.
3. Effect: experiment one’s own ideas in the real life, outside the lab, in small
groups.
These groups are made of people who share a relation and common goal. Each
member’s action allow the group to encourage itself, learn together and co-
construct innovative solutions to face today’s complexity of the world.
4. Reflect together, share and anchor learnings out of experiences.
Classical Labso
Focused on pre-
existing knowledge
Focused on co-
creation
Knowledge is
objective
Knwoledge is
subjective
Structured analysis
and controlled
framework
Generative
approach
Planned solutions Emerging solutions
Directed
Facilitated/coordin
ated
Negative feelings,
logic
Positive energy,
relations

4. Use cases
A Labso can be adapted to four typical usages:
1. Internal Topical sessions
2. Shared Topical sessions
3. Internal Open sessions
4. Shared Open sessions
Internal topical sessions
Faced with a specific problem, you want to leverage your employees’ potential through
a Labso. In this configuration, a Labso is organized inside your premises.
Participants, all from the same organization, will co-construct their own solutions to
the issue they bring in the lab, and experiment in its protected space before replicating
for real inside your organization.
Examples: “training” on how to use social networks, management of complexity.
Length: 2 to 3 sessions of 2 to 4 hours, depending on topics.
Shared Topical sessions
Once your leaders have been identified, you want to appreciate and develop their
talents in a lab external to your organization to benefit from the richness of exchanges
with other cultures.
The topic is defined in advance and the Labso facilitators will prepare the sessions to
ensure each participant will benefit from the rich diversity of others to construct
his/her own answer to the issue specific to her own context.
Examples: develop a “2.0 management culture”, delegate to well informed employees,
delegate using social and network tools.
Internal Open sessions
In this mode the Labso, facilitated in your own premises, is a regular meeting place
where the participants’ strengths are put in common in service of collective intelligence
in order to create a safe environment to liberate your organization potential for
innovation.
Recommended periodicity: ½ day / month.
Shared Open session
In this mode, you offer your collaborators an unlimited access to a shared laboratory
where they’ll enrich themselves out of the exchanges with other participants from other
cultures and domains.
Recommended periodicity: ½ day / month.