Can social innovators join up, innovatively?

There’s a growing buzz in London around tech-enabled social innovation, with its champions circulating at events like UKGovwebBarcamp, Social Innovation Camp, Tuttle Club, and last night at minibar.

The buzz should heighten on July 2-3 at a major 4Good event sponsored by Channel4 and others. More details promised soon. There’s also (read more...)

A movie studio in your pocket

As I researched (in a haphazard sort of way) the ins and outs of videoblogging I came across Rupert Howe at twittervlog, admired his use of a mobile phone, and noted with some anxiety that he was soon (read more...)

More Organisation Lite

Organisation lite over coffee and croissants

The Tuttle Club gathered again yesterday in the rather smart OneAlfredPlace, and a group of us considered the realities of organising without (much) organisation.

Tuttle organiser Lloyd Davis and and club member Steve Moore had prevailed on Rob Shreeve, who runs OneAlfredPlace, to turn over (read more...)

Tracking the buzz online

My creative friends over at Delib have launched a tool to track online conversation, and used it to give us insights into the buzz around Boris, Ken and others in London Mayoral election. You can read the analysis behind the diagram here – Boris is (read more...)

Could the BBC co-design its new community services?

Here’s a try-out for socialreporter as collaboration co-ordinator, on the lines of “wouldn’t it be a good idea if…” rather than “here’s a problem, let’s stir things up”.
I wonder if it’s possible to organise a get-together between people interested in how new BBC services may support social action, local democracy and online (read more...)

Social media, creativity, and open collaboration

The University of Westminster asked me a while back to contribute to their Creative Juice seminar yesterday, and I was in a slight panic last week when I realised I needed to talk to a mix of designers, freelances and academics about social media and creativity.
I didn’t really have much fresh to (read more...)

Inovation needs big and small players

The Collaborate|2008 event last week gave me a chance to catch up again with John Craig, who is director of the Innovation Exchange, charged with helping nonprofits improve their capacity to deliver public services. We last met a couple of months back over wine and pizzas. I wanted to find out about the Ideas Festivals the Exchange is planning, and also what insights John had picked in his work so far.

He explained among other things that he wanted to dispel two misconceptions: the first that innovators were often heroic individuals working in isolation; the second that organisations were incapable of innovation without substantial resources. In fact innovation in the third sector was likely to be successful through partnerships between smaller innovators and larger organisations who could scale up their ideas.

John blogs Collaborate|2008 here.

Ruralnet shows how to do distributed communities

A few months back my friends at Ruralnetonline started an experiment in re-inventing their business in the open, through a co-design process online and in workshops.

The highlight of last week’s Collaborate|2008 event was a demonstration of the results: a very smart network of linked (read more...)

E-Democracy Centre “surprised by speculation”

The International Centre for Local e-Democracy has been subject to some discussion on blogs and mailing lists, started by Professor Stephen Coleman questioning what we get for our money.

Is it new research and understanding? Or new tools to be used by governments? Or critical debate about the merits and values of e-participation? (read more...)