We held our third Social Innovation Camp last weekend at the Saltire Centre, Glasgow and it was a lot of fun.

Over 60 people joined us from a Friday evening to a Sunday afternoon to help make six back-of-the-envelope ideas for web tools to change the world into real social start-ups complete with working software - all in under 48 hours.

Kicking off on Friday evening, we were joined by a talented bunch of software developers, designers, social needs experts and those with business, marketing and legal skills. We got them talking and kept them fed and watered, then asked them to split into groups and work out how to make our six ideas a reality.

We gave our teams a couple of things to think about (hacking together some software, deciding how they’d sustain the tool and how they’d get people to use it) but how and what they chose to develop was up to them.

All they had to do was be ready to pitch what they’d built at our Show and Tell finale by 2pm on Sunday in front of a audience of friends, family and fellow Campers. Our judges came along to award some prizes to the teams who’d shown most potential in the weekend.

The ideas

And here’s what they made:

MyPolice is a tool for members of the public to give feedback, express thanks or tell their story about their experiences with the police and offer suggestions for improvements. It’s Patient Opinion for the police service.

The team tackled a really tricky subject brilliantly, produced some fantastic design work and began to develop a functioning site. All of which earned them a well-deserved first prize.

Check out what it looks like now and their team blog.

Weedayout.com is a site which pinpoints accessible toilets and shows the facilities they have. And if you know where a loo should be, you can add a gap to the map too.

They had a small-but-perfectly-formed group of five with a one-man development team who built an impressive fully-functioning site in less than two days: you can upload details about a toilet, highlight the facilities it has, as well as search for your nearest accessible loo.

The team said they’d like to develop the idea further by using the site to highlight the public places and tourist attractions which don’t provide accessible toilets, as well as make it easy for individuals who have their own specialised facilities to open up their homes for others to use.

Impressed by how much the small team had achieved in such a short space of time and the real need for a tool like Weedayout.com, the judges awarded the idea a strong runner-up.

AngelFish is a platform for individuals to provide small loans, in-kind support and advice to small businesses by creating an online/offline community of ‘makers’ (those receiving advice and financial backing) and ’supporters’ (those who are giving advice or financial backing).

The team focused on developing a detailed, well thought-through business plan and carefully mapped out the process by which AngelFish would function. Their presentation and design will be up online shortly.

Citipedia is a platform for locating, tagging and commenting on future use of public space. Whether it’s derelict ground, an run-down park or vacant building, Citipedia lets you post suggestions for how to make the most of our under-used public space. But it’s not just about adding your comments: using SimCity-like tools you can design what the space should look like as well.

Alongside producing some stunning design work, the Citipedia team were responsible for building Social Innovation Camp’s first-ever Flash hack which was received with a round of applause from the Show and Tell audience: you can drag-and-drop trees, paving or even playground equipment onto a Google map to create your own piece of urban planning - and it’ll add up the cost of your design as you go.

Flock Local matches volunteers with local activities.

Volunteering often requires an ongoing commitment. But many people just don’t have the time to commit to a long-term project. And sometimes there is an urgent need for volunteers and no easy way to get organized. Some activities take forever to complete. Flock Local was created to fill these gaps. The site matches short-term volunteers with one-off activities. From cleaning a garage to painting a shelter, Flock Local makes it easy for you to get involved and help make a quick difference in your community.

With some outstanding project management skills, this huge team of 16 people not only built a functioning and beautifully designed site, but organised a test-run ‘flock’ on Sunday morning. All of which earned them an honourable mention from the judges.

Hitch ‘n Bitch is all about making buses easier to use. On the ‘hitch’ portion of the site you input where you’re going from together with the route you want to take and the site tells you when your next bus is due in real time. The ‘bitch’ section of the site asks you where you’re traveling to and lets you post feedback about the bus - whether it’s late, over-crowded or unclean. The idea is that this content could be fed back to the transport provider to make the service better.

It’s a great hack that powerfully demonstrates the potential of releasing this kind of data openly for developers to get their teeth into. The site is using a bus company’s data for Edinburgh at the moment, but has been promised access to information which will allow the team to extend the service shortly.

The winning MyPolice team

So what next?

Once again, we were stunned by the sheer energy and generosity of everyone who joined us for our third Social Innovation Camp - as well as their talent, skills and the quality of what they created in such a short space of time.

Social Innovation Camp is partly an experiment to see whether we can get some new ideas off the ground: we’ll be supporting the teams to take their projects to the next stage in the coming months if they so wish and we’re looking forward to seeing how their ideas develop.

But the weekend is also about demonstrating the power of putting different people in a room together and giving them some space to do their thing. We hope Social Innovation Camp shows that if you have a little faith in people, they can do amazing things for all sorts of different reasons - whether it’s to solve a problem; to do something that’s worth doing or because it’s simply really good fun.

The great thing about the online world is that it makes all of this possible: the web helps people to organise things better for themselves. We don’t have to complain about stuff that needs fixing or rely solely on government/companies/charities to do it for us.

Instead, we want to give people the connections and skills they need to start up their own thing and mend something that’s broken.

And as a result of coming to Social Innovation Camp, we hope more people will get excited and make things that make stuff better.

(You can read all about our work in Scotland over on the special Social Innovation Camp Scotland part of our site: http://scotland.sicamp.org.)

Social Innovation Camp Scotland 2009 came and went this weekend.

And the winners are….

Honourable mention: FlockLocal (formerly Social Chain Gangs)

Runner-up: Wee Day Out (formerly Ex-Changing Places)

Winner: MyPolice (MyPoliceService)

A full write up to follow when we’ve recovered.

Congratulations to our winners and a huge thanks to everyone who’s been involved!

It’s been three months in the making, but finally our third Social Innovation Camp is just two weeks away.

And this time, we’ll be in Glasgow.

From our eight-week call for ideas, we’ve chosen six back-of-the-envelope projects we’re going to be helping to make a reality in just one weekend from 6.30pm, Friday 19th June to 4pm, Sunday 21st June at the Saltire Centre, Cowcaddens Road, Glasgow.

So now we’re looking for people who want to sign up, get involved and help build some web-based tools that can change something that matters.

Are you a great software developer or designer? Or perhaps you have business, fund raising, legal or other expertise that could be needed to get an idea off the ground? Or maybe you have experience of one of the social problems we’re trying to solve?

Want to come and help build one of these ideas?

We’re looking for all sorts of talented people to get involved and come for the Social Innovation Camp weekend: right through from people who can hack together some software to those who can work out how to sustain an idea in the long-run.

You don’t have to be based in Scotland - or even in the UK - to take part, as long as you can get yourself to the Saltire Centre, Glasgow from the weekend 19th-21st June 2009. You can come along for all or part of the weekend and you can help on one particular idea or help out several different projects - just let us know when you’d like to come and how you can help by signing up here.

Places are filling up: we’ve not got a huge amount of space and we need a balance of skills and expertise to make this work, so please don’t be disappointed if we can’t fit you in this time around.

You can read about how the Social Innovation Camp works here, find out more about the weekend here or check out what will be happening when here. And you can watch previous Social Innovation Campers talk about why they came and what it was like here.

So if you fancy a weekend of good company, interesting ideas and making exciting things, sign up to get involved!

We had an amazing 133 ideas submitted to come to Social Innovation Camp Scotland June 09.

On Friday, the judges gathered to deliver their verdict and the results are in!

So the ideas we’re going to be helping to make a reality at the Social Innovation Camp weekend, 19th-21st June at the Saltire Centre, Glasgow are:

Citipedia

Google maps meets Sim City. Citipedia is an online public town planning tool: Derelict sites earmarked for development will be highlighted and made open to the public to suggest how they could be developed or to review proposed developments.

Community Investors Club

This idea helps people to form clubs to invest regular sums in small and micro-businesses in their own community. The judges thought this was hugely topical in the current recession and suggested that, rather than investment, it might focus on loans. Loans would be legally less complex than investment and there are already similar models to learn from - it’s a kind of hyper-local Zopa or Kiva. It’s also drawing on old ideas which provide an alternative to banking, such as credit unions. Community Investors Club was originally a closed submission, but it’s now up our site with all the others here.

Ex-Changing Places

A user-generated map of all public loos - complete with data about how accessible they are - and a way for individuals (or perhaps companies, shops and restaurants) to make their toilets available and accessible to anyone. The judges felt this identified a really important need. There have been a number of offline campaigns in recent years for better public toilets - especially those that are accessible. Scope ran a ‘Free to pee’ campaign in 2004, the British Toilet Association exists to campaign for better public loos and now Changing Places is pushing for better facilities for those with profound and multiple learning disabilities. However, there’s currently no searchable map of public loos in the UK. There is a great example from Australia, but nothing similar exists here. The Social Innovation Camp judges wanted to see the Ex-Changing Places address this need.

Fix the Freakin Buses

The very simple idea behind this is to put all the bus timetable data into a searchable, accessible form and plot it on a map. It got the judges excited, however, because they saw its potential as a campaigning tool to highlight the places where’s a real demand for transport but no provision - a particular problem in rural areas. So the next stage of Fix the Freakin Buses might be to get users uploading the journeys they make but are poorly served by existing transport links to surface demand for new routes. Finally, the idea could incorporate ways for people to solve the transport problem themselves through using tools like Liftshare.

MyPoliceService

We’ve sneakily changed the name of this one to explain the idea a little better - hopefully you can come up with an improved version at the Camp! It was originally entered as ‘My Public Service‘, but the idea is to create a feedback tool for the police service. The judges thought this had the potential to do what Patient Opinion is doing in the NHS for the police. And there’s an American version already called RateMyCop.com.

Social Chain Gangs

Flash-mobbing with a purpose. This tools aims to get a bunch of people together to get something done, whether it’s cleaning up a local park, helping your neighbours move in, a quick spot of gardening - fast.

Now all we need is the people who’d like to help.

If you fancy having a go at building any of these six ideas - whether you’re a coder, a designer or you now about the need - you can sign up here. And you can find out more about how the weekend works here.

But be warned: places are limited. Please don’t be disappointed if we can’t fit you in this time around.

Read more »

It’s a big week for the Social Innovation Camp: not only does our call for ideas close for Social Innovation Camp Scotland, but we’ve gone global!

The Social Innovation Camp was first created and run in the UK. Now it’s springing up all over the place; other people are taking the idea and running their own thing.

The Centre for Social Innovation is bringing it to New Zealand later on this year, and the Central and Eastern Europe Civil Society Forum are planning theirs for September 2009. You can find more of the details here.

We reckon that each Social Innovation Camp will be slightly different, but its DNA is always the same.

We hope Social Innovation Camp shows that if you have a little faith in people, they can do amazing things for all sorts of different reasons - whether it’s to solve a problem; to do something that’s worth doing or because it’s simply really good fun.

We believe the incredible thing about the web and new technologies is that they make all of this possible by helping people to organise things better for themselves. And Social Innovation Camp is all about making that a practical reality by helping people create the next generation of social start-ups.

But our really grand vision is that the Social Innovation Camp might play a small part in creating a big change: a shift where people don’t just complain about stuff that needs fixing or rely on government/companies/charities to do it for them. Instead, we want to give people the confidence, connections and skills they need to start up their own thing and mend something that’s broken.

So, wherever you are in the world, stop whinging, get excited and fix stuff.

You’ve got just five days left to send us your idea for a web tool to change the world: our competition to get your idea developed at Social Innovation Camp Scotland closes at midnight on Friday 22nd May.

Check out all the details on the Scottish part of our site.

We’re looking for the best ideas that use the web to tackle stuff that matters.

Over one weekend from 19th-21st June 2009, we’re bringing together some of the best of the UK’s software developers and designers with those at the sharp end of social problems at the Saltire Centre, Glasgow.

Their mission will be to turn six back-of-the-envelope ideas that could change the world into social start-ups in under 48 hours - complete with working software.

You’ve got until this Friday to send us your idea that uses the web to create social change and you could be joining 100 other participants to try and make it a reality.

Find out how it works here and check out all the details of how to enter your idea here.

Need some inspiration? Check out some of our suggestions to get you thinking here and or read about some of the ideas that have already been submitted here.

There’s only one thing that every idea must have in common: that it uses the web to help people do something for themselves.

So get thinking and good luck!

UPDATED - UnLtd award up for grabs for Social Innovation Camp Scotland winner!

Read more »

There are just four weeks to go until our call for ideas closes for Social Innovation Camp Scotland.

You’ve got until Friday 22nd May 2009 to send us your idea that uses the web to create social change and you could be joining 100 other participants to try and make it a reality.

And this week, we’re really pleased to be able to announce some of our prizes for the weekend.

At the end of each Social Innovation Camp, we run a Show and Tell where everyone pitches what they’ve built in the weekend.

We’ll be awarding some prizes to the ideas we think have shown most promise. And this time around, we’re lucky enough to be supported by our partners Firstport, IfLooksCouldKill and O Street.

Read more »

Last week, we were in Edinburgh and Glasgow explaining how Social Innovation Camp works, meeting some great people and rooting out promising ideas.

It was a packed couple of days: Edinburgh Web Design and Development Meetup on Wednesday, breakfast in Glasgow on the Thursday and back to Edinburgh for another breakfast (we like our early mornings) on the Friday.

We met some fantastic people: from Glaswegian developers and Edinburgh Girl Geeks to those working to create social change. Huge thanks to all the people who gave us their time - and let us hijack their events.

And we’re back again next week - this time in Dundee. We’ll be holding our own Meetup from 7pm on Wednesday 29th April and you can sign up to come along here.

Once again, if you’re running an event you think we should be at, or you reckon we should come and have a chat with the people you work with, or even if you’re a bunch of like-minded friends who are interested in getting involved, we’d love to hear from you - drop us a line.

Remember: our call for ideas runs until the 22nd May 2009. Send us your idea that uses the web to create social change and you could be joining 100 other Social Innovation Campers to try and make it a reality.

Check out all the details on our Social Innovation Camp Scotland site.

Our next Social Innovation Meetup is a week today in London.

This month, we’re going to be thinking about the economy.

But - for a change - it’s not going to be all doom and gloom.

We reckon the recession could be an opportunity; it’s a great time for new ideas and making new stuff.

Are there ways we’ll need to adapt to spending less cash as jobs are lost? Will there be more Freecycling? A bigger market for OwnGrown? Or will different ways of borrowing and lending money be increasingly important? And how can we help people who’ve lost their jobs? What are the ways we’ll be finding new careers and ways of working?

It’s going to be an evening of brainstorming new ideas, coming up with solutions, getting excited and making stuff.

Join us for beer and some good conversation on April 22nd: You can sign up to come along here.

(Brilliant graphic thanks to Matt Jones)

Interested in getting involved with our next Social Innovation Camp? Want to find out more? Think you’ve got an idea?

Come and say hello!

We’re going on tour during our call for ideas: explaining how Social Innovation Camp works, rooting out the best ideas and meeting new people.

So here’s where we’ll be this week - we’d love to see you there:

• 15th April, 7pm, Edinburgh Web design and development meetup, Minto House Edinburgh
• 16th April, we’re running our own little breakfast, 9-10am, Tinder Box, Unit 4 Ingram Street - rsvp to Katherine if you want to come.
• 16th April, 12.30-1.30pm, Glasgow Coffee Meet, 20-28 Renfield Lane Glasgow
  
• 17th April, 8am, Edinburgh Coffee Morning, 103 George street Edinburgh

If you’re planning ahead, we’ll be in Dundee from 28th-30th April, then back in Edinburgh and Glasgow from 13th-15th May - further details to follow.

If you’re running an event you think we should be at, or you reckon we should come and have a chat with the people you work with, or even if you’re a bunch of like-minded friends who are interested in getting involved, we’d love to hear from you - drop us a line.

Remember: our call for ideas runs until the 22nd May 2009. Send us your idea that uses the web to create social change and you could be joining 100 other Social Innovation Campers to try and make it a reality.

Check out all the details on our Social Innovation Camp Scotland site.