Social Innovation Camp II, Dec 2008 from The People Speak on Vimeo.

The People Speak joined us for December’s second ever Social Innovation Camp to capture all the action on camera. And now they’ve edited everything into a fantastic fifteen minutes of drama.

And if you want to see the original Social Innovation Camp film from our first weekend in April 2008, you can watch it here. Many thanks to Mikey, Hektor and Rick for all their hard work!

We had over 70 people join us for this month’s Social Innovation Meetup on Wednesday.

Following in the footsteps of Bettr – an unconference alternative to the technology in education trade event BETT – we wanted to think about how the web can re-organise education.

So this month, we heard first from Chris Thorpe who runs the MySpace developer platform. With its 110 million-plus users worldwide, Chris told us how MySpace could be used to provide its young, digitally-savvy generation of users with new ways of learning. Next up Alice Phillips, from the Young Foundation’s Learning Launchpad, set a challenge to the audience: how could you use digital tools to bridge the divide between parents and teachers – something that’s really important to a child’s experience of school and education.

The next Social Innovation Meetup will be on the 19th February at Nesta and you can sign up to come along here. 

We’ll be holding our first Social Innovation Meetup of the year next Wednesday, January 14th, over at the think-tank Demos, by London Bridge.

Our monthly Social Innovation Meetups are informal evenings for geeks and social innovators to share knowledge and skills. They’re a space for the Social Innovation Camp community to hang out, help each other and share a little wisdom – whilst enjoying some free beer and good company.

This month, we’re really looking forward to partnering with Bettr, an unconference for education-focused, web-based start-ups and others interested in using technology in education. Bettr is being held to coincide with (and providing something a little bit different to) a large technology-in-education trade conference, BETT, running in London next week. Bettr will be taking place during the day on Wednesday 14th January and we’re looking forward to inviting everyone participating along for our Meetup in the evening.

So at this month’s Social Innovation Meetup we want to ask how you can use the web to re-organise education – from the grassroots up. We’ve got our usual two Show and Tell speakers lined up to help us and there’ll be a space for you to share what you’re working on and introduce yourselves if you’re new – whether education is your thing or not. And then for a free drink and a chat for the rest of the evening.

After December’s Social Innovation Camp weekend, we’re really looking forward to seeing some familiar faces, as well as some new people. We’ll be kicking off at 6.30pm on Wednesday 14th January. Sign up to come along here and you can find out how to find us at Demos, 136 Tooley Street, by London Bridge, here.

UPDATE: Many thanks to the lovely people at Delib who are kindly sponsoring the drinks for this month’s Social Innovation Meetup.