What happens when you get a bunch of software developers and social innovators together, give them a set of social problems and only 48 hours to solve them?
Social Innovation Camps are about finding out.
Every six months these weekend-long events bring together some of the best of the UK and Europe’s web developers and designers with people at the sharp end of social problems.
The Social Innovation Camp takes a set of ideas for web-based tools that will create social change and develops them over one weekend. Working with a diverse range of people, participants organise themselves into teams and help make a back-of-the-envelop idea into a working prototype – complete with working software – in just two days.
Over 300 ideas were submitted to Social Innovation Camps in the UK in 2008 and 2009 and 20 prototypes were built. At least five of these have secured further funding or investment – two of which have incorporated as companies with their own employees. Social Innovation Camps are now spreading to other parts of the world.