The idea behind Social Innovation Camp was seeded in the summer of 2007 when Christian Ahlert, Dan McQuillan and Paul Miller met at a workshop on the ‘social web’ run by the UK Government’s Office of the Third Sector.

Similarly inspired by ideas put forward by the likes of Clay Shirky and Charles Leadbeater, the three found common ground in thinking that there was scope to explore the social potential of the web in a more practical way.

The technology world was already well-versed in using a little practical experimentation to learn. The success of the Barcamp unconferences where people get together to share skills and knowledge and the Hackday model where software developers code for 24 hours straight both provided early inspiration for Social Innovation Camp. And there is already an organisation with similar goals in the US: NetSquared, whose mission is to help non-profits use the web, which it does primarily through a programme of events.

So Christian, Dan and Paul raised some cash and in January 2008, Anna Maybank joined the team. From there, the original idea behind Social Innovation Camp slowly developed and in April 2008, the first event was launched with backing from NESTA, the Young Foundation, the Office of the Third Sector, the Guardian and Yahoo!

To cut a very long story short, everyone had a good time and it was a great success. So we decided we’d do it all again.

With a little help from some friends we got back on the road, running more weekend Camps alongside a programme of monthly events – Social Innovation Meetups.

Although older and wiser than before, Social Innovation Camp continues to evolve as we learn and experiment in the space where society and technology collide.

Find out what happens at Social Innovation Camp here.