Social Innovation Camp was a rollercoaster! From the very first evening, when the delegates gathered at the Young Foundation in London, there was a perceptible buzz in the air…

The crowd was a heady mixture of web developers, designers, entrepreneurs and people with all sorts of skills. Although coming from different angles, everyone seemed to have a driven passion for using the web to help solve the problems of society.

The Projects

Six projects had been chosen for the weekend, from over 70 submitted ideas (one of which was my dream for “Social Compost)”:

• Barcode Wikipedia – community-driven database of product information
• Enabled by Design – product advice and support for disabilities
• On The Up – personal development tracking for youth
• Rate Your Prison – accountability for prison visiting conditions
• Rate My CV – support for marginalised workers
• Stuff Share – community network for sharing possessions

Stuff Share

I was working in the Stuff Share team. Our goal was to create a website to facilitate the sharing of possessions – tents, books, power drills, baby gear and all those other bits and pieces we accumulate but hardly ever use – in order to reduce consumerism and increase community. The idea was that pre-existing trusted groups, such as one’s workplace, neighbourhood, hobby group or children’s school, could become a hub for sharing.

We identified a number of hurdles that we’d need to overcome in order to create a successful site – such as how to support trusted relationships between users and how to get people starting to share as easily as possible. The strict time limit dictated that we decide which set of problems to tackle for the first release – and then the build was on…

The Climax

We worked hard until 2pm Sunday, when each group had to give a presentation of their project. A panel of judges then awarded prizes of £2000 and £1000 to help take the most impressive projects forward.

Here is Tom and Seth‘s presentation of the Stuff Share project:

(video permalink)

The Prizes

Alas, Stuff Share wasn’t a prizewinner, but big congratulations to Enabled By Design, who came first, and Rate Your Prison, who were runners-up.

Work is continuing on Stuff Share and is hoped to be launched at stuffshare.com some time in the near future…

We were happy to have attended Tuesday’s launch of UnLtdWorld, a social networking site for social entrepreneurs.

UnLtdWorld brings together people and businesses who make a difference in the world and connects them with potential co-workers and supporters. It aims to be a hot-bed for collaboration, the sharing of services and the pooling of resources.

At the core of the UnLtdWorld site is the social networking software Elgg – an open source platform that attempts to remain flexible and unassuming within the differing needs of social networking projects.

There is also an initiative to build a comprehensive API into the UnLtdWorld data, which will allow third-party developers to access information about social entrepreneurs and their services. This data could be combined with other kinds of data, for example, to marry the needs of a local community with UnLtdWorld members that may be able to assist.

You can find me, Madhava and Dharmafly on the UnLtdWorld site. Come and say hi…