Social Innovation Camp: Changing the World One Weekend at a Time
December 12, 2008
Last weekend in London, I witnessed what I would call a series of miracles that soon could be a part of our everyday waking lives, or at least the lives of my friends in the United Kingdom. The Social Innovation Camp hosted by The Young Foundation was a barcamp/startup weekend sort of event for social entrepreneurs, people looking to do good and make enough money to be sustainable. If what I saw was as indicative of the scene in London as I believe, this is perhaps one of the major epicenters of transforming the world into the better place that we all know it can be. There is a really great write up of the whole weekend over on the SI Camp Blog.
Besides meeting tons of brilliant people like, I learned a lot about how to facilitate these sorts of events, how to empower better team collaboration and the deep seated desire that so many people the world over have to engage in what I call The Noble Pursuit. I also confirmed that London is still one of the best cities in the world, and perhaps the only other city I would actually live in other than San Francisco.
I hope to work with a foundation or two in the Bay Area, along with my AdHocnium colleague JD Lasica to bring this sort of event to my home soon. We are working on several great ideas I hope to tell you all about very soon that is related to our work with AdHocnium and JD’s work on Media Innovation Camp.
As I sat there last Sunday afternoon, I was impressed by the final presentations of the seven social startups created oer the weekend. Each one progressed in dramatic ways from where they were at the prior Friday night when things got underway. I personally had a chance to sit in on parts of the discussions on almost all of them and contribute little bits here and there, in an advisory sort of role. As an outsider, I didn’t want to get too deep, but I did want to be a ‘useful visitor’, which is actually the team I spent the most time with and hopefully the one I contributed the most real value to. I hope to continue to advise them over the years ahead to ensure it is successful. It is something that I would surely use, as I suspect you would too.
A full write up on the process and the judging talks further about the prizes. Our Useful Visitor team came in 2nd place behind GoodGym. Their concept is interesting and has potential, but there are some security concerns. The idea is that this service can enable people to do good while running, walking or biking by pairing them up with people who need help, companionship or support. Recruit people staying healthy to run errands for people and just stop by for a visit. Kind of like Big Brothers, but perhaps its more like BigRunners 
Will share some more thoughts on them in the coming days.
The other teams were We-Need, OwnGrown, AccessCity, Carbon Co-Op and PostPost. I will write up something on each of them next week along with some recommendations / advice but you can read more about them, see their presentations and check out the web sites they built by clicking on their names above. In the meantime, I thought I would hand out some of my own awards. This isn’t an attempt to make sure ‘everyone feels like a winner’, especially since I didn’t get to see everyone closely. Rather this is just my appreciation of what I saw as some really great accomplishments that should be recognized.
Awards
- Most Prepared: We-Need
Craig came in with a ton of planning diagrams and ideas - he really understands the problems faced by the people he is trying to help at a deep level and it showed. - Best Research: GoodGym
The team went out during the weekend and interviewed runners as to whether they would use the service… they actually signed up 10+ volunteers! - Best Name Change: OwnGrown
Prior to the weekend, this startup was called Vegsy - clearly, OwnGrown is a multi million dollar brand. - Best Web Site: PostPost
The UI is simple simple, the site looks fantastic. - Best Team: Useful Visitor
Well, this is a bit self-serving, but I really do mean it - with such a big team, to execute as well as we did and work so well together, I am really proud of everyone. - Best Presentation: GoodGym
Ivo Gormley was the epitome of dry British comedy and his presentation was superbly crafted. Bravo. - Best Post Presentation Q&A: Useful Visitor
OK, again a bit of self interest here, but I didn’t see many other people get an applause line for their responses in Q&A so I was impressed… - Most Easily Sustainable: OwnGrown
I agree with the remark of one of the judges, this should be a real business. I think it is perhaps a co-op as well, but it is surely a market. If people don’t pay on the transaction level, they should at least be paid members. Who doesn’t want locally grown produce at a reasonable price? - Best Presentation Stunt: OwnGrown
Towards the end of the presentation, they brought in a huge tray of vegetables because ’someone in the room ordered them’ - Most Needed: We-Need
I can’t overstate this point - we need, We-Need. There are too many people who need help from the system which is unable to connect with them properly. Please support this effort in any way you can. - Most Important / Biggest Impact: Carbon Co-Op
One person can make a difference, but a village of people, working together to change the local energy consumption rates can make a huge difference. - Most Valuable Player(s):The Young Foundation
There are some really great people here doing important work. This would have not happened without them opening their minds, their hearts and their offices - thank you so very much.
All in all, this was one of the most gratifying things in which I have participated in a long time. Big thanks to The Young Foundation, Dan, Kati, Anna and all my new friends for welcoming me into your space this past weekend. Hopefully we can find ways to work together again in the future.
PS - more of my photos from the weekend are available on Flickr.Technorati Tags: sicamp, social innovation camp, barcamp, social entrepreneurs, social startups
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How to turn 3 minutes into answers to your social media burning questions
June 18, 2007
There is a really vibrant social media environment developing in London, and around the United Kingdom in general. To try to get beyond the hype and to capture some of the real issues faced by different parts of our social media community, we prepared an ultra-quick You and Social Media Survey on Survey Monkey (worth looking at if only to see what a great free tool it is!). But rather than keep it to ourselves, it would be great to make this a Social Media Club-wide initiative. So please take 3 minutes which will help the organisers of the local chapters to create opportunities to answer your burning social media questions, and which I’ll share with the rest of the leadership council.
If you are in London on the evening of Thursday 21 June, please join us at the next monthly meet-up where we will be tackling some of the early questions to come out of the survey - all details and registration to attend are here.
By the way, the last survey I sent your way created so much traffic to Internet Business Mastery, they gave the Club a name-check on the most recent podcast.
Sphere: Related ContentHelp! London group need a place to cop a squat: ASAP!
April 16, 2007
We just learned our regular venue in London (Fleishman Hillard) is not available to us for this Thursday, April 19th. Whoops!
Is there another fine business out there willing to open their doors to a crew of 15-20 for a couple of hours Thursday night? If so, please shoot an email to lloyd.davis [at] gmail [dot] com.
Many thanks!
Sphere: Related ContentSMC London goes videoblogging
March 22, 2007
The London experiment with weekly media-making meetups continued this evening with another member getting his first taste of videoblogging. Guy West has been a regular at our discussion groups and kindly recorded some audio at one of the meetings.
We sat in the brand new foyer of the British Film Institute/National Film Theatre which only opened last week and chatted about our social use of the internet. I was showing off a bit pointing the camera in my general direction which results in the people standing behind me being beautifully in focus, but my face (some will no doubt say this is a blessing) is a bit blurry.
No Palme D’or for this one, but at least we had some footage - and it wasn’t just of me! I showed Guy how to transfer from the camera to PC and then do some simple editing tasks and then we topped and tailed it with some titles and credits. We’d stood around for long enough, occasionally getting odd stares from the patrons of the Lesbian & Gay film festival that’s currently running there so I didn’t make Guy watch while we uploaded it to YouTube - he knew how to do that bit anyway.Next week the clocks will have gone forward, we’ll be into British Summer Time, and hopefully it will be a bit warmer for our first Blogwalk.
Watch Lloyd & Guy chat about teh internets in the BFI foyer
Sphere: Related ContentLondon Meetup: Exploiting Sound in Social Media
March 19, 2007
The Social Media Club folk in London got together last Thursday for our monthly discussion group (thanks to Ben & Hayley at Fleishman for putting us up again!), this month led by Michael Spencer and Ronna Porter of Sound Strategies. Michael, formerly a violinist with the LSO and head of education at the Royal Opera House talked us through a brief history of sound and it’s use in marketing before Ronna took a look at what the social media aspects of this stuff might be. Here’s the recording of that first part of the session.
We broke into groups to discuss further - I spoke with Suw, Kevin, Ged and Yutong about the delegation of creativity in 20th Century and how we felt we were reclaiming the right to make music. I was aware of Suw’s bass heritage, but I didn’t realise that Kevin was such a muso - it’s clear that we are going to have to get a Social Media Club band together especially after this joint vocal effort
Michael & Ronna’s presentation
FT Article by David Bowen referenced in Michael’s presentation
Sphere: Related ContentWe’re all hardwired for Music
March 14, 2007
Tomorrow at the London Club, Michael Spencer and I will show you that we are all hardwired for music. It’s in our very heartbeat. Naturally, we want to walk the talk and include appropriate sound effects in the accompanying podcast.
There are several ways to include message-appropriate, cost-effective, and life-giving music and sound in social media. YouTubers record it themselves. The exact mood or effect that you are looking for may be freely available and one link away, if you can find it! SOUNDDOGS.COM would have sold me 63 seconds of ‘pristing feature film quality’ heartbeat for $6.75 from its awsome collection. Turbo Squid made no such claims, but would still have charged a round $5.
In the end, I followed a recommendation from Lars Ploughmann, whom I met last week while we learned how to podcast from the London Club’s usual master of ceremonies, Lloyd Davis. Lars’ friend, Martin Christensen, provided me with several sound effects in easy-to-use MP3 format free gratis - for which I give my thanks.
So where are the results? You’ll have to listen to tomorrow’s podcast to hear them. There’s still time to input your thoughts and questions to make it a truly interactive evening.
Sphere: Related Content
We live in audio-visual age.
March 9, 2007
Guest post by Ronna Porter
But so far, we’ve concentrated most attention on video and visual content, and gained only limited benefits in terms of communication, community and distinctiveness from sound and music when it comes to social media. Yes, podcasting is an audio medium, but how many podcasts out there are truely exploiting sound? Research shows that although 83% of all commercial communication is visual, there is a 65% chance that our mood will change when we hear a new sound (see http://www.brandsense.com). I believe we haven’t even scratched the surface in integrating great sound that supports rather than gets in the way of good communication.
Involved in the Social Media Club since its creation, and an active member of the London group, I’ve offered to drive the debate on the use of sound in social media, and I’d love to include your input:
- Attend or watch-out for content from the next London group meeting on 15 March (see http://www.socialmediaclub.org/events/ for details)
- Email me with your questions, topics you’d like us to discuss, or ideas to share. Are your issues based upon skills, copyright, access to resources, technical know-how …? Does sound matter?
- Comment on some of the posts in the Sound Strategies blog, or email your thoughts on these questions:
- What sticks in your memory? Marketers and communications agencies espouse the importance of music and sound in the promotion of identity and brand. What sounds have stayed with you?
- New thinking: Sound Strategies maintains a large collection of current research articles dealing with the use of sound and how we react with it. We’ll show you ours if you show us yours!
- Cool sounds: Have you heard any examples of the effective use of sound? Where … and why?
- Sound – too much or too little? Technology has provided us with multiple platforms for engaging with sound, but what are the minuses as well as the pluses?
- Look out for and contribute towards an ongoing dialogue in putting the audio into audio-visual!
For those lucky enough to be in Las Vegas – have fun and learn lots!
Sphere: Related ContentSMC London Making Media
March 8, 2007
OK, so my bright idea was a little under-attended last week (yes, I was the only one to turn up) but nevertheless I did one of the things I set out to do which was to make some media.
Tonight we had a 500% increase in the number of attendees and half of the people who came along can be heard in the podcast we made! I met up with Ronna Porter (who’s going to lead our discussion group meeting next week) in the foyer of the National Theatre on London’s South Bank. To show her just how easy making a podcast could be, I set up my gear and she set up the gear that she’d borrowed for the night and off we went. We talked a lot about the use of sound and music in advertising and PR and my views on podcasting. A little way in, we were joined by Lars Plougmann, whose contribution, you’ll hear, was repeatedly interrupted by his three friends ringing him to find out where we were. Sadly there aren’t as many massage parlours in this centre of cultural excellence as Chris, Howard and Debbie found in Las Vegas earlier but then they didn’t have a tango band in the background.
I was the only one who’d any experience of podcasting so I showed everyone how simply the file was transferred to my laptop, edited and put through the compressor in Audacity and then exported to mp3. I wasn’t able to upload it to my podcast server while they watched as the large amounts of concrete in the National kept us disconnected from the ThamesOnline network. Ronna kept her recorder running while we did this latter part so there may be another podcast to follow! There was quite a bit of discussion about discoverability, tagging and allowing users to create the metadata they need, rather than trying to control it as a creator.
So next week we return to the 3rd Thursday discussion group indoors with beers and nibbles format but on 22nd we’ll be out and about again, this time with our video cameras teaching each other about video-blogging - watch the wiki page for details.
London February Meetup
February 16, 2007
This month, the London Chapter met at the offices of Blue Rubicon - actually, I’m not very comfortable calling it a chapter - the only organisation I associate that with is Hell’s Angels, so we shall see… Again, there were new faces but there is a small core of regulars emerging and around 20 people made it altogether, which was just right for the size of room. I had two e-mails from members of the Project Redstripe team (who arrived late and left early, leading Alan Patrick to quip that perhaps as economists they figured bringing 6 people for half an hour was equivalent to having one person stay for the whole thing) so they are forgiven.
But where were the women? Joanna came from Redstripe, but when they’d gone it was boys only. Was it something I said?
We spent the first half an hour speed networking - I got to meet Tom and Stewart from Redstripe, Steve who is a headhunter and Tav (who likes the prefix meta- a lot).
We then had a go at seeing how we could best come up with discussion topics. I pushed again my desire to “do something productive” and I think we came to a compromise which was to agree discussion subjects on the wiki, but that discussion leaders would commit to writing, podcasting or videoblogging something afterwards. I said that I would get in touch with people just before the next one to remind them to check out the wiki.
We broke into small conversation groups and I picked off Vikram Shah to talk about how he sees social media - I also managed to capture part of a conversation about blogs and conversations, just so that you know we have the same chats at our meetups as anywhere else, just in a cooler accent. I’ll add this video here as soon as I can.
Since the meeting (and a great conference call I took part in with Chris, Howard, Kristie and lots of other local leaders) I had another idea about how to do this in London. I would like to keep the third Thursday for this kind of discussion and networking activity, but expand what we do (probably spread quite thinly at first) to establish a weekly meetup of one form or another so that we can say to anyone in London, “Thursday Night is Social Media Night.” What I suggest is that anyone can come along at 6pm at a pre-arranged location to take pictures, make some audio or video, or just walk around town and blog about it, somewhere in London according to the following schedule:
- 1st Thursday: Photo-sharing
- 2nd Thursday: Podcasting & Audioblogging
- 3rd Thursday: Hosted Discussion & Networking
- 4th Thursday: Videoblogging
- 5th Thursday: Blogwalk
Except for the 3rd week, these will be out and about somewhere in London, maybe pub-based when weather gets rough, but dedicated to improving social media skills by doing as much as by talking.
I’m committing to starting this in March (I have something next Thursday) with a photo walk about in Soho, meeting at the John Snow pub in Broadwick St (bring your camera) - yes, it will have just got dark at 6pm so the theme will be “Things you can photograph in Soho in the dark without getting arrested or your face smashed in”. Frankly, I’ll be happy if I get just one other person to come with me, but the more the merrier.
I will expand on this further here and on my own blog but welcome comments and suggestions for where and how to make this happen.
Sphere: Related ContentSMC in London - January Meetup
January 23, 2007
Despite large parts of the UK trying to blow away with the attendant travel chaos that staggers those from less civilized climes, we had more than 25 hardy souls braving the elements from as far away as Bonn (yes, as in Germany) and Cardiff (yes, as in Wales), for free beer, wine and nibbles (Thanks, Fleishmann Hillard!) and some incidental chat about social media.
There is quite a churn in these meetings so far, though some suckers keep coming back for more, so we started with round-the-room introductions. There was a wide variety - media consultants, media creators, bloggers, photographers, marketers, entrepreneurs, geeks, visual-thinkers and many more.
We then broke into smaller self-forming discussion groups for the bulk of the time we had together. Broadly summarised there were people talking about:
- Living life completely online vs offline, the problems associated with life-cacheing mixed in with speculation about the shelf-life of YouTube videos and timeliness of social media generally.
- Visualisation as a global language - ask Dave Gray for a picture of this one
- The variety of perspectives and channels in using social media for marketing (pictured above), the problems of measurement and the difficulty of matching ‘channels’ and ‘audiences’ ( not to mention the difficulty of using those words or finding others to use…)
- Where does trust come from? Knowing the source? From the content itself?
- Global perspectives - diverse and complex developments in other parts of the world and the predominance of the mobile phone rather than the desktop as social media tool.
I plugged membership, pointed people to the London wiki and the mailing list as tools to keep in touch and encouraged people to come up with suggestions for topics and activities. I’d very much like us to *do* stuff at these sessions as much as *talk* about doing stuff. We’re going to go with the Third Thursday of the month as a regular slot, though we may shift venue around Central London - 15th February will include a post-Valentine speed-datingnetworking spot 
Social Media Club - London Meeting #2
October 31, 2006
Our good friends over at Fleishman Hillard have opened up their offices again and are hosting the second meeting in London. Come one, come all.
Suggestions have been to discuss the latest in tools, technologies and success stories. However, if there is something specific you would like to throw out onto the table, please place it in the comments below.
Our hope is for each local group to set goals, meet regularly and share opinions on the role of Social Media in the present and future of PR, marketing and journalism. Help us reach that goal in London.
Where: Fleishman Hillard London, 40 Long Acre, Covent Garden, London WC2E 9LG
When: November 15th, from 6pm to 8:30pm
Costs: FREE (we do need you to pre-register so we may prepare for your arrival)
XPRL Meeting in London
September 15, 2006
When I first saw the note from David Phillips about this meeting, I was intrigued, but after discussing the XPRL standard with more seasoned PR folks did not have high hopes honestly. People I spoke with said it was a dead but valiant effort to bring standards into the professional Public Relations world. They said the principal reason for failure was the lack of adoption in the many years since it was conceived. As is often the case with technology projects, it seemed that there was not enough early buy in from the people who were affected by it.
I was happy to see this was not lost on the members of the group and was indeed one of the key points of emphasis pursued during the course of the meeting.
In attendance were: [Read more]
Sphere: Related ContentSMC London Agenda
September 15, 2006
Social Media Club Agenda
for 15 September, 2006
London, United Kingdom
@ the offices of Fleishman Hillard in Covent Garden
A. Introductions to one another (5-10 Minutes)
Your name, organization and 3 tags that describe you and your interests.
1 - Conversation about Social Media Club (<20 Minutes)
What is the purpose of Social Media Club and what great things can we do as a group? How might we build a diverse community of hobbyists and professional practicioners?
2 - Conversation about Social Media (30 Minutes)
What are the pre-requisites of broader usage of Social Media across society, among individuals and organizations, particularly here in the United Kingdom?
3 - Conversation about the future of the Press Release (30 Minutes)
Is the press release dead, evolving or irrelevant? What might be done to make it more valuable? What is the big idea behind the New Media Release (aka hRelease)?
[really looking forward to this event, which is just 2 hours away...]
Sphere: Related ContentSocial Media Club Event RoundUp
September 12, 2006
This morning I shipped Chris off for two weeks to help launch the local chapters of Social Media Club in London, New York, Miami and Los Angeles. These four cities are the first in (hopefully) many with Seattle, Vancouver, Toronto, and Boston to follow shortly thereafter.
Event details are as follows:
London, September 15th at 5:30pm
Fleishman Hillard offices located at 40 Long Acre, Covent Garden, London
Registration: As of this post I do not have anyone officially signed up though several have verbally commited to attend. We would appreciate your signing up on the Mollyguard site so we can prepare the security guard at the front desk for your arrival.
Need additional details? Please contact Chris Heuer at chris@brainjams.org.
——————-
New York, September 18th at 6pm
The Business Wire offices at 40 East 52nd Street, New York, NY
Registration: As of this posting we have 18 people registered – Chris Heuer, Howard Greenstein, Laura Sturaitis, Eric Nehrlich, John Hui, David Bradfield, Christina Koukkos, Annette Krame, Kaarli Tasso, Robert Tolmach, Toby Cohen, Laura Allen, Jen Gherardi, Steve Eisenberg, Ed Costello, Colin Ruane, Nate Westheimer, Sherri Weiss.
Need additional details? Please contact Howard Greenstein at Howard@socialmediaclub.org.
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Miami, September 25th at 6pm
PLEASE NOTE THERE IS A LOCATION CHANGE:
The WeblogWire Offices located at 3550 Biscayne Blvd, Miami Beach, FL
Registration: Chris Heuer, Jason Baptiste
Need additional details? Please contact Jason Baptiste at jason@theweblogwire.com or (305)576-1171 x13
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Los Angeles, September 28th from 4:30pm – 6:30pm
The Press-feed offices at 6767 Forest Lawn Drive, Suite 212, Los Angeles, CA
Registration: Chris Heuer, Sally Falkow, Dawn Wilcox, Allan Weiss, Robert Niles
Need additional details? Please contact Sally Falkow at sally@press-feed.com.
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We hope you will join us at one or several of the meetings where you will meet other folks in your own ‘backyard’ interested in all things Social Media.
Social Media Club London
September 8, 2006
Chris Heuer will be in London for the XPRL meeting (related to the new Media Release format for revitalizing the traditional Press Release) and will be participating in the first meeting of the London Social Media Club that takes place on Friday, September 15th at the Fleishman Hillard offices at 40 Long Acre, Covent Garden, London WC2E 9LG. We will start around 5:30pm.
If you are in the area, please plan on joining us for a robust discussion on the future of the Press Release and to establish plans for the club in London!
Sphere: Related Content
