Dates for your diary: OxfordJam, 14-16th April '10

Not for one moment forgetting the remaining posts of the 12 Lessons series, or indeed my very important birthday wish, but I did just want to have a quiet word in your ear..
In the spirit of Lesson #10 and gift economy, let me share with you a upcoming social-enterprise event on which I've been fortunate enough to do a bit of moonlighting..

Running 14-16 April 2010, parallel to the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship, OxfordJam is a co-created, pay-what-you-can event for the nurturing of social economy and social finance projects the world over.

Instigated by Ben Metz, OxfordJam isn't going to be your average conference, or even your average un-conference. OxfordJam is a conference 'in relief' asking you to: "Invert everything you have experienced at any vanilla flavoured conference, however inspiring.."

But if that's a little too 'down the rabbit hole' said Alice, worry not.
The basic premise is strikingly simple:
⇒ Take the breaks “in between” normal conference programming and fill them full of inspiring TED style “talking heads”
⇒ Take the programmed time of a normal conference and empty it out immediately after each of these very short talks
⇒ Allow the inspiration borne from the talking heads to fill this space
⇒ Let the conversations and encounters go where they will…

The plan is to provide the space and the inspiration, alongside the tools and games to facilitate. That’s it, nothing more.

We're like your favourite Auntie; we'll let you loose in the toy box, you can stay up past bedtime, and we're genuinely eager to see what you create!

Yes, much to my delight and exponentially increasing interest, OxfordJam is becoming quite something other. Huge thanks to those who willed it into existence and adoration to the growing list of participants.
Tickets (free/by donation) will go live this week, so do check it out. Such a series of amazing people, coming forward with this level of conviction and energy, is not to be missed. Better yet, it is still yours to influence so get involved:*

Follow @OxfordJam on Twitter..
Check out the website..
Join the facebook group..
Subscribe to updates via RSS..
Contact the organisers
Comment below!

*Really, do volunteer to get involved... Else I fear, if left unchecked, the food and sexy metaphors may get the better of us..

The Makers of MFA '09 - Post 2/3

I am clawing a few minutes away from the chaos that has enveloped RBD post Ghana, to share with you a few more of the Makers we met there...

I'll start you off with Wisdom, who if i am honest, sort-of embodied the whole of Maker Faire Africa for me..

Craig Calfee / Wisdom Toxla - Bamboo Bike:

There are many versions of the "bamboo bike" concept, this one is the 'Bamboosero' and was designed by American Designer Craig Calfee and built by Ghanian Maker, Wisdom Toxla (a.k.a "The Boy").

Wisdom assured James that his Bamboosero was lighter, faster & more comfortable to ride than a metal frame cycle and, heavily prompted by James' questions, went on to give him detailed instructions on how to go about crafting his own bamboo bicycle, back in Blighty. Amidst all the enthusiastic gesticulating I noticed Wisdom's watch ... find me a man more MFA than him and I'll eat a recycled plastic hat ...

Amit Gandhi / Mark Driordan - Plastic Bag Recycling Press:

Another IDDS team, Amit Gandhi and Mark Driordan (USA, UK respectively), displayed their heat-press designed to transform waste plastic bags into useful plastic sheeting from 3ply to 40ply in thickness. This recycled plastic sheet can then be used to produce... well, anything! Shoes, satchels, pencil cases and folders were some of the examples on display but critically the cost of assembling and running this press is minimal and doing so is well within the technical capacity of Ghanaian Makers, meaning anyone could produce their own recycled plastic goods. Seriously good stuff.. I genuinely want to make and use one. What more can I say?!

...and I will be leaving it to James to introduce you to the zero-electricity fridge; as he spent most of the last academic year researching similar technologies before starting development on what will be Red Button Design's second product, 'Medicool'.

"Medicool is a temperature controlled vaccine carrier that allows health workers in developing countries to keep vaccines within their safe temperature range for longer, increasing the range of immunization programmes. It works by capturing waste heat so avoids the need for a traditional power source."

Once again, photo credits go to the brilliant James-Elliot.co.uk .. nah 'course we're not biased!

The Makers of MFA '09 - Post 1/3

Installed myself just outside the hotel, in the heat & darkness of a Ghanain bar. I have live music, a beer, and my Mac :-)

...Whatsmore, I am very pleased with myself, because if I orientate myself *just so* I can pick up the wifi from the Hotel Business Centre without having to sit inside the ice cold confines of its sodium lit, air-conditioned, anonymity. Bliss!

Although is is somewhat hard to know where to begin, I thought I'd dive right in and introduce you to 3 very different "Makers" I met today:
Meet Bernard, Yasmeen and Stephen.

Bernard Kiwia - Pedal Powered Hacksaw:

Bernard is a Tanzanian bike mechanic. Like many at Maker Faire Africa, he was also part of 'IDDS Ghana' last week (The International Development Design Summit) Bernard's "Make" is ... well it is a bicycle / pedal powered hacksaw for disabled workers. Which really has to be seen to be believed. He has also created a mobile phone charger, a water pump and a windmill, each based around cycle technology.

Yasmeen H. Nsiah - Handmade Soaps:

Yasmeen hand crafts soaps from natural, locally abundant, ingredients like shea, eucalyptus and coconut. She sells them at a premium price in her small store in Accra, citing that her native, minimally processed products are much better for the body than highly processed chemically stabilised American brands which, as they are imported, also command a premium price. A business savvy eco-chic, Yasmeen is a one-woman Lush - what's not to love?

Stephen Gerrard - Bike Powered Water Chlorinator:

Stephen Gerrard (no, not that one) is a recently graduated chemical engineer from Cambridge and was exhibiting a concept-stage chlorinator. By producing enough electricity via pedal-power to pass a current through salt water, the prototype can produce a chlorine solution for use in disinfecting drinking water.

As I say, these are just three of many, many amazing innovations at MFA..

Stay tuned for information on the "Bamboo Bike", which is as it sounds, a bamboo framed bicycle, a "Plastic Bag Press" which makes clothes from a leather-like compound made from old plastic bags and a "Passive Cooling Fridge" which operates without electricity..

Photo credits to James Brown of James-Elliot

Introducing MFA 09 - 'Can't miss' BoP Tech!

Well Maker Faire Africa is in full swing, stalls and stands sprawling out from the Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence and I like to think Red Button Design is holding its own amidst a bustle of new innovation & nascent collaborations from the obvious (water & agriculture) to the sublime (roboteers and traditional doll making - culturally diverse animatronics anyone?!)

Completely surrounded by dust and tech* but diligently on hand to blog the mind bending array of inventions presented: from traditional hand crafts, paintings & dolls, through eco-goods made from roadside trash, up to plastic fabrication technologies (made, in part, with old MIT kit!), robotics, cycle powered chlorinators, and agricultural rice processing...

I will endeavour to cover, in the detail they deserve, as many of these ... 'cant-quite-express-just-how-amazing'.. ideas as I possibly can over the next few days. SO if you don't already RSS us, get us on your Reader.

This is 'can't miss' BoP tech.

*(an interesting combination... I think our Camera equipment and Macs are enjoying the dust and humidity about as much as my damnable Caucasian hair!)

Ponderings on Jeff Saperstein's RSA Thursday Lecture

I attended this week's "RSA Thursday" lecture entitled "Vision Matters: Defining Identity - how visionaries can help us not only survive but thrive" by the wonderful Jeff Saperstein who I was Twittering in favour of throughout his afternoon session at Reboot Britain.

His lecture got, and kept, me thinking so my interpretations and resultant ponderings follow for your (hopeful!) interest. I do, however, encourage you to experience the 'pure' version by viewing the slides and listening to the full audio in order to judge for yourself!

Jeff outlined how we, as individuals, need to 'define'. We draw up definitions and boundaries of ourselves, each other, our environment and our roles, in order to interpret, understand and react to the world. If our definitions of ourselves are narrow they function to restrict us, e.g:

I am a marketing person <--> I do marketing things
This is not a marketing thing <--> I won't do this thing

If our definitions are wider, however, they seek to rightly distinguish us by skill and not restrict by implementation, e.g:

I am a person who facilitates communication --> I could be a journalist, telecommunications engineer, graphic designer, language translator, therapist (!), bar tender (!!) and so on..

The particular problem with restrictive definitions he was proposing (as clearly there are varied and significant problems that can be identified with labeling people in this manner) was that it stifles innovation.

As a collection of people restricted by our labels, be it a community, company, government or NGO, we loose out on a great deal of collected skill & talent as people aren't rising up to the challenge of taking on tasks which they could perfectly well complete. This is because they fall outside of the definitions they have established for themselves (or have been established for them.. yet there is so much to say on that facet I shant even begin!)

In this way, our restrictive definitions stifle our ability to try new things, to challenge and to innovate.

Innovation, he goes on to say, is the only path to increasing productivity and there are no limits to its progress. Clearly I agree, you will never become more productive by doing the same things, the same way you always have, with the same people you always did them with.

He rounds off this domino effect saying that productivity increases wealth and wealth is still the great divider between those that 'survive' and those that 'thrive' as illustrated by discussions of geographic, digital, socioeconomic and educational divides.

The interesting tie in, for me, was the assertion that the most important and effective innovation is the way in which we work together. This links further to messages I took from his "Reboot Britain" session around the common features of highly successful technology clusters being partly a 'respect for knowledge' but hugely weighted towards the concept of an open and flexible working culture where people are encouraged to collaborate with those unlike themselves.

When brought to bare bones it is a somewhat obvious but fantastically empowering message:

By not restricting myself in terms of the way I allow myself to be defined, by working flexibly and openly with people who are culturally/experientially different from myself, and by learning from these people, I can achieve great and unexpected things. Thus adding more to my community/workplace/family and becoming a productive and instrumental force in driving positive change.

(BTW, I'll also be at the Sustainability Project panel on Mon 13th 6:30pm - so shout if you're going :)

SICamp Scotland ... Blogpost 2/2 - James' Take

The third Social Innovation Camp (SICamp) was held last month at Glasgow Caledonian University. 60 people from across the UK (and Europe) gathered to help turn ideas into reality. Six back-of-the-envelope ideas for web tools that would make a positive difference to the real world had been previously chosen out of 133 applicants. The six chosen ideas, which included an online public planning tool (think google maps meets sim city!) and a website which enables flash-mobbing for social good, were taken on by a group of people with an amazingly diverse range of skills, from hardcore coders to services designers and interaction specialists.

Diversity, in fact, proved to be the aspect of this gathering that made it such an enjoyable and productive experience. Without exception all the ideas started off as rough concepts at 9am on Saturday and by the time we presented to the judging panel at 2pm the next day, every site was online. But not just that, one team who were working on a web tool which gives live bus information via txt message had a fully functioning demo. And the flash mob team (FlockLocal) actually arranged for a group of people to turn up to a communal garden in Glasgow and spend an hour fixing it up! Its incredible what can happen when a group of motivated people with a wide skill set focus on a defined problem, in fact the whole weekend had the feel of a FlockLocal-style flash mob, with lunch and dinner announced on twitter and the fantastic support crew from Gladserve running from team to team with the latest server news.

Each team was not only tasked with building a site, but also with defining the need, creating a sustainable business model, designing the site to work within the user’s needs and then putting together a presentation to show it off.

I worked with a fantastic group of people on a website which fosters and supports meaningful dialogue between local communities and the police which serve them. Named MyPolice, the site allows the public to share their experiences of the Police and allows the Police to respond, either individually or on more general topics. By encouraging people to talk more openly about both good and bad aspects of the policing service they receive we hope the site will be of true value to the Police, the public and support services.

At the end of the weekend MyPolice was awarded the idea with the most potential by the panel of judges and we have been given a range of business and technical support as prizes so keep an eye out for MyPolice.org!

* Cross posted from Social Design Entrepreneur RBD Design Director, James Brown's, personal blog

SICamp Scotland ... Blogpost 1/?

I spent the last 48 hours completely immersed in Social Innovation Camp-ness .. no wait, that didn't come out quite right ;) Still, the sentiment holds if not the expression. Unless it was Twittered to #sicamp I have no idea what happened outside of The Saltire Centre for the last 2 days.

Like the most convoluted of film plots I am going to start with the end, skip to the beginning and see if the middle sorts itself out in the interim, so bearing that in mind ... let me introduce FlockLocal.

FlockLocal was born in the spirit of the SICamp pseudo-mantra "using the online world to change the offline world." Using this idea we elected to create ClusterFlock...,. FlockYourCommunity... FlockLocal, which is a website and collection of associated apps & plugins to allow people to flash mob for social good. That is, to allow people who identify a social need to quickly mobilise volunteers to fill it.

Let me illustrate. We started to think about this idea in the pub on Friday night. By Saturday morning we had a fairly good idea of the user scenario. By 11am we decided we'd like to aim to actually hold a flash mob (henceforth to be known as 'organising a flock') 2 hours later (now 1pm) we had found the wonderful Glasgow Wood Recycling who were due to be reclaiming wood from a theatre set at Gilmorehill which needed loading into a van, driving across town and unloading into their community garden (which itself needed some painting and weeding). By 12noon the next day we'd assembled 15 people, done the job, and headed off for the afternoon.

Hence our tagline FlockLocal "Do Good. Fast"

But it wasn't just us!
The 5 other fabulous teams created the following:


Wee Day Out - A mapping tool for locating & rating disabled toilet facilities.

Fix the Freakin Buses (a.k.a "Hitch 'n' Bitch !!) – A SMS text platform for accessing live bus data.

AngelFish - Hyperlocal Micro-finace for community startups and business growth.

MyPolice.org – Allowing the public to give positive and negative feedback on the police.

Citipedia-An online public town planning tool.


.....and we'll hear more about them shortly.. in part 2 ... after I get some sleep!

but just before the zzZ 's hit, let me say a massive thanks to all at SICamp for working so hard to support all our hard work. We all really appreciate it!

Stay tuned for part 2.

Footnote: Glasgow Wood Recycling is an amazing organisation run by Peter Levelle to whom FlockLocal are very grateful and I will be blogging more about Glasgow Wood Recycling very shortly!