You can wait months for a hack weekend, and then three come along at once...
Besides Seedcamp's mentoring session, Over the Air and all the other tech-offs happening this weekend, Social Innovation Camp has opened its doors to teams of philanthropically inclined developers and, um, normal people. Those 'undevelopers' put forward a host of interesting ideas to hack around through this weekend, so what's on the schedule?
Photo by tico24 on Flickr. Some rights reserved.
The Camp team sat around last month poring over a weighty digital mailbag of more than 70 submissions, eventually whittling it down to the best six.
"All the ideas we have chosen are great examples of disruptive social innovations which create platforms for assisting people to help themselves," wrote the voice of SI Camp's blog.
"Out of the many fantastic examples that we were sent - from ideas to help people share their food to their journeys to work - the advisory board made their decisions because they felt specific ideas created the most social capital, held the greatest potential to create a more equitable distribution of resources (i.e. they didn't just help people who were already advantaged or who were traditionally technology users) and, crucially, that they had enormous potential for future development."
Bobbie Johnson will be covering the camp all weekend, so watch this space - or the one just above this. In the meantime, you can decide which horse to back.
• Stuffshare: A bit like a classified site for stuff that you're prepared to share, and stuff you need to borrow. If you break it or lose it, you replace it, and there's a feedback system on the site to keep sharers in check. It's postcode-orientated which should make it logistically easier than eBay (that's a delightful stuffed parrot, but you're in Iona?")
The Stuffshare idea was submitted by Seth Reynolds: "We want, we buy - but we never ask around. B&Q profits soar on the rising waste from unwanted consumer goods, while community, sane society and real human contact tumbles into oblivion. Meanwhile identical drills sit side-by-side in identical cupboards under identical stairs all along your street. DIY gear, festival tents, a once used goretex pen, fish kettles... all once seemed essential, now rarely, if ever, used. And we never even think to ask."
• Rate my CV: Job seekers upload their CV and kindly volunteers proof them, the thinking being that even people with a few more years in the industry will be able to give helpful feedback.
Lydia Howland's idea started when she noticed a demand for migrating workers, who might need what she describes as cultural translation for their CVs, but this grew into a broader idea about industry-specific style and tone.
"I think this idea does build on existing web paradigms around peer-generated reviews and ratings (e.g. Tripadvisor, Amazon etc), job seeking (e.g Monster.com) and collaborative editing (e.g. Wikipedia, Google Documents etc). I think the newness is around responding to a genuine and unmet need in a way that builds upon web behaviours that people are already familiar with."
• Prison visits: Developed after talks with Anton Shelupanov of the Young Foundation's Innovation, Justice and Youth Programme, the site aims to support prisoners and their families who are learning to cope with the experience of prison. Tools might include advice on transport and lift sharing, child care support information and some features that make it accessible by mobile and text for low-income families that might not have a computer.
"The prison system is traditionally a closed and complex one for outsiders to understand. Opening up how it all works could hold considerable social benefit.
"And this is not only of use to visitors - prison visits are also a challenge for prison staff. They are difficult to organise and can pose security risks. Some kind of web-based social tool which could facilitate information sharing between prisons and families would also help in preparing visitors for what to expect and make the whole process easier and less stressful for both parties."
• Personal development projects: The site would encourage young people to sign up, probably during a set project or activity, and monitor their personal development by scores in various interactive tests. Mike Amos-Simpson thinks the site could be used with young people in an educational environment, and might succeed where previous experiments with video diaries, award schemes and progress diaries have failed.
"I also think there is a need for something more meaningful than the endless 'accreditations' that young people gain. Potential employers are much more impressed by what potential candidates are able to discuss about themselves - their skills, interests, experiences than they are by 'wads' of certificates. It would be nice to provide something that allows people to back up those good conversations about themselves!"
• Enabled by Design: This project is about super-accessibility, allowing disabled or injured people a simple online search for products and services that can help them. With 10m disabled people in the UK the potential market is huge.
Denise Stephens said she has been unable to find any satisfactory service online for the UK. "Now that the government has announced a move towards user-driven social care, there is an even greater demand for a website like Enabled by Design. People with personalised budgets will be looking for an accessible website service that provides information on a comprehensive range of design solutions (living aids and adaptations), with the offer of professional occupational therapy advice, customer reviews and the opportunity to buy, all in the same place."
• Barcode Wikipedia: This could be the ultimate consumer power tool - an open, editable database of product barcodes. Richard Pope submitted the idea because he thinks people deserve to be able to make informed choices about the products they buy, and wants to see this become a default public database for product information.
"People would be able to access the info by entering/scanning the barcode number. The kind of information that would be stored against the product would be things like reviews, manufacturing conditions, news stories about the product/manufacturer, farm subsidies paid to the manufacturer etc. All entered in wiki form by end users."
MediaGuardian is the media partner for Social Innovation Camp.
