I found myself on a commuter train on the way to 2gether08 on Thursday morning.
Literally hundreds of, most probably very bright, people around me were heads down, buried away in Sudoku puzzles or reading the Metro – occaisionally checking their phones or Blackberry's.
What if we could find some way of harnessing that cognitive surplus – and providing volunteering/pro-social crowd-sourcing opportunities that commuters could dip into at five-minutes-to-nine, just before they got stuck into their nine-till-five?
[Summary: Could the Innovation Exchange be about a festival of small ideas that scale…]
One of the bits of blogging I struggle with most is getting the opening paragraph right. So let me instead quote David Wilcox (and borrow his photo of the event in question):
Earlier this week John Craig and colleagues, who are developing the Third Sector Innovation Exchange, invited a bunch of us along to share ideas over wine and pizza on what it takes to make collaborations work…. The Innovation Exchange is being funded by the UK Government to “find new ways to connect innovators in the third sector with public service commissioners and other investors and help them to work together to develop their work”.
I was part of that bunch, and given David and John have both shared their reflections on the evening already, I thought I should catch up and do the same.
One of the big questions that seems to face the Innovation Exchange, in light of the massive potential for innovation in the third sector and public sector, is where to focus. Cliff Prior of UnLtd shared a number of powerful stories about innovative 'movements' that have succeeded in creating dramatic changes, such as the re-invention of the House Association sector, and the shift to safe and soft playgroupd surfaces massively reducing childhood injuries. Primarily these succeeded, Cliff suggested, because of the passion and drive of their leaders and supporters. But it is not in incubating and supporting these forms of 'mass innovation' that I think the Exchange has most to offer. Rather, as David Wilcox captures in the idea of innovation 'thingies', it is in supporting the 'small ideas' that the most work needs to be done. And as John has blogged, it's growing and scaling these sorts of particular innovations (rather than 'growing innovation in general') that the Innovation Exchange will have a focus on.
So what are these small ideas that scale? What are the 'thingies' and 'widgets' the third sector and public sector need?
They might be processes. They might be technologies. They might be ways of getting people togther, or better ways of measuring impact. They might be tools for sharing knowledge, or practical gadgets that just make life on the front line that bit easier. They could be anything. The key is that they unblock the blockages, and make bigger things happen. I'm rather excited by the potential for such sorts of innovation to make a real difference for the most excluded young people.
So here are a few of the 'small ideas that scale' that occured to me during the discussions on Tuesday:
Developing skills for designing consultationgames– games can make complex decision making processes more accessible to excluded young people. Using a 'game' or scenario to consult with a group of young people can ensure that everyone is involved, regarless of literacy and numeracy issues – and it makes sure participation is not just about hearing the voices of those who can fit into standard models of meetings and presentations.
Knowledge management for youth participation projects – knowledge is power – and far too often we don't support young people moving on from participation projects to share the knowledge and experience they've aquired with their peers. Challening the 'boom and bust' cycle of participation projects could happen through introducing techniques for better knowledge management.
That could be a technology driven process using video and blogging, or it could be, as Cliff Prior suggested, promoting the idea of youth forum chairs having a 'pre-chair' year to shadow the current chair, and a 'post-chair' year to mentor their successors.
A financial/organisational 'container' for youth led projects – anyone who has run a student society probably knows about the six-month period of trying to transfer the bank account mandate that occurs every year. And if you're under 18 and trying to run a bank account for a group, well, it can be near on impossible.
But if young people are to be setting up and leading their own local projects and enterprises, making them sustainable, and handing them on to a new group, then there could be a role for a youth-friendly financial system that makes handling the organisational sides of running a youth project just work – freeing up time for actually running the project.
What small ideas would you love to see the Innovation Exchange explore? (You're welcome to use the comments below, or you can, of course, blog them direct to the Innovation Exchange…)
P.S. David handed me the Camera to interview John Craig after the conversations. Here's what John had to say.
P.P.S. Sorry about the close up John. I was trying to avoid the background noise, but, erm, should have probably been standing a little futher back.
Ok, it's not strictly a Haiku – it should be in 5, 7, 5 in sylables rather than words, but I thought I would experiment with using the Haiku form to capture learning, inspired by this post from Michelle Martin via Matthew Homann via Christine Martell.
The learning in question? It's about this online game for consultation on workforce development. We've extended the time it's open for to try and increase the rate of responses from young people, although the tight timescale of the project means I've not got the opportunities that I'd like to revise the game to draw on what we've already learnt.
However, if the incentive of knowing that responses to the consultation game could impact on the future of leadership and management training in youth services in England is enough of an incentive for you, then please do encourage any 13- 18 year olds you know to take the time to create their own youth workforce dream teams.
Ok. I promise this is the last one page guide I'll post this week (possibly this year…) – and this one isn't strictly about a social media tool.
I don't own a car and I don't drive, hence I rely heavily on the UK rail network. And to make that as straightforward as possible, I rely heaving on the fantastic traintimes.org.uk created by Mathew Sommerville (ok, I realise I've raved about this before… which to non-uk-train-travelling readers is possibly slightly odd… but I'm not going to let that stop me). And so that others can benefit from the sheer brilliance of traintimes.org.uk and its bookmarkable URLs (and so they can use if to find cheaper rail fares), I've put together this one page guide to using Traintimes.org.uk.
Ideal to print out and keep by the computer for the next time you're planning a journey and wondering whether taking the train would make sense…
As with all these guides, feel free to download the word copy and edit it to suit your needs.
I've just returned from a weekend catching up with friends, and have been struck again by how important the movement of One No, Many Yeses* is.
Social change requires co-ordination that takes place not (just?) through the market, but through individuals taking action because it is the right action to take. That means deeper conversations to creatively work out how we each play our part. That means understanding the real nature of our relationships with others and not leaving the £ sign to mediate in all our interactions.
It needs communities. And I've just been reminded by the loose community of bloggers whose work I read and on occaision interact with, that today is 'Blog Action Day'. A chance for a community to come together around On No (killing the planet) and Many Yeses (ways to live more environmentally friendly lives) and to reflect on environmentalism in their individual areas.
So as my contribution to promoting some enviro-wise things to say yes to, I though I would point in the direction of the Generous Community, an experiment that arose from Greenbelt Festival as a way of taking small actions as part of a bigger group. You can see all the environmental actions suggested on Generous here, and if there's some that you're already trying, or that grab your attention – do sign-up and join us. You can find my Generous household over here.
I found myself on a commuter train on the way to 2gether08 on Thursday morning.
One of the bits of blogging I struggle with most is getting the opening paragraph right. So let me instead quote 
Ok. I promise this is the last 
I've just returned from a weekend catching up with friends, and have been struck again by how important the movement of 