Thriving too

Stick a pin in it

 

“Hello Gran, how are you doing?”
“Oh hello dear…” click,beep, I’m sorry I’m not able to take your call right now… “Oh, I am here, hello?”
“Hey Gran, I think your answer machine is trying to join in. So how’ve you been?”

Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, faster, more connected - I’m tapping this out on a netbook in a café with free wifi so I can’t complain! But what if you’re not on the internet superhighway?

You might remember my previous post on the Granny Cloud, with UK grannies reading stories via Skype to children in Hyderabad. Well, warming to a theme, I’ve just found a great project called Historypin – another simple action to help change the world by the guys at We Are What We Do. It’s a project with an ambitious target to create a digital history of the world, and along the way help tackle the growing gap between the old and the young, the email savvy and the snail mailers, the disposable fashion vs the make do and mend…

I’ve pinned up a picture of my gran, from around 1935, in a car on the road she grew up on in Eastbourne. She remembers it because it wasn’t common for people to have cars back then, and the owner Frances used to drive her mum to visit Gran and the couple that brought her up. Frances’ mother had ‘creeping paralysis’ which my Gran thinks is called Parkinson’s now. And the car’s name was Fifi.

“Thanks Gran that’s really useful”
"It’s amazing what you can get from such a small picture”
“Yeah, the human memory is crazy, right?”

Gran can’t stay and chat this time, because she’s out for lunch with my aunt today and hasn’t decided what to wear. They are going to the golf club, so she wants to look proper.

So go and visit your gran or say hi to your elderly neighbour… you never know what you might learn.

And pin your history up here: www.historypin.com

1 potato, 2 potato, 3 potato, 4

So there's a lot of things being posted in the social media world. Look at the numbers roll up!

Hang on. I just blogged because I saw it. So does that mean my blog is counted in the stats, or is it extra? If you talk about counting it, and more people blog about you talking about counting it, does it become a self-fulfilling prophecy and cause an increase the amount of data on the social web, thereby making the calculations behind it invalid?

Hmm. Ask Gary.

FixCity

Another great tool from the folks over at the Open Planning Project in the States:

fixcity.org is about taking small steps to fix your city. Our first endeavor, FixCity:Bike Racks, is a social mapping application designed to "crowdsource" community and government collaboration in the gathering, planning, and implementing new bike racks.

This application encourages residents and community organizations to suggest new bike racks, verify suggested locations, gather statements of support from the broader community, and finally submit a "shovel-ready" bulk order to the Department of Transportation. This application is designed to use the best of today's web technology to enable smart ways to meaningfully and efficiently match residents' wants with city services.

All knowing

Wolfram/Alpha does some rather neat tricks with information. I learnt that I am just under 10,400 days old. And I was born under a waning crescent moon apparently.

Their long term goal is "to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone". Easy peasy then.

UK Youth Online: unconference

UK Youth Online are looking at some very important questions concerning young people. Some of these questions include:

How do we equip young people with the skills and literacies to engage well, and engage safely with the myriad of online opportunities available to them?

How can services for young people go to the places where young people are online to let them know about the positive activities they can get involved in?

What can we learn from the way young people are using the web? And what does it mean for the future of work with young people, and indeed, for public services and public spaces on the web?

Well - if there are answers to those questions - then they will be answers we need to co-create. And so on Saturday September 27th an assortment of youth workers, webbies, academics, young people and others will be getting together at the DIUS offices in London to discuss, explore, share and learn on these topics and many more as part of 'UK Youth Online'.

And if you want to join us for this free open space/unconference event then we would love to see you there. Registration is available here - and the UK Youth Online ning community that we're using for planning the event and carrying on the conversations can be found here.

(The event will also include an informal launch of the Youth Work and Social Networking research.)

The ColaLife Campaign

Image: grzegorzkomar

Over the last month, I have been helping Simon Berry (CEO, ruralnet|uk) promote his latest idea, and what an idea it is!

"ColaLife" is a campaign aiming to leverage Coca Cola's distribution muscle to provide life saving medicines to children in developing countries. The idea is so simple, but until now has been difficult to implement. The power of web 2.0 and social networking media however, has allowed Simon to digitally document his progress and to build a digital support network surrounding the campaign.

“We can distribute Coca Cola all around the World but we can’t seem to get medication to save a child from something as simple as diarrhea and I think that that is wrong.” (Annie Lennox)

Since the launch of the campaign and due to the power of a Facebook group, Simon was invited by Salvatore Gabola, Coca-Cola’s Global Head of Stakeholder Relations, to a meeting to discuss the idea further at Coca-Cola’s European HQ in Brussels. The campaign’s Facebook group has reached over 3,890 members since its inception on 18 May 2008. It was nominated for the NewStatesman’s New Media Award in June and showcased at London’s 2gether08 festival on 3 July.

Most recently, the campaign was featured on BBC Radio 4’s iPM programme in May and July, and on the BBC World Service on 13 July. Simon explains; “Before the Facebook group I was getting nowhere at all. The group has changed everything and is the reason we’ve made such rapid progress …Continuing support for the idea is vital if we are to turn this idea into a reality and actually save some lives.”

Image: Nick Gripton

Research and development of the campaign continues to evolve. The next objective is to get an international NGO to engage with the campaign. Meanwhile research is underway in East African into Coca-Cola’s distribution system and the feasibility of the idea is being investigated and reported on the campaign website.

Thanks to everyone who has already shown their support, and a huge thank you to the team at Inhabitat for publishing the ColaLife story and launching it into the blogosphere!

To find out more information and to follow the story, visit the newly created ColaLife.org (thanks to Dave Briggs!). To support the campaign, please please join the ColaLife Facebook Group! To get even more involved and if you have anything you can offer the campaign please sign up to the campaign’s Google Group “ColaLife”.

Nodestone goes live

I met friends Libby Davy and Graeme Sutherland at the RSA on Monday. Libby and Gra have joined forces, blending a formidable combination of expertise, to form Nodestone. Their beautiful new calling card in the pic above.

Nodostone is specialising in providing courses, coaching and a full hand-holding service for organisations wishing to develop into social media.

Their next course, Social Media for the Third Sector, is on 11 July 08.

Just what we need, when we need it!