On Wednesday 8th October, I went to an event hosted by Nesta in Holborn, London. The event was pitched as an opportunity to find out more about the opportunities that Digital Social Innovation (DSI) presents. I have written a post previously about DSI, and how we in Local Government could make use of the principles. We reckon that a lot (if not all) of the stuff that comes out of the Lab will fit under DSI, so it seemed like a fantastic opportunity to go and learn more from genuine experts, in what is really a nascent field, especially, seemingly, in the Public Sector.
The afternoon was split into 3 sessions (4 if you count the networking drinkup, which I most certainly do):
1. What do we mean by digital social innovation?
2. Creating digital social organisations
3. Creating the right infrastructure for digital social innovation
There were around 120 people in the room, a few familiar names and faces (from real life, and twitter), but most were unknown to me. As I scanned the list of attendees, I was struck by how few public sector organisations were represented – around 6. I also noted that the room was pretty much 50/50 men and women, which seems to be significant – most of the ‘tech’ events that I go to are man-heavy, and this equal demographic split would suggest that DSI appeals to a broader audience (which is amazing, if it’s the case..!)
1. What do we mean by digital social innovation?
So the event kicked off with Geoff Mulgan, Chief Exec of Nesta, and Peter Baeck, Principal Researcher at Nesta, talking about what exactly Digital Social Innovation is. The definition that I wrote about in that previous post looked at 11 different areas. That (thankfully!) has been streamlined, to 4: Open Knowledge, Open Data, Open Hardware and Open Networks, though still encompassing the same ideas.
There followed a series of lightning talks, from Tomas Diez, of the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, who spoke about FabLabs and the opportunities they present to communities, and Smart Citizen sensors (I was at the Manchester launch of these kits at Future Everything’s 2014 conference).
Hannah Keartland was up next. Hannah heads up the Citizen Science unit at Cancer Research UK – and gave a talk about how Cancer Research UK are working with games developers to create cancer research tools that masquerade as games that the public play. Tools like Cell Slider, in conjunction with Zooniverse, and Genes in Space. This was AMAZING! Over 500,000 people have taken part, inadvertently researching cancer cells. Results are consistent with those achieved by actual experts, but 6x faster..!
Dr Laura James, CEO of Open Knowledge (not all open knowledge, just the work of the open knowledge foundation), spoke very eloquently and passionately about open data, and open knowledge. About the open source platform (CKAN) that they provide to governments around the world, including data.gov.uk, data.gov, and our own datagm.org.uk.
After this, the first coffee break was up, and I was looking forward to eating a pile of biscuits (because of a timing issue, I hadn’t had time for lunch). Before I could fill my plate, I was approached by the organiser – Peter Baeck. He told me that one of the speakers for the final session had dropped out. Someone at Nesta had read this blog (not this post, obviously), and liked it, and asked whether I could step in and talk about the Lab. This was a fantastic opportunity for me and the Lab, but meant that I only had one eye on the second session, while I tried to work out what I would say that would add value to the event.
2. Creating digital social organisations
The second panel session was about how DSI can be used to stimulate business growth. The panel were legends in this space – Francine Bennett, from Mastodon C (did the big statins analysis), Jonathan Waddingham, from Just Giving (the charity-enablers), Paul Miller, of Bethnall Green Ventures (Nesta-funded startup accelerator), Dan Sutch, from the Nominet Trust (serious tech funder) and Chris Taggart, from Open Corporates (massively comprehensive open international database of companies).
The general tone of this panel session was that there are people and organisations who are there to help people who think they can grow a business using DSI (Bethnall Green Ventures and Nominet Trust), but that it is hard (Open Corporates and Mastodon C). Francine Bennett also made the point that not everyone is in the start-up space waiting for a venture capitalist to come along and flip the company for millions, which was really nice to hear…
Jonathan Waddingham then told the story of Yimby, a spin off product from JustGiving. JustGiving facilitates donations to charity, but if the cause isn’t a charity, it can’t help. So Yimby (Yes in my back yard) plugs that gap, with a site that supports crowdfunding to make good things happen. A very nice story, interesting also for the fact that the product was developed rapidly, by a team made up of JustGiving staff and externally hired-developers.
3. Creating the right infrastructure for digital social innovation
The third panel session of the day was about infrastructure, and how public sector can help drive DSI forward.
Emer Coleman spoke about TransportAPI, and the way they pull together many transport-related Open Data feeds to create their service. TransportAPI has a free service, and a paid for service, depending on the number of API calls an app makes. They provide the data for over 400 apps, providing travel information to citizens.
Carl Haggerty (from Devon County Council, Chair of Local Gov Digital and winner of the Leadership Excellence award at the Guardian ) spoke about the skills gap in Local Government – that staff aren’t necessarily equipped to deal with digital. He also rightly said that all stakeholders must work together to make a real difference. There was a brief discussion with the crowd on the differences between urban and rural areas, and how perhaps there should be less of a focus on cities.
Finally, I was up. I introduced the (mainly southern) crowd to Trafford, where we are (South-West of Manchester City Centre), who we are (political, organisational, aspirations, demographics), and what we’re doing with DSI. I spoke about Open Data Manchester, and the thriving Open Data Community. I then moved onto the Lab, and our way of working (rapid prototyping, transparent, multi-organisation). I spoke about how we’d started experimenting with Crowdmapping – blue plaques, faith groups), and how we were beginning to try to offer analysis/narrative alongside the data that we make available as open data.
I also explained how I am very aware that though I have a website with ~3,000 pageviews per month, and ~1,000 twitter followers, much of the data, analysis and maps that we make are not reaching people in the communities of Trafford. I then went on to talk about our project with Gorgeous Gorse Hill, visualising data with flowers in the streets around the ward, to try and get people thinking about data and information who wouldn’t normally have any contact with it. I really believe that the more informed people are about the area that they live in, the better equipped they are to improve it, and I think that this is a very nice way to do that.
The formal session was brought to a close, and we reflected on the fact that of the four broad areas of DSI, there is a lot of activity relating to Open Data and Open Knowledge, but less around Open Networks and Open Hardware. This was true of the speakers at the event, and it’s also true of activity in Trafford. We do open data well, and we’re getting on with open knowledge. But for the other two, we’ve started to think about getting hold of a couple of the smart citizen sensors to contribute to the Smart Citizen network. We’ve also had conversations in the Lab about getting a 3D printer, but we’ve really not made any progress. I think to do that – we need to strengthen our links with people that have successfully run projects in these areas. Hopefully further Nesta events will help with those connections.
4. The drink up
The networking drinks were AMAZING! I met the legendary Shirley Ayres – Connected Care, Carrina Gaffney of the The Good Systems Team, Tom Harrison of the London Borough of Hackney, Dalton Coker – cancer analyst from Imperial College, and many others, both there in person, and virtually through twitter.
All in all, a very worthwhile day/night. Learned a lot from the leading experts in this space, was able to bring Trafford and the Lab to a different audience, and had some very stimulating, and thought-provoking conversation…
Trafford Innovation and Intelligence Lab 
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