SIX Blog

Sorts of film rating that I present more details bellow:
I call it Active rating which by it I want to reduce the bad effects that films
Have on their fans and increase the positive effect, the role that their fathers may be able to have (and usually cannot do it properly).
It can use in TV s, you can form an industry on the basis of it and sell the method on films , and it can be a campaign (for film industry) to change film rating or reducing the rating of one special film by applying the technology on it.
I presently need a sponsor to help me do some marketing for it.
davood011@yahoo.com

Sorts of film rating that I present more details bellow:
I call it Active rating which by it I want to reduce the bad effects that films
Have on their fans and increase the positive effect, the role that their fathers may be able to have (and usually cannot do it properly).
It can use in TV s, you can form an industry on the basis of it and sell the method on films , and it can be a campaign (for film industry) to change film rating or reducing the rating of one special film by applying the technology on it.
I presently need a sponsor to help me do some marketing for it.

Let us end the separation :( providing finance for social and... Activities)

It’s better and essential every person or group see results of its own activities in Society. Problem arises when different wrong processes separate between money and the mother.
So, as it s clear we should join between them again, one natural way it can happen is by taxes. So, Government in a process will estimate and pay a portion of your direct or indirect result to you as NGO or what so ever.
The other way is to increase the limitations of intellectual property law to include such cases.
For example: you as NGO (university…) have generated an idea (Open University, Google...) or a service and this service sooner or later will show itself in different ways (producing money or lessening expenses) in society
So, naturally you are the entity who should be entitled to use the result.
This will answer important part of the problem.
After implementing such method other part (some activities may underestimated or by any reason do not like to use this system) will have access to more generous people.
davood011@yahoo.com

We held our second ever Social Innovation Camp last weekend and it was a whole lot of fun.

From a Friday evening to Sunday afternoon we had over 80 talented developers, designers, social needs experts, mentors, facilitators and those with business, marketing and legal skills to help accelerate seven early-stage ideas for web-based tools to change the world.

We set them the challenge of building seven social start-ups in less than 48 hours and let them loose in the Young Foundation in Bethnal Green, London.

The whole thing kicked off on Friday evening with an informal introduction and drinks: together with some imaginative use of felt-tip pens and sticky labels.
 The real work began bright and – given the night before -perhaps a little too early at 9am on Saturday morning. We had strong coffee and huge croissants to welcome Campers and after a brief introduction to set the challenges for the weekend, they were off dividing themselves into teams around the seven ideas and hunkering down into spaces around the building.

And it all sort of took off from there. Each team had to ‘prove the potential’ their idea had to create real social change and become a fully-fledged social start-up by 2pm on Sunday afternoon. We gave them some things to think about (hacking together some software, deciding how they’d sustain the tool and how they’d get people to use it) but how and what they chose to develop was left to participants to decide.

Everyone attacked their task in a huge variety of ways: we had a crack team of coders sitting in the attic building this; to groups fiercely arguing about taxonomies; to neat divisions of labour into development, design and pitch. We used Twitter to find skills and expertise around the building and had a dedicated handful of people circulating each of the projects offering help and advice on everything from media law to project branding.

Patch leads and extension cords tangled round each other, mixed up amongst pens, paper, glue and cellotape - all put to use showing how ideas could make a difference in reality. One team even headed off to a nearby canal path to ambush Saturday afternoon joggers into signing up to their site. Projects gained new names, the walls became plastered in post-it notes, diagrams, wireframe sketches and designs.
After a frenzied sprint to the finish, all our participants gathered in the Museum of Childhood at 2pm on Sunday to share what they’d built over the weekend. We invited a whole load of extras along and each of the seven teams pitched what they’d created.

The progress teams of people – most of whom had never met previously – made in less than 48 hours was staggering. The projects kicked off with AccessCity, who built a stunning amount in one weekend - a Ruby on Rails platform with working api and iPhone app as well as a beautifully designed site and presentation. The audience was then treated to two hours of video, clever tech and the appearance of some vegetables at the end. Check out our December ideas page for all the material we’ve collected from the weekend – the Guardian’s Jemima Kiss also wrote a great run down of the teams and projects here.

The judges had the unenviable task of rating each project from one to seven based on some loose criteria: that a project had proved its potential to create real social change by harnessing the power of individuals to do something for themselves and that the technology they’d built wasn’t just for early-adopters, but for anyone to use.

The results were very, very close – the Good Gym scraped in in first place with Useful Visitors a close second, followed by our other five projects in very close succession. You can read more about the judges’ view from Lee Bryant at Headshift.

The results are in! The following 7 projects have been selected for Social Innovation Camp, 5th-7th of December 2008, at the Young Foundation, 17/18 Victoria Park Square, E2 9PF.

- Going Postal
- Useful Visitors
- AccessCity
- We-need.org
- Good Gym
- Vegsy
- Carbon Co-op

For more information, take a look here: http://www.sicamp.org/?page_id=187

Now we're looking for talented people to provide technical and creative input for the Social Innovation Camp weekend, 5th-7th December 2008 and help build these projects. If you'd like to join us, tell us what you'd like to work on and how you can help here: http://www.sicamp.org/?page_id=301

This was the focus of discussion with politicians, young people, front line community workers, entrepreneurs, business people and many more at the Chain Reaction event this week. The event was organised by Community Links and launched Global Entrepreneurship Week. You can learn more about this two day event here. Unlike many events, Chain Reaction's focus is on it legacy. What happens now? Will people continue to connect, collaborate and commit? Check out new ideas for positive social change that came oout of the day so far.

[For Social Invention without Borders]
2008 International Conference on Social Invention, First Day

“How would it be to use ‘No-lae bang’ (singing rooms) during the middle of the day as conference spaces?”
“During the credit card settlement time, let’s make it necessary to input a 4-digit secret code. At present, it is too dangerous.”
“It would be good if we could designate the third week of October for Chusok (harvest festival) so that one can plan consecutive holidays.”

The lively ideas bouncing around delighted the participants of the very first International Conference on Social Invention. The citizens’ imagination-laden social invention ideas filled the walls along the staircase leading to the second floor auditorium of the Myongdong Korean Federation of Banks Convention Hall. With “Social Invention without Borders” as their motto, participants from all over the world have gathered to share freely their thinking and experiences in this widely opened space. This article will convey the landscape of the first day of International Conference on Social Invention, which was convened on the 9th at the Myongdong Convention Hall. It was a time filled with imagination and inspiration that matched the original ideas that the citizens had gathered.

[Many Millions around the World Committed to Social Invention]

“Inside daily life, the policy proposal method of mutual communication with citizens is an example of good governance that should be sought by all nations and cities. It is of help in strengthening the capability of civil society and in establishing governmental policy.” (Kim Young-ho, first vice minister, Ministry of Public Administration and Security)

“As the Wikipedia phenomenon tells, the small and big ideas of ordinary citizens that have come from within their daily lives are excellent means of changing the world and when these ideas are able to operate as a pathway, social invention can be realized.” (Kim Chang-guk, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Hope Institute)

With the welcoming address, the curtain was raised on the International Conference on Social Invention. The first presenter to go up to the podium was Mr. Geoff Mulgan, Director of the Young Foundation. The Young Foundation, a public foundation based in England, is engaging in lively activities in the field of social invention.

“We hold an explicit point of view regarding social design. When an idea emerges, even if it is one that is small in scope, right away we experiment and act on it. Our scholarly traditions differ, and our governmental practices differ. But I believe that we can learn a great deal about being able to act more quickly.”

Director Geoff Mulgan introduced an example of an activity in the field of education. “School of Everything,” the online educational program launched in September of this year works in both directions, and is one in which anyone can teach and anyone can learn. With the entire world as their neighbor, netizens can learn the Vietnamese language or teach the methods for installing solar power generators on roofs.

“Everyone will likely be surprised to hear that there are many millions of people around the world participating in social invention. From citizen organizations to social enterprises, there are many fields that include social invention and social invention is also developing regionally and locally.

This year, the Young Foundation launched the online site “SIX” (Social Innovation Exchange), the first site where all the world’s groups concerned with social invention can engage in interchanges. In this space, those from Spain, United States, China, Australia, among various other places in the world, can share ideas that they have grown and participants can freely own these ideas together.

Nowadays, social invention is not only one society, but rather something that rises from a new dynamism that is moving the entire earth.

Director Geoff Mulgan also suggested assignments that social organizations will have to solve in the future. Among the assignments are the diversification of resource procurement; systematization of methods for developing small ideas into big ideas; and strengthening the incubator role of connecting ideas with money, strength, and government. Also important is the issue of how to secure a much larger role for social invention in the debates regarding the establishment of policy measures and social change.

“We live in an era in which potential is high and opportunities can be found. This is even more so because we are at a critical economic moment. This period in which capitalism is retreating is a time in which much more socially pertinent productivity and creativity can emerge. This period will become an opportunity to newly utilize social assets, including social invention, that have not received attention in the past.”

[Citizens and District Residents, Becoming Happy through Ideas]

One need not cross an ocean to see an example of social invention. Even in Seoul, where we already walk on its ground, we can perceive a significant transformation. Participant in the conference, Mr. Ra Jin-gu, Vice Mayor of Seoul Metropolitan Government, introduced “Inventive City Government,” an example of social invention that Seoul city is pushing ahead.

“If you define ‘Inventive City Government’ by a single phrase, you can express it as “Think from the citizens’ perspective.’ By bringing the qualities of originality and creativity to even minor daily work, all Seoul City public employees are appreciated by the citizen-clients and continue to improve.

For this reason, in 2006, Seoul City launched an “Imagination Bank” suggestion window person for Seoul City employees and began operating the system “Million Imagination Oasis,” where citizens can freely set forth ideas concerning the city government. After citizens suggest their opinions through an online space [“e-People”], those in charge of policy can directly join heads with citizens and hold a “Realization Conference” in order to guide the ideas into reality.

In the past two years, through the “Million Imagination Oasis” citizens have poured out ideas on 16,095 subjects. Delivering multi-language magazines about Korea delivered to the multicultural families, starting new, small enterprises together with Seoul City, and lowering hand straps in the Metro for shorter passengers are among the examples of citizens’ ideas that have become reality.

The example introduced by Lee No-gun, Director of the Nowon District Office, also expands one’s vision. The Nowon District is championing a “Social Agenda Marketing Leadership” and the ideas gained from public officials, students and citizens are reflected constructively in the District’s policies.

The deliberation structure with a small number bureaucracy and central government at its core possesses the special qualities of small expenditure and efficiency.

If in the past, the leadership had been a leader-centered vertical one, social agenda marketing leadership is based on originality and ideas, with a horizontal consultation determination structure among those making policy.

[Social Invention is a prism, social invention is a microphone]

The government by its own efforts alone cannot search for it. Ko Kyu-chang, Director of General Administrative Division of the Ministry of Public Administration and Security stated, “Generally foreign countries’ policies are formed with the civil society at its center, but differently in Korea, a government-centered policy structure is in operation.

“Presently, we respond within thirty days to ideas provided by citizens. With regard to good ideas, compensation and recognition can arise out of them. In different countries, this process is systematized through a presidential decree.”

As one by one each presenter finished, participants poured out questions. Mindful of the progress of the proceedings, the moderator stated a number of times that “No more questions will be received” to restrain the participants whose intellectual curiosity was demonstrably heated.

After all of the presentations ended, the first day’s program concluded with presentations of inventions by the first, second and third place winners of the Social Invention Competition. The social invention experts gathered from the world gave lavish cheer to the original ideas and passion shown by the awardees.

[Material gathering, writing] Lee Hyun-gu (Freelance contributor)
[Photos] Park Jin-heui (Photographer)
[Researcher in charge] Lee Won-hye/topcook@makehope.org
[Volunteer Translator (CORI)] Park Ji Won

[To see the whole news ▶ Hope Institute's website]

We believe SIX is full of people with great ideas, experiences, methods and projects and we need your help!

Anton Shelupanov, our thinker in Residence for Crime, Justice and Youth is organising a seminar on the policing of young adults - aged between 18 and 25 – as part of a programme to pilot promising ideas. He is interested in any innovative approaches to this issue and any interesting case studies, projects or ideas you might have about this!  

 Join his Forum here - http://www.socialinnovationexchange.org/node/1200 

 Yvonne Roberts - a senior associate with the health launchpad team at the Young Foundation is speaking at the WHO 2008 Global Ministerial Forum on Research for Health. This is a rare opportunity to talk about social innovation to ministers from all over the world.  We’d be very grateful for examples of social innovations in health in the developing world, and particular messages that are worth communicating.

Join her Forum here - http://www.socialinnovationexchange.org/node/1201 

We’ve just launched the first paper on the Methods for Social Innovation project -  Generating Social Innovation: setting an agenda, shaping methods and growing the field.  This includes nearly 300 methods currently in use around the world. Please read it here -http://www.socialinnovationexchange.org/node/1167 and let us know what you think, including additions and amendments!

Our Call for Ideas has opened

To submit your idea for Social Innovation Camp, just answer our submission questions and email your idea back to ideas[@]sicamp[dot]org

Or if you're feeling particularly inspired, we'd love to see submissions as video, podcasts or photo stories - be creative!

Have a look at our ideas criteria and examples to find out more about what we're looking for. Or check out the projects and winners from our last Social Innovation Camp in April.

Submissions close on Friday 7th November 2008.

Our judges will then select the ideas which they think have the greatest potential to benefit from the Social Innovation Camp weekend. We'll be in touch with those who have submitted chosen ideas by Friday 14th November 2008.

Remember to keep 5th-7th December free!

Don't have an idea to enter but still want to get involved? Find out how you can here.

Chita 08 is a collaboration workshop between Indaco department, Politecnico di milano (Italy) and School of Design, Jiangnan University (China). It’s a service design exercise as a teaching activity, and as a research activity, to investigate potentials of mobile communication technologies in supporting the collaborative services which are implicated in grassroots social innovation towards sustainable everyday life.

The second part (concept design) of Chita 08 workshop has launched on 2nd of September and last 2 weeks until 13rd when there would be stage presentation.
5 PhD researchers from Politecnico di Milano, Miaosen Gong, Francesca Valsecchi, Joon Sang Baek, Musstanser Tinauli, Irina Maria Suteu visited Jiangnan University and work together with 29 Chinese students and lecturers.

During the 2 weeks concept design part, 13 input lectures including 6 public lectures have been done from different perspectives. The concept design part includes field research, idea generation and concept definition. 6 groups of students developed 6 service design concepts about food network, mobility, health, stories connected places, migrant workers and outdoor sports. And the concept design presentation was organized in the morning of 13rd to share the results with other professors, students and local partners. The experiences during this 2 weeks are exciting and beyond of our expectation.

The next steps of workshop are solutions development and exhibition in Expo in November, together with results of Lab sythesis project that we have done in Polimi last year.

Chita08 involves 6 Phd Candidates in DIeCM from different research lines and theirs research activities (directly involved into 3 Phd thesis) from different perspectives. We can say it’s discovering of Phd research based action. Based on related research activities, 6 academic publications have been published or accepted by the design conferences all over the world (Torino, China, Hongkong, Scotland).

For more information, please see: http://www.chita.politecalab.org/chita/

Chita 08 is a collaboration workshop between Indaco department, Politecnico di milano (Italy) and School of Design, Jiangnan University (China). It’s a service design exercise as a teaching activity, and as a research activity, to investigate potentials of mobile communication technologies in supporting the collaborative services which are implicated in grassroots social innovation towards sustainable everyday life.

The second part (concept design) of Chita 08 workshop has launched on 2nd of September and last 2 weeks until 13rd when there would be stage presentation.
5 PhD researchers from Politecnico di Milano, Miaosen Gong, Francesca Valsecchi, Joon Sang Baek, Musstanser Tinauli, Irina Maria Suteu visited Jiangnan University and work together with 29 Chinese students and lecturers.

During the 2 weeks concept design part, 13 input lectures including 6 public lectures have been done from different perspectives. The concept design part includes field research, idea generation and concept definition. 6 groups of students developed 6 service design concepts about food network, mobility, health, stories connected places, migrant workers and outdoor sports. And the concept design presentation was organized in the morning of 13rd to share the results with other professors, students and local partners. The experiences during this 2 weeks are exciting and beyond of our expectation.

The next steps of workshop are solutions development and exhibition in Expo in November, together with results of Lab sythesis project that we have done in Polimi last year.

Chita08 involves 6 Phd Candidates in DIeCM from different research lines and theirs research activities (directly involved into 3 Phd thesis) from different perspectives. We can say it’s discovering of Phd research based action. Based on related research activities, 6 academic publications have been published or accepted by the design conferences all over the world (Torino, China, Hongkong, Scotland).

For more information, please see: http://www.chita.politecalab.org/chita/

Many of us in the network have to present complicated issues in a striking way visually. Here are a few of my favourite sites providing ideas and practical tools for presenting complex social issues. This is a field that is advancing very rapidly – so updates would be welcome..

An excellent site with many examples is http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/ which also connects to a blog.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/08/02/data-visualization-modern-app... is another collection, full of fascinating and beautiful examples.

A similar collection aimed at advocacy and argument is http://www.tacticaltech.org/infodesign.

Others include: the now famous Hans Rosling and www.gapfinder.org which has been bought by Google and is the liveliest example of animated data.

I also like: the complexity maps group working on local mapping - www.complexitymaps.net; www.socialwatch.org – for showing social data on inequality etc; www.wiserearth.org – for a more grassroots use of Googlemaps, and http://www.softhook.com/ Christian Nold’s site for public participation in representation.

It'd be good to have other ideas and examples.

Call for Papers International Journal of Innovation and Regional Development (IJIRD)

International Journal of Innovation and Regional Development  (IJIRD)

Call For papers Special Issue on: "Non-Technological and Non-Economic Innovations and Their Impact on Economy" Guest Editors:
Steffen Roth, University of Geneva and Berne University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland
Ralf Wetzel, Berne University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland
Karel Müller, Charles University Prague, Czech Republic Discourses on innovation are characterised by contradictory concepts: the label innovation qualifies products or processes as well as their market entry; and both intra-organisational change and new forms of inter-organisational co-operation are said to be (open) innovation. At the same time, the immense scale of concepts cover just a narrow scope of research interests: mostly, innovation is about technology. Thus, we do not so far know much about non-technical innovations (NTI), or non-technical sources of technical innovations. Additionally, we find that this bias is flanked by an economy bias, which is even more surprising against the background of the multi-dimensional reality of innovation:

1. The regionalisation of national innovation regimes is accompanied by the installation of more negotiation-based innovation systems. In the course of this transformation, both the number and the diversity of involved actors and their practices have been increasing. Meanwhile, studies on contemporary knowledge societies, on the MODE 2 of science, and on the triple-helix of innovation all indicate that the design of robust innovation is, to a great extent, about the finding a well-tempered balance between political, scientific, and economic forms of interests.
2. For decades, private companies have been understood as part of the economy. Due to increasing insights in the relevance of intangible resources, organisational learning, and multi-stakeholder approaches, current organizations are said to be in need of a more polyphonic self-concept. Meanwhile, even banks and insurance companies seem to follow the idea that they produce much more than just economic values.
3. If we are in need of commodities, machines, and financial resources, then we go to the market. If we are in need of human resources, intercultural competence, and social capital, then we also go. In both cases, the term market means the economic market, which raises issues as it is hard to imagine that we can buy cultural or social capital on economic markets. Thus, currently, we are experiencing an increasing popularity of theories and concepts of the social embeddedness of markets, or even of the existence of non-economic markets.

Nonetheless, most concepts, indicators, and databases focus only on the economic dimensions of innovation. That is, most researchers and practitioners focus on just a narrow range of dimensions when they discuss on the multi-dimensional phenomenon called innovation. The contradiction between the most polyphonic realities and the rather one-dimensional concepts of innovation provokes the central questions of this special issue.     Subject Coverage Papers should address research questions in the field, including but not limited to the following questions and topics:

• Why do we know so little about NTI and non-economic innovations (NEI), so far? What impact does this lack have on public understanding of innovation in general and economic performance in particular?

• Which forms and dimensions of NTI and NEI can be found both in literature and empirically? What impact do these findings have either on current theorising about innovation, on regulatory practices in this field or on the concrete performance of innovating systems?

• Are there innovations without an NTI or NEI dimension, that is, is there something like pure TI or EI innovation? How good are current indicators of innovation? What could adequate indicators for NTI or NEI look like? How could they complement current indicators for TI and EI?

• Are there further biases in innovation? How do these (often hidden or self-evident) biases influence public understanding of innovation? How can they be identified and studied?

• Which paradoxes and conflicts are emerging in the context of management and the efforts to balance economic and non-economic dimensions of innovation?

• How do polyphonic organisations identify, balance, and anticipate relevant resources, competences, and market structures? What relationships between reflexivity of organisations and their organisational pattern can be identified?

• How can we measure the innovativeness or changeability of organisations?

• What does an adequate concept of the diffusion of innovation in(to) non-economic markets look like? What kind of innovation barriers are we to be expecting in the context of non-economic innovations?

• Is open innovation a case of (trans-)economic innovation?

    Notes for Prospective Authors Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere All papers are refereed through a peer review process. A guide for authors, sample copies and other relevant information for submitting papers are available on the Author Guidelines page     Important Dates Manuscript due: 31 December, 2008 Acceptance notification: 28 February, 2008 Final manuscript due: 30 April, 2009     Editors and Notes You may send one copy in the form of a PDF file attached to an e-mail (details in http://www.inderscience.com/mapper.php?id=31) to the following: Dipl.-Soz. Steffen Roth
Berne University of Applied Sciences
Department for Business and Administration Studies
P.O. Box 305
CH-3000 Bern 22
Switzerland
Tel: +41 31 848 3447
Email: steffen.roth@bfh.ch with copies to Prof. Dr. R. Wetzel
Guest Editor
Email: ralf.wetzel@bfh.ch Prof. Dr. K. Muller
Guest Editor
Email: muellkar@jinonice.cuni.cz Prof. Dr. P. Ketikidis
Editor-in-Chief, IJIRD
Email: ijird@seerc.org and Editorial Office
E-mail: editorial@inderscience.com Please include in your submission the title of the Special Issue, the title of the Journal and the name of the Guest Editor

In response to a great conversation at the conference about "building networks", I've posted a wikispace to gather ideas and thoughts from SIX members. It's not a pretty site, but just a spot to gather info that can be transfered back to the SIX site at some point.

Please visit, take 10 minutes to share some ideas and return to see what others have written. If you have any questions or thoughts, please don't hesitate to contact me.

http://si-networks.wikispaces.com/

The topics include:
* What are other’s experiences in building networks/How to draw people in?
* How do you sustain Networks?
* Diffusing Innovations through Networks/Role for and opportunity of learning communities
* System Dynamics: How do you create a common language, understanding?
* What are your ideas for SIX?
* What is the difference between an alliance and a network?
* How do you increase citizen engagement?
* How do you collectively create IP/Knowledge through Networks?
* How do you use new technologies (web 2.0 etc)?
* How do you moderate networks?
* Is it better to have international or local engagement?
* Why would I bother to participate in a network? What makes a “good” network good?
* How do you manage cross-discipline, cross-issue networks?

Chita 08 is a collaboration workshop between Indaco department, Politecnico di milano (Italy) and School of Design, Jiangnan University (China). It’s a service design exercise as a teaching activity, and as a research activity, to investigate potentials of mobile communication technologies in supporting the collaborative services which are implicated in grassroots social innovation towards sustainable everyday life.

The workshop has been launched in July 1st and would last 5 months to proceed a complete project of service design till November 11th during the Wuxi International Industrial design Expo where the results of workshop will be presented and exhibited finally. During the first two weeks September, 5 Ph.D Candidate and researcher in Indaco (Polimi) will visit Jiangnan University as lecturers of workshop.

Chita 08 workshop is a great opportunity to exchange the teaching and researching experiences in service design and design for sustainability between two universities and will be a real step of design action towards sustainable society.

We are still looking for the suitable local partners for workshop as follows:
- Companies in the field of mobile communication technologies, who are supposed to be the clients of design projects and to provide the technological supports;
- Non Government Organizations(NGOs), Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and other Associations, who also could be clients of service design project and provide the local context;

For more information http://www.chita.politecalab.org/chita/

If any partners have interests, pls contact to:
Miaosen Gong
Dis-Indaco, Politecnico di Milano
Via Durando 38/A, 20158 Milano, Italy
Tel:+39 02 2399 5967
Cellphone:+39 3339425646
Fax: +39 02 2399 7274
miaosen.gong@gmail.com (miaosen.gong(a)gmail.com)
www.sustainable-everyday.net
www.chita.politecalab.org/chita/

At the risk of being a "Blog Hog", I thought this second post I put on the Australia 2020 Summit participants' website might also be of interest to SIX members:

If you haven't already done so, please try to watch the powerful, confronting documentary film "The Oasis", screened on the ABC last Thursday night. Filmed over a period of two years, it follows the Director of the Oasis youth crisis centre in Darlinghurst, Sydney—Captain Paul Moulds—and his team as they provide basic, life-sustaining support for some of the 22,000 teenagers in Australia who are homeless every night in our wealthy country. In Paul Moulds' words, the job is to "try to stop desperate young people from jumping over the cliff".

It is disturbing and heart-wrenching, but it also leaves a glimmer of hope. Hope that comes from the fact that wonderful people like Paul exist and that they will probably never give up on the people in whom they see so much promise. Hope in the young people themselves—in their resilience, their inner fire. And hope that, for at least some of them, circumstance, their will to survive and the tenacious support of the Captain Paul Moulds of the world might come together—and as a result they might just live the rewarding, fulfilling lives that they and every other Australian deserve and to which they all, ultimately aspire. It can be viewed online at http://www.abc.net.au/tv/oasis/about/watch/watchFilm.htm.

While the film focuses on the important and challenging problems of youth homelessness, the basic messages it leaves apply, in my view, to all of the issues that result in social exclusion. I mentioned in an earlier post that I have lived with a disability most of my life and have spent a lot of my career contributing to the reform process that aims to remove the barriers that prevent people with disabilities from participating fully in society. As I watched the film I saw so many of the same dynamics in the situations of the young people in the film—and the systems and processes that try to support them but only survive on a shoestring and the goodwill of decent people—that I see so often faced by people with disabilities in our community. And I know that these are also the same issues that indigenous people, economically disadvantaged people, people from non-English-speaking backgrounds and so on all face.

The first of these is the gap between the reality of what's going on on the ground and the decision-making process that decides what needs to be done. As our society has become bigger, more complex and less "personal" the gap between those who are disadvantaged and the issues they face and those who make the decisions about the programs, interventions and the money to be spent on them has widened to the point where, despite the best efforts of those who are in the privileged position to control the nation's resources, they simply can't understand—largely because they are NOT disadvantaged—what living life at the disadvantaged end of the spectrum really means.

The irony here is that, in the end, a "successful" life for someone who is currently excluded would look no different and should be no different to a "successful" life for anybody else. Life is a pathway. To be "successful" in life that pathway needs to be (mostly) smooth. Of course some people can deal with life's challenges reasonably well—but they are usually the ones with a combination of inner resilience, opportunity, resources, strong family and community support and a healthy dose of good luck. With those resources in their "life tool kit" the inevitable potholes in life can usually be overcome fairly easily.

The homeless youth in the film are not on a smooth life pathway. As the film so graphically shows, most have had virtually no opportunity, no resources, no family and community support and no luck. Even those with a healthy dose of inner resilience are so far behind the eight ball that the resilience that they may have started with either manifests as anti-social behaviour or simply gets eroded away. Their fire goes out.

I see it all the time. I have even felt it myself—the frustration, the anger and sometimes the insidious feeling of disempowerment that comes from living in a world that views me and others who are somehow "different" as somehow "lesser"—as second-class citizens. It is not just that these homeless young people don't have a home. It is that we (the "mainstream") haven't understood the complex set of issues that cause homelessness and we haven't created a plan to address all of these issues in unison—to create a smooth life pathway. We just don't understand them and their lives.

We CAN sort all of this out, of course. As I said in my previous post, the business sector in particular sorts out complex problems all the time—but it requires "big picture thinking": thinking that embraces the ENTIRE problem, not just the bits that, like an iceberg, appear above the surface.

The second is the fundamental role that self-esteem and hope play in every individual's life. These are not things that can be just injected into a person and they are certainly not things that are passively received by the individual. I believe one of the greatest builders of self-esteem is an individual's capacity to meet the expectations of our society: of our family and friends and of the community as a whole. A sense of achievement.

This is about rights and responsibilities.

A citizen who is fully included in society has a responsibility—not necessarily formalised and not even necessarily overtly recognised—to contribute to building and sustaining that society. And as they discharge their responsibility they have a right to expect that the society to which they contribute will provide them with the support they need to function effectively in society. On the other hand, society has a right to expect that individuals will take advantage of the combined efforts of its citizens to build a world in which individuals can contribute. It also has a responsibility to ensure that, as it builds that world, every citizen can take advantage of it.

That formula works well for the "average" citizen. Our mums and dads, our next door neighbours, the many others with whom we come into contact expect us to make a contribution and see it as only right that the resources we need to do so are available. We know that if that formula breaks down the "average" citizen wouldn't function well and wouldn't be able to contribute to society.

For the majority of those who are currently excluded from society, their exclusion has resulted in one way or another from an inability to access the massive infrastructure that we call "society"—an infrastructure that we have built by investing inconceivable amounts of money, time and effort. But instead of recognizing that the key reason people are not contributing is that this massive infrastructure hasn't been built with them and their needs in mind and we need to put effort and resource into fixing that, we simply lower our expectations of them. That, to me, is an abdication of one of the most basic responsibilities of society.

The third is about breaking the cycle. That's what Paul and his team try to do. And they succeed... sometimes. They would succeed more often if a) they had the resources to do the job properly and b) they were an integrated part of an overall intervention that connected a range of interventions, tailored to each individual, that created the smooth pathway that most of us take for granted. And one-off intervention—connected or otherwise—is not enough. Many of the social problems we face in our nation require sustained, continuous effort. Investment. Social investment.

Instead of trying to control and micro-manage the one-the-ground interventions that, like Paul's, are proving their worth, our systems and bureaucracies need to be facilitators and coordinators. Creating the linkages needs a helicopter view so let's do that at that level. Allocating resources can only be done by those who control those resources. That's not Paul: he was out on the streets at midnight with a tin trying to raise a few extra dollars that will at best only make a small dent in the financial challenges his organisation faces.

The fourth is about understanding people, understanding the diversity of human nature. The film didn't just show "homeless kids". It showed a huge variety of human beings. We are all different. We have different strengths and weaknesses. We respond differently to different situations—good and bad. While there was a strong commonality in the life situations that most of the kids had faced, in the end their responses to the situations were different.

The simple conclusion here? Our interventions need to build in that human diversity at every level—from inception and construction through to delivery. We need to place the individual at the centre of a set of coordinated interventions and programs. Design the programmes around the people, not the people around the programmes.

I spoke in my earlier post about the things we could learn from the success of the business sector and I'm sure many would argue that this area is probably not one of them (ie, understanding people ... doesn't Business just understand profit???). I would argue the opposite. The marketing function in any successful business is all about understanding that every "customer" sees the "product" differently. Every successful marketing program applies the concept of "market segmentation"—the process of identifying the different groups that make up the overall market, understanding what makes them "tick" and tailoring the message/product/solution to appeal to those different groups. The marketing function understands diversity perhaps better than any other.

The fifth (bear with me, I'm almost there!) is about normalising best practice. I'm sure like many others in this group I have seen countless pilot programs that prove, without any skerrick of a doubt, that there ARE achievable, practical solutions to virtually every social challenge we face. But I can number on one hand those that have gone beyond "proof of concept" to "business as usual" roll out. This makes absolutely no sense.

And the final one is about the economy. One of the key challenges I think we face at the Australia 2020 Summit and beyond is understanding that every one of the 10 streams that the Summit will focus on relates, in the end, to every other. I'm sure the 100 or so of us who will be focused on the Community stream will be able to come up with a range of great, practical solutions to our nation's most pressing social challenges. But they will go nowhere without a strong economy. And we need a secure nation. And an effective governance model. And a healthy society... We need to make those links.

And this is not a one-way thing. It's not just about needing a strong, wealthy economy to fund social programs. It is just as much about the contribution that an investment in social reform—and the increase in the productivity and contribution of all Australian citizens to the overall wealth of our nation that will result from genuine social reform—will make to the overall wealth of our nation. In business terms it's about "cost/benefit". Yes, there is a cost in funding Paul's programs and the many other clever, successful social intervention programs in all areas of disadvantage, all around the nation. But there is also a massive return.

To illustrate the point: If we offered opportunities for just a third of the working age people with disabilities who are currently sitting at home on Disability Support Pensions to access our basic community infrastructure, gain the education and training they need and as a result gain a job—that is 606,000 people—we would have fixed Australia's skills crisis. And we would have saved $3.6 billon annum in welfare payments and added $17 billion to Australia's GDP.

It’s not about cost, it’s about investment. Investment in Australia's future.

We have started an open discussion about an idea called peace cafe/cafe salam at http://www.peacecafesalam.blogspot.com/ feel free to join us! Simon

Friends and Colleagues,

I am writing to invite you to participate in an experiment of sorts, a scan aimed at understanding how innovation works in small (<$500,000) and mid-size (<$2.9m) NGOs. This project was created to collect and share information how organizations come up with ideas and new solutions and to ascertain whether or not organizations currently use innovation strategies (specific tools and practices) to support social innovation.

The project came from a desire to better understand attitudes about "innovation" within NGOs, current practices and use of tools and opportunities for development in the understanding of social innovation, especially in the United States. Primarily, it is a way to better understand how tools, processes and practices can help NGOs to enhance program design and development and to capture, pilot and realize "new ideas that work". This scan is part of a William Davidson Institute fellowship that I am doing with a large national foundation which is interested in improving adoption of constituent-engaged innovation in the nonprofit sector.

In an effort not only to collect information but also to share learnings, we have created a both a wiki and a survey so participants can choose the instrument that most fits their technology preference. While this project is based in the US, ideas from international NGOs will be a tremendous asset. There is such exciting work being done in the international community. Please share your thoughts and ideas.

You can find the wiki here:
http://npo-innovation.wikispaces.com/

Or take the survey here:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=OJN7cmDHHThtE5IGj5lIkg_3d_3d

Please email me at floosen@umich.edu with any additional questions or feedback.

Thank you for your time and assistance. See you in San Sebastian!

If you like sun, beatiful beaches good food and above all want to share and learn Social Innovative methods and tools with some of the top practitioners and thinkers in the field, please come and join us in San Sebastian from the 28th  to the 30th of July.

For program and registration details check here: http://www.socialinnovationexchange.org/node/709