Social Innovation Camp CEE

Have you heard about Social Innovation Camp?

Not yet? It has been started by Dan McQuillan, an e-campaignin expert, previously working for Amnesty International, and with background in partialphysics on the topic of web-participation-development and social innovations. After the succesful camp in the UK, the Sicamp nano-Barcamp styled hybrid of development event is buzzing Scotland and the CEE region now.

What is Dan saying about this? 

We hope Social Innovation Camp shows that if you have a little faith in people, they can do amazing things for all sorts of different reasons - whether it’s to solve a problem; to do something that’s worth doing or because it’s simply really good fun.

We believe the incredible thing about the web and new technologies is that they make all of this possible by helping people to organise things better for themselves. And Social Innovation Camp is all about making that a practical reality by helping people create the next generation of social start-ups.

But our really grand vision is that the Social Innovation Camp might play a small part in creating a big change: a shift where people don’t just complain about stuff that needs fixing or rely on government/companies/charities to do it for them. Instead, we want to give people the confidence, connections and skills they need to start up their own thing and mend something that’s broken.

The focus now on the CEE region, with the help of the CEE Trust. The Social Innovation Camp (SIC), will be a part of the Civil Society Forum in Bratislava in September’09, which is bringing together talented software developers/designers and social innovators from the non-profit, commercial and public sector. Their task is for a couple of days, paired up in teams, to build effective web-based solutions to real social problems.

Based on the successful model pioneered in the United Kingdom, Social Innovation Camp CEE aims to jumpstart a “digital activist” movement across the Central European region, committed to using the Internet for social change.

Beside participation, following Dan on his website  https://www.internetartizans.co.uk/ is a useful activity.

Tags: camp