Among the many presentations at 2gether08, the one that led to lots of “did you catch that  …” remarks  was JP Rangaswami talking about the Cluetrain Manifesto ten years on. At the event is seemed like a touchstone for our explorations of the relationships of people, technology, commerce and society. Now you can see JP here, introduced by Euan Semple.

JP is Managing Director of BT Data, and widely known for his insightful blogging as Confused of Calcutta. Cluetrain in the late 1990s set out a vision of how the Internet would transform relationships and communications without and within organisations. The Cluetrain website said:

A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.
These markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and often shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can’t be faked.

At 2gether08 JP suggested that Cluetrain was as much reminding us of what we had lost, as it was talking about the future. It was taking us back to a time before organisation and communication was dominated by command and control, and broadcast mode. It articulated what people were already feeling, and enabled them to say: it’s not just me … and I can get on the Cluetrain too.

JP identified five themes from Cluetrain:

1. people are human beings
2. people work in communities, and community extends beyond the walls of the firm
3. hypelinks subvert hierarchies … and so conversations can go laterally, not just up and down the ladder of control
4. conversations are richer with the new tools available, and firms have less capacity to control their employees and customers
5. people, in that context, have some power, and what is happening has a democratising influence.

JP also offered four themes for future exploration: governance of the Internet; consumers’ ability to aggregate their own information; identify; and intellectual property rights.

You can see the original Cluetrain site, and also read Cluetrain here.

The use of mobile or ubiquitous technologies to enable transformational improvements in learning and teaching practice has become something of a phenomenon where everyday devices from mobile phones to game consoles and mp3 players, social and media sharing networks and much more have created a rich and diverse learning landscape that exists beyond the school or university gates. Schools need no longer be “buildings”.

London is host to an annual event that has become the worlds largest conference to focus on these issues where over 800 innovators, early adopters, thought leaders, education professionals and policy makers come to discuss and explore the impact that these ubiquitous, affordable technologies are having on learning and what this means for the future of our educational institutions. The event is called Handheld Learning 2008 and will be held at The Brewery, Chiswell Street, EC1 during Oct 13th - 15th.

Lead speakers include author, Steven Johnson. social media scientist, danah boyd, Professor Stephen Heppell, Futurelab Research Director, Keri Facer, MIT Media Lab Chief Learning Architect, David Cavallo, former Sony Computer Entertainment Chairman and President, Chris Deering and many others.

Steve Moore will be hosting a 2gether morning of surprises (naturally) to engage a panel of speakers and the audience in a debate over how the technologies that learners already use outside of the school can be embraced for learning rather than being banned which is often the current position. Confirmed speakers in Steve session include Matt Locke, Channel 4, David Langridge, Microsoft and Richard Warmsley, T-Mobile with other to be announced shortly. There’s an Awards Party on the evening of the 13th, also at The Brewery.

Early bird registration is available until 31st July and includes a FREE Nintendo DS with game as well as entry to the Party. The DS is yours to keep but we ask that you bring it to the conference for a fully interactive experience during the 3 days. Those who attended 2gether08 receive a further 5% reduction on registration by using the code “2gether”.

Please join us and help keep these events connected and the ideas and actions continuing.

Register here

At 2gether08 I met up with my friend Richard Wilson, who runs the excellent participation think tank Involve. They are definitely thinking big in using new media to scale up the scope for citizen engagement. I shot this brief interview, and then asked Richard to send me some further thoughts.

He came back with this ambitious and inviting vision:

We at Involve are looking for partners to help us develop new 360 degree (online, broadcast and face-to-face) processes which engage millions of people to solve problems. We have spent the last year traveling the world identifying and understanding the best processes we can find.

Inspired by the 2gether08 festival and some of our own work - Critical mass: broadening the reach of public engagement across society - we are hosting two small workshops to develop ideas suitable for the Channel 4 4IP fund on the 10th and 23rd of July at our offices in Holborn, London. We’ve come up with a couple of initial ideas to start the conversation (click to download):

• Next Gen Britain: Your Chance to make a Change
• Last chance Britain: Your chance to make a change

These are just a starting place. If you’re interested in partnering Involve in developing these proposals, please get in touch with me letting me know which date you’re free, which proposal you like and how you could improve it.

In particular we’re really aware that us policy people can be incredibly worthy and dull. Whatever we do must be the opposite, exciting and fun; and talking to many of you over the last couple of days that’s what you do best.

I’m definitely signing up. Hope to see you there.

First Simon ran a session to explain how, by starting a Facebook group, he was able with the help of the BBC iPM programme to get a face-to-face meeting with Coca Cola and explore with them what could be done. As the graph shows, it that was achieved very quickly.

Here’s the full presentation.

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Then Simon got a call from iPM’s Jennifer Tracey with a request for a further interview, which he has posted here. Jennifer was happy that I took some video of the interview ….

Simon Berry interviewed by BBC iPM from David Wilcox on Vimeo.

… and I then recorded a shorter update interview.

Simon Berry from David Wilcox on Vimeo.

You can see all Simon’s posts about the campaign here on his blog, with more on the Facebook group. He is urging more people to sign up to the group to help him show support in the next phase of pursuading an international NGO like Oxfam or WaterAid to join in.

In the meantime Simon has linked up with one of Coca Cola’s reseachers, Adrian Ristow, who will be reporting from Ethiopia and Tanzanian on investigations into ways that Coca Cola may be able to use distribution channels for humanitarian purposes.

Want to help? Join the Facebook group and encourages others to do so, and offer any other ideas and expertise you may have. As Simon says, he’s become an accident campaign leader, and can do with all the help he can get.

Andy Hobsbawn established the first international Internet agency back in 1994, and so when he became concerned about climate change and living a greener life he thought about how to use the skills and creativity around his business.

He wanted to do come up with a solution rather than “stand back and panic about it”.

The result was Do The Green Thing “a new community that makes it easy and enjoyable to be a bit greener. Every month you’ll get a different Green Thing to do. All you have to do is do it.”

Andy explains here that he and his collaborators wanted to create a brand that was equivalent to those that people found in their consumer lives: something that was about fulfillment, enjoyment, pleasure and leisure rather  duty and  obligation. He’s enlisted some of the best people in video, podcasts, writing and games to achieve that.

Andy’s vision is that top-level creative content and interactivity can help catalyse and join up with more bottom-up activity like that being developed by the Low Carbon Community Network, and Transition Towns Network, described here by Tracey Todhunter.

I think we’ll see some collaborations on that front developing at 2gether08.

Meanwhile, here’s a video from Do the Green Thing, which promotes the message of Stick with what you’ve got. Apple fans look away now …

John Grant, author of the Green marketing Manifesto, will be interviewing Andy at 2gether08 tomorrow.

The aim behind 2gether08 is not just to talk about social issues and digital technology, but to start forming collaborations for practical action. The Social Innovation Camp that Anna Maybank described here shows how that is possible.

One big idea now emerging at 2gether08 is using online networking, and public service media, to help communities reduce their carbon footprints.

Groups in towns and villages are already starting to share experience nationally and internationally about local projects to tackle the challenge of peak oil and climate change, through the Low Carbon Communities Network and Transition Towns Network.

However as Tracey Todhunter, co-founder of LCCN, explains in this interview, they need technical help on how to raise awareness and communicate better online, by using social media and attracting the interest of public service publishers like Channel 4.

Tracey plans to gather a team on the first day of 2gether08 to add more tools to their current set of blogs, wikis and other communication methods, and develop their networking skills. They’ll work to a brief developed by Tracey and others in the network - and on the second day present back a working demonstration.

Although the main focus of the project is climate change, the tools and networking processes could be applied anywhere that communities seek to collaborate on projects for social benefit.

That’s why Tracey hopes Channel 4 might be interested in sharing ideas on how to do this effectively. In a series of interviews on 2gether08.com, Channel 4 executives have explained how they are moving beyond public service broadcasting to develop a range of interactive tools and programmes with partners.

The tools developed by Tracey and the team at 2gether08 will be used to build a network that will meet face-to-face at a conference in October. This will bring together the Low Carbon Community Network and the Transition Towns Network.

We’ll shortly have more details of how the team will organise at 2gether08. Meanwhile drop a comment here if you are interested, and pop over to meet up with Tracey and other on our networking site. You’ll find Tracey’s profile here.

With the Social Innovation Camp we decided to dive right in, get our hands dirty and build some prototypes for web-enabled social innovations - tools that use social technologies to help people create change for themselves, from the grassroots up. At the moment, however, we see a disconnect between what the technology supplies and what society needs.

Technology, but not just for geeks

Those who could benefit from the use of social technology don’t necessarily see there’s a technological solution to the challenges they face. Whilst Amazon and eBay have changed the way we buy stuff, the expectation a similar tool might be an aspect of healthcare choices or a child’s education isn’t yet a reality. You can build the flashiest software in the world, but if your users can’t see the point, it’s not going to make a blind bit of difference.

On the supply-side, the vibrancy of the UK web start-up scene demonstrates that there is a wealth of technical talent out there, but software developers and designers are not necessarily social change experts. Energy currently being driven into creating the ‘next Facebook’ – yet another tool for already technologically-savvy users – needs to be given an alternative, social outlet.

The geeks with the know-how need to be matched with the people with the need. So the Social Innovation Camp started out back in 2007 scratching our heads, trying to work out how to link up tools and need to find new ways to make technology useful, but not just for geeks.

A new model for social innovation

No matter how effective online interaction can be, there’s nothing quite like getting people together in a room, to talk to one another, face to face – the old-fashioned way. This was the premise behind our first Social Innovation Camp weekend in April where participants including software designers and developers together with social needs experts came to accelerate six ideas for web tools that could change the world, from concept to early-stage social enterprise in under forty-eight hours. Based on a thorough understanding of a specific social need, participants had to hack together a prototype tool, as well as come up with a way of creating and sustaining a user base - all in just two days. At the end of the weekend, everyone had to ‘show and tell’ what they’d built and we awarded some prizes.

This year’s winners, Enabled by Design, developed a resource for anyone looking to make adjustments to their lives - be it as a result of disability, injury or impairment - to share their design problems and solutions. The runners-up, Visiting Prisons, came up with a tool to support prisoners’ families who are coping with being separated from a loved one and feed their experiences into making the criminal justice system better.

Play, experimentation and risk

Despite the severity of the social problems we were tackling, Social Innovation Camp was really designed to be a game. The weekend was fun and fast, and it incorporated elements of play and experimentation. We were researching, building and testing all at once, making imperfect products in an iterative development process where the end user and the social need were central to design. We set participants a common goal and provided a loose structure, but the rest was for them to self-organise. Most importantly, the event embraced risk; we encouraged participants to do their own thing, so we didn’t really know what would happen or what would emerge at the end. The weekend buzzed with energy, creativity and exciting new ideas.

The digital world is only just at the beginning of becoming socially relevant to ordinary people. Social Innovation Camp is a practical learning experiment in prototyping the tools that will become increasingly important to society. The web and related technologies could be a platform for hugely disruptive innovations - changing beyond recognition what was there before. We don’t know what we’re going to find. Combine this environment with the ease with which digital tools themselves can be designed and built, adapted, re-worked and re-made – often by users themselves - and it becomes clear that innovation in the digital world is well suited to high risk, playful experimentation of the kind that Social Innovation Camp is pioneering.

Come along to our 2gether session to find out how we ran our Camp, what we learnt and what we’re up to next.

More information about Social Innovation Camp is on our website; find out about our projects or even watch the film.

Some of the most interesting conversations at 2gether08 will, I suspect, be when activists and social media types get together with TV broadcasters and digital marketing specialist. That’s because they’ll have to talk about what’s engaging and makes a difference, rather than the latest tools and industry trends.
Andy Bell has been working in that cross-over space for the past few years, moving from RDF Interactive to set up Mint Digital in 2004 with the aim of fusing the participation of the web with the buzz of TV. I like the way he responded to The Guardian’s Elevator Pitch challenge to explain your business to your Mum (very briefly):
“You know Big Brother? You know Facebook? No? Oh well, um, anyway, imagine mixing the two. That’s what Mint does.”
Andy is developing two sessions for 2gether08. The first is on a Web of Generosity, which Andy has trailed over on our Backstage blog:

The best websites are hugely generous. Google gives you incredible power to find information. Facebook gives you better ways to connect with your friends.

TV is generous too. Every day, each channel gives away millions of pounds worth of content.

But when TV people come to the web, all they see is cash.

Instead of asking ‘how can we monetise these eyeballs?’, it would be better to ask ‘what can we give away?’. TV people have rare skills that put them in a great place to answer this question.

The value of intellectual property is changing. What can we learn from the following examples:

• Free software: open code has gone from being the lunatic fringe to Venture Capital orthodoxy in 15 years.

• Event-based advertising: Innocent Village Fete and Red Bull Flugtag and Nike Run London show new ways to reach audiences in the age of ad skipping.

• Music: you can’t sell IP on CDs anymore, but the new music economy is thriving.

What is the best stuff to give away? And as Channel 4 launched 4IP - what skills can the broadcast community leverage?

He adds: “any examples or thoughts would be much appreciated. This proposed talk is v sketchy at the moment. Be Good is an interesting start point if you want to read more.”

The second session, as I found when I interviewed Andy, is going to be “a musical extravagancy of common characters you might meet in the web 2.0 world”.

I ‘m sure Andy is is going to be generous there too … and if you want to pitch for a role you might like to pop over to our networking site and make friends with Andy. Once you have created you own engaging profile, of course.

What is digital health?
Digital health is the measure, positive or negative, of our relationship to the digital technology we use to get things done in our work and life.

Prominent examples are how email stress affects our mental health: constant interruption in the long-term leading to depression, negotiating some of our key relationships through Facebook, social-networking fatigue and the level of panic and insecurity around admitting to not quite understanding work-related software. And who wants to admit that in this day and age they still don’t understand what a wiki, Basecamp, RSS or social-bookmarking is?

Our use of digital technology is at the centre of our work, our goals, our self-image and our relationships. We navigate most of our modern life through it. Regardless of whether we are fluent or pigeon-literate in it’s use, our digital health is the extent to which that use; truthfully brings benefit to us, our projects and our organisations.

A new view of ourselves
For Marshall McLuhan (not to mention Gregory Bateson) new technologies are ‘extensions of ourselves’:

“The personal and social consequences of any medium, that is, of any extension of ourselves, result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.” - Marshall McLuhan.

Digital technology brings us this new scale (and indeed speed) and consequently our experience of ourselves has expanded into the digital realm; we already are digital. We need a new framework within which to think about a holistic notion of a healthy being and doing in our modern life.

A new health for our new century
We’ve had the idea of physical health for centuries and last century brought us the concept of mental health. This century brings us a new kind: digital health.

At 2gether08 we throw this idea and it’s logical consequences open to the world and ask: What new language, models of thinking and models of doing do we need to deal with this new phenomenon?

How can our digital technology most-positively facilitate our collaborations so that we can truly make an impact beyond 2gether08, the next decade and the next 100 years?

More info on The Digital Health Service.