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.

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.

MAP is funded by the Wellcome Trust, and is led by Professor Bob Snow at Oxford University. MAP charts the prevalence of malaria throughout the globe, and Bob’s team eventually want to make real time data available online.

Sean is as excited as I am about the creative potential of social technologies to mash up and interpret the data (through mapping, visualisations, etc.) and has agreed to join us at 2gether and use the platform to frame the enormous challenge of eradicating malaria and perhaps bring some new energy to MAP with a big dose of collaborative thinking. That’s just what 2gether is all about.

Loads more ideas swimming around in my head, in need of a life raft or a solid rock or two of which to grab hold. That’s where you come in, so take this as an open invitation to suggest speakers / themes / topics / formats that you think we ought to bring 2gether in July.

There have been so many thought-provoking events so far this year, but the key is translating all this into action – something with real social impact so that (as Dan McQuillan said to me recently) “we can be more than the sum of our parts.”

Finally, if you haven’t already done so, do join my friend Simon Berry’s campaign to encourage Coca Cola to use their distribution channels to “dedicate one compartment in every 10 crates [of coke] as ‘the life saving’ compartment?” Perhaps that’s something else we can explore at 2gether!