Paul A Young is selling his amazing ice cream on the roof of Rochelle School, at the 2gether08 festival. I went along to investigate and got the full explanation from Paul of how it is put together. Wish I could give you a taste!

More here about Paul from the New York Times

Paul’s ice cream stall was part of an experiment run by Lea Simpson and Rob Hinchcliffe, who I interviewed here. Yesterday standard ice cream was on sale - today we are running a micro experimenting promoting Paul’s to see how small enteprises with excellent products can compete by using digital media.

One of the most challenging and interesting sessions at 2gether08 will be “You’re fired, innit” run by Bold Creative. That’s provided you join in. The schedule gives a hint:

A group of young people and a group of older people will develop digital content about what they see as the solutions to youth social problems. Both films will be screened on Day Two.

Here Greg Villalobos, creative director, explains that he will be looking for some creative volunteers tomorrow.

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.

You can now personalise your schedule for the two days, and see who else is going to which session. To provide personal scheduling, we are opening up our online networking site over here >. As well as showing the Festival sessions in detail, it allows you to start discussions with others who are attending, link to friends, and tell people that you don’t yet know that you would like to meet up.

You’ll find some of our team ready to welcome you. Just fill in your profile on the site, and get started. We’ll shortly be inviting everyone who has registered to join us.

We are excited by the schedule partly because it features such a great range of speakers that we have invited - but even more because so many of the sessions have been proposed by those attending. We’ll be adding more sessions - because you can still put up an idea.

If you are about to register, just put your idea into the form when you sign up. If you are already registered, you can still suggest a session. More details here >.

Haven’t yet registered? Early bird £195 until June 16 here >

The early signs are however encouraging! We have over 20 speaker suggestions which we are busy following up (we now plan to have a rolling roster of 15 minute presentations throughout the festival) and over 30 ideas being developed backstage on our ideas farm.

Over the course of the next few days we will be announcing some of the new speakers and sessions which we will feature at the event. Keep them coming. We are asking all our participants, upon registration, to contribute to the agenda; the sovereign idea being that everyone participates (or is, at least encouraged to) and that everyone pays to participate which ultimately breaks down the barriers which exist at most conferences between delegates, sponsors and speakers. It is an interesting experiment and so far I like the results. See what you think over the next few days as we roll them out…

But these worlds hardly ever collide and as a consequence critical policy is formulated which takes no account of the affordances of emerging technologies, great creative ideas evaporate into the ether for want of some caring husbandry and new tools and technologies which could have a dramatic societal impact if adopted and cultivated by change makers come and go…

Over the course of the last year or two I have attended and spoken at events all over the world where people have gathered to focus on change and have barely referenced the new tools we possess to connect, collaborate and converse and also attended technology events where, frankly. the real world doesn’t get a look in.Kipling has a great line ‘ who knows England who only England knows’ and it feels to be apt in the context of what is happening in the world today and it is this desire to bring together passionate creatives from a diverse range of fields that makes 2gether such a great prospect.

The plan for the event is that it should be a mix of structured content with great presentations and panels but also that most of the content should be generated by the participants. We will be asking for your ideas and suggestions, for you to frame problems and are gearing up to respond both online and at the festival to ensure that we host the conversations and workshops that you want to have…

We will shortly be announcing details of some of the funds and awards that will be available to help bring some of these ideas to life. Come and join us and join in !

Questions and answers about 2gether08