Well, there is something that people can do now, they can speak out, and make these hidden transactions, the ‘bribe economy’ visible through initiatives like the India-based www.ipaidabribe.com . The site enables people affected by bribery to write about their experiences in public and to track the incidence of bribery in an open and transparent way, it aims “to tackle corruption by harnessing the collective energy of citizens.”

You can report on the nature, number, pattern, types, location, frequency and values of the bribes made, and the  reports add up to provide a snapshot of bribes occurring across any given city. They make formerly covert activities visible so that individuals who are sick of corrupt practice can build a stronger case for change, together, from the ground up.

And this idea of making things visible as a form of power and a force for legitimacy of experience can be brought to other contexts. One of the most powerful online tools out there is the interactive map. Geography and place bring things to life for people, and if you are not on the map then you’re not part of the ‘visible’ geography – you are part of a hidden world with little legitimacy as a home and a place to live. This is the case for many slum dwellings.

Take the example of Kibera in Kenya - Kibera in Nairobi, Kenya, was a blank spot on the map until November 2009, when young Kiberans created the first free and open digital map of their own community.

Map Kibera has now grown into a complete interactive community information project with the additon of Voice of Kibera - a portal for citizen reporting and community advocacy which has the map at its heart.

The Map of Kibera “has steadily emerged as a powerful tool for not just locating place, but also for influencing the social, political & economic spheres in Kibera and beyond.”

What else that is hidden or covert can be made visible through social media to make a real-world change? If you’re intersted in reading more check out this blog from Giulio Quaggiotto who works on Knowledge Management at UNDP Europe and CIS. There is much more that can be done through using these online tools to make a real-world difference.

Groupon : An awesome name for an awesome idea…

First of all, it does what it says: It is a ‘coupon’ for groups. People join up to the groupon site and get sent special offers by email Eg. a half price holiday or spa visit. If a certain number of them ‘group-on’ to the offer by signing up in principle to pay for the product/service then the company will provide the product/service at a hugely discounted rate.

The Groupon concept has some great features which could be applied to a public service or social context. I thought I’d write a just a few up below for you to think about.  I was wondering if anyone had come across similar incentive schemes or group buying in the public/social sector that I should take a look at?

Peer referral

The idea that you need to get a group of people around the offer before it goes ahead means that peer referral is strongly incentivised. This enables the groupon concept to grow virally and reach deeply into friendship or interest networks.

If you applied this to public services you could reach people that public services can find it difficult to reach in order to promote take-up of training or healthcare offers.

Targeting niche markets

You could use groupon to match user groups with very specific needs with tailored/bespoke offers made up of both financial and NON financial benefits. For example, those living with long term conditions in a particular geographic area might form a group to network AND buy support services at discounted rates. Those with rare conditions who feel isolated can be matched with others to purchase discounted specialist treatments that they need AND to provide peer support.

Pipeline for ‘new social services’ 

Services like Cool2Care http://www.cool2care.co.uk/ which provide specialist carers to families with disabled children could stand to gain through being able to better understand and plan for demand for the service by creating a pipeline of demand when people sign up to take on their offer. Personal budgets could be spent on this type of care OR cautious investors could be attracted to make investment once the provider has been able to demonstrate a strong market for their service.

Just a few ideas to explore…be interested to hear your thoughts.

credit : vancouverfilmschool

Last year, just before Christmas break, I did a little tally up of the amount of time I spent on-line or screen-struck. The results were frightening! I was racking up around 60hrs/week screentime!

After wrapping the travelling carnival of presents and locating my tickets home for the holidays, I turned to my phones and computers, their sweet little blue LED lights blinking away at me like the eyes of so many endearing children.

Gritting my  teeth, I pulled their plugs, resolving to go on an extreme digital diet over Christmas. I didn’t go cold turkey(ha!), but I did drastically downsize my relationship with my beloved digitools.

Now back in the city, I am once again glued to the screen and instantly feeling less zen-like.

What to do?

Going on a fairly radical digidiet helped to get some perspective on the way I use web and mobile; when it adds something to my life, and when it takes away.

However, just knowing that didn’t stop me embracing the gadgets in full on my return to work because, well, I like them, and they are very useful!

In short, cutting it out completely just isn’t doable or desirable.

There was only one thing to do… make them work for me and not the other way round. A digital new years resolution…. a digital Detox!

My guiding principles

• No mobile or laptop in bedroom
• Locate all charging points in an ‘office’ space when at home
• Don’t check email Twitter or Facebook unless you intend to spend time responding
• If you don’t have to read or plan on screen, do it on paper or whiteboard
• Don’t use phone and computer at the same time (especially for unrelated things!)
• Close your email account alerts so you don’t get interrupted
• Why sit down when on the computer… stand up more when browsing!
• Save up small messages til you have dead time to use up, then take care of q a few
• Don’t turn on the computer as soon as you arrive at home or work

That’s an insight into some of my dreadful habits, and a starter for me to kick off a more digitally healthy new year.

Check out this useful quiz and article from wikihow!

If you have any tips, let me know!

Sometimes you just wish you’d thought of an idea first…

In the words of the Hometaping website:

“People think that only the talented or the beautiful should be able to make music. This is bullshit. Making music is something everybody can enjoy. And everybody has something worth making a noise about.

‘Hometaping‘ is a big effort to help as many people as possible to record an album of their own music in one month. It is a celebration of what happens when they do.

So if you can’t sing but do anyway, you are Hometaping. If you’re crap at the guitar but it makes you happy, you are Hometaping. If your saxophone makes you smile but your neighbours wince, you are Hometaping. If you’re convinced your songs are intricate masterpieces, you are Hometaping.”

Making a s hort album and posting it online, then showing up to play at a hometaping party (whether via skype from transylvania, or live in london) should sound rather terrifying. Somehow, the hometaping ethos kinda takes the fear out of the process – and makes it well, fun, to record your own music for the first time. Its not often that online hype and offline actions marry up so perfectly, but I think the team behind hometaping have hit the right note… its easy to join in, non-scary, and not too techie – but without the online streaming and uploading then the thing wouldn’t exist.

I think that too many campaigns or initiatives that use the web end up getting bogged down in making the tech too complex or the messages too official. You can learn alot from hometaping no matter what kind of community project you’re trying to run.

In fact, I liked the whole concept so much that I bought the company! Well, no, I didn’t but I did ask Basil, one of the people who set up hometaping to tell me (and all of you) a bit more about what it is.

• Conchords: What’s the Friendship realm?
• Murray: Well, you’ve heard of a realm – yeah?
• Conchords: Er, yes.
• Murray: Well, this is like a friendship one; a group of people basically getting together, calling each other friends…Look at this.
• Conchords: What’s this?
• Murray: A friendship graph; look along here on the x axis – that represents time passing, on the y axis here, that represents the different levels of friends. Okay? We’re starting up here with friends, down to workmates, colleagues, strangers (which is pretty  much everyone I’ve noticed) …and then enemies.

 We’re pretty comfortable navigating our social relationships by classifying them more or less in the same way as Murray rather bluntly describes. Up until 5 or so years ago   it has been very easy for people to segment their ‘realms’ and to vary their behaviour according to whether we’re in the company of ‘friends, workmates, colleagues, strangers or … enemies’.

However, now social media usage has become so widespread, with 26million Facebook users in the UK , many of us are increasingly faced with the quesiton of how best to communicate consistently and with integrity across ‘the friendship graph’ and how best to draw together a fragmented online and offline identity across a wide variety of social networking platforms, including the office, the pub and your living room sofa. 

 The thing is that many people seem to be a bit confused about how to get the most out of the new networks available without compromising traditional ones.  The key to making social media work for you lies entirely in your own hands, through taking pro-active control of the online networks that you use and the way you use them:

• In the first instance, that is about deciding which platforms to use, and which to disregard.
• Then, there’s the question of what content/conversation you want to share with the rest of the world
• Finally you can use your privacy settings and groupings to help people engage with that content

 If you get it right, then people will be able to engage with you online in one persona that pretty much reflects the real, offline you in all your rounded and lustrous glory. If you get it wrong, as many of us do, then it could well be a case of coming over as someone with a split personality, or maybe just giving us all TMI. People don’t want to be dragged up the friendship graph by force of your ‘fab nites oot!!!’ Facebook album! As you can see from the Conchords’ efforts, you might end up jettisoning your ‘workmates’ into the ‘strangers’ realm before you know it.

The concept is very simple -  it matches two differing needs in order to provide a different kind of social service.

The idea of GoodGym is to provide isolated or immobile older people with regular human contact and to provide motivation for younger, mobile people to run and get fit.   The Good Gym aims to make it easy for people to channel the energy used up as part of their exercise routine  toward a wider social good. 

I was very pleased to see that Ivo and the team were featured on BBC London News spreading the word about the project. Check out Goodgym on the telly! Excellent to see things going from strength thanks to lots of wonderful project leaders and volunteers’ time.

The project is currently piloting live throughout Tower Hamlets right now and looking for people to get involved there, as well as inviting expressions of interest from further afield.

A subterranean den of philanthropy - Fairy lights provided by YTFN!

We turned up at a mysteriously quiet location in a bar in Hackney to find a basement packed with people looking for drinks, conversation, cupcakes and an opportunity to donate and/or volunteer for charities.

The whole event is run very simply and effectively. It involves paying £10 on the door in exchange for a voucher and simple info-pack outlining the three charities who will pitch for funds from the crowd that evening. Drinks and cupcakes are first on the menu, followed by pitching from the three featured charities. Then, the pitching itself begins – with everyone having a £10 minimum donation (the door entry fee) to put forward to the charity of their choice.

There was a huge amount of energy and interest in the room, and everyone who attended got a buzz from connecting with and supporting charities in a very personal way. Additionally, a match funding round backed by particular audience members helped to really push up the value of the donations made on the night, so all the charities benefitted still further from the event…Imagine what the results of 10,000 such events would mean to local communities…

Of course this isn’t the answer to the cashflow issues and sustainable income stream building that small startup charities are currently being faced with. However, there was something very encouraging to see so many people pitching in their donation in person, making a direct connection with the charities  themselves. These participants were more than happy to take a chance on providing some seed funding which will enable great new ideas to get off the ground at speed, with little bureaucracy.

I spent my ££s on the Hackney Pirates – check out their site here!

It was great to see groups of young people being supported to create their own mobile apps to create a range of useful and hopefully sustainable services, and at the same time gaining skills and confidence to talk about technology and entrepeneurship.

My personal favourite was ‘stop and search’ an app for young people to use and give feedback on stop and search actions carried out by the police.

Check all of the ideas out for yourself.

Read about it in the Times Online.