By Richard McKeever
The Catalyst Awards for Social Technology were presented by PM Gordon Brown this morning. It was an enormously impressive celebration of ingenuity and creative passion of organisations and individuals who have put “new technology” to use in tackling a range of tricky social issues. All award winners and shortlisted projects are detailed on the Catalyst website - and across the range of entries there is much to be be inspired by…
However during the event I was reminded of a recent blog post. Anna Maybank reminds us that “technology is boring”. Anna was quoting Clay Shirky who suggests in his book “Here Comes Everybody” now that the web and mobile telephony are so embedded into everyday life, ”new technology” tools are commonplace, boring.
People working together, connecting and collaborating, committed to tackle issues that affect us all – using these technologies is the really exciting stuff. Potentially transformative.
There seems to be a growing critical mass of people and organisations commited to sharing the ideas of socially useful technology. Alongside the UK Catalyst Awards, 2gether, Shine and Social Innovation Camp are recent examples. A whole raft of internet tools and infrastructure from Linux to Wikipedia and the blogosphere are supported by the willing commitment of skilled, enthusiastic amatuers who volunteer their time and expertise.
This morning’s award winners reveal that exciting connections between different people is where the sparks of innovation are generated. People skilled at web design are collaborating with groups who need a public presence, community organisations with the reach of a small neighbourhood are being assisted to connect across the globe.
Its an exciting time - Community Links was involved in developing the ideas for the UK Catalyst Awards, the next stage is to take some of these ideas forward at our Chain Reaction event in November to Connect diverse people and projects to Collaborate on new ideas and to Commit to making a difference together. As the Prime Minister said today:
In the year ahead we will see bold new international collaborations to promote social action - such as the first Chain Reaction forum on social leadership, taking place in London in November.
If you want to be part of it visit www.chain-reaction.org
Richard – I agree over here http://snurl.com/34b9y about the “growing critical mass of people and organisations commited to sharing the ideas of socially useful technology” I’ve been running the online side of 2gether08, and that convinced me of the potential for better connecting (mashingup?) of networks. How about getting together a core group of people interested in helping do that up to and through chain-reaction. People mostly know each other … they just need