I'm presently sitting in the Saltire Centre at Glasgow Caledonian University. This weekend it's hosting Social Innovation Camp Scotland. This is the first Social Innovation camp hosted outside of Social Innovation Camp's Headquarters.
But what is Social Innovation Camp? It is a project designed to link up various professionals such as designers, entrepreneurs and computing experts with people who have ideas to fit a specific social need. The idea is to help the outside community and should utilise social networks and mobile technology. In the words of their Twitter bio:
"Bit of an experiment in using social tech for social change"
The camp picks six ideas that have been submitted by the public. You can see this particular camp's six ideas here. The teams are made up by what people are interested in. People can move between the teams over the weekend. They then have 48 hours to get their idea up and running with some marketing and some sort of online application.
Here is the winning presentation from the last camp. The Good Gym.
The Friday night was a "getting to know you" affair with the Saturday being the start of the proper work. They will have until 14:00 hours on Sunday to discuss the strategy for their
I'm involved as my employer has offered one year of free hosting as a prize to the winner. We are also providing additional services for this camp.
So far we have: