Social by Social Game at Net Tuesday tomorrow

If you are in London tomorrow evening, June 2 with a couple of hours to spare, and an enthusiasm for exploring how to use social technology for social benefit, join us for a run of the Social by Social Game at Net Tuesday. As organiser Amy Sample Ward explains here:

The Social by Social game is a fun session to help people explore how social technology can be used for social benefit: whether that’s by a nonprofit, a social innovation startup, within a neighbourhood, or across a community. We’ll invent some of those places, then challenge each other in groups to develop plans using a pack of specially-developed cards and other props. It will be a mix of collaboration and competition that should give you lots of practical ideas that you can use in your own projects.

We facilitated a version of this game recently at SHINE09 and this should be a greatly improved second version. The game will be run by me, Amy and David Wilcox, and we’ll also give you news of the Social by Social handbook we've written, with Cass Business School, for NESTA.

Our intention is to link the game to the book content, which will also be available online under a Creative Commons license, so after developing your social technology plan in outline during the game, you can use the Social by Social content to follow through. The game is Creative Commons too.

* Date: Tuesday, 2 June * Time: 5:30pm doors, 6 pm start * Location: Charity Technology Trust - 1 London Bridge, SE1 * RSVP: London Net Tuesday group

Who Wants to Speak?

I've been doing some work as a host/facilitator for my friends at The People Speak this month, and in timely fashion they've just released a video of their recent Who Wants to Be? event at the Unicorn Theatre. The People Speak are the funkiest events company in London. They produce democratic gameshows and innovative event technologies to get audiences genuinely engaged in discussions. Co-founder Saul Albert is also a Sociability Associate, and their work in events ties in nicely with the online projects we've been building to engage communities and unlock the power of networks.

Who Wants to Be? is their most ambitious event yet: a gameshow in which the audience pay £10 each for a ticket, and then collectively decide what to spend the money on. Watch the video to find out what we decided this time - and watch this space for future events they and Sociability are running.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH34nk9LsjM]

Being Interesting

I spent a wonderful day yesterday at Interesting 2008, exploring interesting things with interesting people. It wasn't like any conference I've ever been to before: much more informal, more fun, more varied. It made traditional conferences look like what they are: sterile, mannered, orchestrated sales events. Thank God for people who are happy to sit in a big room and talk to each other about things they're passionate about. Why doesn't that happen more often? In some ways this was to conferences what blogs are to mainstream media. It's personal instead of abstracted, defined by the personality of the marvellous Russell Davies and his friends rather than 'brand values', and inviting lasting relationships. Lovely.

A few quick thoughts on why Interesting was so much better than most events (and I'm still trying to work this out so please do add your own thoughts if you want):

1. Short talks about simple things. No essays, no complexity - just 5 or 10 minutes for each speaker to get you interested in their thing.
2. Passion. Everyone was talking about something they loved and did in their spare time, rather than something they were selling. You can pay people to do things, but you can't pay them to be interested in them. And as Russell himself said, in order to be interesting you have to be interested.
3. Nice surprises. No-one knew what each speaker was talking about before they started, so no-one wanted to miss a word.
4. Bring your own. No lunches provided, and though sponsors brought cake and biscuits we came for the content, not the freebies.
5. Singing. And recorders. And electric guitars. And a ukelele. And other things that conferences aren't supposed to have.
6. Jokes. Conferences are so bloody serious - and being serious is not the same as being interesting.

There are more of course, and in some ways it's like a magic trick: I don't want to know how it works, because if there's a repeatable pattern then Glaxo and Nike could do it too. But there's definitely a lot I've learnt about how to run more "interesting" events. Big thanks to the ever-lovely Tessy for giving me her spare tickets, and to Russell for letting School of Everything do Interesting Things in the foyer.

So here's to fewer conferences, more Interesting, and huge respect to this guy, and this guy.