I’d planned to come along to Social Innovation Barcamp Sydney since I first heard about it. Knowing that my poor old Powerbook G4 wouldn’t last the distance of a whole day’s note taking, I put the call out to twitter for a laptop or iPad I could borrow. Amazingly I had a few people offer their gear, and I took the offer of an iPad as I’d never tried one out for anything much before.
As it turned out, it did a great job going the distance. I grabbed my bluetooth keyboard to sync with it, and manage to take about 5700 words worth of notes during the day. I managed to get to nine different sessions including the opening keynote by former NSW Premier Bob Carr. There were a range of topics around making society a better place – I even ran a session on “how to explain twitter to people”.
A Barcamp is the kind of conference that is “un-organised”. A couple of people take responsibility for making sure people know it’s on, but the sessions, and who is presenting, is determined on the day. Here are the sessions I went to:
- Bob Carr opening session
- Twitter for Direct Action (and cupcakes) – @kcarruthers
- Slow Projects – @stevehopkins
- Generation Y – @beaney
- explaining twitter to people – @cafedave
and then lunch - using your voice for direct engagement – @timnoonan
- what’s your social innovation strategy? – @franksting
- government and web 2.0 – @whtmakesuhappy
- unestablish yourself – @sharner and @infoding (thanks mei!)
It was great to meet and catch up with a lot of twitter friends: – especially Anne BB who I’ve known from twitter for over a year, but never met until today.
Some highlights were
- thinking through what information (“killer facts”) help shape public opinion and hence political will
- a better understanding to the link between an environmental trading scheme and actual success in fixing global warming
- the importance of moving beyond just interacting with people online, and taking action in the real world
- that sometimes it’s worth taking on a project just because it is good and fun
- some insights into the way that young people think
- that I still need to work on the way I explain twitter – there are a lot of concepts to understand before someone understands where they might find benefit in twitter
- how being relaxed and comfortable with your self has a big impact in the way you speak
- that making small changes to your house, and to your life, is the only way you can alter the impact you are having on the planet
- that the lessons I’ve learned in working in social media in big organisations apply to some extent in government organisations too
- that big lifestyle changes are sometimes necessary to achieve the things you want to in life
More details to follow when I have a chance to go through my notes in more detail.
Big thanks again to un-organisers @mia_will and @kcarruthers
Thanks for sharing this Dave – I enjoyed the event so much, yet realise there was so much content that I missed. Your generosity in sharing your detailed notes with everyone is really appreciated.
There’s talk on Twitter today of getting together monthly informally but with purpose and actions to work on, to see if we can build a community to support us in various projects we choose to work on in the area of social innovation. Stay tuned!
Cheers
Tony Hollingsworth
Hey Dave thanks for the great notes! For the unestablishing yourself session Soren is @sharner
Hope to have a chance to say hello one coffee morning cheers