In between talks by a cellist about innovating music and a localgov chief exec’s wild story about a chicken, we decided to stage a bit of a resource auction to inject some Simpl spirit into the festivities. Prior to the event, we asked those attending to donate services which would then be bartered and bid on with in kind resources. We got a flood of offers for items to bid on, ranging from an “API and Open Data Makeover” to a piece of handcrafted jewellery. Carrie was our auctioneer for the task, and opened the floor for bartering and offers. While the auction itself was perhaps less Christies and more communal discussion, the items up for grabs and the exchanges made were quite impressive. Of the six offers auctioned on the day, the exchanges made included:

• A piece of hand-crafted jewellery by Amisha Ghadiali was won by Peter Gregson, in exchange for a private cello concert
• A day of Carrie Bishop (using her as you wish… within reason) was won by Nigel Bishop to have Carrie speak at an upcoming event in exchange for his photography skills at a FutureGov/personal event
• A mutual exchange was made between two bids, with three days of ethnographic research by Carla Ross being traded up for a blog designed by FutureGov’s top notch design crew

But as mentioned, we had quite a few offers of good and services from our stellar attendees, and we thought it a shame to let those good offers go to waste. So instead, we’ve decided to post them here! If you spot something that tickles your fancy and you want to bid and barter with some in kind services of your own, just post your bid in the comments below (silent auction style) and hope for a winner!

The remaining items on offer are:

• An API and Open Data Makeover by Will Lovegrove from Release Mobile
• A day’s charity consulting from Adele Drake
• Use of the venue at St. Barnabas charity in Soho
• Disability/ Accessibility help and consultancy from Alison Smith from Go Geni
• An intriguing “People’s Adventure” with Cassie Robinson
• £500 worth of meeting space at The Partnership Centre in Birmingham from Improvement and Efficiency West Midlands
• A day of “Technology Therapy” by Neil Ford

If any of these items look like something of interest, see what tantalising resources you might be up for offering to win yourself the prize.

Happy bidding!

As we mentioned in our recap, we had a brilliant time watching the teams develop their ideas at warp speed over the two-day period, and were quite impressed by what they came up with. A month on, we decided to check-in with the teams to see how their ideas have progressed and if there is anything they need from the Simpl community to keep their projects going -

FutureBuilder: The winners of Interactivism are getting down to business developing a proposal for how their idea will be executed. They are investigating potential grant funding streams at the minute, so if you have any suggestions, please let us know!

GamePlan: These guys have been keeping very busy since the hack event! They have secured two commercial clients (one of whom was in the audience at Interactivism!), received funding from the Big Lottery Fund and are waiting to hear back about three more potential funders. They are also currently at the top of the leader board for Cisco’s British Innovation Gateway Awards, so you can help them out by clicking on the link and commenting on their idea! As they progress, GamePlan are still on the look-out for Facebook app developers, UX designers, organisations to help create public sector opportunities, and members to join their advisory board – if you fit the bill for any of those, get in touch!

Meet Market: There has been a nice bit of buzz around Meet Market since its Interactivism debut. They’ve had plenty of meetings with some pretty cool people, and are now well on their way to developing a prototype with some partners up north, and this pilot is planned to take place in May in both London and Manchester. Similar to a hackathon, they will be testing their assumptions quickly and cheaply to see what they discover before taking the next steps forward.

OneUp: The OneUp team are working hard on writing some seed funding proposals to kick start their project. Team member, Laura Warrington, has taken over the management of things, as idea owner, Terri Hubert, focuses on her studies, but they, along with a cluster of others are devising a plan to fund their initial development.

Mesh: After some breaking apart and rebuilding during the hack event, #MeshDays have been working on their business plan and meeting with focus groups to start developing a pilot for the project. They have had some brilliantly positive responses so far, and are eager to move forward and hold their first Mesh Day soon. To help get them on their way, they are looking for help to build their website (by mid-April), seed funding to start up the project, and advice on developing a sustainable commercial model.

Cloud Gaming: Due to university commitments, Cloud Gaming’s active idea is currently on hold, however the idea and planning behind it are still in progress and becoming more concrete with each passing day. Fingers crossed once uni is finished, we will see this idea back in action!

TreeVee: TreeVee is another idea currently put on hold due to university coursework (good luck on your final exams!), but idea owner Annie Jackson is keen to get stuck into the social innovation world. Once exams are finished, Annie is planning to start looking for organisations to support and take part in developing the online CV platform.

Slurker: The Slurker team are keen to take their idea forward, but before they do, they are looking to do a bit of background research around their rationale – testing whether or not using ‘downtime’ browsing to create better future work prospects is the right way forward. To help with this, they are looking for any existing research on the subject, or an expert in online behaviour to have a chat with to get them off in the right direction.

There you have it! Well done to all the projects on continuing to think, act and develop on their ideas since Interactivism, and we cannot wait to see how they progress further. If you want to get involved in any of these projects or have a resource that has been asked for, please get in touch by commenting or bidding on the project’s idea page on Simpl!

Last week we published our full recap of Interactivism, complete with quotes and pictures, but if that wasn’t enough, we now have some moving images of the event as well! The RSA shot a short film over the two days, interviewing attendees and organisers, and creating a brilliant snapshot of the energy and aura we were lucky enough to experience first hand. So sit back and relax with some popcorn and see what we got up to at Interactivism.

Google Interactivism: Young People’s Hack from The RSA on Vimeo.

Want to find out more about any of the projects that were hacked over the weekend? Check out their original pitches on the Interactivism challenge page and stay tuned into Simpl for the latest updates on how all the ideas progress!

Making our temporary home at Ravensbourne College the 17th and 18th of February, 2012, over 130 developers, designers, students, social innovations, and young people joined us to get stuck into the challenge.

After some intros from Dominic Campbell (FutureGov) and Andrew Eland (Google), we were lucky enough to have three brilliant speakers to help get those innovative cogs turning. Bruno Taylor, co-founder of FlipJobs, told the story of taking his idea for an alternative CV platform from hack event to functioning beta site. Next up, Sam Conniff, chairman at Livity, spoke of the importance of testing innovation (with an amusing anecdote involving a toothpaste dispensing toothbrush) with the wise words,

“Iterate your ideas. Keep changing and challenging yourself. Always relate back to the young people.”

Paul Massey, of MentorWell, finished things off by pitching his mentoring platform as a way to help support the Interactivism ideas and participants after the weekend was over. With some inspiring words and our 10 teams divided, they were off to develop, build and design their ideas for the rest of the day.

The room quickly fell into a hum of ideas, with flip charts out and post-it notes flying up on the wall. In the late afternoon, the idea owners met for an early show and tell feedback session with members of the judging panel. Some teams had focussed in on delivering one clear product, while others were talking about their idea in a very broad sense. It was obvious from the energy levels of the group that the focused ideas were easier to understand and therefore more interesting and the judges encouraged all of the teams to distil their vision into something simple, distintive and tangible.

By dinner time, our teams were ravenous and fully embedded in their projects, eating, developing and designing their way into the night!

Day two brought sleepy faces to the breakfast table, but most were quickly re-energised and getting stuck into preparing their prototypes and presentations ready for 2.30pm.

Mid-way through the morning on day two, we gathered our glorious group of young people together for a chat to find out their frank and honest opinions on how they use the internet in their own lives – with Twitter ranking very low on the popularity spectrum, and BBM near the top, while Facebook caused mixed responses with concerns around privacy and personal interactions. We asked them how they use the web to find work and education, promote themselves and find opportunities, and heard about using Facebook for self promotion, sites like IdeasTap to find projects, Google to research businesses, and Twitter to network directly. Mobile phones (particularly Blackberry) were the preferred method of using the web, and the most common methods of contact between friends bounced between BBM, phone calls and Facebook.

It was so refreshing and insightful to sit down with all of these young people and hear what they really thought, and how their input into the hack event is ensuring that these projects were headed in the right direction.

Almost 36 hours after we started, it was time for our teams to show off what they’d created in front of their Interactivism peers and our esteemed judging panel, which included, Andrew Eland (Google), Naomi Brown (Livity), Carrie Bishop (FutureGov), Julian Thompson (the RSA) and Mark O’Neill, Head of Innovation and Delivery at Government Digital Service.

Interactive CV Timeline, renamed TreeVee, opened the presentations with their platform, born out of the desire for an online space that helps people display their CV in a way that does their experience and skills justice. Based around the rings of the tree, they designed an interactive CV format that allows users to plot official and unofficial experience (things like tweeting, blogging, ad hoc work) in a non-linear, multi-media way.

Next, Re:Skilled, who also made a name switch to OneUp, created a web app to help young people develop their soft skills, such as how to conduct an interview, by connecting them with local opportunities and staging online challenges and activities. They tested their challenges with the young people within the team, iterating based on their feedback.

GamePlan wants to help young people “play their way to success.” They pinpointed that while many young people know what they want to do, it is the journey to get there that is the real challenge. They developed a service supported by mentors and sponsored by businesses to help young people find and design the path they need to get into their desired field.

Job Story wants to make young people better aware of what jobs are out there and available to them through a simple, intuitive website. In the same way you link through a string of different yet related videos on Youtube, Job Story uses videos and profiles of jobs to give users more information on a particular career, coupled with suggested related careers, allowing people to zigzag and browse through jobs they may have never seen before.

Cloud Gaming looks to aggregate a person’s information that exists on other sites to help form a profile, which then helps find the jobs that will get young people where they want to be in life, rather than simply suggesting “the ten jobs you think you want.” It then uses games and online challenges to help users develop skills and figure out how to achieve their goals.

Meet Market is an idea to teach young people enterprise skills by supporting them to set up market stall businesses.  The activities would mix young people with different levels of engagement and direction, and the face-to-face interactions would be used to build a sense of excitement. The team behind the idea have already secured £9000 funding and are hoping to pilot the project soon. The technical solution would support the offline activities.

FutureBuilder is a site where young people can identify what skill gaps they have and are then directed to courses or other sources of support that will help them fill these gaps. The programme that the team developed also used strong graphics to show whether a person’s skills match those required for a job that they are interested in doing. Each person has their own profile on the site and this tracks jobs applied for, training done and the development of their skills.

Mesh is a solution to young people not getting jobs because they have not developed the right networks. The site that Mesh have designed gives users their own Mesh page where they can arrange Mesh Days – or networking opportunities where they get personalised tasters of their future careers. Universities, colleges and employers can become Mesh Day providers.

Gamification transformed into Slurker (the name is derived from a combination of slacking and working) during Interactivism. Slurker is designed to exploit people’s online procrastination habits to help them gain insights into suitable future careers, or in their words: “Putting your slacking to work to find the right job for you.” The idea would take the form of a Facebook application and would make career searching social. By tracking what you are already liking online, Slurker would suggest career options that might be suitable for you.

InspireTree is an intelligence based application that helps you explore career opportunities. The tree itself shows the roots, branches and leaves of various career options, showing what various training or experience could lead to in the future, or what would be needed for a given career choice. The team were questioned by the judges about whether this would result in too linear a depiction of career paths, which are often much more fluid and unplanned. They responded that the full version would provide many more examples, but obviously could not capture every option.

The judges had quite a tough decision to make when it came to choosing a winner, but as stated in our previous blog post, the judges selected FutureBuilder as the winning team, each receiving a Google Chromebook, and the Young People’s Choice went to Interactive ‘CV’ Timeline. Congrats!

If you want to see even more about the event, check out our photos on the Simpl Facebook page and these brilliant photos by our resident photographer Murtz.  If you attended on the day and want to keep your conversations and connections going, we’ve created a Facebook group for just that!

For a more well-rounded view of the day, check out these blog posts from Paul Massey, Angelica Robinson, and one of our judges, Mark O’Neill of their own experiences of the event.

We were very honoured to have so many young people joining us for Interactivism and we’d like to share with you some of their feedback on their experience of the hack weekend:

Trim Lamba @trimlamba (Future Builder): “I was expecting a weekend slumped in a chair, listening to adults speak.  Instead I was stood up speaking whilst they listened. It was a brilliant weekend, and our team winning made it even better- I took away new knowledge, new friends contact details and a Chromebook.

Stephen Isaac Wilson @stepheniw (Future Builder): “ My brain was officially fried by the Saturday but it had all been worth it.  I worked with some insanely talented and creative people; so talented that I actually was a member of the winning team!  The best bit was realising that we had come up with something that may actually help young people regain their confidence and find future employment.  The whole event was simply mind blowing.”

We will be getting into the nitty gritty of the event with a full blown follow-up blog in the very near future, but until then, we wanted to share with you the winners!

There were two awards up for grabs – the overall judges’ award and the young people’s choice, and the competition was tough. It was no easy feat deciding the winners of Interactivism, with so many groups coming up with truly promising ideas and some nifty tech to support it. There were some pretty rad presentations to go along with it (we had sweets, miming, a video and more!) but in the end, a decision had to be made. So without further ado…

The judges choice and overall winner of Interactivism was…

FutureBuilder!

FutureBuilder impressed the judges with their idea and technology to help young people fill the gaps in their skills for a career path by linking them up with local opportunities. The service and site could link up young people with mentors and develop their CVs as well, and they even had some cool graphics to help people visualise their current and required skills.

Meanwhile, the young people’s choice was…

TreeVee (formerly Interactive ‘CV’ Timeline)

TreeVee was our young people’s favourite. It is a tool that helps people to create an online, interactive CV in a non-linear, more natural way. Inspired by the rings of a tree trunk, their logo and tech centered around circles of experiences and skills for a more well-rounded and holistic approach to showcasing one’s experience.

We want to congratulate both teams on such a stellar achievement, and well done to all the teams on making the event an overwhelming success. Like I mentioned, stay tuned for a full report of Interactivism’s proceedings in the near future, guest blogs from some of our participants, and more information on how all the ideas can be supported in the future.

“The single biggest pool of untapped resources in this world are human good intentions not translated into action” ~Cindy Gallop

Over the past weekend, participants and spectators at Interactivism were inspired to use technology to create software prototypes to help young people get into the work, training and education that is right for them.

Keeping the momentum from this weekend alive, it is important that we channel our creative energies, brilliant ideas for social good, and good intentions into action. Translating ideas into action is a journey. Not necessary to have an end point, or have a business plan, or a perfected product before deciding to act. No one expects you to have all the answers figured out – moreover, you don’t even need to know which questions to ask. The first step is sharing your ideas and energy with those around you; the second step is holding yourself accountable to acting on those ideas and committing your time and energy to action-oriented activities; the rest, you’ll figure out thereafter.

There are no shortage of resources and supports available to guide you along your journey. SoJo is one of them, and is pleased to be working with Simpl to help support ideas in the making. SoJo is an interactive online resource that empowers young people to turn their ideas for social good into action. In its current public beta, SoJo is a self-guided online resource that organizes relevant content in a clear and simple fashion. The content curated by SoJo focuses on the practical “how-to” of idea development and project execution, and on the personal growth of the individual behind the idea.

SoJo will be publicly documenting the evolution of the projects that came out of this past weekend, so that you can follow along the journeys of the young social innovators who competed at Interactivism.

“The world is run by those who show up, not those who wait to be asked” (author unknown). I challenge you today to take the initiative, have the courage to put yourself out there, stand by your ideas and actively commit to bringing them to life. I guarantee that you’ll be pleased with the journey that lies ahead of you.

If you don’t know where to start, let us know. SoJo is here to help you find a starting point — all you have to do is ask.

"Prop for the TV Mate prototype built at the Interactivism: Accessibility Hack Weekend"

Of course, while we would have loved to have chosen all of the ideas, we had to whittle them down to just 10 to take forward to the Hack Weekend on 17th and 18th February, where teams will work to develop them into prototypes and a final winner will be chosen. Three young people from Livity joined members of Google, the RSA, and FutureGov to form the shortlisting panel at Google’s London HQ in Victoria on Friday and the following ideas were selected (drum roll please)…

1. Cloud Gaming as Personal Tutor (C.G.P.T) – Mahmoud Fereydouni‘s idea is to create a virtual online tutor, where the computer gives intelligent advice based on a person’s situation in life. This is presented as a game with challenges that need to be completed, with young people as the players.

2. FutureBuilder -Tracey Bleakey’s idea is for a site that allows young people to build skills profiles. In response, it highlights the gaps in their experience or skills required for their desired career path and suggests actual work, education or training opportunities that will fill those gaps. The site has a number of functions, such as skills matching, being able to request a mentor, print a CV, feature testimonials from teachers and employer opportunity profiles.

3. GamePlan - Lee Hazzard is proposing to build a Facebook app that helps young people break down their life goals into everyday, manageable steps, before assigning them to a “GamePlanner” mentor who will provide support through Facebook and offline to help them meet their goals. The app will also feature functions such as CV writing and job notification (which could be controlled by Work Programme providers) and inspiration from role models.

4. Gamification - Chantal Barcelona is from the Bigger Idea Community and her idea is to use the usual “procrastination zones” of Facebook, YouTube and the like to create personality assessment tools to see what jobs a young person would be suited to – depending on how they reacted to various videos, for example.

5. InspireTree - Thomas Marsden wants to make a decision-making mobile and web app that helps young people who don’t know what to do next uncover the opportunities that lies before them. It matches interests, suggests next steps, finds local opportunities and demonstrates where their decisions could take them in the long term, like what jobs they could ultimately end up with if they took a certain decision path now.

6. Interactive “CV” Timeline – Annie Jackson, from the Bigger Idea Community, wants to create a website where CVs can be presented in an online and multimedia format, similar to the Facebook Timeline. The site would enable people to link to blogs they have written and to post other sections of their CV in a variety of formats, for example video. There would be an option to view the interactive CV as a chronological timeline or grouped into “education”, “work experience”, “skills”, “interests” and “blogs/articles”.

7. Job Story – Thomas Maxwell’s idea helps young people find out about possible career paths, including some that they may not have even heard of, broadening their job options as a result. Information about jobs would be presented using profiles similar to Facebook, and videos, like on YouTube, that would tell the whole “story” of the job, helping the young person to see what it really entails. The site would then suggest a range of related professions in the same way that YouTube suggest similar videos.

8. Meet Market - Tom Tobia‘s idea is for an online and offline platform to create a support network for young people not in education, employment, or training to learn and develop entrepreneurial skills through launching micro-enterprises within the familiar context of street markets.

9. Mesh – Networks That Empower - Megan Clatworthy‘s idea is for an online space where young people, employers, educational providers and community organisations can network with one another. People can use the space to create 3D CVs, use careers advice webinars, post videos about job opportunities and much more. Young people can generate points for using the space, which can result in real-life opportunities including work experience, internships, courses and vouchers.

10. Re:Skilled - Terri Herb‘s idea is for a web application that helps young people identify the skills needed to reach their goals, and helps them to develop and demonstrate those skills by being able to take part in a variety of projects (including projects offered by employers). They can then use videos or other records of their participation in these projects to add to a mini-portfolio. Gaining feedback from people running projects will be an important part of the personal development process.

Congratulations to everyone who submitted one of these ideas!

Don’t forget that you are still welcome to attend the event regardless of whether your idea was selected or not. We are particularly looking for young people to come along and join the teams. You can reserve your free ticket on our Interactivism Eventbrite page here.

If you have any questions about Interactivism, please e-mail: lucy [at] wearefuturegov [dot] com and don’t forget to follow our Simpl Twitter account (@simplco) for all of the latest updates.

Hankering to submit an idea of your own but not sure where to start? Check out these organisations who are already doing great things to change young people’s lives through digital tech and see if that helps turn on a lightbulb of inspiration for your own ideas!

Using social media: If FLiPJobs wasn’t already in its Beta phase, we would be knocking at their door to enter Interactivism! Working on the ethos that those closest to you know your strengths and weaknesses best, they have developed a site that helps young people create job profiles and showcase their talents with the help of their Facebook friends. Tied into the social media site, a young person first ranks themselves in things like ‘being on time’ and ‘willingness to learn’ before sending the same questionnaire to their friends. The site then helps match up employment opportunities based on these skill rankings, and allows users to build profiles that can be easily tailored into professional CVs.

FLiP: How it works from White October on Vimeo.

Peer-to-peer: IdeasTap is an arts charity that helps young people get into the creative industries. In just three years, they’ve built up a thriving (and growing!) online community of over 52,000 young people and name amongst their partners The Old Vic, The National Skills Academy and Magnum Photos.

The golden nugget for these guys though, is the level of peer-to-peer working they promote. Alongside more general job and funding opportunities, IdeasTap allows young people to set out briefs for their own creative projects, which their peers then answer. In an industry that is infamously hard to break into, IdeasTap has created a space young people create their own projects and opportunities for and with their peers. In turn, they can build portfolios with real-life projects and develop experience in freelancing. The site also features a community-sourced online magazine choc-o-block with advice, news, and features.

Local Opportunities: Sometimes, the best thing that technology can do is help you discover what’s right on your doorstep. Somewhereto helps link up young people with available spaces in their area for everything from sports and dance training, to staging an event or exhibition. Local authorities, organisations and businesses can offer up their space, free of charge to give young people the chance to develop a project, and recently, websites have even been offering up space on their home pages to promote these endeavours.

Now that those cogs are turning, get your ideas up on Simpl by Wednesday, 25 January 2012 for a chance to turn your idea into a working prototype.

Right, so it’s pretty impossible to escape the constant media surge of stories around NEETs, youth unemployment rates, social unrest, you name it, and it’s painting a pretty bleak picture of the current situation young people are in. There is no doubt times are tough, but rather than dwell in the negative, we want you to harness those negatives, creating ideas for projects that will help change this myriad of sad statistics into positive social action.

We’ve got quite a few tricks up our sleeves to get those innovative juices flowing. For one, the RSA (http://thersa.org) have put together a discovery framework, which maps out some of the biggest barriers and gaps in what’s currently out there to help young people. They look at how design methods and a nifty matrix can help you discover where your idea might fit into the mix.

Additionally, in the run up to Interactivism, keep your eyes peeled for a string of guest posts on the Simpl blog written by a pretty awesome bunch – including young people, those who work with young people, employers, and more – to help highlight some of the biggest needs from those who know best.

And if that isn’t enough to put some fire under your feet to get ideas flowing, here’s another thing to consider – prizes. That’s right, as a bit of extra enticement, we’d like the reveal that the prizes for the top hack weekend ideas will include – Google Chromebooks for the entire winning team, a trip for one lucky student developer to one of Google’s international offices, and a chance for the young people involved to get a tour and lunch at Google HQ in London.

Like we said, stay tuned to Simpl (both on our blog and on Twitter @Simplco) for the latest news, details and inspirations relating to Interactivism, and we hope you see your ideas up soon!