Google’s second Interactivism event was held in London on 17th and 18th February 2012. Google and FutureGov joined forces with the RSA and Livity to deliver Interactivism: Young People’s Hack Weekend. This time, teams were challenged to come up with innovative ways of using the web to help young people get into the job they want, or onto the training or education that will help them get there in the future.
For those of you unfamiliar with the term, for us, a hack is an event where computer developers, designers and people with ideas come together to build real, working prototypes (or models) of their ideas in a short amount of time.
Before the hack weekend, the RSA hosted a roundtable discussion with young people and policy influencers to help frame the challenge. This informed a framework document that you can read here. Ideas were submitted here on Simpl and a short list of 10 ideas (click here to see which ten) were selected to be developed during the two day event. The event was held in Ravensbourne, a digital media and design university sector college, and the teams consisted of people with ideas, student developers, Googlers, young people with experience of being out of work and education, designers and social innovators (you can see the full list on the Eventbrite page here.) All of our teams produced some excellent prototypes during the two days and two winning ideas were selected. If you would like to help any of our teams develop their ideas further, please get in touch through the Simpl ideas page.
Details of the first Interactivism event: Interactivism - Accessibility Hack Weekend, where participants were challenged to make the web more accesible for older people, can be found here.
You can read all of the reports from Interactivism on the Simpl blog and can keen up to date with any future Interactivism events by following us on Twitter @Simplco.
All information collected for the Interactivism competition will be held by FutureGov, Google and RSA only. All ideas submitted for the competition remain the sole property of the idea originator unless otherwise stated by the idea originator. Idea originators must be prepared to work with Google should their idea be chosen to be given further support following the Interactivism event.
If you use an RSS reader, you can subscribe to a feed of all future ideas posted to Simpl.
1Neater.me Boost motivation & confidence of NEET's by giving them a simple (!) platform to showcase their strengths (whatever they may be). Grow from there.
2IIBIT! : "The Facebook of Education and the Twitter of Constructive Criticism" When implemented, this will revolutionize the collective growth of students all across the globe. Learning should be interactive, different and entertaining. "IIBIT!" seeks to break cultural diversity and school curriculum rigidity in order to create a fresh approach to educational development.
2Active Enterprise Links This idea links students with real world businesses to support their learning and eventually leads to valuable workplace connections.
1SKILLED This idea aims to highlight the skills that young people possess to increase their confidence and to address the myth that young people don’t have the skills needed in the workplace.
added 22 Dec. 2011 | Created by :
0Tutor map A graphical user interface similar to Google Maps, where every marker advertises an education opportunity (free and paid courses, tutors, etc).
Users are able to post on the site and tag a geographical location with the post.
There would be two primary uses for the site:
-Posting courses on ANY subject (as long as they are not illegal)
-Browsing for courses
People who post courses are supposed to teach these courses to anyone who request to learn from them. They will become teachers on whatever subject they choose. Examples include: painting, playing an instrument, cooking, etc. Incentives may be requested by people who post, but may not necessarily be monetary.
This would increase the array of skills available for learning in any community and increase social interaction within it, further increasing a sense of community and belonging.
1Online Ambition website A website that collects tips and publicises events about using social media to improve career prospects (work, college, interviews etc)
0NEET - "platform for experience and development" Edinburgh Council has launched a Guarantee - no school leaver should leave without education, employment or training. This fits with the NEET Interactivism competition. We need a platform where people can come together with organisations to exchange information, to enable successful outcomes e.g. work, volunteering, studying
3A "What's Going On?" Info Stream of Youth Activities/Job Opportunities w/ Custom RSS Subscriptions "Wouldn't it be great if young people could find out about jobs or skill-building, mentoring & learning opportunities, entrepreneurship, and, say, rock-and-roll-camp for girls - through a single RSS feed? And what if the feed was customizable - so that said young people (or parents/guardians/mentors) could subscribe to an organization (that hosts such activities), a venue (near home, for example), or a specific firm where said young people might really, really want to work?"
1FutureBuilder FutureBuilder allows young people to build their skills profile through matching career aspirations and highlighted skills gaps to local opportunities and mentors.
The young person enters all their experience, training, work experience and life experiences into the system through defined templates to build a skills profile. The system will use a ‘skills profile engine’ to highlight the missing hard and soft skills based on the career aspirations (role or sector specific) – i.e. the areas upon which the young person needs to focus and match these to opportunities.
An automatically generated CV and detailed skills profile can be printed or emailed from the site.
1 Neater.me 
