A word from the authors

To encourage greater innovation, NESTA was a founding sponsor of the Catalyst Awards, community awards for social technology, which aim to raise the profile of communications technologies and recognise the pioneers. NESTA has also helped develop the capacity to bring communities of change agents and technology developers together to accelerate new combinations of ideas through groups like Social Innovation Camp.

The Lab was motivated to commission this handbook to build on the practical experience from the Catalyst Awards and Social Innovation Camp. We wanted to identify the lessons of how new technologies can be most effectively applied to deliver positive social impact and help transform the way public services work.

By packaging these lessons in an inspirational and practically useful way we hope to release the untapped potential for people to use technology to tackle social and environmental challenges. This handbook aims to involve new people, help those already in this space go further and keep this potential developing into more and more practical examples that have a positive impact.

In the words of Dr Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters, “print is dead”.

The instant we commit our words to bound paper and permanent ink, they become static, lose their currency, and remain part of the past. Which is precisely why print still matters. For a few years now I’ve been fortunate to be part of some very interesting conversations about how innovation in technology might reshape our society. I’ve seen huge progress in our collective thinking about how these technologies can help enrich our world and improve our lives, rather than simply giving us even more ways to distract ourselves from our troubles.  

I believe it is time for the conversation to move on. We have talked for a long time about how these new ways of communicating will change our organisations, our society, our lives; and we’ve arrived at a few answers, and lots more pressing questions. But now is the time to act, to test them out in the real world on a much wider scale. By binding up our ‘progress so far’ into the time capsule of this handbook, I hope we can put to rest some of the old conversations and create a space for some new ones. Perhaps the propositions we outline here will form the basis for these new conversations, perhaps even a few arguments. Perhaps not. But if we can bring some new people into the conversation and support them in putting these theories into practice, then I think we can make progress collectively, and in unexpected directions, as these new experiments unfold.

Most of the content of this book will eventually become out of date. Some of it was probably wrong already. After all, it’s just a best guess by a group of people who have at most a fraction of the total knowledge in this field. And that’s fine. What’s important is that it moves things forward. As 37 Signals say in Getting Real “Accept that decisions are temporary. Accept that mistakes will happen and realize it’s no big deal as long as you can correct them quickly. Execute, build momentum, and move on.”

And never, ever cross the streams.

The emergence of freely or cheaply available digital and web-based technologies is enabling ordinary people to have our say to change the way we think, learn and act, to influence others, to find new ways of making a living.

Individuals have led the change but organisations are also seeing the potential and commissioning systems to help them achieve their goals in socially useful ways. But there is still much to learn about using these technologies effectively.

This handbook owes much to the pioneers who have been willing to share their experiences of applying these new tools in a wide range of settings, and in a variety of combinations, to catalyse change by means of social networks or campaigning or citizen empowerment. We hope their candour will help you avoid pitfalls and achieve your own aims.

The social web is here.

With it come the tools and opportunities for non-profit organisations, groups, and even individuals to leverage the power of the global community online. Organisations can now find and connect with supporters in more dynamic ways, both influencers and champions. Individuals can be influencers and champions for charities and causes of their choice, providing benefits at no cost to those organisations or groups. So, what are we waiting for? 

We’re waiting to know what to do, how to do it, or if it will really work. We’re waiting to see who will try it first and whether they will make money, make friends, or make a new tool. We’re waiting for an invitation to dive in.

Well, here’s that invitation. Here’s the beginning of the conversation for you, so you know the words or the tools to talk about and think about with your organisation, your neighbours, and your friends. This is as formal an invitation as it will be – please RSVP ‘yes’. 

Those of us who collaborated on this handbook are waiting for you to join us in the ongoing conversation that has already started and will continue. We’re looking at what’s working, what isn’t working, and what you can do right now to get started. We’re looking at data and figures, as well as feedback and stories. We write about our thoughts, our observations, and our strategies. And we’ll share all of it with you, online, for free.

Take this handbook as the beginning of the conversation. We look forward to continuing the conversation with you online about using these social tools for more effective, efficient, and powerful social benefit. There’s no time like now to get started. Talk to you soon!

In contributing to this handbook I’ve been inspired by the NESTA vision that innovation develops best when it is open, diverse and collaborative. Social media offers us all the chance to join in, with a little money, some skills, and – most importantly, the right mindset and guiding principles.

Cluetrain Manifesto co-author Doc Searls once said that markets are conversations, relationships andtransactions – obvious to anyone who shops in the bazaar as well as the supermarket. You do business or share with people you trust, and to trust people you need to get to know them, and to do that you need to talk to them. Somehow in the last century that understanding got lost in the increasingly impersonal way in which large organisations broadcast to us, advertised at us, and tried to sell us one-size-fits-all products and services.

As this mindset begins to change, with it comes a reminder to think about who and why, before jumping to the what and how of shiny new tools. That was always the case in good design. Get close to the users, and involve them in development. And we should also remember that the best way to learn something practical is to try it. As Ken Thompson said when I interviewed him, you can’t learn to fly just by watching the instructor. 

There’s nothing really new in thinking about how to use social technology for public services and social change... except that something has fundamentally changed. The consumers of products and services can talk to each other about their preferences and complaints, not just in the bounded space of a local marketplace or meeting place, but globally. And if they don’t get satisfaction, they can campaign and organise to develop something they do like.

We hope the propositions and explanations here will promote conversations and a willingness to get in some flying practice. The good news is that it can be fun... because social technology is first social, second technical. If you do get involved, you’ll meet some interesting and friendly people, and develop some new relationships. What you then transact is up to you. 

In 1909, at only 35 years of age, Guglielmo Marconi was awarded the Nobel prize for Physics. It had been eight years since Marconi achieved the first transatlantic wireless communications. In the Nobel Prize presentation speech, Professor Hildebrand concluded: “Where this development can lead, we know not... we can produce connections between far-distant places, over far-reaching waters and deserts.”

In fact by 1909 most of the fundamental communication technologies for the 20th century had already been invented, leaving TV, the digital computer and the internet as the main but still awaited inventions. But to invent something is not enough. It has to be put to practical use, and key new technologies of 1909 (moving pictures, wireless, the aeroplane) still awaited commercial exploitation.

So it is too in 2009. Despite this being the 40th anniversary of the invention of the internet, and despite massive investment and interest in digital communications, we still can expect vast progress yet to come in communications technologies. In particular, the spread of high speed fibre-optic cables to the home is likely to spark a repeat of ‘where this development can lead, we know not…’

It is therefore timely for NESTA to commission a review of the implications of current communications technologies for social change. For most of the 20th century, the dominant dimension of communications has been mass communications, particularly through the media. In parallel was the growth of two-way personal and business telephony. The technologies of 2009 highlight the possibilities of the user as both recipient and originator of communication, within a corporate or a local context.

A problem for us in this project from the very first day was where to draw the line about technologies to include. It was important not to be limited purely to the fashionable tools of social networking technology, or even those which are mediated through the internet. These latter are perhaps inevitably the primary focus of the report, but we have also included references to projects which use other digital technologies.