Yesterday I was at the Reboot Britain conference to launch Social by Social – my first book, co-authored with David Wilcox, Amy Sample Ward and Nigel Courtney and Clive Holtham of Cass Business School.

The book, which was commissioned by Nesta and published by Openmute, is a practical guide to how to make use of the amazing opportunities of social and digital technologies for social impact. We’ve collected the most useful resources around and woven them together with some inspiring stories, practical advice and thoughts on the future.

The book is aimed at anyone working in the public or third sectors, plus campaigners, community groups and even concerned citizens. It’s 250 pages of practical advice and reference materials, and it’s available to buy here for just £7.99.

We’ve also released all the content free online under a Creative Commons license. Read and download it, add your comments and remix it for your own purposes now at www.socialbysocial.com. We want you all to make use of these resources in your projects and consultancy work, so as many people find out about these technologies and what they can do as possible.

After the launch itself, David Wilcox and Drew Mackie ran another version of the Social by Social Game, which introduces people to new technologies and helps them develop their own social by social projects. If you’d like us to run a similar event in your organisation, or if you’d like more tailored advice, please drop me a line.

I’m at b.tween in Liverpool today speaking on a panel with Adam Gee at Channel 4, Andy Bell from Landshare and Lucy Willis from Battlefront. We’ve been talking about using online and broadcast media to create action in the real world, in relation to School of Everything and other “social by social” projects.

My main point was about the intersection of social tools and media content. Battlefront helps young people campaign and then tells their stories on TV and online, and so creates action in the world. Meanwhile, School of Everything is creating action by building tools to enable and inspire people to teach and learn from each other: the existence of the tool is the trigger for creating the stories. Landshare is the model I can see emerging between the two: an integrated commission of TV content and social platform, with TV content to inspire people to grow things on spare land, and a social tool to help them find and use land near them. In other words, the TV content is creating a culture in which the tool will thrive, and providing marketing for the site.

Web 2.0 can also feed back into traditional media by creating and locating stories for cultural programming. Whatever the model of commissioning, if you are fortunate enough to be creating real activity in the world, you can use that activity to create a feedback loop which rallies more and more people to your movement. Here’s how it can work:

1. Create a tool which helps people do something in the world – share land, teach each other, campaign for change, or whatever. Write the stories you want your tool to create, and build it so it supports those things to happen, smoothly and simply.
2. Collect stories of the activity that results by engaging with your community, and share these stories back with the community through newsletters, blogs, Twitter etc. – and also with the public through any media channels available. Tell these stories in a way which makes audiences feel they could do it too.
3. Give users a way to share and promote their activities too, to amplify the effect of the activity and let your users help you market the tool. Help the people who have figured out how to do it share that with their peers.
4. The stories and media activity then become valuable resources in recruiting more users to the platform, which creates more activity to use in promoting the movement, and so on. By creating activity in the world, you create news; and by telling the stories through the media, you create a culture in which that activity is commonplace.

That’s what we’ve been doing at School of Everything: we talk to our users (or rather Claire does), find out what they’re up to, and tell those stories to encourage more people to join in. The media, social or otherwise, helps us turn the isolated interactions into a social movement.

As for media commissioning, I think there’s a rich seam here for media companies to invest in start-ups, and also in media content to tell the stories they support. The question of legacy is problematic – Landshare and Battlefront are commissions that need to generate stories, so what happens to their community when they have to stop “broadcasting”? So I think you also need a business model to sustain the existence of the web platform (School of Everything relies on real-world transactions for its business model), and finance it as an autonomous start-up that isn’t dependent on the continuation of the commission. We need more integrated partnerships between broadcasters and start-ups. And with the mutual benefit a well-designed broadcast and social campaign can bring, a TV-financed web start-up with broadcast tie-ins looks like an increasingly smart business proposition.

So all we need then is to come up with ideas for really compelling things we want to happen in the real world, that are interesting enough to make good telly. Anyone?

David Wilcox, Amy Sample Ward and I ran an event on Tuesday night taking non-profits through a process of brainstorming and developing projects using social technologies for social impact.

The event, called the Social by Social Game, was inspired by the Social Media Game and also by the book we’ve been writing for NESTA called Social by Social.

Rather than repeat the details here, those of you who are curious should check out David’s excellent blog post and videos documenting and explaining the event. The whole game is Creative Commons but still in development, so please take it and rework it, and let us know how it might be improved. And if you’d like us to run a similar event in your organisation or community, please do drop me a line.

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

The RSA is an Enlightenment institution, but progressing the Enlightenment today does not mean perpetuating the beliefs of the past. A modern enlightened approach requires a richer understanding of the human mind and an appreciation of the new values of our digitally-enabled age: an enthusiasm for collective action, a more participatory view of membership and a fundamental belief that people are inherently good and should be trusted.

The RSA has worked hard to embrace these values through the RSA Networks project, on which I was a consultant and volunteer. However the level of culture shift is great and the support of an engaged fellowship is essential. In standing for Council I intend to represent the energies of a young, digitally-savvy, ethically aware generation that is already reshaping the world in its own image.

I bring to this all my experience as a reformer and innovator in education, democracy and mental health. I am Founder of the Mindapples ‘5-a-day for your mind’ campaign, recently featured in the RSA Journal, and a Co-founder and Company Director of the innovative education start-up School of Everything, which won both a New Statesman Award and a Prime Minister’s Catalyst Award in 2008.

I am also co-author of a forthcoming NESTA handbook on the use of social technology for social impact, a fellow of the School for Social Entrepreneurs, a long-standing volunteer at Social Innovation Camp and a pioneer of new models of social enterprise, digital campaigning and democratic participation.

All my voluntary and commercial activities are directed towards building a fairer, healthier and more sustainable world. I challenge old structures and assumptions, not through opposition but by building more compelling alternatives. I hope that with my support the RSA can lead the charge and help us build the society we all want to live in.

I hope you will endorse my candidacy, or disagree with my ideas, by leaving me a comment below. If you’re an RSA Fellow, I hope I can also count on your vote next month. (I’ve always wanted to say that.)

The Shine UnConference for Social Entrepreneurs starts today at Kings Place, York Way, London. If you’re there already, you may encounter me helping out Anna Maybank of Social Innovation Camp with a short session on developing your own SI Camp ideas.

And if you’re coming tomorrow, please join David Wilcox, Amy Sample Ward and I at The Hub Kings Cross for the Social Collaboration Game. We’ll be showcasing a new event format based on the content of our forthcoming book Social by Social. We’ll be brainstorming ideas for how collaboration technologies can solve social problems in your neighbourhood, and then developing your proposals into a full pitches for funding – in just 2 hours.

Hope to see you there!

I’m looking for a research intern to help me develop Mindapples and other Sociability projects, so I wanted to know where I should post the opportunity to attract a bright, enthusiastic graduate (if you know anyone, please let me know).

Rather than trawl the web looking for good sites and hunting out advice in forums and social enterprise communities, I twittered the question to see what my friends and contacts would suggest. Almost immediately, here’s what I got back:

tomstafford@gandy mindhacks.com could do you a shout out if you’d like

adamrothwell@gandy W4MP works really rather well for us, even though we’re not (err) an MP…

tomnixon@gandy Brighton and Sussex unis would both be v. happy to talk to you and help you find a graduate

noelitoRT @gandy looking for a bright, enthusiastic graduate to be my research intern on @Mindapples and other projects.

And because my Twitter is linked to my Facebook status too, I also got these responses through Facebook:

Aly Ripo at 13:14 on 11 May
arts jobs
Imran Khan at 14:09 on 11 May
w4mp?
Anthony McCann at 17:38 on 11 May
www.jobs.ac.uk

Great stuff – thanks to everyone for providing such valuable advice and offering to help, you’ve solved my problem perfectly.

So what’s just happened there? It’s the sort of knowledge that isn’t quite worth paying a consultant for, but which is still incredibly important when building an organisation. Traditionally you might get it from peers, mentors and other people in similar situations; you could also get it from Yahoo Answers, LinkedIn Q&As or potentially School of Everything. But Twitter is simpler and quicker than talking offline, more personal than the normal online solutions and well-suited to the tiny drip-feed of questions that comes with running a business. It’s not a replacement for these other tools, or for mentoring, training or consultancy. It’s something new, or rather a scalable version of something old: a peergroup of fellow professional supporting each other.

I have around 500 followers, plus various overlapping Facebook friends – not many in the grand scheme of things but they’re generally quality people who know their stuff and with whom I have genuine relationships. They didn’t cost me anything to acquire except time in being friendly and creating valuable content, and now they provide me with free consultancy that is worth a huge amount to me and my projects. In return I help people out and the whole ‘economy’ seems healthy and mutually beneficial.

The point is, there’s far more to Twitter (and Facebook) than brand awareness and self-promotion. In engaging with a community of peers, I gain not just a media channel but an educational resource too. Much like a guild or professional association, Twitter allows me to build my own network of specialists with whom I share knowledge and swap industry insights. It allows me to build my own personal “guild” directed entirely to the skills and industries that interest me. They can teach me how to do my job better, whatever my job happens to be today.

So the next question is, how can you put a value on that? And the question after that is, why on earth isn’t your business on Twitter?

A little Friday fun for you: a lovely animation about the history of the internet, via my friends at Cognac.

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.

School of Everything has been selected as an Official Honoree for the Education category in The 13th Annual Webby Awards. Yay!

This is what they say: “The Official Honoree distinction is awarded to the top 15% of all work entered that exhibits remarkable achievement. With nearly 10,000 entries received from all 50 states and over 60 countries, this is an outstanding accomplishment.”

So well done to our hard-working team and thanks to the Webbys for giving us a well-timed boost of publicity following the launch of our new payment system last week. We’ll put the award in our growing trophy cabinet alongside the New Statesman New Media Award and the Catalyst Award we won last year. Onwards and upwards!