1. Digital Social Innovation
Crowdmapping organisations and
activities across Europe
Peter Baeck, Principal Researcher, Nesta
peter.baeck@nesta.org.uk
Follow us on twitter @Digi_Si
www.digitalsocial.eu

2. Three overarching objectives
Defining and understanding the
potential in Digital Social Innovation
Crowdmapping and engaging
organisations working on, supporting
and delivering DSI and how they are
connected
Developing recommendations for how
policy, funding and regulatory
measures can be changed to better
support DSI

3. Delivered by a European Partnership

4. Sept: First AG
Meeting + Open
Workshop at
Open Knowledge
Conference
November:
Second
Open
Workshop
July Second
Interim
Study
Report
DSI
Challenge
Prize design
Sept. Post-
workshop
Report
Sept. Final
Study
Report
Sept: Third
AG Meeting
February: DSI
Policy
Workshop
and second
AG Meeting
December :
First Interim
Study Report
Inception
Report
Digitalsocial
.eu live
Crowdsourcing
DSI policy ideas
on the Your
Priorities
platform
March: Guardian
Article 10 DSI
innovators to
watch
Oui Share
Collaborative
Economy Fest
2014: DSI
Mapping launch
France
We are here
May
2013
August
2014
Jan
2014

5. ‘a type of social and
collaborative innovation in
which innovators, users
and communities co-create
knowledge and solutions
for a wide range of social
needs and at a scale that
was unimaginable before
the rise of ICT and the
Internet’
What is Digital
Social Innovation ?

6. Why is it so
interesting ?
• Empowers Citizens
• New opportunities for
partnerships and coproduction
between citizens and services
• Creates new opportunities to
collaborate on creating solutions
that have a social impact
• Increases the potential to rapidly
scale social innovations
• Better public value services
• Opportunities to develop and
scale decentralized
digital ecosystems
for the social good

7. The broader context for digital social
innovation in the EU

8. Horizons 2020: Joint
Open R&I Programmes
EU 2020 Digital Agenda DSI
To be able to fully maximize social innovation and
citizens engagement, policy makers should be aware
of the challenges
SMART
GROWTH
SUSTAINABLE
GROWTH
INCLUSIVE
GROWTH
• Innovative Union
• Youth on the
move
• A Digital agenda
for Europe
• Resource efficient
Europe
• An industrial
policy for the
globalization era
• An agenda for new
skills and jobs
• European platform
against poverty
• High speed internet
• Single digital market
• Citizens rights/skills
• R&D
• Connected facilities
• …
DSI VISION:
• DSI contribute to smart
growth tackling societal
challenges
(innovation+sustainabil
ity+inclusion)
• Leveraging European
talent by fully engaging
(new) stakeholders
• Taking advantage of the
network effect

9. Governments/business/competition
Bottom-up and decentralised
(open source, open data, open
hardware, open knowledge) P2P,
e-democracy, CAPS, Internet Science,
DSI, web entrepreneurship
Top down and systemic
approaches European
Innovation Partnerships, Smart
Cities, FI-PPP; Cloud strategy;
challenge.gov, eHealth,
eGovernment
Exploit the network effect for the social good
Centrally controlled
Distributed
Communities/society/collaboration

10. Collaboration/socialvalues
Competition/economicinterests
Grassroots, distributed
Crowdsourcing
Federated Social
Networks (Diaspora, …)
Centralised, top-down
Collective awareness
platforms
(collective intelligence)
Smart Cities
Social web
entrepreneurs
FI-PPP
Commercial social networks/
markets (FB, Apple, Android, …)
Startup Europe
Venture Capital
(Digital) Social
Innovation
(Digital) Innovation
Innovation?

11. Learning from practice
Long shortlist of 100+
examples of organisations
working on DSI.
Case studied 39 of these

12. Four technological trends in DSI
Open Hardware
New ways of making and using
open hard-ware solutions and
moving towards and Open
Source Internet of Things
Open Knowledge
Co-production of new
knowledge and crowd
mobilisation based on open
content, open source and open
access
Open Networks
Innovative combinations of network
solutions and infrastructures, e.g.
sensor net -works, free interoperable
network services, open Wifi, bottom
up-broadband, distributed social
networks, p2p infrastructure
Open Data
Innovative ways to capture, use,
analyse, and interpret open data
coming from people and from
the environment

13. Norm Wright, CC
Open Hardware

14. Open Hardware
Arduino
Arduino is a simple
low cost circuit
board that anyone
can turn into an
electrical device
Over 1 million
Arduino boards
have been
produced

15. Open Hardware
Smart Citizen Kit
Smart Citizen Kit seeks to
bring citizens together to
address environmental
challenges
Enables the user to
measure environmental
data and a Wi-Fi antenna
that enables the data to be
shared. Installed at scale in
Barcelona, Amsterdam and
Manchester

16. CCAC North Library C.C
Open Knowledge

17. Open Knowledge
Zooniverse
Zooniverse involves large
crowds of citizens in
capturing and analysing big
data sets.
Zooniverse hosts online
citizen science projects
which involve the public in
crowdsourcing academic
research. Large online
communities devote their
free time to projects such
as studying more than 2m
images of cancer cells in the
Cellslider project

18. Gamification – Genes in Space

19. Open Knowledge
Patients Like Me
Enables people living with a long-
term health condition to contribute
their personal experience and
knowledge on diseases, condition
details and treatments to a
social network of peers living with
similar conditions.
The network engage more than
220,000 users and cover more than
2,000 conditions

20. Open
Networks

21. Open Networks
Guifi.net
Founded in 2000 as a
response to the lack of
internet in rural
Catalonia.
Operates a "mesh
network" where each
person in the network
helps transmit internet to
other nodes in the Guifi
net.
More than 23,000
network nodes.

22. Open Networks
Safecast
Uses open hardware,
sensor networks to
capture large open
radiation level data sets.
Used by citizens to map
radiation levels in Japan
after the Fukushima
nuclear disaster.
More than 13 Million
Data Points have been
captured to date.

23. Open data

24. Open Data
Open
Corporates
scraping, opening up
big data sets
Through web scraping
Open Corporates make
information about
companies and the
corporate world more
transparent and accessible.
The data is turned in to
searchable maps and
visualisations of complex
corporate structures.

25. Digitalsocial.eu
Engaging the European DSI community and
mapping networks

26. www.digitalsocial.eu
Crowdmapping the European
DSI community

27. Type of support or
activity
Networking Events, Fairs,
and Festivals
Running Incubators and
accelerators
Hosting and managing
maker spaces and hacker
spaces
Through research projects
or research networks
Delivering digital social
services
Providing funding and
social investment
Advocacy and advisory or
expert bodies
Organisations working on and supporting DSI across Europe
in multiple ways….
Fablab Amsterdam
Nominet Trust
Bethnal Green Ventures
W3C
Tyze
Chaos
Communication
Camp

28. Health,
wellbeing
and
inclusion
Sustainable
economic
models
Energy and
environment
Participative
open
governance
Pioneering
science,
culture and
education
Smart public
services
Open
Networks Confine
Open-
garden.net
Everyaware Commons 4EU Tor project
Make Sense
Freecoin
Smart
Santander
Open Data
Wiki Progress
Open
Corporates
Ushahidi
OHM
Festival
Cell Slider Vienna Open
Crisis-commons CKAN City SDK
Open
Knowledge Patients Like Me
Goteo
Desis Network
Avaaz
Communia P2P Foundation
Git Hub
Liquid Feedback
Zooniverse
(Cellslider)
Peerby
Ouishare
Landshare
Open Ministry
Open
Knowledge
Foundation
My SocietyYour Priorities
Provenance Meiraha
Open
Hardware
Safecast
Rasberry Pi
Fablab
Amsterdam
IoT Council
Arduino
Smart Citizen
KitFairphone Makerfaire
Open Access Awareness networks
New ways of makingParticipatory mechanisms
Sharing economy

29. “Nesta
Charity
Based in
UK”
“Make
Things do
Stuff”
“Open Hardware
Mobile Apps
3D Printing
Open Source
Sensors & IoT”
“Nominet
Trust
Mozilla”
Who
are
you?
Creating a digitalsocial.eu profile
technol
ogy
Projects
Collabor
ators?32 41

30. Join the Network

31. Data Collection and Mapping

32. Your network

34. Linking Research to other Social
Innovation Trends

35. Collaboration/socialvalues
Competition/economicinterests
Bottom-up
distributed
Top-down
centralised
Safecast
Patients
like me
Wiki Progress
Open
Corporates
Ushahidi Crisis-
commons
Everyaware
Provenance
Freecoin
Goteo
Peerby
Ouishare
Desis Network
Landshare
P2P Foundation
Avaaz
Liquid Feedback
Open Ministry
Your Priorities
Meiraha
Make Sense
My Society
OHM Festival
Fairphone
Fablab Amsterdam
IoT Council
Arduino
Makerfaire
Smart Citizen Kit
Rasberry Pi
Zooniverse
(Cellslider)
Confine
opengarden.net
Commons 4EU
Tor project Cell slider
CKAN
Communia
Open Knowledge
Foundation
Smart Santander
Vienna Open
City SDKGit Hub
A bottom-up collaborative ecology
Awareness
networks
Sharing
economy
Open Access
Participatory
mechanisms
New ways
of making
Open HardwareOpen DataOpen NetworksOpen Knowledge

36. Collaboration/socialvalues
Competition/economicinterests
Bottom-up
distributed
Top-down
centralised
Safecast
Patients
like me
Wiki Progress
Open
Corporates
Ushahidi Crisis-
commons
Everyaware
Provenance
Zooniverse
(Cellslider)
Confine
opengarden.net
Commons 4EU
Tor project Cell slider
CKAN
Communia
Open Knowledge
Foundation
Smart Santander
Vienna Open
City SDK
Freecoin
Goteo
Peerby
Ouishare
Desis Network
Landshare
P2P Foundation
OHM Festival
Fairphone
Fablab Amsterdam
IoT Council
Arduino
Makerfaire
Smart Citizen Kit
Avaaz
Liquid Feedback
Open Ministry
Your Priorities
Meiraha
Make Sense
My Society
Rasberry Pi
Git Hub
A bottom-up collaborative ecology
Awareness
networks
Sharing
economy
Open Access
Participatory
mechanisms
New ways
of making
Open HardwareOpen DataOpen NetworksOpen Knowledge

37. 448 organisation,
their projects and
networks mapped to
date.
What have we
learned?
 Engaging and mapping a diverse
community under one term (DSI) is
hard and takes time
 More DSI practice happening in west
and Southern Europe
 Are we reaching out to and engaging
the right networks?
 The majority of practice is focusing on
Open Knowledge and Open Data. Little
activity around Open Hardware
 DSI is driven by new comers to the
social innovation field.
 ….?

38. Next Steps
Map 800 - 1000 organisations
Analyse data and identify strong and
weak DSI networks
Identify key network nodes
Feed insights from network analysis
in to final recommendations to the
EUC
Make digitalsocial.eu a long term
resource for the DSI community

39. Materials on Digital Social Innovation
11 DSI Trends
Keep in touch:
www.digitalsocial.eu
contact@digitalsocial.eu
@Digi_Si
@PeterBaeck
www.digitalsocial.eu
Trends
1st interim study report
10 DSI innovators to watch

40. We are using Your
Priorities to source
policy ideas for digital
social innovation…