A very late wrap-up on Social Innovation Camp Milano
Apologies to the Social Innovation Camp Milano team – we’ve just found this draft and realised it never went out. Better late than never, however.
Our first Italian Social Innovation Camp was held in Milan from 8th-10th June, 2012. 50 people came together around six ideas in the Hub Milano.
Here’s what they built:
Bircle
Bircle have broken down a complex issue – access for the disabled to public buildings – and cracked it into a very simple rating proposition: Users self-classify themselves into a short list of categories, e.g. “Wheelchair”, “Wheelchair with helper”, or “Walking w/ limited mobility (cane)”. Buildings are rated on a 3-level scale: smile, flat face, or frown. A very simple classification system to try to make sense from a complex subject.
NearBuy.it
Italy is filled with wonderful producers of some of the finest food in the world. Italians want a way to buy the best of these goods direct from producers, and producers want to connect with consumers. NearBuy.it builds a resource for consumers to set up a sharing – so if a producer could deliver a 6kg Parmesan, you could split it into 12 500g chunks and share it among your neighbours.
Semplicel
Semplicel spent the weekend looking at how older people use mobile phones, and wanted to bring the benefits of mobile phone technology to older people. They built a series of easy-to-use interfaces for the most popular mobile phone technologies to bring a range of benefits to older users, including easy photo sharing, one-touch emergency & urgent number dialing, and a locator app for concerned family members to catch up with and locate missing loved ones.
El Raccomandate
This team wanted to help families find the best-of-breed help and build a marketplace for family help – from child- and elder-care to cleaning services. They investigated in great detail how different users would use the services and aim to help families and high-quality service providers find each other and create clarity and trust in the market.
Nabatà
This team dug into one of the most difficult challenges facing consumers: knowing what’s in your products and where they come from. They aim to create a database of products using only factual information, i.e. whether it contains a given compound andwhat certifications (fair trade, cruelty free, etc) it complies with, and provide a list of competing products – so if you wanted a toothpaste that was not tested on animals but contained flouride, you could search for it using that class of products.
TocToc
The TocToc (Italian for “Knock Knock”) movement seek to create a location- and time-based resource for sharing or giving away items and build a marketplace for refurbished and recycled goods – almost a Freecycle on steroids. Through this platform, they hope to build community events around sharing and re-use, and build strong urban communities.
The result
The Hub Milan are providing 3 months of complimentary Hub membership and mentorship to each team, and we know that there are several teams in discussion for financing of these ideas. We’ll report back as we hear more.
