Fontrillo, which is available to download free, enables:

• The elderly to easily connect to their friends and family on their smartphones through a simple and well designed interface.
• Includes a simple way to contact emergency services
• And enables monitoring and remote assistance for the its user.

Check it out! www.fontrillo.com

Photo by Alex Asensi: www.alexasensi.com

We were up in Oslo this last weekend for Social Innovation Camp Norway. Hosted in an old bank, walls lined with portraits of venerable old men in suits, grand and dusty chandeliers hanging from the ceilings. Merete and Therese from WorldWide Narrative were amazing hosts, with seeming undending energy – they kept the teams and ideas going all weekend from early morning till late at night.

The five teams were:

Just Fashion – Making ethical fashion appealing to the ordinary consumer, a lot of research has gone into the ethical credentials of the designers but the website is focused around the clothes themselves. Designers can put up their page on the platform and people can buy directly from them.

Mitgar – An app that gamifies doing good in your community.  It breaks down ‘Saving the world’ into simple achievable tasks that you can complete alone or in teams in order to win badges and prizes.

Kono- An education and peer to peer learning platform for norwegian high school students. Each student has their own profile that they can update with their strengths and weaknesses and get help from their peers.

Memory Lanes- An app that tells you the history of the places as you pass through them, connecting people to their history and that of their friends and family.

Green Dumpsterdiving – An app to help reduce waste by mapping and tagging skips to help people find furniture that has been thrown away and could be recycled.

After much deliberation the Judges chose Memory Lanes as the winner, who now get three months of office space at Mesh, Oslo’s startup coworking space. All the teams will also get a three month startup programme of support from Merete and Therese at World Wide Narrative. We look forward to following their progress!

After meeting with a lot of lovely people who were enthusiastic about the process, we think we were taking the wrong approach for Northern Ireland – so we’re going to do something a little different over a longer period of time. We’re still speaking with the Trust on exactly how that will work, but we’re hoping to run more events on a slightly smaller scale, and reach out into more places, all of which we think is important in Northern Ireland.

This means we’re shutting down our Call for Ideas for the moment, and having a bit of a re-think. Do get in touch if there’s an idea you’d like to talk about –  or something we can help with.

We’re hoping to be in Derry~Londonderry, a bit later in September – details here, shortly, as we’re talking to a few exciting partners about doing something pretty special. If you like digital + culture, get your mind ready to go.

If you’re interested in a medium-term social innovation engagement with us, do get in touch with us. We’re interested in talking to designers, developers, and people who understand social problems – whether you’re an expert or someone who experiences social challenges.

Spring has finally arrived in the UK, and even in Northern Ireland – we’ve seen buds on trees and everyone’s looking up and hopeful.

We had a great session yesterday at the Idea Centre at South West College in Omagh – this is the sort of resource that we wish we had at school: all sorts of fantastic prototyping equipment. One of the ideas that came out of this was using mobile phones as GPS route finders as well as to watch & automatically report bad drivers.

This morning we were kindly hosted by NICVA, who gave us lovely scones and caffeinated hot drinks, then we got down to some ideas generation, including an idea to help drug & alcohol treatment programmes work with users to help self-monitor their usage and an idea to help community & voluntary sector organisations collaborate.

We’ve got just over two weeks left to get your idea in to the Social Innovation Camp we’re running in Derry~Londonderry this June. Anyone can enter: You don’t have to know anything about technology, just be passionate about a problem and submit it here. More information? Want to talk to us? Just want to find out a bit more? The centre for Northern Ireland Social Innovation Camp is here.

We’ve been running a few events during our Call for Ideas, now, and meeting lots of interesting folk. The ideas are starting to trickle in, and that’s great.

We’re most excited today, however, to announce that UnLtd have agreed to fund the idea that shows the most promise at the end of the weekend with an up to £5,000 Do It Award.

We’re still coming around different places in Northern Ireland – our calendar is always up-to-date here, but the current line-up is:

17th April: Derry-Londonderry

• Come to our workshop at the Centre for Contemporary Arts at 1pm
• 18-19th April: Belfast
  • Come to our workshop at WorkWest on the 18th at 12pm
• 22nd-23rd April: Omagh
  • Come to our workshop at the IDEA Centre at South West College on the 23rd at 1730
• 24th April: Nothing yet… but we’re looking in the southwest
• 25th April:
  • Come see us at NICVA in North Belfast for breakfast
  • Later on, we’re tentatively in the E3 Centre at Belfast Metropolitan
• 26th April:
  • Come to our workshop at the i2 CIDO in Coleraine
• 30th April: North West
• 1st May: Newry
  • Come to our workshop at the Win Business Centre at 12pm
• 8th-9th May: Derry-Londonderry: TBA

You can submit an idea anytime until the 10th May here.

If you think your company or organisation can give extra help to the teams – whether that’s during, or after, the event, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

We’re looking forward to seeing more of you in Northern Ireland in the coming weeks!