[This was originally posted by Denise Stephens over on Enabled by Design] Enabled by Design brings you the Enabled by Design-athon, a two day ideas and product prototyping-fest for the 21st Century. Speakers at the event will include Tom Hulme, Design Director IDEO and Founder OpenIDEO, and James Carrigan, Co-Founder sugru and chief sugru guru, among others, so watch [...]
Interactivism Hack Weekend from FutureGov on Vimeo. This post is co-authored by the Google and FutureGov teams on what makes a great hackday. It draws inspiration from posts like this from LinkedIn and this one from @Hubmum. We talk below about the specifics of the lessons learned from the Interactivism – Accessibility Hack Weekend, but [...]
Things are rather busy on the events front again for FutureGov in the run up to the summer break, so as much for our benefit as yours here’s where you’ll be able to find us during June and July…
Enabled by Design has been busy beavering away organising an event to reframe the ageing/disability debate by looking at how universal design can help support independent (and stylish!) living. The event is called “We are Enabled by Design” and you can read more about it here…
As FutureGov passes its 18 month anniversary, I’ve recently been spending my quieter moments contemplating where next for FutureGov … Outwardly we talk about being focused on “Digital Democracy” and “Public service transformation”, which in both our hearts and the hearts of the wider FutureGov family means a passion for better government, rebalancing the role and power of the state to one that better empowers individuals to self-organise and work with government as just one partner in making the world better for them.
We are in the midst of a significant shift in the way we think about and relate to public services. Led both from inside government by the Prime Minister himself as well as more disruptive social, economic and technological change outside government, traditional delivery models and provider-client relationships are being challenged as never before. Driven in no small part by developments in the web, the speed and scale of change is happening on an unprecedented scale and leading us to question the notion of public services in our new, hyper-networked world.
I know what you’re thinking – “he just can’t stay away can he?”. Well you’d be right! Having had such fun at the first Social Innovation Camp and since then working with pal Denise on her vision for Enabled by Design, I couldn’t resist putting in a couple of ideas in for Camp 2. So obviously I’m rather excited (if a little sheepish) to say that one of the ideas, AccessCity, has been chosen as one of the six ideas that will be worked on over the weekend of 5-7 December by myself and (hopefully!) a gang of socially minded geeky types.
Having had a relatively quiet time of it recently on the event front (well for me anyway!), I thought it worth a short post to let you all know where I will be over the next 3 weeks as things are getting rather hectic again.
Things have been a little hectic since the Social Innovation Camp, so much so I haven’t had the chance to write about the success of Enabled by Design, which actually went on to win the Camp and can now rightly call itself a “social start up”!
Since then, FutureGov has been supporting founder Denise Stephens on an amazing circuit of events, from MiniBar to the RSA’s Networks Exchange and most recently the Innovation Unit’s innovationexchange – with more to come (including the launch of the Catalyst Awards later this week)! We have been overwhelmed with the interest in the project and blown away by the generosity and support of a wide array of people and organisations willing to give up their free time and expertise to help us move things forward.