The Global Ideas Blog

Skoll World Social Entrepreneurship Forum

So the Global Ideas Bank is at the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship this week. A massively diverse range of people are here, which makes for both interesting perspectives and clashes of approach (primarily that of practitioner and academic)....anyway, it kicked off with Ben Kingsley bigging up Jeff Skoll and all things empathetic (calling him a 'human silk route', which has now become a kind of conference theme...); then followed an interesting panel discussion on the use of popular media to help engender (as well as communicate) social change. The theme of the conference is NETWORKS, which is wide enough to allow people to talk about pretty much anything. More importantly, arguably, it also allows people to brazenly and unapologetically network themselves: i.e. meet and connect with other people who are here (from over 40 countries...)

Much more to blog about, which I will have to do from extremely non-copious notes later, as I have to go to a workshop on silos, ponds and knowledge ecologies. Which, as dry (or wet) as that might sound, promises to be intriguing and (the holy grail!) even relevant to what we do.

Skoll World Social Entrepreneurship Forum

So the Global Ideas Bank is at the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship this week. A massively diverse range of people are here, which makes for both interesting perspectives and clashes of approach (primarily that of practitioner and academic)....anyway, it kicked off with Ben Kingsley bigging up Jeff Skoll and all things empathetic (calling him a 'human silk route', which has now become a kind of conference theme...); then followed an interesting panel discussion on the use of popular media to help engender (as well as communicate) social change. The theme of the conference is NETWORKS, which is wide enough to allow people to talk about pretty much anything. More importantly, arguably, it also allows people to brazenly and unapologetically network themselves: i.e. meet and connect with other people who are here (from over 40 countries...)

Much more to blog about, which I will have to do from extremely non-copious notes later, as I have to go to a workshop on silos, ponds and knowledge ecologies. Which, as dry (or wet) as that might sound, promises to be intriguing and (the holy grail!) even relevant to what we do.

Lib Dem This Time?

Brian Eno has launched a campaign today to create a 'real opposition': Lib Dem This Time. The site springs out of consistent polling which has shown the difference between how many people say they will vote for the Lib Dems (c. 20%) and those who say they would if they thought they might win (nearer 40%). By getting thousands of people to sign up saying that is the way they are voting, Eno hopes to create a movement that will lead to the Lib Dems becoming the real opposition. Or, as he more eloquently puts it:

"This election could be a tipping point: with the Tories weak, and Blair widely distrusted, the chance is within reach, but if people who can't face voting for either the Tories or the Labour party just stay home, nothing will change: we'll be back to 5 more years of sterile, self serving 'parliamentary debate', of playing cowboys with George Bush, of deceit and evasion and the erosion of democracy in this country.

A good result for the Liberal Democrats won't change the world overnight - it's the start of a process. But it will be an important sign - that people are disillusioned with the conduct of government, and are ready to support a politics of vision and principle rather than fear and focus groups. That message alone will dramatically improve politics in this country."

Interesting stuff, and more ambitious than previous web-based attempts to engender political change (say, Billy Bragg's Tactical voting experiment. Obviously, what is needed is critical mass, and people to tell people who tell people. The most likely area for it to spread is amongst the web-literate 20-30 age group I would guess, who are amongst the most disillusioned sectors of society. Will be intriguing to follow its progress.

Easter Ideas Round-up

Lots of stuff to blog about; not enough time to do so.

• Bach used to drown out rowdy teens (Guardian)

• Richard Layard on all things happiness (Prospect)

• The rise of the creative consumer: DIY innovation (The Economist)

• Italian refuge for divorced men (BBC Online)

• A miss hit (Guardian Online on the Long Tail phenom)

• Blogging and wikis good educational tools in colleges (Washington Post)

• Surowiecki on the unwisdom of crowds (via Smart Mobs)

• OurMedia launches (via everywhere)

• Joke-e-oke (Wired)

• Charity begins at Homo Sapiens (New Scientist on altruism: evolution)

and, of course

• loads of new ideas in the Global Ideas Bank, including The 'money down the back of the sofa' charity fundraising day and Teachers move to the next grade with their students.....

Happy Easter one and all....

Creative patents?

Much debate recently on the Global Ideas Bank about patents, intellectual property and copyright, with respect to ideas. This has come about mostly because, as I blogged last week, someone submitted an idea with a Creative Commons license.

Now, as far as I know, this doesn't work. I asked the Creative Commons community who have so far responded with

"This is an *idea*, not a piece of work. Hence, it does not fall under copyright law. You can't apply a copyright license to it. Ideas are protected by patent law. Hence, it is just not possible to apply a copyright license, like the Creative Commons licenses, to this idea."

.....and the equally sensible

"They can't copyright the *idea*, only its expression in written form. So the license only applies to this bit of text, not the idea the text contains (which could be expressed in a different form of words very
easily)."

[Thanks to Rob and Daniel for first replies] This was certainly my understanding of how it works (or, rather, doesn't): Idea-a-day seems to operate this way, by copyrighting the text of the idea. Their spiel reads:

"*The actual phrasing of the idea is the copyright of Idea A Day Limited. No reproduction of the text in its published form, or substantially similar variation, is permitted in any media without the prior approval of Idea A Day Limited. info@idea-a-day.com"

We don't do that, because we like the ideas to be spread as far and wide as possible (and because we don't phrase the ideas ourselves much of the time), an approach which our users seem to agree with. We only ask people to inform us if they are using it for commercial profit. The same principle applies to ourselves using it in publications: these are non-profit and are used to disseminate the ideas (and the concept of social invention) and we've never had an idea author with a problem with that [99.9% are delighted]. Generally, also, because we don't deal in products, this tends to be a problem that is not relevant to 95% of the ideas that come into the site.

Anyway, as is rapidly becoming apparent, I am no legal expert, and I am going to try and amend our FAQs on this stuff, + our T's and C's to align us more closely with the advice I've received from a range of sources. But what all of this makes me wonder is whether there is some sort of scope for a "creative patent" along the lines of the "creative copyright": a kind of "some parts of patent reserved"? Every legal person says to me "don't go near patents", which is both a little off-putting but also intriguing...This could all be rubbish, but could there be a similar revolution in patenting as there has been in copyright?

This is perhaps similar in tone to an idea submitted to the site last week, which bears reading: The Un-Patent Registry

Creative Archive Commons

The Online blog of the Guardian reports from Etech and quotes Paula Le Dieu from the BBC saying, "We want our audiences to rip, mix and share the BBC". Amen to that. Apparently, the Creative Archive will finally go online this year, running as a beta version for up to 18 months, and with no DRM on the content.

Which is all marvellous news. Quite how they will keep it to UK-only (and ex-pats?) remains to be seen, and there are countless obstacles to be overcome....not least the rights/permissions to material, but all exciting stuff and moving in the right direction.

Interestingly, for the first time today, someone submitted an idea to us which they did under a Creative Commons license. I quite openly state that I have no idea how the principle works in relation to ideas, so all input welcomed....but, in principle, it obviously fits with our remit of making ideas accessible to all to take forward in whatever way.....

Budget reactions and the Russell Commission

Amongst the headline-pulling things in the UK budget just announced (stamp duty threshold doubled: yay!; inheritance tax threshold rises: double yay!; pensioners get help with council tax: triple yay! etc...) sneaks the following:

"New national community service for young people to be created with up to £150m to recruit one million young volunteers."

At the same time, the Russell Commission have posted up their report on what the "national framework for youth action and engagement" might look like (and why it's needed). So, here we go:

- a key theme is that volunteering should be youth-led in design and implementation

- there will be a "dedicated implementation body" which will be independent and youth-led

- it will provide a one-stop web/phone/face-to-face portal for accessing opportunities (building on the excellent work of Do-It, for example)

- aim is to attract a million more youth volunteers

- new things? accreditation and linkages to vocational qualifications...(NVQs and other awards)

- expanded network of Youth Volunteer Advisers...

- an "activity menu of opportunity" (bear with it): three month modules of full-time domestic and international opportunities; taster days; team volunteering emphasis; quality assurance and...a living allowance for full-time volunteers

So, the summary is: campaign for awareness, new portal (including new hotline), 200 Youth Volunteer Advisers in place, volunteering whilst in education, annual award ceremony for youth volunteers, the aforementioned 'menu', more overseas opportunities, assurance/standards, opportunities in the public sector, tying in to qualifications, help for those on benefits to volunteer, the implementation body and ring-fenced cash.

Bargain.

All seems eminently sensible, though it will be interesting to see what organisations more directly 'in the field' (i.e. already doing some of this work) will think. There's not much that is radical, but it is well thought-through and pretty comprehensive. It has been a longstanding concern of contributors to the GIB (do a search for 'community service' or 'volunteer'), so good to see concrete moves in this direction...

The Long Tail (of music)

It occurred to me that, while writing about an 'e-Bay' style world, in which people are matched efficiently and effectively through the web, it might be worth blogging about a great Wired article called The Long Tail, which was pointed out by Cory Doctorow in discussion of new models of business with open source characteristics.

Anyway, it's a fascinating look at how the long tail, that is the massive backlist of books, records etc that never used to sell, is now the area where money is being made...or, as Wired put it, "the future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets".

OFF TOPIC: Was thinking about this having seen a gig last night, a band called Nizlopi, who are currently part of the long music tail of unsigned and little-known bands. They had a bit of an off night last night (too much chat, not enough music, an overly sycophantic crowd) but are well worth a listen; my copy of the album's worn out. Check out their groovy JCB Song website as an intro.

Otherwise in the office it is Rilo Kiley and Wac Mcs all the way. Long live the long tail....

Ebay, Zopa and internet middlemen

Fairly interesting article on the BBC website the other day, entitled If the world was run like eBay. It covers a wide variety of sites, including the new internet loaning site Zopa, the scourge of the bookmakers Betfair and more altruistic bedfellows like Gumtree and Freecycle.

Not sure whether the connection to eBay is really justified in all cases (Freecycle is just a Yahoo group, basically), but there are a couple of points made that are worthy of note. The first is that whereas the internet business model was supposedly (at first) all about cutting out unneccesary middlemen (travel agents, bookshops etc), these types of sites are making money through being the middleman. Or, as the article puts it:

"From the earliest days of the net, pioneers championed its potential for shaking-up established orders. An early buzzword was "disintermediation" - the net's promise to cut costs by wiping out middlemen and matching consumers with suppliers. So, today, travellers book flights directly with airlines rather than travel agents. But with the likes of eBay and Zopa the internet is the middleman, a valuable go-between that matches millions of individual buyers and sellers."

Indeed, it has become apparent that extracting money from what the web does best (link people up) is one of the most simple and effective models. And the added bonus is that the systems prety much run themselves once set up, so maintenance costs, in relation to the amount of business, are very small.

The other aspect of the discussion worth noting is the concept of 'trust' and how different sites approach the problem in different ways (contrast eBay and Gumtree's approach, for example). It is a different kind of online verification that is being talked about, one that confirms you as someone to be recognised and trusted; and as such sites move into areas such as loans, insurance and house buying, trust will become ever more important. As ever, though, trust in a site is closely related to the critical mass: if everyone's using it, what's to fear?

Laughter therapy

Laughter and humour have long been featured in the Global Ideas Bank....see, for example, An Indian laughing club with health benefits, a Prisoner laughter contest to reduce inmate stress, and Humour Therapy.

Now, new research shows that laughter helps the blood flow and keeps you healthy. The American team checked the effect on subjects while watching films, and found that watching "stressful" filmic sequences caused blood flow to slow by around 35%, while comic scenes increased it by around 22%. It should be noted that they used "Saving Private Ryan" for the stress, and "Kingpin" for the amusement, which could lead some to say that "boredom" restricts blood flow, while "genius" lets it flow.....

Anyway, make sure you're getting your daily 15 minutes....