1. http://www.ickr.com/photos/hyku/ Social networks for grand
challenges or Open Social has about 500 million users, Facebook has
around 150 million lets take them for a spin and see what they can
do for the world Chris Thorpe Chris Thorpe | Terra Future 09 |
Royal Geographical Society
2. http://www.ickr.com/photos/kubina/ How can we use this
technology to solve real-world problems? Theres been a lot of focus
on silly consumer applications, like throwing sheep >Tim OReilly
Chris Thorpe | Terra Future 09Terra Future 09 | Royal Geographical
Society Dont think Tim is asking for apps which cure cancer, or x
economies, wed all just like to see this massive user base for
good
3. FTSE + Social + APIs ?= WIN Chris Thorpe | Terra Future
09Terra Future 09 | Royal Geographical Society so why is now a good
time to think about grand challenges. The combination of
disillusionment with nancial markets and large corporations,
accessibility to social and data APIs, easy to use tools for
mashups and readily available cloud computing may be the perfect
storm for attacking some of the major challenges which Tim is
talking about people want a say and want to be mobilized
4. http://www.ickr.com/photos/wishymom/ we are a herd animal
Chris Thorpe | Terra Future 09Terra Future 09 | Royal Geographical
Society And social tools can be a huge part of this We are a herd
animal. We are essentially the social ape. We cannot escape our
biology and in some ways thatsuseful as if it didnt there would be
no social networks. We respond to inuence, we migrate from place to
place within digital networks following others. Lets do something
interesting with this behavior which people like Mark Earls
document so well
5. http://www.ickr.com/photos/sovietuk/ social proof/inuence
Chris Thorpe | Terra Future 09Terra Future 09 | Royal Geographical
Society and lets use this incredibly strong mechanic of social
proof and inuence, of wanting to do the things others do its always
more tempting to eat at a restaurant with a queue, rather than an
empty one social networks surface activity constantly in newsfeeds
and activity streams, we can harness that for challenges, but
how?
6. Chris has just achieved a really high world karma points
score playing For the Good of Mankind Can you beat his score? Chris
Thorpe | Terra Future 09Terra Future 09 | Royal Geographical
Society This is obviously a made up example, but you can obviously
see where I may be going with this... would be nice to have a
concept of world karma points
7. http://www.acesscity.co.uk/ Someone you know is helping to
map routes around cities based on their personal view of
accessibility. Tell us your story on AccessCity Chris Thorpe |
Terra Future 09Terra Future 09 | Royal Geographical Society
AccessCity, project Im proud to have been involved in. Started at
Social Innovation Camp by Domminic Campbell with a team of just 6.
Aim is to build a crowdsourced map of London from an accessibility
standpoint which relates to real time user-centric information.
Were aiming to send out MySpace users on missions to map the
easiest routes round the capital for people of varying levels of
disability
8. http://www.acesscity.co.uk/ Chris Thorpe | Terra Future
09Terra Future 09 | Royal Geographical Society Geography is so
important in solving real world problems, geography is not just
maps, not even just about three dimensional spaces, its all about
your personal involvement with a location and this can only be
gathered by people not machines and by users not surveyors. Its
also totally time based as anyone who tries to use Kings Cross
station on a Friday night can attest
9. http://www.acesscity.co.uk/ (OpenID + OAuth + FBConnect +
API + SMS + Email) - TfL Chris Thorpe | Terra Future 09Terra Future
09 | Royal Geographical Society First thing we built at SI Camp was
an API so we could build many clients and get other people to build
those clients for us. All we need now is organisations like TfL to
follow our lead. One major problem in solving grand challenges is
in getting veried non-scraped data via proper and free APIs. One
way round this problem is to see the grand challenge to be creating
free high quality alternative data sets via crowdsourced
means.
10. http://www.google.org/powermeter/ Your best friend used 5%
less electricity this month than he did this time last year. Can
you do better? Chris Thorpe | Terra Future 09Terra Future 09 |
Royal Geographical Society The environment is clearly a great
challenge to solve, just imagine a social application based on
Google Power Meter where you could claim which Power Meter was
yours and compete against your friends about how much power youve
saved?
11. http://www.we20.org/ 19 of your schoolmates have set a date
to sit down and discuss how the world could be run. Can you be the
20th person in their We20 group? Be a part of the discussion. Chris
Thorpe | Terra Future 09Terra Future 09 | Royal Geographical
Society Politics and active citizenry. We20. A wonderful idea from
Paul Massey and others. Create your own personal G20 meeting using
MySpace, Facebook or in real life. Create your own policies and
then have people vote them up or down. The most popular policies
rise to the top and can be put in front of politicians Their full
site is launching very soon
12. http://www.openstreetmap.org/ these are protoypes, is
anyone doing this sort of thing yet? Chris Thorpe | Terra Future
09Terra Future 09 | Royal Geographical Society Is anybody using
this sort of mechanism to solve a grand challenge already? Several
examples I can think of. Open Streetmap is one of them. Social
tools to produce a high quality resource which solves a real
challenge.
13. http://www.ickr.com/photos/nick_bl/ Chris Thorpe | Terra
Future 09Terra Future 09 | Royal Geographical Society Making high
quality maps is a grand challenge. There are areas where it is hard
to map quickly enough or to a high enough resolution. There are
areas where it is not nancially viable to map or politically
dificult. Groups of volunteers can x this. One of the rst things
which they created was a highscore table. They now have approaching
100,000 people socially mapping worldwide.
14. Chris Thorpe | Terra Future 09Terra Future 09 | Royal
Geographical Society Obama for America iPhone app See nationwide 08
Call Friends total and nd our how your call totals compare to
leading callers Oh my god, its a high score table... its a game of
electioneering
15. http://www.ickr.com/photos/pdcawley/ Obama for America just
launched an MMO, and nobody noticed. >Tom Armitage, infovore
Chris Thorpe | Terra Future 09Terra Future 09 | Royal Geographical
Society Tom Armitage said it best, there is a leader board function
from multiplayer games built right into the Obama campaign
Hopefully the use of social technologies will be a feature of the
Obama regime going forward. Hiring the former Open Social
evangelist for Europe for Google, Katie Jacobs Stanton to the
position of Director of Citizen Participation is probably quite a
good statement of intent and start What about grand challenges that
the networks themselves solve
16. lonely? disconnected? Chris Thorpe | Terra Future 09
|October 2008 | Startup University Future of Web Apps | 9/10 Royal
Geographical Society Possibly our biggest challenge in social
networks is xing loneliness and disconnection. Its no surprise that
mothers when separated in the real world from peer groups through
the demands of new motherhood, and stigmatised by peoples view of
breast feeding in public, feel isolated its no surprise that theyre
turning to social networks in droves. the fact that they can be
social even if it is 1 handed typing in between feeds and that
their social interactions can be rich and yet asynchronous is an
amazing thing for them
17. http://www.ickr.com/photos/smileygeekgirl/ netmums? the WI
of the digital age Chris Thorpe | Terra Future 09 |October 2008 |
Startup University Future of Web Apps | 9/10 Royal Geographical
Society and if we could build a social network which was as long
lasting and productive at building support and friendship networks
as something like the WI wed all be building something that could
take on some truly grand challenges netmums, support network, which
helps parents understand what they are going through, provides back
up, provides services like blind dates for mums where they can meet
other mums near them
18. http://www.twitter.com/tom_watson Chris Thorpe | Terra
Future 09 |October 2008 | Startup University Future of Web Apps |
9/10 Royal Geographical Society A grand challenge is always how we
deal with loss. Suicide rates for instance are higher within
families where there has already been a suicide or death. People nd
it hard to talk. Social networking can reach out to people at times
of crisis and sadness, crossing divides. Fixing that our modern
lives are fairly asocial compared to those of our grandparents I
heard this news this morning via Toms stream. Like Tom Im father
and really feel for David Cameron. This moved me more than anything
this morning when I arrived here.
19. http://www.ickr.com/photos/ogil/ machines for living? or
asocial spaces Chris Thorpe | Terra Future 09 |October 2008 |
Startup University Future of Web Apps | 9/10 Royal Geographical
Society Over 6 billion of the worlds population live in this sort
of place, one of Le Coubosiers machines for living with people
barely knowing their neighbours despite the notion of building in
all of the services such as schools, health centres and shops. The
density of people is so great that the statistical chances of being
able to recognise a signicant percentage of the faces you see each
day are low. We need social networks to solve grand challenges but
maybe one of the grandest challenges of all is helping people to be
really social communities in urban environments. Local is a
challenge waiting to be solved
20. http://www.ickr.com/photos/carthorse/ p $100 @twestival
Chris Thorpe http://twitter.com/jaggeree Chris Thorpe | Terra
Future 09Terra Future 09 | Royal Geographical Society I cant think
of a better image/example to end on. Amanda Rose, created a
festival using Twitter which raised at least a quarter a million to
pay for clean drinking water for people in developing nations.
Doing all this despite more snow than weve seen in London for a
while and with just volunteer helpers. How? By just having an open
ended idea sending an invitation to the world to connect and share
and create their own copy of that idea and to remix it and extend
it. All in 140 characters and in the public and inuential view of
the activity stream.