Welcome to The Social Tech Guide Blog

Celebrating & learning from the world's most inspiring social tech ventures. Feat. the NT100.

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Teaching children neuroscience through technology and toys

- A closer look at NT100 ‘one to watch’ Puzzlebox Brainstorms

by Steve Castellotti, founder of Puzzlebox Brainstorms

The concept of manipulating the physical world with just one’s mind - moving physical objects, communicating without sound, and even controlling the elements of fire and water have long been the stuff of science fiction and comic book heroes. Now these things are possible using combinations of relatively simple, off-the-shelf gadgets and hardware.

Brainstorms was built out of the idea that this new, fascinating form of technology, otherwise known as Brain-Computer Interface (BCI), could be leveraged to foster a passion for science, engineering, and mathematics in students of all ages.

Steve Castellotti, founder of Puzzlebox Brainstorms

The field of BCI has evolved in recent years from a community of several hundred researchers toiling in their labs to include developers and enthusiasts from a vast cross-section of disciplines around the world. Brainstorms has placed itself at the centre of this, in-between academics and armchair dreamers, professionals and hackers to produce simple lesson plans for teachers to introduce and explore bite-sized concepts in biology, physics, electronics, and software programming. At the same time activities and experiments carried out by the students themselves underscore good mental practices and exercises, such as learning to achieve and maintain mental focus and clarity of thought.

The Rosemont School Project

One of the first algorithms which became commonly available in the field of BCI supplied the ability to measure levels of attention and concentration using EEG (Electroencephalography). The Brainstorms project used this as a means to add direct mental control to robots and vehicles built by 11 and 12 year olds at the Rosemont School, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania using programmable LEGO Mindstorms kits. Students were divided into groups and alternated roles including designer, engineer, data collector, and scientist (predicting and analysing results). Each student would take turns racing their creations by performing mental tasks such as arithmetic, silently singing song lyrics and foreign language translation to achieve focus. The faster focus was achieved the sooner their vehicle would move, and the higher their consistency of thought the faster it would go.

Students were encouraged to experiment to discover which mental exercises worked best for them. They would then meet regularly to challenge students from other groups and record their results. The project is currently funded by productising open source toys and devices, such as the Puzzlebox Orbit, a brain-controlled helicopter launched through Kickstarter, another 2013 NT100 venture featured on the Social Tech Guide.

BCI has the potential to deliver the most desired and impressive modes of interaction between mind and machine. The brain’s pre-frontal cortex, positioned behind the forehead, is frequently associated with conscious thought and is an easily accessible area for EEG due to the signals originating behind exposed skin. This is the area from which attention and focus readings are currently recorded for use with Brainstorms. However, alternative areas of the brain such as the sensorimotor cortex, parietal lobe, and occipital lobe provide considerably more information-rich targets. These zones enable fully three-dimension control and steering, pattern matching useful for composing text and complex menu selection, and high-definition visual processing algorithms which require little or no training on the part of the user.

However receiving these signals cleanly entails a host of fresh challenges. Due to the differences between the shapes and sizes of heads and especially the complication of hair, including certain styles and hair products, it makes designing a one-size-fits-all EEG headset solution a significant challenge. Furthermore, the most prominent physical locations of the signals themselves vary from user to user, requiring fine-tuning on a per-person basis. Once determined, the ideal sensor location and frequency exhibited by an individual can even drift over time as neuroplasticity kicks in and the brain adapts to stimuli. Therefore a form of mutual training and adaptation on both the part of the individual user and the control software is necessary to achieve best results with many BCI skills.

Complicated learning algorithms and advanced biosensor materials are driving innovation in this space, and solutions are slowly being revealed. Puzzlebox’s goal as a company is to develop new toys and devices related to each new capability revealed as consumer-grade EEG headsets provide coverage over these brain structures. The future is looking very exciting indeed as new capabilities are delivered from research labs to the home.

View for the future

This year Brainstorms is forging ahead with a particular focus on the university demographic. While classrooms filled with younger students have provided great fun and anecdotal evidence of sustained positive results over time, in order to properly grow the project credible efficacy must be shown. Puzzlebox has more broadly expanded its product line to include custom-design hardware and circuitry which opens the door to new lessons, tools, and techniques for discussion. This more advanced material may require a higher base-level of understanding, but should therefore attract ideas from those innovative minds best placed to develop capabilities and explore new creative directions.

For example the brain-controlled Orbit helicopter is steered by a simple infrared protocol, and our multi-purpose Pyramid is capable both of broadcasting this transmission as well as receiving and recording novel infrared signals from any external device. Combined with Bluetooth this recording can be re-purposed to operate not only a vast spectrum of third-party toys such as cars, boats, and planes, but also home entertainment systems such as televisions and stereos.  Brainstorms hackers can use these capabilities to build new and exciting devices such as alarm clocks that can turn on a TV each morning, change to a weather or news channel, and set an appropriate volume. ‘Gravity, Puzzlebox’s next product demonstrates principles of electricity and magnetism by adapting the Pyramid hardware combined with induction to operate a glowing sphere which hovers and spins in mid-air above a mirrored platform.

Finally Brainstorms is undertaking a new and unique initiative to outsource the actual manufacturing of Pyramids and its derivatives to hackerspaces and colleges which have the basic necessary equipment, such as 3D printers and CNC routers. With completely open-source components and hardware schematics, the opportunity exists for anyone to collect and assemble Arduino-compatible circuit boards plus design and print completely custom plastic cases according to their individual needs and preferences. Furthermore, Puzzlebox will help match this new breed of creative engineers with buyers and backers for their innovations.

Over the past five years the Brainstorms project has evolved from a single classroom experiment to an international program seeking to help and collaborate with teachers the world round. And Puzzlebox has evolved alongside into a thriving commercial business through the open exchange of ideas and technology between education and the consumer realm. As the field of Brain-Computer Interface continues to expand we hope to find new ways to involve and encourage students of all ages to engage in science and learning.

Follow Puzzlebox and Nominet Trust on Twitter:

@PuzzleboxBCI

@nominettrust

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People, patterns and data - the story of legislation.gov.uk

- A closer look at NT100 project legislation.gov.uk

by John Sheridan, Head of Legislation Services, The National Archives

‘The law must be accessible and so far as possible intelligible, clear and predictable’ writes Lord Bingham, in his acclaimed book The Rule of Law. The principle of free public access to the law underpins legislation.gov.uk and the work of the Legislation Services team at The National Archives.

The digital age has transformed who accesses the law and how. The old world, where sources of law were consulted by legal professionals, turning the pages of large bound printed volumes, has, for the most part, gone. Today people can access any piece of legislation in just a couple of clicks, more often than not, arriving at legislation.gov.uk.

John Sheridan, Head of Legislation Services, The National Archives.

Law for everyday people

So who is using legislation online? We live in a nation of laws, where the rule of law runs deep. The majority of users of legislation.gov.uk are everyday people, not legally trained or qualified, but who want to find out for themselves what a piece of legislation says. Imagine someone working in an HR department, a facilities manager, or even  the citizen looking to assert their rights - this is an entirely new audience for legislation, enabled by easy online access to the law. But this comes with its challenges.

Finding a piece of legislation is one thing. Being able to correctly interpret what you're reading is another matter entirely. Our user research has shown that people find legislation complex and difficult to understand. People lack a mental model for how the system of legislation works and how different laws are interrelated. Some of the things you need to know are not at all obvious but essential to understanding the true meaning of the law. It’s easy to assume the meaning of commonly used words – ‘child’ for example – but such words have very precise legal definitions when used in a piece of legislation. It’s also easy to assume that the piece of law you’re looking at is up-to-date, in force and applies to where you live, but that’s often not the case. Delivering legislation online is as much about aiding comprehension as it is about providing quick and easy access.

To tackle these challenges legislation.gov.uk embodies a number of principles, which are very much at the core of how the government approaches digital projects nowadays. We use open standards to represent legislation data and to exchange legislation data with others. This helps us ensure the data and the tools are portable, so we’re not locked into one supplier or one technology platform. We make all the information in the database available as open data, through an Application Programming Interface (API) - the same API we use to run the website. We also make the data available under an open licence, the Open Government Licence. Finally, with our Expert Participation Programme, we are sharing the burden of managing all this data. It means the content is curated and managed by a wider community of expert users, not just people employed by The National Archives.

A wicked problem

Managing and publishing legislation on the web, is a ‘wicked problem’. Statutes are unlike other documents. The structure and layout of legislation conveys an essential part of its meaning. Different component parts of the document carry different judicial weight. The layout needs to be reflected online, whether viewing legislation on a website, a tablet or a smart phone. Second, legislation changes over time as the text of one law is amended by subsequent Acts. All these changes need to be represented as data, as part of creating different versions of the legislation at different points in time. Finally, to help users it is important to try and capture some of what a legislative text means. For example, does this provision create a duty or an offence, or a power which enables other legislation to be made.Representing this meaning as data is crucial to then providing a better user experience.

As a result of this work legislation can be much more accurately cited – people are now using social networks such as Twitter to link to a specific section, paragraph or schedule that's relevant to their point.

Open Data as an operating model

The benefits of opening up our data have been enormous. Take the work of revising legislation, working out how the law has changed over time and creating versions of the legislation that show those changes. There are far more changes being made to the law than The National Archives, on our own, can possibly keep up with. Open data has enabled us to open up the work of maintaining that data to ‘expert participants’ from the commercial and public sectors. It means for the first time we can now bring to bear the editorial effort required to bring all the legislation on legislation.gov.uk fully up to date. Our aim is to do that for all the Acts of Parliament by the end of 2015. Opening up data has proved an incredibly useful way of managing a large public database.  

Our next ambition is to use open data and data analytics to start to work with the statute book as a whole – how it functions as a system of laws, how it is linked and is interconnected, how it's changing over time and whether there are key trends or patterns. If we can find good patterns in the data, that might impact on how legislation is framed in future. These ideas are the essence of our ‘big data for law’ project, announced by David Willetts MP in February this year. Our aim is to give legal researchers access to easily downloadable data, alongside user-friendly tools they can use to interrogate that data. We also anticipate producing pre-packaged  data analysis – an annual 'census' of key aspects of the statute book if you like – that can be used by researchers.

What is really encouraging is how these different activities are informing each other, with our research work contributing to delivering a better user experience for example, or usage data giving us new insights into how the system of laws fits together. We have come a long way, but it feels like we’re just at the start of something. These are exciting times.

Follow Legislation.gov.uk and Nominet Trust on Twitter:

@Legislation

@nominettrust

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Sparking a reading revolution across South Africa

- A close up on NT100 project FunDza

By Mignon Hardie, Managing Trustee at FunDza

I was lucky. I grew up in a privileged home in South Africa that was filled with books and stories of every kind imaginable and it was through stories that I learnt so much about life and the world around me.

But, the vast majority of young people in South Africa are not so lucky. Books are expensive, so very few people grow up in homes where books are easily available. Public libraries are under-resourced and school libraries – except for those in privileged schools – are virtually non-existent. As South Africa’s book-buying public is tiny, few publishers concentrate on creating the types of books that will inspire young South Africans – particularly those growing up in poor communities – to read. The result is: books aren’t seen as being relevant and reading isn’t considered to be enjoyable or fun. As reading isn’t an intrinsic part of people’s lives, literacy levels are low.

Mignon Hardie, Managing Trustee at FunDza

These low literacy levels have an impact on higher education performance. As Noma Gapare, a University of Johannesburg student told us: “Many varsity students can barely keep up with course work because they can't read properly thus failing to understand what is required of them and fail assignments because of grammatical errors and errors in concord. When we asked a few why this is so and why this happens, most told us they don't read and find no interest in reading at all because they can't. However those who excel attribute their successes academically to reading.”

FunDza’s mission is to shift attitudes to reading and to spark and sustain a reading revolution.

While books are few and far between, mobile phones are pervasive. A 2012 World Bank report found that 75% of all South Africans over the age of 15 had access to a mobile phone. These aren’t necessarily the latest smartphone devices: most frequently they are old feature phones operating on prepaid packages. While data costs may be high and data download speeds slow, these feature phones can access text-based content as well as other services, including South Africa’s homegrown social network, Mxit.

FunDza has developed a mobi network that includes a responsive website and a Mxit app. This allows people to read books, stories, poetry and plays on their mobile phones, tablets or computers. Mxit is accessible by thousands of different phone types, including old feature phones. It provides chat services as well as value-added services – FunDza’s app is one of these.

Every week we commission a writer to produce a new short story – seven chapters in length – that we release in serialised format on our mobi network. The chapters go live at one minute past midnight and we can see that some readers wait up for the next chapter desperate to find out what happens next.

FunDza creates the stories based on themes our readers can relate to, such as love, jealousy, grief, survival, fear of failure, fear of the future, how to make a mark on the world, how to live in your own skin and how to be true to yourself. Discussion questions at the end of chapters encourage interaction and participation – and around a hundred readers do, every single day.

FunDza’s mobi network is reaching thousands of readers on a daily basis. On average the network is visited by 50,000 unique readers every month, and with the average session lasting 13 minutes we can see that readers are engaging with the content.  

Mandy, a young reader on FunDza’s mobi network, explains: “Before I started reading FunDza books, I always headed in the wrong direction. But, once I started reading them, I kept asking myself if I really wanted to do bad things, were they really worth my time. You guys rock!”

FunDza always creates content to highlight specific themes or events. 2014 marks 20 years of South Africa’s democracy. To commemorate this historic time, we’re running a ‘Rights’ story project that highlights some of the rights enshrined in our country’s Constitution. And, we’re simultaneously providing educational resource material too, so that readers can develop their constitutional literacy skills at the same time as they read for enjoyment.

The more that young people read, the faster that they acquire the language skills needed for study and life. Readers report that with FunDza they are now able to read more frequently and for longer periods of time. And that this is having an impact on their lives. FunDza reader, Morongwa Lebatlang explains “I just want to say that FunDza has really helped me a lot to upgrade my English at school. Since I’ve started reading books on FunDza I’ve been passing English excellently and it’s all because of you. I’ve read every book that I’ve come across and I’ve learned a lot. Please continue doing the brilliant job that you guys are doing.”

FunDza wants stories, storytelling and reading to become a vital part of people’s lives, adopted into daily routines and in a way that spreads virally and encourages other people to read too. In short, we want to begin a reading revolution. We’re honoured to have been included in the Nominet Trust 100. We can see how technology is making a difference in terms of reaching so many people at once and at allowing us to be highly responsive to reader needs and desires. We, too, are inspired by the many other organisations that are using technology to make a difference in the communities that they reach, whether through free online education, online tutoring, learning through games or bridging digital divides. What strikes us about so many of the projects, is that technology is not an end in itself – rather it is an enabler that allows people to connect with each other and content in new and interesting ways.

Follow FunDza and Nominet Trust on Twitter:

@FunDzaClub

@nominettrust

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Calling on the crowd to beat cancer sooner

- A closer look at NT100 ‘one to watch’ Cell Slider by Hannah Keartland of Cancer Research UK

The beginning of our citizen science journey

Our Cancer Research UK scientists struggle to analyse the huge amounts of data they have to deal with as quickly as they’d like – it can take years. A lot of this analysis needs to be done by the human eye and, although some automated methods exist, these just aren’t reliable enough. The only way to speed up the analysis is to get more people working on it. At the same time, we knew the concept of crowd-sourcing was growing rapidly, so we saw an opportunity. What if we could take advantage of technological advancements and get the general public to help our scientists? This could help speed up their research and so help us develop treatments quicker and ultimately help us find cures for cancer sooner.

We’d seen the great work that Zooniverse were doing using a citizen science approach to analyse astronomy data and we wondered if they’d be able to apply their model to our cancer data – and so began our citizen science journey, towards what would later become Cell Slider.

Cell Slider users are vital in the analysis of cancerous cells

What started with a 48 hour hackathon in London’s Science Museum, resulted in us launching our first project in October 2012. To see what happened at the hackathon at the London Science Museum, watch this video.

Cell Slider makes the potential to accelerate research huge. To date, we’ve had more than two million classifications – some of these have been done by people who’ve used other Zooniverse products, some are existing Cancer Research UK supporters, and we’ve also attracted new citizen scientists as a result of press coverage, social media and Facebook advertising. 

Scientific impact

One of the interesting challenges we’ve faced with Cell Slider is nervousness from the public – “how can someone with no medical training analyse cancer cells?”  they ask. The trick is in the numbers. We don’t just have one citizen scientist looking at each slide – we have many, and through having thousands and thousands of people looking at the data we can ensure its accuracy.

In fact, initial indications are that the citizen scientists have a good level of agreement with our pathologists yet our citizen scientists have been able to analyse data six times faster than researchers. In just three months they had analysed data which took a single pathologist 18 months. The type of data that Cell Slider analyses is a research area where there’s a huge bottleneck – so anything that can be done to release it is valuable. Play to Cure: Genes in Space

Following the success of Cell Slider, we wanted to do something bigger and more ambitious – something which had never been done before. We noticed the number of people who were playing mobile games and wondered if they could analyse cancer data at the same time. To develop this idea, we held a GameJam event in March 2013, where we brought Cancer Research UK scientists together with developers, academics, gamers and designers for a weekend to help develop mobile phone games which could solve a real scientific problem. Here’s what went on.

Play to Cure: Genes in Space will generate vital data analysis

We were looking for a game which could translate genetic data into an engaging and playable format, and most importantly a game that could generate robust scientific analysis. After 48 sleep deprived hours, 12 gaming prototypes were made. Our scientists then worked closely with game experts, Guerilla Tea, to develop Play to Cure: Genes in Space – a fun mobile game that will generate useful data for our scientists and help accelerate cancer research. We want anyone, anywhere and of any age to download the game. Imagine the impact we could have if every single person with a smart phone played the game for just two minutes – whether they’re in the queue at the supermarket, sitting on the bus or waiting for their dinner to cook. Because the incredibly exciting thing about this game is that you’re not just playing a game – you’re analysing genetic data and contributing to cancer research.

Looking to the future, we’re working on our strategy for all Cancer Research UK’s citizen science activity, but our main objective will always be to support our citizen scientists in solving real science problems – particularly in areas where the biggest impact can be made and where we bring forward the day when all cancers are cured.

Follow Cancer Research UK, Zooniverse and Nominet Trust on Twitter:

@CR_UK

@the_zooniverse

@nominettrust

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Drawing on our shared passions, dreams and experiences

- An interview with NT100 project, 7 billion Others

7 billion Others is a video art project from the GoodPlanet Foundation that presents a portrait of humanity today. The aim is to listen to the inhabitants of the planet, to listen to what they have to say, and to share it with others. To date they have interviewed 6,000 people in 84 countries; asking the same 45 questions each time. From the answers, the project tries to figure out what we have in common and what we don’t.

Galitt Kenan, project manager, 7 billion Others, GoodPlanet Foundation shares more on this beautiful story.

Galitt Kenan, GoodPlanet Foundation

How did the project come about?

Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Rouget-Luchaire and Sibylle d’Orgeval were the originators of the project. Following a helicopter accident, Yann found himself in Mali for a couple of days. There he met a man – who he had never met before and who he would never meet after – and they shared their views on the most essential subjects that people can share together: their dreams, their hopes, their fears, their country, God, progress…everything. When he went back he thought about how wonderful it would be to have a glimpse of that all over the world. He was fascinated by the beauty and fragility of the earth, thinking that from the sky everything appears to be very simple, so why, when we get onto the ground level, are we so often confronted by boundaries, by antagonism, by separation, and ignorance? He wanted to explore that.

What does 7 billion Others tell us about humanity?

Despite having interviewed more than 6,000 people I have always been impressed by how humans all have the same hopes, fears and dreams even if we express them in different ways. Regardless of where we live, deep down we all share the same basic thoughts: what lessons are we teaching our children, what will the future bring, how can I be happy in myself, with my family, my community, and my country. Essentially we all want to find a balance and a better way to do things.

Here, at the GoodPlanet Foundation, we all have testimonies that touch us more than others, it is very personal. One that has really stayed with me is a story from an Indonesian man called Bruno who is handicapped. He said: “we’re all disabled on this planet, physically, emotionally, spiritually - physically is the easy part.” He is very young but it could have been said by someone who was 100 years old; there is so much wisdom in it and I was very touched by that.         

At the same time some of the elderly are so positive, and so young in the way they think. I remember a man who said “I have been married to my wife for 25 years, but we only fell in love last year.” It’s so interesting to think that two people could live together for so long but suddenly discover each other after 25 years of marriage. How, at the age 45, could something so fundamental in his life change so much?

We also explore how people can change over time. In one of our movies about the genocide in Rwanda we not only speak to the victims about how difficult life is, but we also met those who committed the acts of the genocide. For example, Ernestine, who was one of the victims. We first interviewed her in 2008 and then went back and interviewed her again in 2011 to see how her life has changed.

This video from 7 billion Others shares interviews with people from Rwanda, including Ernestine.

What role does technology play in the project?

The aim of the GoodPlanet Foundation is to educate the public and make people aware of how to protect the environment. We want to inspire people and encourage them to be more respectful of the Earth, and technology plays a vital role in helping us to achieve this. All our projects rely on us communicating this message to as many people as possible, so tools such as the internet, social media, DVDs and even books allow us to disseminate our stories to people in countries and regions all around the world in the most cost-effective way.

What does it mean to 7 billion Others to be recognised in the 2013 NT100?

Being part of the NT100 means a lot for 7 billion Others. It is recognition that our project not only has a strong concept, but that the impact it is having is significant. Being recognised as a social tech innovator is important for us - technology is a tool, a wonderful one, but not the objective in itself. We are honoured to be considered among other great social tech ventures in the NT100, all doing different things but with the same goal of improving society and making the world a better place.

What role is technology playing, or can play in supporting social good?

Technology allows us to do things more efficiently and effectively. It is a valuable communications tool as it allows us to share vital information with as many people as possible. But it is only a tool. In sharing this information we hope it will remind us that there is no plan b. We – humanity - have to learn how to live together.

Is there more that unites us or divides us?

Are you kidding?! There is everything to inspire us, which is so important. Even what divides us inspires us.

7 billion Others is one of the projects of the GoodPlanet Foundation. To find out more about the Foundation you can visit: www.goodplanet.org

Follow 7 billion Others and Nominet Trust on Twitter:

@7_billionothers

@nominettrust

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Paving the way to smart cities of the future – Pavegen

- a close up on a NT100 ‘one to watch’

By Laurence Kemball-Cook, CEO and founder of Pavegen Systems

The world’s energy crisis has necessitated a radical shift among policy makers and industry participants, and this renovation is spearheaded by the renewable energy sector. Competing renewable sources (wind, solar, hydropower, etc) are all established names however these sources are ineffective in busy, built up, urban environments sheltered from sun and wind by pollution or high-rise buildings. It is estimated 60% of the global population will be living in urban areas by 2030, however, there is currently no suitable form of renewable energy generation for these vastly populated environments. I launched social tech venture, Pavegen Sytems to try and change that.

Laurence Kemball-Cook, CEO and founder of Pavegen Systems

Whilst studying as an Industrial Design Engineer at Loughborough University, UK, I recognised that footfall was a wasted energy resource and presented a significant opportunity as an alternative energy source to power urban life. After receiving a grant for winning the Royal Society of Arts International Design Directions Competition I developed the initial prototype. It is through applying for grants and awards like the Nominet Trust 100 that I was able to commercialise my innovation and Pavegen Systems was launched as a limited company in 2009.

Pavegen has pioneered a flooring tile that converts the kinetic energy from footsteps into renewable electricity. In environments with high footfall, this is enough to power local applications such as street lighting, advertising displays and communications networks. Being included in the Social Tech Guide has helped put Pavegen in the spotlight as a driver towards a greener planet and is great recognition for our hard work.

In my experience, society as a whole has been developing a deeper understanding of the positive aspects of clean energy. In turn large companies have a growing desire to consider their triple bottom line, incorporating social and environmental issues as well as profit. Companies such as Schneider Electric are introducing radical approaches to their sustainability strategies, with groups such as WWF providing a prime example of society’s green conscience at work, holding events like Earth Hour and the Green Ambassador scheme.

The media attention surrounding these organisations has played a crucial role in educating the public about the benefits of clean energy. This interest has subsequently led to clean energy products, such as Pavegen, being recognised for their contribution to society. It is only through increased positive media exposure that a social tech venture business can grow and so validation of the idea from independent groups such as the NT100 goes hand in hand with commercial traction.

I believe the future of the energy industry has to shift towards alternative clean technology, not only to provide a supplementary energy source, but also to sustain the smart cities of our future. The social aspect of Pavegen is facilitated through our API platform that has the ability to collect, monitor and communicate live footfall and energy-generation data. This means that organisations have access to detailed information about customer behaviour and movements around an area to help formulate an evolving strategy, as well as send out live updates via online channels as an aid for crowd control.

My vision is for Pavegen technology to become part of the fabric of urban infrastructure, directly engaging people with an alternative energy source and inspiring them to take responsibility for their own role in energy generation. In order to achieve this, we are eager to develop new partnerships to continue to deliver projects all over the world and are currently seeking investment as we enter an exciting phase of global business expansion. By developing a commercially viable product, we can demonstrate that a smart, low-carbon future is within our grasp, and prove that the disruptive technologies we need to make this a reality are already available today.

Everyone needs to play their part in helping save the planet and I believe that the solution to the world's energy crisis is literally under our feet.

Follow Pavegen Systems and Nominet Trust on Twitter:

@Pavegen

@nominettrust

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Turning the camera on human rights abuses - WITNESS

-  a close up on an NT100 'trailblazer'

By Matisse Bustos Hawkes and Stacy Raye Kellogg of WITNESS

WITNESS is incredibly proud to have been named one of 10 Trailblazers among the Nominet Trust 100. We’ve been using technology since our inception in 1992, when co-founder Peter Gabriel and a handful of others set a vision to open the eyes of the world to human rights abuses. Back then the aim was to “give cameras to the world” so that survivors of human rights abuses could tell their own stories. We knew that if the world had a visual record of their experience, the violations couldn’t be denied or buried.

Members of the Endorois community film testimony to present to the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights. Photo courtesy of WITNESS.

And we did increase the visibility and impact of these stories. Since our founding, WITNESS has partnered with more than 300 human rights groups in 86 countries, trained over 4,500 human rights defenders, and supported the inclusion of video in more than 100 campaigns. WITNESS videos have helped restore lands to an indigenous community in Kenya, put a warlord behind bars for recruiting child soldiers in the DRC and passed the adoption of the first-ever legal protection for elderly Americans at risk of abuse.

But we have recognized the need to reach millions more people. Yes, millions. Today, thanks in large part to mobile phone companies, the majority of the world’s population now has a camera in their pocket and people everywhere are turning to video to document abuse. But all too often their videos don’t make a difference.

It’s not just a need to keep pace with technology innovation; we want to keep people safe and help ensure their videos make an impact.

We’ve evolved the way in which we carry out our mission in three main ways:

In critical situations we teach video basics, safe filming techniques, and how to create videos that stand a better chance of creating change. See our work in Brazil where activists are using video to document wide-spread use of forced evictions in the lead up to the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics.

We create and distribute toolkits, guides, tip sheets and even mobile apps to help keep activists and their footage safer. This month we launched a video series for interviewing survivors of sexual violence. Survivors’ stories are an important advocacy tool and we’re working to ensure they are captured in a way that is respectful and avoids re-traumatizing those willing to step forward and share their personal experiences.

We advocate for technology and policy changes that can help anyone using video to defend human rights to do so with maximum impact and minimal risks. Last year we helped convince YouTube to incorporate a face-blurring tool into their online editor so that activists have the option of helping protect the identity of people who appear in their footage.

WITNESS partners in Brazil document the story of a woman who was forcibly evicted from her home. Photo courtesy of WITNESS.

Core to everything we do at WITNESS are our partners around the world. Our core constituents and partners include human rights activists and organizations, technology companies, and developers, supporters, donors, and the media. Without their input and feedback we would not be able to create the curriculum and tools to make a difference in the lives of individuals, families, and communities. We encourage social tech entrepreneurs to stay connected with all of their valued stakeholders, which helps ensure that they are developing projects and resources for which there is a need.

A screening of a WITNESS co-produced video for community in the Eastern DRC trying to prevent recruitment of children to local militias active in the area. Photo courtesy of WITNESS.

The explosion of digital media means that almost anyone can bear witness to human rights atrocities. But challenges have emerged around anonymity, privacy, and retribution; how to determine the veracity of media being created by millions of people; how to highlight less visible stories and struggles with increasing volumes of content, to name a few.

The demand for our services is greater than ever before. We have a great foundation in place to meet this demand – an international reputation, outstanding staff, a dedicated board, remarkable partners and a proven-successful video advocacy model. Our continued goal is to scale our programs and reach those millions of people with the right training, tools and support.

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[ntsocialtech]

Charlie Leadbeater summarises the aims of the NT100.

[ntsocialtech]

Reflections from the NT100 Steering Group - Geoff Mulgan

by Geoff Mulgan, chief executive, Nesta

The internet came out of a military research programme, and the World Wide Web out of CERN – symptoms of a huge skew in the world’s research and development towards the needs of warfare and big science, and away from human needs.

But the new generation of digital innovators celebrated in the Nominet Trust 100 are part of a movement pointing in a very different direction.  They are sharply focused on pressing everyday needs; make the most of ubiquitous mobile phones and internet connections; and, unlike military technologies, were generally cheap to develop and cheap to scale.

They are incredibly diverse, but include some striking trends. One is the use of technology to make things visible that are otherwise invisible – like Baby Come Home in China using facial recognition software to reunite parents with lost or taken children, or I paid a bribe in India, or (not on this list) Blindsquare from Finland which is an app to help blind people navigate around cities. 

Another is the use of the web to mobilise and share resources  – at Nesta we back a lot of sharing economy projects, and the Collaborative Consumption site, which brings together knowledge about ventures like Couchsurfing, Air BnB –  all of which point towards a radically different, and much less wasteful economy.    

A third cluster of the 100 which I particularly like are the sites providing the tools for other innovators – like MySociety or Github and Bitorrent – and bringing down the cost of new ideas. 

Nesta backs well over 100 digital innovations at any one time – and we often work closely with Nominet Trust.   I’m well aware of the speed of development and the excitement there is in this field, and how much it is attracting in the best minds.  No-one knows which current digital innovations will still be running in five years time. But we can be fairly confident that even the failures will be useful.

Bill Gates may have been right when he recently said that technology alone won’t save the world.   It’s naïve to expect that a brilliant new gizmo will suddenly solve world hunger or poverty.  But I’d turn his comment on its head. Although technology on its own won’t save the world, most of the best ideas that will help the world will include an important role for digital technology, and usually the technology will work best when it’s linked to other things.  I’m sceptical about most of the MOOCs, but Digital Green in India is a good mix of online, video and face to face learning for farmers.  I’m sceptical of some of the online health tools, but when linked to the day to day work of doctors and nurses they can be immensely powerful.

Digital technologies are still young in the big scheme of things and evolving very fast.  This is a snapshot of some of the pioneers, hungrily experimenting and blazing trails for others to follow.

[ntsocialtech]

Inspiring Social Change

A blog from Annika Small, CEO, Nominet Trust

Did you know that millions of Bangladeshis are learning English through 3-minute lessons and SMS quizzes delivered to their mobile phone? Or that professional scientists have used an online platform to engage thousands of volunteers in classifying almost 2 million cancer cell images in less than a year? Or that the Chinese equivalent of eBay is being used to arrange care for millions of elderly people who are isolated from their families? 

The Nominet Trust 100 (or NT100) is designed to celebrate the people who are using digital technology to change the world for the better. In seeking people who are coming up with creative answers to the big issues of our times, we were bowled over by the scale of the response with hundreds of nominations from all over the world. Not surprisingly, we found some key themes emerging. Many of the nominees are finding compelling ways to open up access to healthcare and education; some are offering creative responses to human rights abuses; while others make imaginative use of digital technology to tackle the pressures on natural resources resulting from climate change. 

Although the list spans countries and continents, health to human rights, mobiles and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), the finalists have much in common: creativity, risk-taking, persistence and a commitment to making positive change happen. Not just talking about it but taking practical action. Not settling for the status quo but seeking radically new and effective approaches using digital technology. We all have a vast amount to learn from these digital social entrepreneurs and, by offering much deserved recognition to some remarkable people and organisations, we hope to inspire others to innovate and build on the ideas presented. 

The NT100 - curated by Charlie Leadbeater, a leading authority on innovation and creativity - has been chosen by a steering group who didn’t always agree. Inspiring was our key criterion which created much debate; it appears that inspiration is in the eye of the beholder. Some panelists were excited by early-stage inventions showing huge potential while others were only enthusiastic about established initiatives that are already improving the lives of millions. The final list has a combination of the early experiment and the widely applied. 

In terms of the social context, some of the steering group were fired up about those people who are addressing a pressing social need while others were interested in innovations which anticipate future challenges.

The panelists agreed that it was important to include innovations that are social in their means – using crowdsourcing or social media to solve an issue – as well as innovations that are social in their ends such as increasing interaction between neighbours. In fact, one of the principles underlying some of the most effective innovations is the use of digital technology to enable people to self-organise and find solutions together. 

Surprisingly perhaps, there was immediate consensus that the NT100 wasn’t about innovative technologies but the innovative application of technology to address big social challenges. Similarly, it was agreed that technology must not be a bolt-on but embedded in the solution and that the technologies should be widely available in their geographic context. 

Another surprise in compiling the list - or perhaps stark reminder - is how quickly this field is evolving. We agreed early on to separate out those applications, such as Wikipedia, Facebook, Google, Twitter, GIS and Wordpress, which underpin much of the work that is currently going on in this field. Our working title for this group was ‘grandparents’; somewhat ironic when few of these are more than ten years old, reinforcing how quickly, in our new digital world, technologies can become standard, embedded and widespread.  This also applies to digital social innovations; we found that the initial long list included a number of initiatives which adopt broadly the same approach which made for some challenging choices in trying to celebrate innovation while avoiding duplication. 

The NT100 does not seek to be a definitive list. Instead, we hope that it will prompt conversation and debate. If we aren’t told of hundreds of projects, services and people who should have been on the list, we’ll be disappointed. What have we missed? Are there entries that you would challenge? Let us know about other imaginative ventures that are using technology to make a difference so that we can build on the NT100. We want to create a dynamic resource that serves to inspire and accelerate the use of digital technology as a tool for significant social change.

So which social tech innovations have inspired you?

Tweet @nominetrust or email your suggestions to: [email protected]