More details on the Social Innovation Camp site and I’ve got a piece in today’s Independent that includes some of the thinking behind what we do.

So I’m up in Glasgow using electrical tape to direct people around the Saltire Centre. It’s Social Innovation Camp 3 and the teams arrived last night to start building six new social start-ups in the space of 48 hours. It’s all looking good so far. There’s a great buzz and people are running around Glasgow city centre doing interviews to find out more about their needs for the services they’re going to build. You can follow the action on twitter here or on Flickr here.

Ivo and the team have put the whole of Us Now up online for everybody to watch. So you’ve got no excuses for not watching me in slightly soft-focus.

Us Now from Banyak Films on Vimeo.

This isn’t really about expenses. What’s going on has been brewing for a long time - it’s a more general disaffection with the structure of politics in the UK and a belief that politicians just aren’t up to the job of taking important decisions. It was only a matter of time before we found a touchpaper issue to really get things going. I’d focus on making Westminster a better decision making body. It’s going to take a long time for that to happen but there are some things that could be done quite quickly. So here’s what I’d do:

• Halve the number of MPs - randomise which neighbouring constituencies get merged so there’s no argument about it. Do this before the next election.
• Pay MPs 50% more.
• Have no expenses system.
• Don’t allow external employment. Being an MP should be a full time job.
• All benefits or gifts received externally should be declared as they are now.
• Have a mandatory 50% number of women candidates for all parties. If a party is to be represented in Westminster it must put up at least equal numbers of women to men.
• Give up on the idea of surgeries. MPs need to accept that they are employed to take decisions on national issues. Councils are for local issues.
• Ban donations of more than £5,000. Political donations should be tax deductible.
• Parliament should sit around the year, MPs should have normal working hours, holidays and sick pay.
• All votes should be free votes.

I’ve got quite into the idea of publishing my energy use information, partly as a way of keeping tabs on what my big carbon emitting activities are, but mainly because I’m interested in learning how easy (or otherwise) it is to work out. I’ll publish it on the blog every month. If you know better ways of working out the CO2, let me know.

For the month of April 2009:

• I did 20 days of commuting by train and tube (22 miles each day) = 50.000 kg CO2 (Data source)
• I drove 373.3 km in the car at 155 g CO2/km = 57.860 kg CO2 (Data source)
• I took no flights or long-distance trains this month. Yay! = 0 kg CO2 (from Dopplr)
• And my home electricity usage was 121 kWH = 63.575 kg CO2 (From my Wattson)

So Grand Total = 171.435 kg CO2

Things I’ve left out:

• Heat and hot water in my flat (this is provided from our onsite CHP and I can’t get monthly data)
• Food (I don’t know how to measure this)
• Embedded energy in products I buy (again, I don’t know how to measure this)
• Electricity and energy in the office (might be able to do this soon)

So we’re half-way through the call for ideas for Social Innovation Camp 3. What’s your idea for a website that could change the world? Now’s the time to submit it.

If you know anybody who might be able to help us raise the money for the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq, do get in touch. It’s an amazing project that really deserves to happen.

Dear All,

First of all, I’d like to thank you for your continuous support. As each day passes by, we’re getting closer to the date we have scheduled for the Summer Academy leading to the historic debut of the first permanent National Youth Orchestra of Iraq; this very thought is truly exciting, but it also means that we have to work extremely hard to make it happen.

I’ve had a chance to promote the orchestra on several occasions a little over two weeks ago in England, we have had lots of response from people who wanted to help, we also had some interest from music tutors to help with the our online mentorship programme. It’s also where I’ve had a meeting with the British Council, and they have promised to provide seed support

The reality is we still need over £100k to fund the 09 Summer Academy and the tour in the Caucasus, and it’s your chance to take part and help us achieve our dream in having our own National Youth Orchestra. You are able to help no matter who you are or where you come from, whether you’re a professional musician or a believer in this cause, it’s YOUR chance to contribute to a life-changing experience through music. Make a donation now through our justgiving page:

http://www.justgiving.com/nyoiraq

It’s not too late to be involved in this project, in fact, your help is needed more urgently than ever before; and remember: every little contribution makes YOU a participant in spreading peace, bringing hope to a war-torn region and inspiring the whole world.

Thank you, for everything you do.

Zuhal.

We found out yesterday that School of Everything has been made an Official Honoree for the Webby Awards in the Education category. It all makes me feel very proud of the team and grateful to everybody who has helped us along the way. It’s been so rewarding to see something through from just an idea to award winning site with tens of thousands of members.

Nico Macdonald asked a few of us to feedback from the events we’d been to this year at his Innovation Forum last night. Since Andy Hobsbawm did such a good job talking about TED, I shared a few thoughts about what was good at SXSW Interactive.

Steven Johnson’s talk about the Ecosystem of News was superb. He’s put it online as well which is a very good thing to do with these kinds of things I think. His basic point was don’t panic about what’s happening in the news industry at the moment, from a citizen’s point of view, we’re nowhere near seeing how this is going to play out. He also gave School of Everything a good plug which is always good.

Laurence Lessig’s Change v2.0 talk was very slick. I remember the first time I saw him do his Free Culture presentation back in 2003 and how blown away I was by the way he used Apple’s Keynote. Well he’s still the master. Here’s a video of him doing the talk elsewhere:

I do have a bit of a problem with his version of democracy though. I think by focusing so much on the money he’s missing a bigger problem with the basic idea of representative democracy. I’m not saying we don’t need it - of course we do - but I think he needs to question the basic way we structure democracy as well as the way we fund it.

The final highlight for me was Bruce Sterling who played conference grouch. He talked about everything that was going wrong in the world and all the things that social media had harmed such as his ability to have good parties and the way that people don’t pay attention to conference talks (he got his own back by bringing his own beer and crisps because he said if the audience was gong to behave like that then he could do what he wanted on stage as well). He’s right of course, I know I certainly find some aspects of social media pretty unhealthy.

But through the humour and how he ended the talk you could tell he’s actually an optimist. Just go and do something he said, no matter how small. Use your abilities as humans and technologists to make the world a better place. Amen to that.