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.

[This is a slightly adapted version of a short talk I gave at MASS LBP on 10 March 2009 in Toronto, Canada]

It feels a bit unfashionable in tumultuous times like these but there’s something you should know about me before we start. I’m an optimist - a practical optimist in that I like making things happen and changing things for the better. I’m a great believer that the direction of human progress is towards greater and greater ability to solve problems. People are getting more intelligent individually and groups of people are getting even smarter because of new tools for collaboration and new ways of co-ordinating activity.

This talk stems from some things I’ve learned over the last five years about what’s possible when you try to take ideas that could change the world and put them into action using web technologies. It’s also about a quote that I made in a film called Us Now that got me in a little bit of trouble with my political friends:

“Representative democracy is based on the assumption that people are thick. And that’s just not true.”

It was one of those things that just came out of my mouth without much thought beforehand. The advantage of saying it on film is that I’ve had to think about it afterwards. What I meant was that by putting decisions and the provision of public services in the hands of a small group of elected representatives we miss a massive opportunity to tap the power of people to solve their own problems.

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I’ve written here before about the incredible Zuhal who is campaigning to set up the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq. Well I’m really happy to say she’s putting on a recital, plus a talk and a Q&A about the campaign at the Wigmore Hall in London on the 2nd of April between 1pm and 2pm. It’s completely free and you can sign up for tickets here.

So it’s a big day for Social Innovation Camp. Not only is it our meetup this evening, but we’re also announcing the next weekend event which is going to be in Glasgow on the weekend of 19-21 June.

There’s also lots about Social Innovation Camp in the Guardian today - in particular a great piece about the winners of the first camp Enabled By Design who are launching their new site today!