I had really planned to get to Social Innovation Camp, in Sarajevo, to see what was brewing and to meet some people I feel can stimulate me professionally.

Sadly it wasn’t to be BUT this video really makes the pain of not having been there worse (in a good way people)

My holiday “read” this summer has been “The Dark Tourist” by Dom Joly.

For me it was a book that showed the human, more personal life of Dom, who is famous for his off the wall and cutting comedy on TV. You can get the book and read it for yourself if you are weirdly interested in what a “Dark Tourist” does, but Dom said something that struck me in regards to Bosnia and Hercegovina where I now live.

“Spotting your first Starbucks or McDonald’s in any travel destination is such a depressing experience”.

Well, in the next few weeks McDonald’s will finally arrive in Bosnia. The first store will open in Sarajevo followed by Banja Luka. Banja Luka authorities are still to give planning consent for the outlet.

How successful will the “Golden Arches” be in a business sense?, we’ll have to wait and see.

“Maccy Dees” will be setting up in direct competition with the quintessential Cevapcinica that are plentiful across the country.

Initial reactions from people are:
that its a western fad and wont last long, that the cevap is made from high quality ingredients that McD’s cant deliver, that no one will want to go there at all.

Whilst I am an avid supporter of the small restaurants that sell the culturally incorruptible cevap and šiš, I can’t help but think that the underground “new urbanites” will simply be ecstatic at Bosnia taking another positive step towards both Europe and wider international integration. That they will be able to enjoy a burger (and apparently eating a Big Mac can be enjoyable) in their own country rather than travelling to Croatia, Serbia or Macedonia (where the nearst arches are).

The presence of a McDonald’s seems to be widely associated with “normality”.

McDonald’s do have high standards, everyone knows that and the design of the restaurants will be corporate, the packaging corporate, in fact there won’t be much that’s culturally Bosnian, except the language on printed products.

So can McDonald’s do what the International Representatives here have failed to do?

Can they bring a powerful and successful business model into a country where local politicians and criminals think that they set the commercial agenda?

I mean, you need a bucket load of cash to sue McDonald’s and McDonald’s profits are way way way in excess of the entire GDP of Bosnia and Hercegovina.

No Contest.

My Fear is that McDonald’s allow a concession to Bosnia and launch the “Turbo-Mac” complete with sponsor credits from Jelena Karleuša!

Some times living in a country “in transition” can be very frustrating and hope can quickly get lost when “normality” (whatever that is) disappears from everyday life.

It happens all too often, even 16 years after the terrible 90’s here in Bosnia.

So 2 weeks today I intend to be on my way to Sarajevo to attend a weekend of “Social Innovation (SI) Camp”.

The reason for the journey is to blog about my impressions from an event that aims to improve civil society through ideas and concepts devised by everyday people.

One of the main people behind the SI concept is Dan McQuillan, a Brit living in London and whom I had the great fortune and pleasure to meet just over a year ago, during one of my short visits back to the UK whilst still working in Kosovo.

Dan is extremely active in promoting civil society at many levels and I hope will be able to make it to Sarajevo, as maybe there will be another golden opportunity for me to get a “re-charge” of enthusiasm from him.

The aim of Social Innovation Camp is to bring together social innovators from the non-profit, media, commercial and public sector and talented software developers and designers. Over the course of 48 hours, teams will build effective web-based solutions to real social problems.

Social Innovation Camp (Sarajevo) is based on the successful model pioneered in the United Kingdom and aims to jumpstart a “digital activist” movement across Central and Eastern Europe, South-eastern Europe, and Central Asia, committed to using information and communication technologies for positive social change.

The project is organised by Internews, an international NGO that fosters independent media and access to information worldwide, and Transitions (TOL), a Prague-based media development organization that works to strengthen the professionalism, independence and impact of the news media and civil society organizations in the post-communist countries of Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Social Innovation is very much “Don’t just talk, do something!” and after more than 70 ideas being submitted to Social Innovation Camp Internews, the pre-selection committee agreed on 7 ideas to help build the Sicamp weekend.

The winning ideas are…

Newsify / Ukraine

The idea behind Newsify is to create a mobile/online game for journalists in which players can register as a journalist attached to a media outlet, a freelancer, or as a citizen journalist (for any citizen who wants); it will function like FourSquare with geolocations, and the players will compete to be the one to break a story (around a city, state, territory, country) in a variety of categories (crime, politics, business, arts) with their tweets, bit.ly links, or blog posts; at the end of the week, on the site, there will be weekly ‘peoples’ voting’ on who did the best coverage of a particular story based on different news values (fairness, balance, accuracy), as well as best analysis.

Badu – Mobile Agency / Armenia

The idea is to aggregate and report on hot topics in social networks within a certain community (country wide or topical) and to bring the social media content into the mainstream media. The aim is to help editors and journalists to better understand what people talk about, what they request as well as to empower people to influence national news agenda.
The system should motivate bloggers and social media activists to strengthen the veracity of information, to check their sources, produce more original content and less copy-pasting. A system of rewards ( “stars”, “badges”,…) would be introduced in order to highlight those who are more accurate and meet preset criteria.
Such application could install anyone and customize it for any language, some seven key categories (e.g Politics, Economy, Culture, Technology, Society, Environment) would be identified as basic filtering method. This should be a very useful tool for journalists, media experts, as well as organizations, businesses engaging with the social media in any country.

Map4Youth / Belorussia

The idea is addressing the problem of young people who are lacking enough opportunities to spend their leisure time in active and meaningful way. Proposed platform with interactive map would at first record locations where young people most often gather and spend their time and consequently would provide geospecific information about variety of available activities such as skateboarding, running or cycling, including more detailed information for beginners and those interested.

Can I Help You? / Belorussia

This project aims be the first to network people suffering terminal, complicated, or rare diseases, and the handicapped people together.

People with some medical, social, psychological as well as adaptation problems (they are too shy being interviewed, for going outdoors, etc.) can’t get normal medical aid as well as advice what to do, where to go. They all are feeling isolated in the Belarusian society. There are nearly no charities providing relief to people with cancer or AIDS or similar diseases; the society is full of prejudices against those people. Handicapped people bound to wheelchairs are bound to their homes as well since the elevator doors in residential houses are too narrow for a wheelchair to fit, there are no ramps or moving doors to enable easy access. These people feel that they are lonely and no one else suffers this illness – whilst this is not true.Our objective if to bring the people suffering, terminal, complicated, or rare illnesses together so they could help each other and get objective information.
This project will be the first to network these people so that they are able to share their experiences, consult each other on treatment and rehabilitation issues, help in finding relevant medical specialists and getting relevant legal advice to protect their rights and thus – not to feel lonely and abandoned. This idea aims to empower them to solve problems together and fight with their diseases, protect their rights and improve medical help they get.

Positive2Day / Bosnia,Slovenia

Internet users that navigate Bosnia Herzegovinian online portals after one week get the impression that everything is going down. Drowned and poisoned by fragmentation, ethnic-politics, corruption, poverty and stigmatization, one might feel that everyday life in BiH is frustrating and dis-empowering.  All of this despite the fact that one can experience positive, engaging personal stories and accomplishments on a daily basis.
The idea is to provide an alternative to infotainment as a representations of “easy” daily news by establishing an platform, both internet and mobile based, enabling its users to share positive reports and personal accomplishments in their daily lives.

Journalist2Journalist Solidarity / Bosnia

In most countries in transition, media professionals are under the strong pressures of various centers of power, both political and economical. While doing their job, they are often scorned or suffer direct oppression leading in some cases to violence and deaths. Those responsible often get away without punishment.
In many countries, there are mechanisms for journalists’ protection. They include reporting to journalist associations, ombudsmen or to the police. However, there is still a gap between presupposed formal systems of protection and wider social mobilization of journalists increasing their mutual solidarity and support. Journalists who follow and respect professional codes of their work are often on their own without an adequate support of their colleagues and the entire media community when they need it the most.Online platform/application would enable the engagement and participation of the entire journalist community, by establishing social network and tool for rapid and effective information sharing that is necessary for timely and efficient mobilisation in cases when necessary.

Open Ukraine Land Ownership Platform / Ukraine

On 2011 Ukrainian Government is going to cancel moratorium on the free trade of land. At the same time a lot of agricultural and recreation lands in Ukraine are already disposed and belong to politicians and olygarchs.
The idea is to create an open and free online CMS (Content Management System) that will be available to local publishers in order to provide them with a map visualising market pieces of land with location specifics (including GPS data), size of land, ownership details, when it was sold by the state, for how much money, and other relevant data as well as multimedia.The project could serve also to investigative reporting efforts and will help reporters to create general picture from local maps. This idea may partly solve the problem of transparency of land ownership in Ukraine and can be scalable also to other countries facing similar issues.

I am certainly excited to see how these teams of “social innovators” plan to make the small changes needed to make the world a better place and what the challenges they see lying ahead of them.

If you are interested in SICamp and can make it to beautiful Bosnia and Hercegovina, then come along to the centre of Sarajevo, to Hotel Europe 9-10 July 2011.