Social Innovation Camps are ok. Moldova also has one, I wonder why it’s not marked on the map of Global SiCamps and no words about it even here. Seemingly we are apart from the rest of the world as usual.
Get it working
This year teams were encouraged to get some real working done. I suppose that includes launching the application live. As for me it’s so hard to deploy it when you know the app is half done. But that’s sometimes the right thing to do, because otherwise you will be having lots of those “nice” apps in your repositories, that will rust there till the end of the world. So just launch it.
Nevertheless I hate hurry projects, maybe it’s better to fail fast and get a prototype done. Reasons:
- the working app will keep reminding about itself so you don’t abandon it
- users will tell you what’s best, so you get some real feedback
- you already started solving that noble social problem - get yourself a beer
Are the SiCamp projects really going to hold on? We will see.
Mentors
Mentors on such events are a pain in the ass. That’s what they do:
- giving lots of ideas - it’s 48 hours and about 20-25 hours of real productive work and it’s hard to stay focused when every single mentor has an overwhelming conglomeration of ideas in his head. The ideas might be very useful, but usually each person’s perspective is killing a strong fixed aim of the team. The best way is to give mentors a single person from the team to fuck with his ears.
- giving great ideas about the stuff they are not experts in - i assume this happens because of the status they got. Maybe they are trying their best to be useful, but sometimes it’s just not working for anybody.
In the end
I have no idea if the event is worth going to or continued to be organized. When you look at the big picture, it absolutely plays no role. People that will be promoted to the status of “they changed the world”, will probably do it anyway without SiCamps. Thinking less globally, one can see lots of benefits in creating and participating to such events.