First of all, I have exciting news to share: the proposal for The Socialholic Typewriter is amongst the winners of the mahallae challenge! I am so thankful to everyone who supported and believed in this idea. The Socialholic Typewriter is amongst the 5 winning ideas out of the 43 which were originally submitted to mahallae’s call, so it is definitely a great honour to be included in a diverse group of amazing tech-enabled peace initiatives: for example, i-vee, a game which aims to subtly encourage volunteerism or Yu-Biz, a platform dedicated to helping young entrepreneurs cooperate and initiate their professional career. Click the link below to read more about the rest of the winning proposals.
The @mahallae community announces awarded projects, implementation starts NOW! And here they are: http://t.co/IrDCKJ9apL @mehmeterdoganIV
— Ellada (@elladaeva) June 24, 2014
Last week I flew to Cyprus to attend a two-day intensive workshop led by Helena Puig Larrauri, a brilliant peace building practitioner who guided us through user centered design. Helena blogged about the workshop here. During these two days we got to really break down our ideas, prototype them and pitch them to a group of people. Here is a short video of the preparation.
Of course a lot of the content was tweetable, so there you go:
'The success of your product is its impact on people's lives' at @mahallae winners design and activation workshop!
— Louiza (@louizam394) June 25, 2014
Great way to think about the user/consumer of ur product: what they want and what prevents them from getting it! @mahallae #tech4peace
— Louiza (@louizam394) June 25, 2014
The journey to materialise the socialholic typewriter begins!! So excited @mahallae #tech4peace #prototype pic.twitter.com/B4jQiGSvW2
— Louiza (@louizam394) June 25, 2014
At the end of the two-day workshop I was exhausted, but happy! Helena says, ‘It’s been a fantastic, exhausting and messy few days.’ And I actually love the messy part best of all. Because I feel that innovation comes from connecting the seemingly unconnected, creating a mess, a beautiful one, that will hopefully succeed in doing what it set out to do.
Honestly, I am so excited to be able to work on an idea which combines creative writing, visual art and technology at this particular time, as I feel that the impact of a social innovation in storytelling can be great. Earlier this month, I attended a hackathon on publishing which had participants (hackers, developers, entrepreneurs) find innovative ways to merge books and technology in order to address challenges in publishing. What stuck with me are the opening remarks by Matthew Cashmore, Digital Director of Blackwell’s Bookshop:
So what are you waiting for? Let’s mess with the way people tell stories! Drop us an email on info@readingthelines.com
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