Big Society in the North

It's time to dive in and get on with this. This post, or versions of it, will appear elsewhere on the internet, so I apologise if you get fed up of seeing it.

We need to get on with developing the Social App Store. This was not my idea. If anyone kicked it off, it was probably David Wilcox in posts like this and this, but I am looking to take it forward, with help from David and others such as Dave Briggs and Steve Dale mainly because I have been fortunate enough to receive a small amount of money from the wonderful people at UnLtd to help oil a few wheels.

David does a really good job of explaining the concept of the Social App Store in the posts cited above. In brief, what we are seeking to do is to bring together some tools that help connect people in communities and assist them to work together for mutual good. These are tools that help people:

• build platforms for collaboration;
• "amplify" their work to spread their practice; and
• reach out to new members.

While this concept is internet-based, it is not necessarily exclusively about the internet. Some of the tools will be designed to being people together online to work together, but many will simply be guides to doing things offline that are hosted online because it's the cheapest and most efficient way of distribution.

There are lots of things out there which fulfil part or all of this task. But, we believe that there is nothing that does the complete task, and there is a need for this gap to be filled. In an era of tightened public spending and entreaties for people to band together to improve their communities, it is vital that we make the most of free and cheap online tools to ensure that people and groups can avoid re-inventing wheels, learn from what each other is doing, and attract new people to join them. And, of course, any such tool suite needs to include guides to helping people get online and information about online etiquette.

One of the key gaps is in the area of the kinds of tools that bridge the gap between the online and offline worlds. This is what those of us in the Big Society in the North group have been exploring with the Community Noticeboards idea. We must never run away with the ideas either that everyone is comfortable operating online, or that all of those who are not online can easily be converted into digital residents. The internet is, however, a powerful tool for powering background operations that make things work in the real world, and we need to make more of this principle.

This, then, is an iterative process. If anyone wants to put substantial amounts of money into it, that would be very welcome. However, this seems an unlikely occurrence at the moment, so we need to build gradually and incrementally.

Please add your comments below on what you think about this idea. If you can point the way to existing resources which could form part of the App Store, that would be extremely useful. If you'd like to join this, as yet loose and informal, team that is working on this, that would also be fantastic.