Institute For The Future

Community Engagement 2.0: IFTF Plans a Social Impact Technology Futures Conference

A social impact technology field is emerging as multiple innovators creatively apply technology to society’s most compelling social problems. These technologies are powerful tools for building new networks and communities for social action. While technologists work on the cutting edge of locative, crowdsourcing, social media, simulation and gaming, there is a great, untapped need and interest for these technologies among a wide range of social benefit organizations that have limited capacity in this arena.

Declining foundation and nonprofit budgets during the current economic crisis have created a new openness to exploring how technology can be used as a cost effective means to extend social networks and impact. However, moving beyond Silicon Valley and other technology centers, the social benefit sector’s exposure to and use of these technologies is limited. Furthermore, there is a “communications gap” between technologists and social activists. The jargon of both fields is a barrier to collaboration and technology access.

The Institute for the Future (IFTF) has become an innovator in the application of social media, crowdsourcing, simulation and gaming to the solution of social problems. “Massive, Multi-Player” games scale-up participation and build communities to quickly tap the collective experience and wisdom of thousands of people to create ideas that could resolve society’s most pressing challenges. Our award-winning SuperStruct game engaged almost 7,000 people from around the world in designing alternative social structures and practices (www.superstructgame.org). Ruby’s Bequest, a partnership with United Cerebral Palsy (www.ucp.org), is addressing the country’s weakening caregiving system for seniors, aging baby boomers, children and disabled persons (www.rubysbequest.org). Signtific (www.signtific.org), is IFTF’s global, collaborative research platform, created to identify and facilitate discussion around future disruptions, opportunities and trends in science and technology.

The Community Engagement 2.0: Social Impact Technologies Futures Conference will bring together leaders in technology and social action to explore the potential uses, benefit and future of these and other important but underutilized community engagement tools. Stay tuned for updates about our conference plans. Contact Jackie Copeland-Carson, IFTF Research Director, at [email protected] for more information about how you can participate.