Socially innovative uses of technology: a year of podcasts

It was great to see my interviews with Beth Kanter and Dick Hardt appear on the ITConversations top 10 list for 2007. Since it’s the listmaking season, I want to make one as well. Not a list of favorites, because there are so many, but instead of conversations that best exemplify the theme of using technology in socially innovative ways.

Last summer I realized that this theme had become really important to me. It also occurred to me that, while there hadn’t been much overlap between ITConversations and its sister channel, Social Innovation Conversations, there should be. Doug Kaye and Phil Windley agreed, and I was delighted when my interview with Ned Gulley became my first crossover show to appear on both channels.

I think that many of my shows, including the interviews with Beth Kanter on working with digital immigrants in non-profit organizations, and with Dick Hardt on user-centric identity, touch on the theme of socially innovative uses of technology. Here’s a rundown of some others, in alphabetical order by last name.

Barbara Aronson: Making medical research literature available online, at low or no cost, to poor countries. (blog)

Ken Banks: Using SMS to create communication networks in Africa and other places ill-served by the Internet. (blog)

Gardner Campbell: Using the tools and methods of Web 2.0 to reimagine higher education. (blog)

Mike Caulfield: Bootstrapping and running a state-level community-based political blog. (blog)

Brian Dear: Enabling performers to measure and respond to demand for personal appearances.

Greg Elin: Extracting, reformulating, and making sense of the operational data of government. (blog)

Beth Jefferson: Federating the online catalogs of public libraries, and pooling the participation of patrons. (blog)

Ned Gulley: Designing problems to be solved by gameplay that teaches advanced skills using an optimal mix of cooperation and competition. (blog)

John Halamka: Modernizing the exchange of health care information, and putting patients in charge of it. (blog)

Timo Hannay: Bringing the tools and methods of Web 2.0 to the scientific world. (blog)

Ed Iacobucci: Creating a decentralized alternative to the hub-and-spoke air travel system. (blog)

Doug Kaye: Helping volunteers capture and publish audio recordings of civic events. (blog)

Matt MacLaurin: Recapturing the joy of creative expression in software, in a game inspired by LOGO and implemented using modern software principles. (blog)

Hugh McGuire: Bootstrapping and running a collective effort to record and publish public-domain audiobooks. (blog)

Simon St. Laurent: Chronicling the civic and political life of a small town. (blog)

Jim Russell: Analyzing the dynamics of the Pittsburgh diaspora. (blog)

Greg Whisenant: Enabling cities and towns to publish crime data online, and imagining the citizen/government collaborations that can flow from that. (blog)

John Willinsky: Advocating open access to academic literature, and reimagining education in the era of Net participation. (blog)

Jeannette Wing: Explaining why the principles of computational thinking will become part of everyone’s educational foundation. (blog)