International conference Social Innovation 2015: Pathways to Social Change. Research, policies and practices in European and global perspectives – 18/19 November 2015
According to the work-plan SI-DRIVE was obliged to hold an SI-DRIVE mid-term conference by the end of 2015. SI-DRIVE organised this event in collaboration with other major SI projects of FP7. Therefore, the Conference became a meeting place for many more experts (including policy makers and practitioners) with a variety of approaches to, and activities in the field of social innovation.
The idea proved to be extremely successful in at least three respects:
1. The invitation to take part, from preparing and organizing the conference onto active participation as speakers and managers of workshops, was received with great enthusiasm followed by massive investment of energy and resources by the following research projects – besides SI-DRIVE:
2. “Social Innovation 2015”, now frequently called “the pathways conference”, became a fantastic and extremely stimulating platform to exchange intermediate results between the four participating research projects. Net4Society provided first-hand information regarding open Calls for Proposals in Societal Challenge 5 (Climate action, environment and resources) and Societal Challenge 6 (Europe in a changing world – Inclusive, innovative and reflective societies), and organized a brokerage event where researchers met in pre-arranged One to One settings to establish new contacts and to discuss options of collaboration in drafting potential research bids. In addition the participation of policy makers, including the special plenary “Policy debate”, mutually conveyed a lot of important information and involved representatives from EU/Europe, Latin America, North America, Africa, and Asia. Practitioners were involved in workshops ranging, e.g., from Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), Social innovation methodologies for community intervention, Rethinking business models, to Future mobility). On local level three excursions were organized to offer three different examples of social innovation in Vienna (one past and present ones).
3. Immediate and countable outcomes of the conference were:
- The attendance of 320 participants from 44 countries around the world.
- The very obvious fact that many new networks of partners among the four research projects and beyond with other participants emerged. This is very promising for boosting new research in social innovation and to leverage the emergence of more social innovations in practice.
- A lot of some 510 tweets were sent out during the conference to the world. You may look at the distribution of senders and their interlinking networks here.
- The fact that three Ministries of the Government of Austria and the Municipality of Vienna supported the conference (making it possible to allow public attendance free of charge). These institutions welcomed the participants of the conference, including the Minister of Labour, Social Affairs and Consumer Protection, deputies from the Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology, and the Ministry of Science, Research and Economy. Moreover, all ministries, the municipality, the Austrian research promotion agency (FFG), many universities and other organisations from all sectors of society were present during the two days of the conference.
- Practical impact was achieved by involving – in different ways – Austrian social innovation projects and facilitators, such as Grüner Kreis who provided catering during the conference, SozialMarie. Annual Award for Social innovation, and Ashoka Austria, taking care of the whole region of Central and Eastern Europe.
Following the conference reports will be provided to the EC and the supporting Austrian institutions. A number of papers by contributors to the conference will be published in the form of ZSI Discussion Papers. The invitation to do so is still open! You may find information here: Guidelines and a template (this is on my page under TEAM; unfortunately you will need to scroll down to the “INVITATION”, below the long list of “Projects” and “Publications”.
Other events related to the pathways conference were a variety of SI-DRIVE meetings the days before and after the conference (including the SI-DRIVE General Assembly), meetings of Work Package partners and of SIMPACT (at the premises of ZSI). Not least also the General Assembly of the European School of Social Innovation (ESSI) and a great reception by the Mayor of Vienna, Michael Häupl, celebrating 25 Years of ZSI. The mayor also took over the Auspices of the conference.
At last I like to thank all co-working projects, institutions and individuals for their commitment and input, which made the successes of the event possible and effective in real terms! Above all you may think of looking forward to the final and closing conference of SI-DRIVE in the second half of 2017 (Brussels). We expect again another productive collaboration in building on the experiences, outcomes, the strong networks established, and the opening of new pathways in the course of “Social Innovation 2015”.
Josef Hochgerner