On Saturday, February 4th 2017 Casa Jasmina hosted DSI4EU Internet of Things and Social Impact workshop, with Zoe Romano (WeMake) and Serena Cangiano (SUPSI Lugano).
Born in 2013, DSI4EU is a research project on digital and social innovation dedicated to investigating the employment of digital technology in social innovation projects and organizations, trying to create a network between these realities and, ultimately, to build a European community of social innovators.

The aim of the workshop was to discuss how Internet of Things, open source and maker projects can make a stronger impact on society. To do it we gathered people who are working on projects that use IoT technologies to address social issues, like open source hardware, health, environment, the creation of new business models.

We discussed how values like collectivity, open technology, communication and economic sustainabilty are at the core of the maker community. But how can these entities become digital innovators? Which are the strategies to employ in order to scale and make a better impact?

The workgroups were introduced to a DSI Kit, an open source tool to help them create a Digital Social Innovation Scale to develop their projects in this direction and go from makers to changemakers.

Here is Serena Cangiano’s thoughts on the experience:

“The workshop was a participative experiment through which we managed to define how social innovation projects that use IoT technologies can scale and make a stronger impact. It wasn’t a formation experience based on infallible methods. Rather, we learned through confrontation which are the strategies and actions one can dispose of to put maker projects in a social prospective”.

You can find the DSI scales produced during the workshop HERE.