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Since you made your pick of the top mobile volunteering ideas and existing apps in October and November, we’ve finished our judging and picked the remaining 7 for our top 10. We’re working hard with the winning charity partners to make the ideas into a reality by creating the actions and building an easy-to-use platform to house these amazing actions.

So what’s coming next? The launch! We’re in the final stages of developing and testing the app and are excited about the full-scale launch to get people doing good on their mobiles. We’re kicking off in March with a program of continuously expanding mobile actions with more charity partners and more ways to do good.

As we’re cracking on with the final stages we’re not setting up a new challenge. Instead, we’d like to invite you to be part of the launch and hope that you will join us in spreading the word about doing good on the go.

You, the founders of this community, have been vital to get this movement underway. We’ll keep you posted on the next steps and would like to thank you again as we couldn’t have done it without your contributions!

You’ve done it again! The Founder Community has spoken and after a rush of entries over the past two weeks we have the top 3 voted community winners for the topic ‘Apps doing good on the go – built or in development’:  The Help Engine (by Sim Stewart), Mission:Explore (by Mission Explore) and Help Amnesty International (by Dream PJ).   Well done to them and well done to all of you for making it happen.

So what’s next? The judges will get together soon to look at all the other apps and make a long list of those we would like to get behind. We’re looking for a total of 10 apps to feature to Orange customers and will take all of your comments and votes into consideration.  We will be in contact with each of the winning app owners individually to discuss the next phase.

We are delighted with the way mobilevolunteering.co.uk has developed since the August launch.  We hope you have enjoyed participating.  Achieving an active community of nearly 1500 members has topped all our expectations.

In fact you have achieved so much together that we would like to extend the Founder Community with a new call topic as we develop Orange Mobile Volunteering into a sustainable initiative.  The remainder of the year will enable us to develop the community with your expertise and input and enable you to retain your relationships with other community members and keep involved in the dynamic new mobile volunteering category.

Watch this space for the announcement of the new exciting challenge coming soon!

You’ve done it! The Founder Community has spoken and after some frantic voting action today we have the top 3 voted for community winners for the mobile volunteering actions topic, Places to Play Map CyberMentors on the Move and Guerrilla Gardening. Well done to them and well done to all of you for making it happen.

This is one of the most dynamic friendly and helpful communities we’re ever started so thank you so much for all your contributions!

So what’s next? The judges will get together shortly to look at all the other actions and make a long list of other exciting ideas we hope to take forward. We’re looking for 7 more popular and feasible actions so it could be you! Therefore please keep the conversations flowing as these will continue to be helpful to our judging panel.

You will know by the 8th October if you are a winner, as we will be in contact with each of the idea owners individually to discuss the next phase. This will involve a series of conversations and meetings so that the Orange team are able to build successful actions ready for the launch.

The fun doesn’t stop here of course. The competition for apps continues until 20th October and we’re sure that their owners would appreciate you switching your experience and judgement to that. There are some really strong contenders here – the top three as we write are The Help Engine, Mission:Explore and Help Amnesty International Petition

Here’s the latest word on what’s ahead for the apps and ideas underway here.

The Orange Mobile Volunteering app platform will be built from templates which allow specific functionalities – think view photos, listen to audio, view text and so on. These templates make mobile volunteering tools quick to develop and easy to learn.

Take a look at this presentation for a sense of how it will all work. Take advantage of this walk through as as inspiration on how to edit your submission to make it most appy in Orange eyes!

View the presentation (PDF)

TIPS FOR WINNING

Hello everyone, with just over a week to go before the ‘Ideas for mobile volunteering’ call closes, here are some tips that will really influence the voting and judging:

1. The best ideas will have support from a relevant charity or organisation to actually be responsible for them. Many of the submissions have this but there are still some highly rated ‘orphan ideas’…

2. Feasible to make. Naturally, mobile apps need to use the capabilities of a phone and be simple to use so this means actions should be restricted to this list, as presented at Jam 1:

View Photo (add comment, add location)
Listen to audio (add comment, add location)
View video (add comment, add location)
Complete Survey
Upload Photo (add comment, add location)
Upload Audio (add comment, add location)
Upload Video (add comment, add location)
Mark location on map (add comment)

3. Actions need to qualify as volunteering, where people are giving up bits of their time to help out, live on the phone.

If you’ve any questions, don’t forget there are two more jam sessions coming up soon – there are a few places left at each:

Jam 2: Prototypes and Partnerships. 16th September, HubCulture London 5.30-9pm
Jam 3: Technical Development. 21st September, Orange Labs London.

To attend either of these jam sessions please sign up at http://orangejams.eventbrite.com/ now.

Hi everyone,

spread the love

Things are really hotting up at mobile volunteering. So many ideas and apps have come in that it’s important (and fun!) to look beyond the top ranking ideas and spread the votes around. If you do this you may stumble on ideas that really appeal, or that are similar to yours. Try filtering the submissions using different options, especially ‘the latest’ to get the new ones.

Here are a couple of recent ideas that have caught my eye – why not check them out?

Accessibility Capture Application, Trustee Finder, Watch and Give and Kiva Micro Loans

twins

If you find you’ve submitted an idea which has much in common with someone else’s, great!  This indicates that you’re on to something good.  Why not consider joining forces (and votes) to make your app a reality?

orphans

There are lots of brilliant new ideas for mobile volunteering actions that lack a sponsor to run the app, collect the data and measure results.  If you have such an ‘orphan’ idea and you think that established organisations like Oxfam or Freecycle could benefit, please give them a ring.  Tell them Orange sent you!  If you do have an organisation behind your idea, it will be marked up in the judging as this makes it more likely to do good.  If/when yours is backed, tell us!

jam session,  Tuesday evening in London.

There are three jam sessions coming up in the next few weeks focussed around different objective as follows:

• Jam 1: Meet and Collaborate. 7th September, HubCulture London 5.30-9pm
• Jam 2: Prototypes and Partnerships. 16th September, HubCulture London 5.30-9pm
• Jam 3: Technical Development. 21st September, Orange Labs London.

To attend any of these jam sessions please sign up here now.

Hopefully, see you there!

David Simoes-Brown

Hi everyone – all 428 of you!

Thanks to you all for your energy and enthusiasm on the site this week. Once again we’re been amazed by the quality of the ideas and contributions to date.

This is a big week with the launch meet-up of the Founder Community on Thursday from 5.30pm at 1 Alfred Place in London. We’ll be showcasing some of the best ideas to date and it’ll give you an opportunity to hear from Orange about their plans and aspirations for this movement. There are just a few spaces left so if you haven’t already done so, please register here using the password ‘mobilise’. Also you might be interested to see the new design on the site tomorrow in time for our launch event.

Thanks again for all your contributions and I look forward to seeing many of you for the launch on Thursday.

David and the Mobile Volunteering team

It’s great to see to you here on this site.  We’ve had interest from more than 200 to join in before even being launched so all bodes well for a really healthy and expert mix of developers, social entrepreneurs and NGOs. There are a few ‘lurkers’ such as me and Orange too!  We’re going for growth so please feel free to invite others you know and who you think might make a useful contribution.

So let’s get innovating.  On this site we will create everyday opportunities for social action, kick-starting a new movement we’re calling Mobile Volunteering.  Through an app on their mobile phone, people could for example volunteer to map and tag wildlife photos, make an audio map for the blind, or complete a charity’s survey. Imagine the potential of millions of people regularly contributing in this way.

As an incentive to upload some good ideas fast we intend to showcase the best initial ideas as the launch event on the 19th August in London.  You’ll receive an invitation to this in the next couple of days.  We’re capacity constrained to 100 so be sure to book early if you want to come.

We’re going to update this blog regularly so keep a lookout for news on events, inspiration and gossip!