As mentioned in my recent so what’s the big society story post, I’ve caught up with social reporter David Wilcox recently to discuss all the confusion surrounding the Big Society. David and I worked together on a research project that looked at collaborative innovation for NESTA. We specifically looked at the social impact assessment of the use of social media technologies for social innovation, which is an area that still needs further research.

I’d been particularly intrigued by a video David had shot a couple of years ago at an event where Cliff Prior of Unltd, and Nick Temple of the School for Social Entrepreneurs had led people in a workshop to map the territory of social enterprise. It was both entertaining and instructive, as you can see.

It struck me that a similar exercise would be useful as far as mapping the Big Society space is concerned, especially as far as where it intersects with civil society, social enterprise, etc. So I mentioned this to David and coincidently he’d just been to a meeting about h0w to explain the Big Society and was already sketching a map of the territory on his iPad. You can see the sketch and subsequent cleaned up version on his mapping the big society post where he’s made a first stab at trying to help clarify a lot of different terminologies around for the different sorts of social activity, current or hoped for. Hopefully, this will prompt the likes of Cliff Prior and Nick Temple to run another mapping workshop that aims to help explain the Big Society to a wider audience in an engaging way. Hope I get an invite too.