Although we were lucky enough to be shortlisted for the UK Catalyst Awards, we didn't win this time round.

The awards are all about celebrating the use of social technology for change - and we were honoured that our efforts with Plings were included. The winners thouroughly deserved their awards and you can find out more about them at http://ukcatalystawards.com.

For your information, here are some of the words that we submitted about Plings:

Imagine switching on the television but not knowing what was on. To find out the BBC programme, you'd have to check their website… ITV would only be printed in the local press… Channel 4 listings would be posted on the local town hall wall… whilst Five would only tell you via SMS. As for the hundreds of other channels on freeview, cable and satellite - you'd best improve you search and bookmarking skills to keep on top of it...

Thankfully, TV listings are aggregated, digitised, printed, formatted and circulated so it isn’t so much a chore. This works for us so we only turn the TV on when we want to watch something (!?), but also for programme makers, advertisers and everyone else making some effort.

Plings - Places to Go, Things to Do - has the same approach for information on positive activities for young people. Whether this is DJing in the local youth club, Football coaching at the sports centre or Kite Making at the park - our aim is to make it easier for young people, parents, community leaders, youth workers and associated organisations to easily talk to one another about "what's on". For the scenario painted above for TV schedules, think about dozens of different websites, leaflets, email newsletters and notice boards currently circulating around to varying degrees of quality, accuracy and compatibility. You really do need good google and del.icio.us skills to currently know about positive activities! We want to change that.

But we don’t stop there. Getting information together is one thing. But getting it to people, and getting them to positive activities is another. Once there (or not) - getting people to talk about what they think is the quality, scope and range of positive activities available is another thing entirely. That is why we added Plingback to Plings.

Plingback is about feedback, but on your own terms. Got a blog? - then just tell us. Been to a good activity? - then post and tag images on Flickr. Know a good story? - tag the link on deli.cio.us and post to our news digg. Plingback is in fact in line with our whole philosophy around Plings - "Fish where the fish are!". Let's get the data flowing in and out of applications that people use, rather than send people to empty applications and broken links.

To sum up, Plings is about a change in mindset. We don’t want to replace but to enhance. Things shouldn’t be difficult, when they could be easy.

Some will follow Plings, whether they are in policy, practice or the local youth centre.

From YouTube

Minister for the Third Sector, Phil Hope, and awards organiser Dan McQuillan explain the purpose of the UKCatalyst awards launched at NESTA May 8 2008

Watch the video

From the blogs (Technorati)

There are a number of blogs that reference the awards.

Read blog posts about the
UK Catalyst Awards at: technocrati