FAILFaire

The fourth FAILfaire, this time in New York City on December 14th, will be an evening dedicated to those tech and mobile projects that were designed to have a social impact but instead crashed, burned, and FAILED.  FailFaire NYC is presented by MobileActive.org and hosted by the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, with participation from UNICEF’s Innovation Unit.

If you do not know about Failfaire, here is some background: Launched in early 2010, there have now been three FAILfaires, events designed to provide a platform for those working in online and mobile technology for social change to openly, honestly (and humorously) discuss our own failures.

As noted in the New York Times’ piece on FAILfaire, “Technology’s potential to bring about social good is widely extolled, but its failures, until now, have rarely been discussed by nonprofits who deploy it.” Well, FAILfaire is changing that, and is doing so in style. The format is informal, the discussions are rich, and the refreshments are adult and, well, refreshing.

Slate.com wrote that FailFaire “…[isn’t] about celebrating failure just for the sake of failure, but about taking lessons from each mistake and using them to create more efficient, economical, and accessible projects that could have a greater effect on a community.” We couldn’t agree more!

To join us, please RSVP here, as the event will fill up quickly.

If you like to be considered as a presenter for the next FAILfaire, click here and submit a note about your failed project and what we can learn from it.

More information can be found at failfaire.org or on Twitter at @failfaire / #failfaire

From its inception, FAILfaire was designed to be something that could be organized by any organization interested in facing and learning from past mistakes. We even wrote a blog post a while back with directions for “How To Roll Your Own FAILfaire” Well, it looks like the idea is catching on…

On October 13th, FailFaire DC 2011 will be hosted by The World Bank, Development Gateway, Inveneo, and Jhpiego. The event will be held at The World Bank, and featured speakers include:

* Dr. Tessie San Martin, CEO, Plan International USA
* The World Bank on their 70% ICT4D failure rate
* Ian Schuler, Internet Freedom Programs, U.S. Department of State
* Erin Mote, Chief of Party, USAID Global Broadband and Innovations Alliance
* Andrea Bosch, ICT Advisor and Chief of Party, TILO Egypt, Creative Associates
* Grameen Foundation
* Development Gateway

As the hosts describe on their website:
“Fail Faire DC 2011 is a celebration of failure as a mark of innovation and risk-taking. We will have great speakers with fun, fast, Ignite-style presentations of their professional failures. Audience participation is not only encouraged, it is mandatory! We are all peers and none of us is perfect. Expect much laughter as we navel-gaze at where we have all gone wrong in ICT and international development.”

We wish them much success in sharing failures and look forward to the event.

More information can be found at failfairedc.com

We are very pleased to announce FAILFaire DC, in collaboration with the World Bank Institute: Innovation Practice.  FAILFaire DC will take place on July 26th at the Bank.  We will feature again, as we did in New York, mobile-for-development and other technology-for-development projects that failed.

We will feature lightening talks that focus on the learnings of the projects – and what can be done differently in the future.  We have some presenters already from the Bank and from various NGOs who will be presenting their failures but we encourage you to submit a failure here if you like to be considered for a talk during the event.

The format is informal, and we will provide refreshments and drinks.  We are looking forward to learning from failure in DC!