Our social spin-off that asks “what’s the 5-a-day for your mind?” and encourages everyone to take better care of their mental health. Mindapples started in 2008 in response to the lack of public interest and understanding of our minds. Aiming to reposition mental health as a positive, proactive subject, we played a major role in transforming the national conversation around mental health. 

Now Mindapples is a thriving charity and successful trading firm that has worked with funders like Comic Relief and Kings Health Partners, and major commercial clients including Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, L'Oreal, News UK, Accenture, Gatwick Airport, High Speed Two and the Wellcome Trust.

Social by Social (2009) was the UK’s first practical guide to using social technologies for social impact, from starting digital projects to promoting charities online. It was commissioned by NESTA and co-authored by Andy Gibson, Amy Sample Ward, David Wilcox, and Dr Nigel Courtney and Professor Clive Holtham of Cass Business School.

The guide included case studies of best practice, practice tips for charities and campaigners, and future trends and areas for potential development. As Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, said at the time: “if you’re interested in using social media in your organization, and you should be, Social by Social is the real deal."

In 2007, the Royal Society for Arts engaged Sociability to encourage its 27,000 fellows to collaborate on social innovation projects. We designed a new collaboration platform with Fellows, and created the technical and engagement strategy to help the Fellowship connect and create together. 

The tool was quickly adopted by over 1000 active fellows and the RSA implemented many of our recommendations as it reinvented itself as a platform for 21st century social change. It has continued to embrace digital platforms ever since, and our report influenced their strategy for the next decade.

Andy Gibson’s influential pamphlet on social media in local authorities was published by NESTA and the IDeA in 2010. It showcased best practice and signposted the way ahead for local government, and has influenced public policy and local government technology strategies for many years since.

Public Technology called it “a call to arms for local authorities to effectively use social media to improve local engagement and promote efficient communication”, whilst a retrospective in 2020 called it: "A very far-sighted document. Possibly the first to see what social media was likely to do for community engagement."

In 2010, Sociability co-wrote the NSPCC's digital strategy and business processes. The work drew on best practice research from the non-profit sector to outline quick wins and long-term strategic goals for fundraising, customer service and service delivery, to help them catch up, keep up and get ahead. 

It has informed the Society’s digital strategy ever since, and two months after the delivery of the report the NSPCC conducted its most successful viral campaign to date.

Sociability's Andy Gibson provided expert input to this highly-regarded paper on social media usage by charities and grant-makers. Its goal was to help philanthropists interested in digital platforms invest their money more wisely.

Published by the Indigo Trust and the Institute for Philanthropy, it inspired considerable debate in the press and went on to influence many private and institutional donors in the UK and US to take a smarter approach to technology.

An experimental project to build a simple web and mobile application to help people organise and manage their volunteers. We aimed to do for volunteering what Mailchimp and Zoho did for mailing lists and project management: to make it as simple as possible for anyone to organise a voluntary group.

The project was incubated by the RSA and our prototype app showed the potential of opt-in, shared task lists for voluntary communities, though the venture was never taken forward.

We worked extensively with the public innovation body NESTA for a number of years to help them pioneer digital approaches to tackling society's toughest problems. 

As part of this work, we evaluated several innovation projects for them including their ambitious Reboot Britain programme, and Jailbrake, a project to develop mobile app services to help young offenders rebuild their lives. We also helped them with their early thought leadership work in digital innovation, including writing a number of policy papers and briefings.

A media experiment co-hosted by performer Jack Klaff and Andy Gibson, to create a new long-form interactive TV format. Guests were filmed having a free-form, social, which viewers could discuss online via Twitter. 

The pilot episode was streamed live using innovating social media feed software developed by Sociability, and featured philosophers, authors and psychologists debating the nature of the human mind.

Sociability provided editorial services and consultancy on this influential NESTA review of the emerging hyperlocal media sector. The pamphlet shone a light on local content creators and proposed ways to sustain this vital industry financially.

The final publication, written by experienced hyperlocal researcher Damian Radcliffe, offered insights into a diverse, creative and emerging sector, and was the first time that such a comprehensive review has been undertaken anywhere in the world.

This is where it all started. Though not a Sociability project, School of Everything is where we did our first work on social technology for social impact, when five co-founders came together in 2006 to reorganise education for the 21st Century by building an "eBay for learning".

The venture was a Seedcamp finalist and won a number of awards, including from Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

The Guardian called it “A beautifully simple idea using the web to connect those who have something to teach with those who want to learn.” Boing Boing said: “It’s one of those great, simple, smart ideas that make you want to smack your head and say, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’”

Social Innovation Camp was a pioneering hack weekend that brought together digital specialists and experts in social issues to create new solutions to pressing problems.

Incubated by the Young Foundation and co-founded by School of Everything co-founder Paul Miller, Sociability's Andy Gibson was deeply involved in the first few weekends, providing mentoring to projects and later evaluating the social impact of one of the weekends for NESTA.

Mindapples, our first social venture, was also originally a Social Innovation Camp project submission, all the way back in December 2007.