I resisted joining Pinterest for years. Not because I thought it was silly, but because I knew my own addictive tendencies. And Pinterest would too easily become an addiction for me. The pure joy of the creative sparks that fly as I flip through photos of what others have done is a great dopamine hit. The ideas, creativity, and the awe is endless.

And yet, there is a huge difference, a gaping void, between ideas and action. Pinterest gives us thousands of ideas, but no action. The action is up to us.

People are inherently amazing, creative, and kind. People on Pinterest makes stacks of wood inspiring and beautiful. Some days I wish we had a Pinterest for humanitarian digital transformation. Visuals of how projects use diigtal tools for impact. Responsible data boards. Ethics boards. Perhaps a board for each sector, for governance, and so on. Perhaps these critical aspects of digital transformation could become ‘shiny’, fun, interesting, and dare I say inspiring.

The thing about Pinterest is that it is not only the professionals who post, who share ideas. In fact, it is often regular people who have solved a problem differently who we find most inspiring. And yes, if professionals are open to it, they can take the ideas and improve them, make them structurally sounds, etc.

So too is it in digital transformation and humanitarian aid, we need the others to show ideas, to say ‘here, I did this’. Not so that we can rip them apart, tell them to stop, or dispise them. No, so that we can learn from them. So we can take a part of their idea, combine it with a part of another idea, and a part of our context, and create something new.

So here’s to all of you out there turning ideas into action. Keep doing it and please share with us what you’ve done.

Photo by Fahim Reza