You might want to… focus on another angle: increased robustness of tools through lowest-common denominator design, then seeing if that leads us in any interesting, innovative directions.
@Ben: You hit the nail on the head. Lowest common denominator design is indeed the key to MobiChange.
It would be good if you give an example in words and not just diagrams. So take an NGO by name and say how it will connect to everyone else. The idea is easy to follow, but making it simpler will not reduce its value.
@Lavanya: You are right. I should illustrate the idea with examples of use cases. Coming up soon.
What are the actionable deliverables for this great idea? Everybody wants to learn but doesn’t want to be taught. So, how do you address the challenge of providing relevant content for the idea?
@Ranjan: I’m sure that learning/ teaching will be one of the use cases for MobiChange, but I don’t think that it will be its primary use case.
Google is inviting innovative ideas that will change the world and help the highest number of people. The initiative is called Project 10^100 (10^100 is a way of expressing the number “googol,” a one followed by one hundred zeroes) and Google has committed $10 million to realize the selected ideas —
Here’s how it works. You submit a short description of the idea (and maybe a video) by October 20th, under one of eight categories (community, opportunity, energy, environment, health, education, shelter, and everything else). Google will put up a selection of hundred ideas for public voting and shortlist the twenty most popular ideas. Finally, an advisory board will select up to five final ideas and Google will use an RFP process to identify the organization(s) that are in the best position to implement the selected ideas.
So, Project 10^100 is not a social entrepreneurship venture fund — it is meant for people whose desire to see their idea being brought to life is bigger than their desire to bring it to life themselves. I know how powerful that desire can be — because I feel it (suffer from it?) myself — and I applaud Google for tapping into it.
Over the last two years, I have been fortunate to be included in conversations around social media thought and practice in India in multiple roles — as a traditional marketer who understood social media, as a blogger who wrote about social media, as an early adopter of new social media platforms, and as a connector of social media thinkers and practitioners. I think that I was able to play the last three roles primarily because of my first role. Much of my legitimacy as a thinker/ blogger and most of the connections I was able to make were rooted in my role as the custodian of a big brand that was engaging with the social media space in a meaningful way.
Over the last few months, my focus has moved away from social media marketing to other use cases of social media in developing countries, especially the use of social media for social change. As I explained in the introductory episode of my fellowship podcast, my research really lies at the intersection of three worlds that (surprisingly) don’t really understand each other — the web 2.0 world, the technology policy world, and the ICT4D world — and also borrows heavily from cultural studies.
I was part of the audience at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York last week when Tim O’ Reilly gave an inspiring keynote on using technology to solve real world problems –
I find it frustrating that people talk about using technology for doing good without any distinctions regarding either the nature of the technology or the purpose for which it is being used. Therefore, I have developed a framework to think about using technology for doing good. I understand that ‘technology’ is a very broad term, and I’m only talking about communications technology here.
It’s probably clear to even a casual observer of this space that there are two separate groups discussing using technology for doing good. The first set of discussions, primarily amongst large aid organizations, converge around ICT4D (or information and communication technology for development). The second set of discussions, primarily amongst smaller non-profits and web 2.0 geeks, are around SM4SC (social media for social change).
The real opportunity in the mobile services business is at the two extremes.
At the top end of the market, mobile phone are really compact, but really powerful, location-aware, always-on computing devices. This model presumes ubiquitous and unlimited data access (including wi-fi access), and a Java-enabled smart phone with GPS and a sophisticated mobile browser. Japan and South Korea have already established the proof of concept for this model and iPhone and other smart phones are creating a mainstream market for it. Most of the oomph and much of the money in the mobile services business is at this end of the market, but the number of users is still small (less than 300 million worldwide).
At the lower end of the market, mobile phones are the only communications device people have access to. The mobile phones themselves sell for as little as $20 and usage is primarily driven by voice and text messaging. This end of the mobile services business has little oomph but there is some serious money to be made here, because of the sheer size of the user base (almost 3.5 billion worldwide).
On a planet with 1.2 billion Internet users, a far less fortunate 1.2 billion people survive on less than a dollar a day. The same technology that has transformed our lives—the lives of the wealthiest people on the planet—remains out of reach and irrelevant for the poorest.
Often dubbed “information and communication technologies for development” and abbreviated ICTD or ICT4D, this field involves multiple sectors—governments, academia, small start-ups, large corporations, intergovernmental organizations, nonprofits, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)—and draws interest from multiple disciplines: anthropology, sociology, economics, political science, design, engineering, and computer science to name a few.
I believe that the most powerful application of social media is to help citizens self-organize themselves into virtual communities to work towards social change. In BRIC countries, where mobile penetration is much higher than PC penetration, such communities will need to be designed in an “access agnostic” manner, which means that the content/ community exists in the “cloud” and can be accessed by multiple mediums including websites, RSS feeds, voice portals and even text messages.
So, when I attend Microsoft’s ICT for Development Conference (see agenda) in Washington DC on September 22-23 2008, I’ll be interested to find out if development agency leaders, private sector practitioners, non-profits and activists share my enthusiasm for the use of social media for social change. The conference is free, but there are limited seats, so you need to register in advance at DevEx, a community for “professionals working in international development, global health, and foreign assistance”.
Incidentally, Microsoft runs some interesting initiatives under its Unlimited Potential program and James Utzschneider runs a cool blog on “Microsoft’s commitment to create sustained social and economic opportunity for the next 5 billion”.
Beth Kanter is a trainer, blogger, and consultant who writes about the effective use of social media tools in the nonprofit sector to enable social change.
I recently announced that I’ll be spending some serious time this year working on MobiChange, a social entrepreneurship venture that will leverage mobile social networking for mobilizing social change.
I have been doing some research on how to use social media for social change and I believe that a truly powerful social 2.0 initiative needs to be –
1. Mobile, because most of the developing world still doesn’t have access to computers.
2. Scalable, because standalone events/ initiatives can only have limited localized impact.
3. Self-sustainable, because it won’t last unless it pays for itself.
The social media world has proven that, though still a young and small community within a multitude of industries, we have the power to exact great change. But what about change for the greater good? Social Media for Social Change was born of the idea that the social media community, these “agents of change” can get together for one night, to support one cause.
The first SM4SC event will take place on October 10 at Boston (Eventbrite) to raise funds to benefit Jane Doe Inc. , a Boston-based anti-domestic violence organization.
