HBS Pitch Builder recreated

Years ago someone introduced me to the Harvard Business School's Elevator Pitch Builder. I found it to be a great, simple tool every time I started a new project or venture that I needed to explain to people. At some point in the last couple years Harvard redid their business school's site and did not port over the pitch builder.

Well, I liked and got so much use out of the tool that I decided to recreate it: http://mjumbewu.github.io/elevator-pitch-builder/ (source). It's optimized for smaller screens. This was also a good exercise in playing with material design concepts using CSS animations. Check it out. Let me know what you think at @mjumbewu.

The Smartest Cities Rely on Citizen Cunning and Unglamorous Technology

[V]endors like Microsoft, IBM, Siemens, Cisco and Hitachi construct the resident of the smart city as someone without agency; merely a passive consumer of municipal services – at best, perhaps, a generator of data that can later be aggregated, mined for relevant inference, and acted upon. Should he or she attempt to practise democracy in any form that spills on to the public way, the smart city has no way of accounting for this activity other than interpreting it as an untoward disruption to the orderly flow of circulation. ... All in all, it’s a brutally reductive conception of civic life, and one with little to offer those of us whose notions of citizenhood are more robust.

...

The true enablers of participation turn out to be nothing more exciting than cheap commodity devices, reliable access to sufficiently high- bandwidth connectivity, and generic cloud services. These implications should be carefully mulled over by developers, those responsible for crafting municipal and national policy, and funding bodies in the philanthropic sector.

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/dec/22/the-smartest-cities-rely-on-citizen-cunning-and-unglamorous-technology

(via @CityLab)

Quick Thoughts from the 6th ICAT in Nairobi

I just returned from the 6th International Conference on Appropriate Technology in Nairobi, Kenya and have so many thoughts to share. I want to get some of them down before they evaporate.

The Conference

This is my 3rd ICAT. I had the pleasure of attending in Accra, Ghana in 2010 and Pretoria, South Africa in 2012.

We had a number of great, hands-on and discussion-based workshops at this conference. I was able to attend two. The first, a workshop on assembling 3D printers, spanned several days and was an incredible challenge. The design for the printers we built came from Michigan Tech’s MOST Lab. The idea for the printer is that almost all of the parts for the printer can either be easily sourced from a decently large hardware store wherever you are in the world, or printed from another 3D printer. So, as long as you have one working 3D printer you should be able to obtain the parts for another. The only exceptional part is the controller board (http://reprap.org/wiki/Melzi).

The other workshop I attended was on building a low-cost radio station, presented by RootIO. Here, Jude Mukandane walked us through the internals of a RootIO radio station (which just consist of a few simple electronic components, a radio transmitter, and a cell phone), as well as the software that powers the stations (an Android app and a Web app). My thanks go to Jude and Chris from RootIO for planning the workshop.

We had several inspiring and polarizing keynote speakers, but my favorite was activist and scholar Patricia McFadden, who among other things spoke about:

• the notion that appropriate technology alone is insufficient without other elements of social transformation
  
• the historical relationship between women and technology that has been undermined by patriarchal systems
  
• the necessity to transform technology markets to being focussed on human sufficiency
  

On Friday morning, I had the pleasure of planning a trip to visit iHub with a few of the conference participants. About 10 conference participants piled in a van to get a tour of the space and the way that all its parts work together. As the theme this year was “Technological Innovation to Empower Africa”, it would have been a shame to miss a relevant case study institution like iHub while in town, so I’m glad that the trip worked out at the last minute. A huge thanks to everyone at iHub who helped it work.

On Friday through Saturday we had the 2nd ICAT hackathon. Several things went better in this event than in the first hackathon in 2012. For starters, the 2012 hackathon had very little participation from conference-goers. There are a number of factors that could have contributed to the low participation rate:

• the hackathon was held at a venue away from the conference, and most conference-goers didn’t have their own transportation
• the hackathon was scheduled to run simultaneously against several workshops, a keynote speaker, and a trip to Soweto/Jo’burg/the Apartheid Museum

Some of these factors were repeated this year (like scheduling the hackathon to be run against a Saturday off-site trip), but others were mitigated. Before this year’s hackathon really kicked off we had a round of Ignite talks where several conference and hackathon participants presented. I gave an Ignite about what a hackathon is and why people should participate (not my best Ignite performance, unfortunately, but a passable introduction hopefully). There was no conflicting programming scheduled for the first night of the hackathon, and it was held on the conference premises. As a result, participation from conference participants, at least in the initial stages of the hackathon, was relatively high.

I think the sequence of events this year was good, but there are definitely improvements that can be made for next time (like setting an earlier deadline for Ignite slides, asking for more help with the planning and execution of the talks/hackathon, and ensuring that there are more conference participants around for the presentations and judging portion of the hackathon). Stay tuned for a brief rundown of the Ignite talks and hackathon projects.

As a member of the conference organizing committee I can say that we have a number of improvements to make in the planning of the 2016 conference, and that we should start by ensuring that the next time people hear from us about appropriate technology is well before the 2016 conference. I mentioned in my Ignite presentation that a hackathon is primarily a community building activity, and that notion should be extended to this conference as a whole. To really be successful, INAT needs projects, collaborations, and engagements that sustain beyond the biennial conference.

Some other major themes for next time that I heard or noticed:

• We should continue to incorporate visible hands-on activities as part of future conferences. These were very engaging both for people participating in the activities as well as those watching. There were so many questions about the progress of the 3D printers and a couple of the more visible hackathon projects.
  
• Increasing the meaningful participation of women in the conference is very important.
  

Nairobi

I also have some quick impressions about the ICAT’s host city this year. Nairobi is very much a city’s city. I only spent a few days there, and covered very little of the city’s area outside of a car, so I can only say so much about it. Some things that struck me:

• Speed bumps everywhere. As I understand it, this infrastructure came out of an abundance of automobiles crashing into pedestrians. However, I don’t get a sense that’s they’re meant as a temporary solution to the problem. It seems to me that Nairobi is in dire need of some more deliberate holistic transportation planning, taking into account walking, biking, matatus, and private vehicles.
  
• Matatus! Such an interesting industry. There are of course informational improvements that could be made (and I see that there is some excellent work that has been and is being done in this area, like http://www.digitalmatatus.com/). It would be interesting to see the city further embrace these vehicles as part of their transportation network, perhaps by having matatu-only lanes along some of the bigger roads at rush hour, or giving subsidies for more environmentally friendly matatu vehicles.
  
• Security guards and metal detectors at every door. Based on a handful of conversation, Nairobi seems very much like a city in transition. Population has nearly doubled over the last 20 years and crime rates have steadily increased with it. It’s worth noting, anecdotally, that I spent a bit of time walking around certain areas of the city during the day and never felt particularly unsafe. If you keep your wits about you as you would in any large urban area, chances are that nothing will happen to you. However, it is also true that Nairobi is, statistically, a relatively high-crime city.
  

Ultimately, it’s a city that I wouldn’t mind immersing myself in for a bit more time, especially to learn more about and participate in the burgeoning tech scene.

(See more photos from the conference)

A phone worth keeping...

As I mentioned before, I'm helping to organize the International Conference on Appropriate Technology in Nairobi this year. As it gets closer, I'll be sharing a series of short posts about projects and information that's inspiring to me and my notions of appropriate technology. This is the first in that series.

The way that we use and dispose our electronics is unsustainable and needs serious revision. I enjoy my new phone or computer every other year (or every year) just as much as the next techie, but the impacts (environmental and social) of this rapid replacement cycle have been weighing on me for a long while.

I was certainly not alone in feeling this way. Phonebloks, an "independent organisation with the purpose of encouraging the development and production of products that produce less electronic waste," organized an incredibly successful Thunderclap campaign last October to raise awareness about the issue and the idea. 979,255 people agreed to allow the project broadcast from their social media accounts in late October 2013.

Phonebloks's most compelling partner to date has been Google's (formerly Motorola's) Ara Project for a modular phone. The Ara project intends to create a phone whose components can be easily swapped. They have tossed around $50 as the price for a base model of this phone.

Critics have noted the technical infeasibility of creating a modular phone that people will actually want with today's technology (though Google disagrees), but it's the experimentation with the ideas that excites me. With the increasing ubiquity of mobile tech, it's refreshing to see design innovations that potentially lower our environmental impact.

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Let's discuss on twitter...

International Conference on Appropriate Technology in Nairobi this November (yay!)

I'm helping to plan the International Conference on Appropriate Technology * in November. This year (the conference happens every other year) we'll be in Nairobi, Kenya at Kenyatta University!

The details of what I want to bring to the conference are still being worked out (watch this space!), but I'm leaning towards (1) an Appropriate Technolgy Hackathon and (2) an unconference around Sustainability & Responsibility in the Tech Industry (I'm curious what kind of meaning that will have to an international audience).

Appropriate tech, in context of this conference, is tech that is designed with special consideration for the environment, both social and natural, into which it will be deployed. Often it is considered in contexts of constrained resources. Think solar cookers in places with inconsistent access to public energy. Think heavy use of mobile tech where access to computers is low. Appropriate tech is tech whose means of production can be owned by the communities who will be benefiting from it. It's tech that empowers people.

To get into the groove, I'll be sharing some appropriate technology related tidbits here through the next few months.

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* High on my list of to-dos is a website refresh...

AirBnB for farmers and eaters

This is a post that's been sitting around in my draft box for about a year. It's not doing any good there, so I'm publishing it as is. Does anyone know if a thing like I describe exists?

- Mjumbe

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Here's an idea: AirBnB for CSA farmers (and patrons).  For short, let's give it a Web2.0 name like "csa.ly" (someone come up with a better name).

Someone should capitalize on this.  Think about it, everyone needs to eat!

I haven't been a host on AirBnB for long [I'm not any longer, but was for about a year], but here are some of the things that I enjoy about the system, from both host and guest perspectives (we'll call the analogs on csa.ly farmers and eaters):

• Handle the money - Make sure that it is as painless as possible to get money from the eater to the farmer.  Farmers should be able to focus on farming and eaters should be able to focus on eating.  I don't think farmers get into farming because they like dealing with credit card companies.
• Don't be greedy - Charge only a small surcharge for farmers.  They're doing the work and it's important that they feel they're getting most of the benefit.
• Allow bidirectional reviews - In a peer-to-peer network, it's important that not only the eater has a good experience with the farmer, but also vice versa.  Make sure your farmers feel like they're protected against entering into relationships with bad eaters.
• Focus on the customer service - The success of the site will depend on the how well it facilitates interaction between eaters and farmers.  It should remove as many barriers as possible between an eater finding, getting information about, and contacting a farmer.

And, some things that I wish AirBnB had that csa.ly should (ideally):

• Let the farmers access their data ... ALL OF IT -- Farmers should have access to simple analytical views on all of their sales data, and be able to get a dump of it all if they want to do their own analysis.

I don't know enough about CSAs (yet) to come up with a complete list of requirements, but here's a start:

• Farmers should be able to create a profile for their farm where they can post...
•  pictures
• a schedule
• the food they grow/harvest
• the buy-in they're asking (price)
• details about how they operate (again, I don't know much, but there's some info under "Variations" at http://www.localharvest.org/csa/)
• Eaters should be able to find farms that are located near them, or that drop off near them
• Eaters should be able to leave reviews and ratings of farmers (but only farmers they've received food from), and farmers should be able to rate eaters (but only those that have received their food)
• Eaters should be able to select (shop for) food from a given farm through the site

Who is the target market:

• People new to CSAs.  For them, there should be plenty of informational material on how it all works.
• People who have used CSAs, but are moving to a different area or city.  These people will probably want to keep using CSAs, and need to find one to patronize.

I don't know if one could tell beforehand which of those two groups would be the primary market for the site.

Working towards open legislative data

(I also posted this over on the OpenPlans blog)

A few weeks back, I sent out a solicitation to a bunch of city clerks and other people connected to City Council bodies around the country that use Granicus's legislative management software, Legistar. I was requesting signatures on a publically available letter as a statement of the importance of opening the legislation data that Granicus collects through Legistar. This type of data has been a persistent interest of mine ever since I helped start Councilmatic a couple years ago.

The Method

To find the cities that use the software I searched Google for all sites on the domain legistar.com (i.e., with the search query "site:legistar.com"). Then I wrote a little scraper to step through the pages of that search and collect the subdomains. I took the results and started collecting contact information for the City Council contacts in those cities (see those results here — it's a far-from-complete list). I then contacted the people in that list with a little bit of background about myself, my projects, and the letter's purpose:

The letter is meant to let Granicus know that their clients think that it is important to have their data open and available to the public, specifically through an API. The letter is directed at Granicus because, as the letter states, they are in a unique position to open this data for a number of bodies all over the country at one time. The developers at Granicus are in favor of this type of action, but we believe that hearing from their clients that this is important would help them to prioritize it further.

...Many opportunities for business enterprise, journalistic storytelling, public advocacy, and citizen experimentation are lost when there is no access to quality data sources.

For demonstration of the latter point, see amazing work done by the likes of Open City folks in Chicago, or AxisPhilly in Philadelphia, or work coming out of the Code for America fellowship. There are many more examples of applications built with open data (here's a list of seven more apps covered by Mashable), but the data has to be out there in a way for developers and tinkerers to work with first.

An additional, unstated purpose was just to raise awareness about the value of opening this data, particularly with so many different parties interested in local legislative data recently.

The Response

I received responses from 5 of the people on the list, two from cities that agreed to sign. Both of the cities with favorable responses were from people that I had some prior connection to, at least through some common acquaintance, underscoring the importance of personal relationships and trust when making changes. I think that it is reasonable to expect a low return rate for any cold-call communication. The person on the receiving end is even less likely to response, I think, when they don't understand the purpose of the solicitation. We're still far from a point where an open data vocabulary is common in government. For example, one of the contacts that got in touch with had this response:

Please note that any documents pertaining to the [city represented] that would be available through Granicus/Legistar are already available to any member of the public through our website. I am fairly confident that is true of any city that utilizes their services. Have a good day and a wonderful new year.

The benefits of making data open and available in raw formats is something that I have found difficult to communicate outside of one-on-one conversations. It is definitely a big step to make data available in a human readable format, but computers aren't good at getting information in the same ways that humans are. Enabling people to build new things, tell new stories, and otherwise make the data useful to more people in more ways requires access to the data in a more computationally malleable form.

What's most frustrating is that, often, data is already sitting in a repository somewhere ripe for developers to use. This is evidenced by the fact that many documents, such as every Legistar legislation record, are generated from raw data. That data is simply inaccessible in its raw form. Access to the data is mediated by the format that the document is rendered into. Scraping is an option in this case, but it is an overly complicated, inherently fragile solution, and there are better solutions to be had.

Data openness initiatives like these have a higher chance of success when there are local supporters who understand the issue and can coach city contacts through what it all means. This is the approach that the OpenCity group is taking in Chicago, with some success. If I did this over, I would start with cities that have a local Code for America brigade to help with the outreach.

Making Sense of My Thoughts on Civic Software

I spoke on a panel at a conference a couple of months ago: Reinventing Older Communities, Building Resilient Cities.  The panel I was on was titled "Innovation with New Information":

Governments are using technology to better understand challenges and create solutions to meet them. Residents are using technology to report problems to local government for quicker resolution. In this session, we explore how technology is changing the relationship between governments and their constituents and offering greater efficiency, transparency, and accountability in the process.

I was one of 3 panelists.  Each of us gave a 15 minute presentation on some particular topic.

The topic I chose was "Building software for citizen engagement".  As I struggled to develop my presentation, I realized how general a topic I had chosen (a persistent problem of mine).  A few days before the conference, I had still not been able to nail down my presentation and was feeling rather distraught.  I decided that, rather than continue to bang my head against the topic, I would go see a movie (I admonished myself for relaxing with the conference date so close, but I needed the break anyway).  And it's a good thing I did (it's also a good thing that Joss Wheadon is so talented).  I'll explain why below.

Yael Borovsky from Technically Philly covered the panel and summarized my talk better than I gave it (don't bother watching the excerpt video).  Here is what I wanted to get across:

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I went to see The Avengers the other day and it helped me make sense of my thoughts on civic engagement software.  Good civic engagement software should help inspire people to solve achievable, human-scale problems.

I went to a midnight showing -- 12:30 actually -- so when I left the teater it was quite late.  I won't say much about the movie, as I don't want to spoil it for anyone, and the specifics of the movie aren't important anyway.  But I was energized.  I felt like I could leap over cars and take any of the baddest bad guys in a fight if I had to.  I was inspired, and a world of possibility seemed open to me.  Yes, that "world of possibility" mainly consisted of vigilante justice, but that's not important.

Inspiration is a powerful thing.  Unfortunately, in our every-day life, there are too many things that have the opposite effect.  Sure, some things are uninspiring, but I would say that the opposite of inspiration is disempowerment.  One stimulates you to action, the other encourages inaction.  One expands your perceived realm of possibility, the other reduces it.

Disempowerment doesn't always take the form of someone telling you that you cannot do something either.  Often, it is instead a message that there is nothing you can do.  For example, in Philadelphia, the school district is broke.  They're being dismantled, 40 schools are closing next year, and 6 per year for a few years after that.  This is the framing that the issue has most often taken.  As framed, it's a problem that no ordinary citizen can address -- it's a "city-scale" problem (it may be bigger than that, but I'll jst call all big problems city-scale for now).

In the face of this type of problem, people will do two things: (1) consider what effect the problem will have on themselves and their family, and (2) consider what they can do to mitigate the effects of the problem for themselves.  There's not any point of considering a solution to the stated problem, for an ordinary citizen, because it's just too far outside of their circle of influence.  I think this is, again, because of the problem framing.

A few people are able to cut through the problem framing and see that it is in fact a collection of many smaller problems.  For example, the following post showed up in my Facebook feed one day i early May:

Schools are closing and if you weren't already aware moms and dads, the City of Philadelphia isn't offering "Summer Enrichment Programs" either, which means that there will be an exorbitant amount of children in need of some outside tutoring or help from wherever their struggling parents can find it. I wish I had a center that could accommodate every single child being left out due to these horrendous "budget cuts" but I can't. However what I can and will do and you can too is volunteer some of your time this summer on a consistent basis to the youth in your communites!!! I don't want money getting in the way of providing a service that most who need it can't afford so I will be offering my own "Enrichment Program" for a handful of "Early Childhood" age children this summer for free. Every Saturday morning I will offer this service for at least 3 hours. If you have a child in the SW area or are dedicated enough to drive from wherever you are and would like to get your pre-k, kindergarten, or 1st grade child some additional help with reading, phonics and basic math, before the new school year I am sure that we can make some progress together. Again this will be "free enrichment" not free babysitiing so there will be no drop-offs. If your child is here you will be as well...."team work makes the dream work"!!! Inbox me for details and soon so that I can come up with an offcial schedule as soon as possible!!!"

- Ashlee Ann Martin-Franklin 

Reframing problems on "human-scale" returns power to humans.  Another simple example: in Boston, in the winter, it snows.  It can snow a lot.  And the snow can cover and bury anything that's stationary for long enough.  It covers everything including fire hydrants.  As a consequence, in the event of a winter fire, emergency personel find themselves wasting valuable time finding and digging out the hydrants.  The city doesn't have resources to dig out all the hydrants.  And neither do you.  This is a problem framed on city-scale.

In the face of this problem, a project emerged: Adopt-a-Hydrant.  This is a web application that allows anyone to "adopt" any particular hydrant in the city.  It says, "when it snows, this hydrant might be buried, so we'll notify you so that you can check on it".  It took a city-scale problem and reframed it to human-scale.  (Access to open data is a part of this.  Hiding detailed information and knowledge about the world behind the wall of Government, and only letting the knowledge out in large aggregated chunks disallows human-scale reframings.  If the city didn't provide data on the locations of all the fire hydrants, Adopt-a-Hydrant couldn't have been built.)

Empowerment is only part of the solution.  The other is what we started with -- inspiration.  Both are crucial.  Inspiration with no real power will fall flat, and power with no inspiration won't even get started.

Make visible the people who are doing things, especially small and local things (the person who shovels out a fire hydrant down the street when it snows has a real impact).  Hold them up as heroes and tell their stories of achievement.  Further, don't just make these people visible, but demystify their process of making change.  People will be more likely to do things if they know how, or at least know that they have access to instructions.


The internet has borne tools successful at doing all of these things: inspiring and empowering people to mobilize resources they have access to in order to make an impact on their own or other peoples lives through access to information, networking tools that augment real-world activity and interest, and technology that removes the hassle of traditional barriers to entry (for example, accepting electronic payment).  The field of civic engagement software remains ripe with opportunity in this respect and I'm eager to see what's developed next.

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I'll continue to think about this, and I hope that I get another chance to give this talk (or one like it).  I feel that the content is true and isn't often framed this way, at least when talking about software.

Understanding the Engagement Toolkit

Today, @chachasikes called a meeting of the Pheattle (that's Philly and Seattle combined) team to try to get a clearer idea of one of the projects we're doing with the cities.  I thought it was helpful.  We ended up with a set of ideas that drive us, and a set of metrics that would lead us to feel that whatever we create is successful (see below).

We have been calling the project The Engagement Toolkit.  We knew that the point of it is to be a resource for civic leaders and potential civic leaders to get their initiatives going, but were still fuzzy on the details.  Energy throughout the meeting was dragging.  There was a sense that peoples passions weren't coming out into the ideas that they were expressing.  This was the reason for the meeting in the first place -- we were all having difficulty getting behind the Engagement Toolkit as an idea because we had never agreed as a group why we were working on it.  We could have just gone on and created anything, but (as Chach likes to say), that's not why we're in Code for America.  We're here to create things that we're passionate about; things that we think will address issues that are near to our hearts.  We want to express our love of humanity through our work, and if we're not doing that, then we're not realizing our reason for being here.

After much of the meeting had passed by with our uninspired input, we had an idea to each tell everyone what they were passionate about in regards to what the Engagement Toolkit could be, and what their metrics for success are.  Here are the (abbreviated) results:

What’s exciting?

• It's a good time.  Community organizing is sexy now. Facebook is watered down. There’s not a hub for inspired people to share their successes -- to show off. Excited about putting together a bar that appeals to organizers' narcicism.
• Schools in Philly suck, and there are certain groups of super-moms who are teaming up and saying they’ll be involved in their local school, which is horrible, and make it good. There are others who want to do that as well. If we were able to provide a mechanism for sharing those strategies, that would be awesome.
• Education about and sharing of experience is exciting. There’s so much good that happens that it just makes sense that there should be an easy way for people to learn about what others do.
• Creating civic leaders. Encourage and convince (or con) non-civic leaders to take action. Turning complainers into civic leaders.
• Making it exceedingly easy to do something positive in your community.
• There are cool things that people are doing to make their city a better place, but they’re really hard to find. There are weird ways that people help, and I would like it to be more easy for people to find what those ways are. If it was more transparent and people could see “recipes” for getting things done.
• Would have loved to have a tool like this when doing community organizing so that I could know who it is that’s out there already organizing events, so that I could talk to them; ask to share organizing letters, contacts, etc.
• Bringing knowledge from people who know how to get things done to people who don’t know how to get things done. Also, putting the spotlight on people who are doing the right thing.
• Excited about imparting practices that good leaders have now onto new leaders.

Metrics of success

• Seeing people getting involved/voluneering because of the ET
• Seeing people exchanging organizing knowledge through the ET
• Seeing people organizing who haven’t organized before
• Seeing people taking action who would not otherwise have
• Seeing people making an impact on real people in real places
• Seeing people contributing their stories of successes through the ET back to the ET, demonstrating investment in the community
• Seeing people getting up to speed with community organizing faster than those who came before them, which we may measure by surveying people when they register
• Seeing companies wanting to provide plugins for their software to connect with the ET

Showing Dev Love

I've been thinking recently about how to enhance city institutions using tech skills. I'm still relatively new to really diving into it, but this represents some of my current thinking on the topic.

All I know so far is that this is a two-way street: people need to build up their institutions, and institutions need to support their communities in building them up.

The Gist...

For institutions:

• Let your community help you.
  (Corollary: Avoid, when possible, legal agreements that restrict you from receiving help from your community)
• Empower your community to help you.
• Ask your community to help you.
• Your community is you.

For developers:

• Just do it.
• Have patience.
• You are your institutions.

Institutions...

Let your community help you. People want to help. Don't push them away (with few exceptions). I love how some of Philly's innovative schools readily accept community support (I'm thinking Science Leadership Academy and Devnuts). Though, the institutions may need to be doing something to inspire community support in the first place.

A corollary here is that institutions need to avoid legal agreements that restrict them from receiving help from their community. Sometimes you just don't know until it's too late that you're involved in such a restrictive agreement, particularly with the pace of new technologies. But at the point of realization, you should from thence treat the restrictive agreement as if it is bad for your institution, because it is.

And giving your community opportunities to express their affection is a good thing. So ask them for help, if you need it. As with any relationship, of course, don't overstep your bounds. And this only works if you have a relationship with your community in the first place. Which you should. If you're really local (not just biding time until you can expand to increasingly larger markets), you need to focus on the relationship between you and your community. For a local institution, your community is you. If your product is not as strong as your competitors', then your community will wise up. And with potentially larger, national competitors with deeper pockets, it may be difficult if not impossible to keep up in perfect step with product quality. But community love (e.g. affective bonds) will keep your patrons with you. Affection is added value.

Developers...

If you have a project that you think would benefit a community institution, go for it. Shoot first, ask questions later. Times that I've taken this approach have sometimes worked out, sometimes not. But I have regretted every instance of not acting. Sometimes this may be bad advice (anyone have stories for the comments?), but if you wait for the institution to back you up, you may be waiting for a long time. Even if you act first, you may be waiting for a long time, but at least you'll have something to do while you wait. You'll have drive to keep going because you can see something happening, and you may be able to pick up supporters because they'll see something happening.

Nothing happens unless someone acts anyway. So it might as well be you. Because, when you get down to it, you are your institutions. They are yours to accept or neglect, shape or destroy.

So if you have the resources, and it doesn't hurt anyone, just get started developing. Legal worries? Worry about it later (of course, comply with any cease and desist orders; but if you get none, then keep going).

OneWebDay Reflections: Tyranny of the Tech Elite

A few weeks ago I attended the Supernova Forum at the University of Pennsylvania. It was great — I got to hear from and talk with so-called thought leaders in business, government, education, and media on topics related to the "network age". While there, I was plagued by a feeling that there was some phenomenon absent from the conversation, but I couldn't identify what it was. Since then, I've reflected and named this phenomenon "The tyranny of the tech elite". This tyranny is a reframing of the idea of digital inclusion. It is somewhat in contrast to the idea of the internet as a democratizer. I'm still struggling with this concept, so take this as a work-in-progress.

(I was going to write this post myself, and have been agonizing over how to do it right. After some research, I found that Joshua Breitbart already wrote much of it for me four years ago. So, in summary...)

The future of us...
The Web is a pretty neat technology. With it, people can do and have done some amazing things.
Generally, we (the educated, technologically savvy, modern-day bourgeoisie...yes, probably you too!) think it's so great that we want everyone to take part in it. So, we talk about technology vis-a-vis marginalized groups like "how do we get them to where we are?" We talk about reducing digital division, and increasing digital inclusion. There are a few assumptions in this: (1) Where we are is good (nay, best, at least for now), (2) They will want/need to be where we are.

Joshua Breitbart has this to say about digital inclusion:

[The phrase "digital inclusion"] carries an implication that people who are offline are being brought into a perfect world. That’s clearly not the case.

What we see in the online world is the result of a land rush where English speaking white men had first crack at the virtual real estate. Digital inclusion is like saying poor people, people of color, and non-English speakers are allowed to shop in white neighborhoods.

Digital Inclusion or Digital Expansion?

This maybe gets to the heart of the tyranny. Access to global networks and technology is a real issue, and it's deeply distressing how closely race, class, gender, and other "traditional" forms of marginalization are correlated with access gaps. However, the digital divide these days isn't so much about people having access to global networks and technology. It's about shaping those global networks and technologies in ways relevant to one's own reality. Defining the future of technology. Some have a much larger hand in creating these definitions for themselves, their neighbors, and their children.

It brings to mind danah boyd's tweetable quote regarding privilege and publicness (at about 30:30 in the video): "...[T]he internet is not automatically a great democratizer." Certain voices get heard farther, louder, and more readily than others, and carry more weight in public discourse. When we observe and analyze how technologies are used, what affects they have, and where we (and our children) are taking them, we do so from a certain perspective, bringing in our own selective focus and our own ideas about which voices to privilege. As it happens, the cultural idea of what "the future" — of technology, of the internet, of us — will be is still left by a wide margin to those privileged voices.

Of course, technology is not novel in this regard. The prevalence of privileged perspectives are as old as hierarchical society (or at least as old as forms of mass media/communication). Marginal or alternative perspectives are always late to the popular discourse. We have to remember that the Web may alter structural inequalities, it does not remove them. This formulation of the digital divide isn't something that can be eliminated by distributing computers and high-speed internet access (though, in some way, that helps).

So...what now?
Joshua Breitbart goes on in his article:

We want to do more than just include people in the online world as it currently exists. We want that new involvement to transorm that world. This is what I hope to imply with the phrase digital expansion. It’s also what I want to imply when I talk about “open internet.”

So how do we achieve digital expansion? I'm not really sure. I half-way agree with Jeff Jarvis that time (and demand) will heal some of these wounds. However, we can't wait around and expect structural inequalities to spontaneously disappear. I have some guesses for first steps (some of these are borrowed loosely from Chicago Digital Access Alliance (CDAA)'s 10-Point Plan for Digital Excellence):

• Make the internet universally available. This stuff should be a public utility. Or, better yet, a human right. I don't think that access (or lack thereof) to capital should be a determinant in whether one can access the internet or not (capitalism is one of the most frustratingly unacknowledged forms of sanctioned discrimination).
• Keep (make?) the internet open/neutral. Though, as Breitbart points out, openness on its own is not enough. "Open does not mean equal, it doesn't mean that usage or usefulness is the same for everyone. Access does not equal justice, but it is necessary for justice. Therein lies our work."
• Be aware of and concerned with social justice issues. They don't go away once you move online. In some ways, they're exacerbated.
• Invest in people. Digital literacy and fluency are forms of human capital and require public investment. Digital proficiency must be promoted at neighborhood based locations, especially community technology centers, community based organizations and libraries, to strengthen resident understanding of new technologies. And remember that access at an early age is a key factor in raising people who don't just know technology, but are comfortable with it.
• Build local infrastructure (social and technological). “Price points are one barrier to entry for the poorest community members' use of a network, but so are software design, literacy levels, and misinterpretation of what a community needs from a network,” says Hannah Sassaman, Program Director of the Prometheus Radio Project. Community networks need to be about more than Internet Service Provision — they need to build community-wide Local Area Networks to house information, services, and multimedia on the network itself. Emphasize being a part of a local community and building relationships within that context. Yup, create divides — but divides that are respectful of one another. These will allow diversity to flourish on the Web.

There's a lot more to this conversation (like about how in/effective legislation might be in addressing the issue), but that's a start.

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OneWebDay is a global event aimed at giving all people a chance not only to celebrate the Internet, but also to raise awareness of the importance of maintaining the open-networking principles that have made it the success it is. As OneWebDay 2010 approaches, I'll be posting some of my own and other peoples reflections on One Web.

OneWebDay should be local and global simultaneously. It should highlight the ways that people use the web locally, and acknowledge in a non-trivial way that the web they use is the same web that is used the world over—one web.

OneWebDay Reflections: The Web Ain't Dead, and So What If It Were

Talk of the death of the web has gotten a fair bit of play since the Wired article on August 17. Notwithstanding its grandiose title, there's actually a fair bit of useful content and food for thought in the article (it's actually two articles—one by Chris Anderson and one by Michael Wolff—explaining the same phenomenon from different perspectives).

Fact of the matter
The Web continues to grow. And so does the internet. The Anderson article says that the web — "largely HTML data delivered via the http protocol on port 80 — accounts for less than a quarter of the traffic on the Internet...and it’s shrinking." However, Internet traffic as a whole is growing exponentially each year (interestingly, United States traffic is only growing roughly linearly — check out Cisco's Visual Network Index forecasting tool).

So, while the Wired articles paints this picture:

It seems a lot more like this:

(Source: Is the web really dead? - Boing Boing)

What is the web? (and what's a browser? and an app? ...)
So, the web isn't dead. But so what? As the Anderson article points out,

The Web is, after all, just one of many applications that exist on the Internet, which uses the IP and TCP protocols to move packets around. This architecture — not the specific applications built on top of it — is the revolution.

Not only is the web but one app built on the Internet, but each website can be thought of as an app unto itself, built on top of the Web. In this sense, the Web is very much like an app market. (There is at least one crucial difference between the Web and the App Store as application marketplaces: no one — or maybe everyone — owns the Web¹. No one can tell anyone else what can and cannot be put on the Web¹.)

Technologies get superseded all the time. Several social networking sites (apps?) have come and gone. A few years down the line, no one really notices. One day, the Web as we know it and access it through web browsers may fall out of favor relative to some other information creation and distribution technology. But probably not any time soon. Unlike the case of the big social networking sites, the Web is not really in competition with the App Store (or any other marketplace). The Web is an open network, benefiting and growing as much as Apple (well, maybe a little less) from the success of the App Stores millions of Internet-aware applications.

Technology, or values?
The danger posed by threats of the death of the Web is not really that we would lose the Web, but rather that whatever takes its place might not be built on the same foundational values as that which gives the Web and the Internet such promise and potential.

So what are the values behind the Internet/Web? I don't know of any comprehensive or authoritative lists, but here are a few around which there seems to be some consensus:

• Transport Equality — As far as the Internet is concerned, all nodes and data should be equal. No prioritization based on arbitrary distinctions.
• Collaboration and Transparency — Development proceeds under shared global ownership and is based on open standards.
• Accessibility and Openness — Anyone should have access the content on the Web, and anyone should be able to create content on the Web.

These are ideals, of course, and there are numerous examples of when they have been violated. However, without these types of principles, the Internet and the Web would be a far cry from what they are today.

If anything right now has the ability to kill the Web, it is our lack of protection of these values. Forgive the drama, but the Web devoid of its principles is dead. This is why this net neutrality stuff is such a big deal. So far, Chile has passed a neutrality bill. Now we're just waiting for everyone else to catch up.

In the mean time, it's on us to protect, express, and spread Web values. At the 2009 Internet Governance Forum, Ian Peter proposed we write 10 Commandments of the Internet. Of course, what these are still need to be determined. His were:

1. Independence of applications
2. New applications can be added anytime that’s a core value
3. Permissionless innovation
4. Open standards
5. Accessible and globally inclusive—anyone can use it
6. User choice—I can choose what applications I use and where I go to with them
7. Ease of use—I can use it in my language, I can use it in a device I’m familiar with
8. Freedom of expression
9. The ability to change rapidly
10. Trustworthy and reliable is one we have to work on; it’s got to be a core value.

What are your 'net commandments?

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Notes:

¹This is debatable. Given sufficient resources, there are few limits to what you could do, but ultimately you are beholden to whoever owns the servers your data lives on, and the wires that connect you to the Internet backbone.

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OneWebDay is a global event aimed at giving all people a chance not only to celebrate the Internet, but also to raise awareness of the importance of maintaining the open-networking principles that have made it the success it is. As OneWebDay 2010 approaches, I'll be posting some of my own and other peoples reflections on One Web.

OneWebDay should be local and global simultaneously. It should highlight the ways that people use the web locally, and acknowledge in a non-trivial way that the web they use is the same web that is used the world over—one web.

OneWebDay Reflections: The Value of the OneWebDay Brand

In April 2010, OneWebDay.org announced that it would merge with Drumbeat, "a new initiative of the Mozilla Foundation that shares all of OneWebDay's goals and values." Additionally they say that they "will retire [the OneWebDay] brand and invite all of its people to join forces with Drumbeat’s growing community."

I think the merging with Mozilla Drumbeat is a good thing. It is useful and important to have avenues for people who are willing to get more involved. However, does it justify dissolution of the One Web Day brand? Institutionalized celebratory events can play a useful societal role. Nathanial James, former executive director of OneWebDay, says:

I’ve spent most of my time with OneWebDay listening to as many of you as I can reach. Here’s the number one thing I hear from you: “Our OneWebDay was amazing! Let’s do more! What’s next?

James presents this as a reason for merging with Drumbeat, but how many of those people asking "what's next" would not have gotten involved at all without One Web Day? If anything, I think this is an excellent reason to continue to support and build the One Web Day brand. As the event spreads, more and more people will be exposed to the ideals underlying the open web. Some of those people will choose to become more involved, and others, though not organizing directly, will take values learned and spread them. Spreading the meme of the open web is as important as active organization.

Of course, it is preferable to have the values of one web be celebrated and practiced every day. As James writes, "Unlike OneWebDay, [Drumbeat projects happen] every single day and with some powerful infrastructure behind [them]." This is a great thing. In order for these projects to achieve their maximum impact, though, open web values need to be integrated into the cultural fabric. They need to be presented in a sticky way and embraced by people outside of the circles of the technology elite. That should be the place of events like One Web Day.

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OneWebDay is a global event aimed at giving all people a chance not only to celebrate the Internet, but also to raise awareness of the importance of maintaining the open-networking principles that have made it the success it is. As OneWebDay 2010 approaches, I'll be posting some of my own and other peoples reflections on One Web.

OneWebDay should be local and global simultaneously. It should highlight the ways that people use the web locally, and acknowledge in a non-trivial way that the web they use is the same web that is used the world over—one web.

OneWebDay Reflections: Worldwide affordability

Last OneWebDay, Sanjay Patel shared some surprising data comparing "what it costs [him] on a montly basis to get cable speed internet here in the United States along with 3 different quotes [they have] received for installing internet connectivity to a school that is a stone’s throw away from one of Tanzania’s largest cities."

Check out the full post here: OneWebDay | The Epic Change Blog

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OneWebDay is a global event aimed at giving all people a chance not only to celebrate the Internet, but also to raise awareness of the importance of maintaining the open-networking principles that have made it the success it is. As OneWebDay 2010 approaches, I'll be posting some of my own and other peoples reflections on One Web.

OneWebDay should be local and global simultaneously. It should highlight the ways that people use the web locally, and acknowledge in a non-trivial way that the web they use is the same web that is used the world over—one web.

Philadelphia Public Computer Centers Survey

I'm designing a survey to administer at recreation centers and libraries to get a sense of what people get out of the city's public computing infrastructure, what people seek to get that isn't available, and what they assume isn't available but would like to see. I would expect the survey to be filled out when a user is done with their session on the computer, so that they'll have a sense of whether they had achieved what they came to achieve on the computers.

I'd probably be violating all sorts of human subject research rules by just going in and asking people to take the survey, but if I can't get explicit permission, that's what'll happen.

The survey is at http://bit.ly/8XwlRn. It is still evolving at this point. Most importantly, I have to get people to look over it so that I can get it into some more normal language.

Update: So, I've gotten a couple of pretty good pieces of feedback since I posted this yesterday. First, from @digitallogic. Noting the fact that people are often unaware of the realities of various available technologies and so are unable to determine certian changes that would provide them with a meaningful impact, he says:

The ideal approach would be to follow someone through their whole usage and observe where improvements could be made, though this may be a better in a business environment due to the nature of tasks be performed and obvious privacy issues.

Barring that, hopefully these might go more in that direction:

• Is there anything you would have liked to do on the computer today which you were unable to?
  
• Other than your primary goal (check email, do homework, read websites etc), what did you spend most of your time on? (wording on this is weird, trying to see if there's some major hurdle that could be over come, ie - 5 mins to check email but 15 mins to log in)

The next bit is from @beingpurposeful. She recommends that I stay away from negative questions, as value biases are more easily built into these. To ask something and not its inverse paints that thing as notable (i.e., abnormal). Sure, I have my own value biases, but I'd do well to protect the survey from these as much as I can.

So, I have to build these suggestions into the survey. Thanks!

Geniuses in Community Computer Centers

I was at the Apple store the other night, and it dawned on me that Philadelphia's computer centers should employ Apple Geniuses. They should be intimate with the inns and outs of the machines in the centers. They should have a thorough knowledge of the city's technology infrastructure, what you can do with it, and how it can solve your problems. At each center the geniuses should report to the community they serve, as well as to the Division of Technology, maybe on alternating weeks.

This wouldn't just be of service to the technically challenged community members, but would also help the DoT keep a pulse on how city residents are trying to use the centers—what they're doing and what they'd like to do that they're not currently able to.

Now, I'm not just saying that you should put tech-savvy people in the centers. I have no idea how Apple trains and prepares their Geniuses, but the patience, warmth, and passion about the technology they're showcasing is what makes Apple's Geniuses work. Good customer service. That's probably the hard part, but it's also the most important. I'd take a passionnate and compassionnate person over an actual tech genius who was cold and impatient any day. Though, of course, I'd prefer a passionate and compassionate bona fide tech genius. Maybe it's something you have to select for in the interview process.

Todo: Do some research into how the city's computer centers are currently staffed/supported.

The Tension between User-centered Design and E-government Services

Here's an excellent talk by Nalini Kitamraju, assistant professor at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, for Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society on the tension in creating e-government services using user-centered design principles.

This one's highly recommended for anyone interested in how governments can better interact with citizens in the digital age. To be honest, the lessons from the talk are not limited to e-government; they can be applied to government in general. However, as we're fumbling through figuring out how to best use the tools we've developed over the last half-century or so, the video provides some great food for thought.

Nalini Kotamraju on the Tension between User-centered Design and E-government Services

Individuals and institutions are slower to adopt e-government services due to a lack of user centricity in design and development. Work with PortNL, an integrated e-government service for expatriates in the Netherlands, suggests the core of governments' difficulty in creating user-centered services lies in a fundamental tension between the needs of users and those of governments. In this talk, Nalini Kotamraju — an Assistant Professor at the University of Twente in the Netherlands — explains how the purposes of e-government services can be met through a user-centered design approach, and how site builders can put the needs of users ahead of the ideas of governmental clients.

Through most of the talk, Kitamraju is focussed on government (remember: government is just a group of citizens) as a service provider. One of the points that she brought up during Q&A is that participatory democracy is relatively low on citizens' lists of e-government concerns. Granted she was doing her research in the Netherlands, but I would venture that much of it is relatable to the United States and other Western countries, at least most of the time. The popularity of democratic participation ebbs and flows in this country. Many people are looking for ways to use tech to help drive popular participation, and it will really be no small feat to do so. We're not in a situation where the masses are perpetually pounding at the doors of city hall.

At the same time, though, there are novel uses of modern social media and technology for driving engagement. At the Supernova forum this past week, I learned about ThinkUp, an app from Gina Trapani & Co. at Expert Labs. It provides an exceedingly simple way to poll for anecdotal answers to arbitrary questions using Twitter. It's not a government app per se, but certainly one that they could use. Perhaps it's not that citizens aren't interested in talking with the government. Perhaps citizens just feel that it's not worth the effort—government doesn't listen anyway. Perhaps if there were better, more engaging, less bureaucratic ways to communicate with government, people would be more interested in doing so.

In other words, maybe citizens' standards are just lower than what they should/could be. If there are no worthwhile communication channels with government, then no one expects there to be. However, if there were worthwhile channels, then people may raise a fit if you to take them away. This brings to mind Tim O'Rielly's conception of government as a platform (a good definition of a platform, via Scott Heiferman, is something that enables people to empower other people). For now, government is like an IBM/360; you can build on it (well, some people can), but it's cumbersome, expensive, and often over-centralized. When will we get to Django or Ruby on Rails? And what cultural shifts will be necessary?

But I digress.
Watch the video (in one of several formats) here.

(via Putting People First)

My Gigabit Bid

Okay, I'm submitting my Gigabit bid. If you like it, vote for it on the Gigabit Genius Award Google moderator page. It should be one of the most recent ones. This was adapted from a post a few days ago. For more information on the grant, go here.

Summary:

Set up a system where residents could access their desktop and files over the internet, from any computer. Offer a service that rents out netbooks that come configured to connect to the system. For visitors, it would serve as their portable guide to the city. For residents, it would serve as their city dashboard. And for students, it would enhance their classroom materials.

My Take on Gigabit City Ideas

The deadline for submission of ideas to the Gigabit Genius Grant is nearly here (it was extended, at some point, to June 30). I've looked through the submissions (all 158 of them, so far) and there are a few that I like.

Some are good ideas but very vague, some of the ideas are very science fiction, and some have very little to do with high-speed communications at all, but all's good in the name of generating initial ideas.

One thing I notice is that so few of the ideas link to any place where they provide more information, which is a shame; I'd like to see more depth to some of them. So, for some of the ones I liked that didn't have much further explanation, here's my take.

Philly Software for Citizens Brainstorming Meeting - Thoughts

So, before I forget what happened, over the next couple of days I have to record my thoughts on the brainstorming session that took place tonight at IndyHall.  I'd normally post this kind of stuff on a more personal blog, but this was, after all, a public meeting.  Forgive me if the thoughts are a little stream-of-consciousness.