Technology for Social Change at Chain Reaction

Live blogging can’t happen right now – SORRY! The wifi at the event has been quite troublesome for the social reporters so I’ll go what I would for the live blogging but then just publish this at the end, hopefully.

I’m in the Technology for Social Change session with lots of greats here at Chain Reaction 2008.

Simon from JustGiving

6.5 Million have used website
nearly 6,000 orgs using website
2009 will launch a new website: new focus on portability, want JG to be about other people’s sites than own, use the tools to fundraise that matter to them, plugging in to other social services
made lots of investment into the new site

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network for social entrepreneurs to connect to community to make the most powerful difference
efforts are focused on building tools that have real world application
let’s social entrepreneurs share their work, advertise what they offer, change how they connect with each other
limited world research lab – allowing people to slice and dice data and build applications
allow people access to real time data

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tom with channel 4

publicly owned institution
26 years old, to bring voices into the mainstream
3 values: inspire change, whatever you do do it first, make trouble
channel 4 has realized that digital technologies need to be leveraged, especially for educational materials
project aiming at supporting websites, games, mobile apps that improve people’s lives
2 broad areas of scale: give people their first break at digital media, work with existing public institutions to make the most of digital media
many to many is the change from few to many
5 areas: tools to keep an eye on money and power; introducing people who need to know stuff to those who already know it; helping people discover stuff in the digital realm that they didn’t already know about or didn’t think they’d like; amplifying voices that media previously hasn’t reached; api layer – tools to make trouble, disrupt platforms for hte public.
submit ideas on their website

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dominic campbell with enabled by design

can i make local government cool? can i make assistive equpiment cool?
currently work with making social media in government – barnett council
building online community for users of assistive equipment to unleash frustration and ideas – bring together with designers to make better equipment

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anna maybank with sicamp

interested in how online world could make offline world better
internet lets people connect to scale in a new way
need to bring together two groups: people who build the technology, and those who have a need for it
gap in social enterprise incubation – what do you do if you have an early stage idea?
interested in bridging gap between idea and doing it
run a program with 3 parts: call for ideas of web based tool for social change; 6 are chosen to go to sicamp 2.5 day event with software designers and marketers etc.; give support to projects to continue
looking to develop further in the future, less than a year old
not just talking about technology using old things better, but about using technology as an enabler to do something entirely new and different

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gemini charity

webtools, building high end websites around engaging young people
reflections, teacher trainer tools with laptops and webcams etc.
rafiki, large online community of schools over 100 countries worldwide about curriculum in the real world
big challenges are about scale
x axis is long term impact, y axis is how many people and you really impact

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questions now…

how do you get regional/local support?
very hard if you’re not in the main cities; current regions are not representative of how people relate where they live, with digital media you can cater to any identity of region really
lots of organizations that can help with small amounts

what do you think about the obama campaign’s use of social media?
the campaign was remarkable – mobilizing a million organizers, walking the distance to the moon and back over 20 times
mybarakobama.com was so interesting because it empowered the individual users
why are you supporting him and why do you think people should vote
indicator of where social networks are going – has to be fueled by individuals
empowerment was a key point, as well as the use of social media to engage
attention to detail was incredible – applied science and got the best people
there is an israeli campaign just launched that copied obama’s site identically
the message was key – the way you can win is by ceeding control and letting people be themselves, having faith in your supporters to be part of the movement instead of scripting and controlling

lots of membership organizations around the country, with members that are aware of the issues, but most orgs don’t use the members but to give a magazine, etc. – how do you mobilze membership organizations?
it’s an interesting point, it always comes down to the small percentage of people who are doers and the influence they have over their networks
need to view members in a different way – if you donate money, you aren’t just a donor, you could give time or experience, etc.; about ceeding control of top down, also about different kind of leadership
membership orgs need to adapt to changing environment about where value comes from and what leadership means in digital age
you’ll know when the first membership org gets that right when they drop the membership fee but ask more of their members
look at political campaign, bring leverage to fundraise and give brand – obama did it without the party, fostered his own community
platform agnostic in obama campaign – proves there isn’t reason to build only your own community but to use other services
lowering the barriers to engagement and fractionalizing what it means to get involved, changing the world is huge but if you can give a tiny bit then it adds up
local government can really learn from it in getting people involved in small bits

how do you measure the impact of social media on social change?
pollcat.com
benchmarking, looking at perceptions
what you can measure, do measure – real activity, etc.
build the tools right and you can measure everwhere
mysociety does it really well – like writetothem.org asks you a couple of questions about other activities; once you give people a staisfactory experience then you can ask questions to measure
bbc gets a lot of traffic, but it doesn’t mean there are lots of value there – studied what the best value was – advocacy. how likely they were to recommend service to another user

the message isn’t about the charity, it’s why the messenger cares – network for good