I have followed the development of Social Actions over the last few years and really believe in the work that Peter, Christine and the community have done to shape a collaborative, open tool that benefits so many people and organizations in all kinds of ways. SA is now at a very interesting time and there are some very exiting opportunities on the table!
Social Actions Transition: Request for Letters of Interest
A short six weeks ago, Peter Deitz shared our intention to find a well-resourced and mission-aligned organization, or group of organizations, to assume ownership of Social Actions’ programs. Since then, we’ve received a number of inquiries and have had several one-on-one meetings with organizations that have an interest in carrying Social Actions forward.
We’re also seeing a range of creative proposals — for example Paul Lamb’s suggestions including stewardship by open source foundations or social entrepreneur funders, and a NetSquared-type transition campaign. See the comment thread here and add your thoughts!
As a next step in this process, we’re requesting formal Letters of Interest from those who have an interest in stewarding all or some of Social Actions’ programs. We’re posting that request here not just as an update but to encourage everyone to share it and chime in with ideas and proposals.
Opportunity Alert: Four Powerful Enhancements to the Social Actions API
Social Actions has a fantastic opportunity to make four powerful enhancements to the Social Actions API in the coming weeks:
- Add the capacity for semantic analysis and weighted querying: Integrate the Zemanta API analysis, or something similar, into the Social Actions API and then fully support semantically extracted issue- and location-based querying in the Social Actions API. This feature would allow for weighted lists of topics and keywords or an emphasis parameter when external API queries are made.
- Provide support for knowing when actions are no longer active: Currently, the Social Actions API assigns an automated expiration date. Additional enhancements could involve supporting an expiration field in the live feed from partners and/or determining if an action has expired based on the content on the destination page.
- Integrate with other APIs and/or advanced feeds: The ability to make direct calls to open APIs and/or advanced feeds (provided they are available) to expand the number of data-points included in the aggregation.
- Add a minimum of three (hopefully more!) new sources that are specifically focused on global development-related causes.
Opportunities for orgs, developers and changemakers! Exciting Times for Social Actions – https://amysampleward.org/2010/08/06/exci…
Amy, thanks so much for drawing attention to these two announcements — finding the right organization to steward Social Actions going forward, and enhancing the open source Social Actions API — and especially for doing so in the same post. We’re literally walking two distinct paths at the same time, sensing along each one where the boundaries and opportunities for open and proprietary “is-ness” can be found.
Lots of forward motion on both fronts in the days since our posts, and we’re expecting more in the days ahead. We’re asking those who would be interested in assuming ownership of Social Actions to let us know by August 20th (http://bit.ly/SAlettersofinterest) and will share an update soon after with the scenarios we’ve been asked to consider.
On the other front, the Opportunity Alert for the tech and content enhancement to the Social Actions API, we’re close to finalizing the contract with the group that’s interested in funding most of that work. Expect an update by early next week that announces a green light there.
Woot 🙂
On both paths 🙂
That’s great news about the improvements to the API, Christine! So glad to hear that and am looking forward to the update next week with more details.
As for the deadline for interested groups to submit letters by the 20th, well, I’ll be sure to tap the shoulders of a few people I’m thinking about to see what their interest is – and hope that those reading this post will think about it as well!
Thanks for sharing an update here