Scott makes introductions - IAC is looking for Java developers, project and product managers for some new ventures.
Danny Schultz, Ross and Adam from DFJ Gotham.
Future of Organizing with technology - power to the people in this century.
Jordan Goldberg, CEO of stickk- "Put a contract out on yourself" - allow users to create commitment contracts and leverage their network of friends to keep you on track.
- Commit to weight loss, stop smoking, etc - social networking with goal creation - then add stakes (money on the line) to either charity, anti-charity (an organization that you DO NOT want to get your stakes), friend and/or foe or no stakes.
- Referree - a person to verify your progress - which is a viral nature to get someone else into the site and will track your progress. Email sent to them.
- Supporters - list of friends who will encourage you to lose your weight, stop smoking, exercise, etc.
- Using the social networking concept and the social pressure that happens in companies like Kiva and other microloan companies.
- Looking to build in group commitments rather than simply single person commitments.
Currently: 6000 users, hired a full-service development team to build the system
Success is found on using anti-charity
Peter Deitz, Social ActionsIndependent project for the last year - social action aggregation platform - allowes for people to communicate and join guide for social action platforms.
- Problem with interoperability, higher level integration of social change. 29+ social action platforms - social change campaign.
- Each with its own: user base, Facebook app, Tag Cloud, etc.
- Platforms built to empower individuals - full-responsibility for amplifying campaign on campaign creators.
- Making an API in a microformat - what it is trying to accomplish, merge the feeds and have a aggregated source of information. Thinking of how to make social action platforms work together. (peterdeitz at google's service)
Jesse Richards, MeetupAnouncing a new functionality: Meetups in the Making - pledging and expressing an interest for a Meetup - the idea is that if you do not want to commit to being the leader of a Meetup, but you are willing to join one at the time when the Meetup happens, then you express your interest.
Then when a person who is closer to becoming a leader of a group, it shows the potential "pledged" people who are interested in the group.
Launched in November 2007 - 70K people have pledged to upcoming groups.
Ready registry: pledgestry (Jesse's word)
"World's first platform for aggregating demand for community" - Scott Heifferman
Paul Miller, SchoolOfEverything (from London)
In 1965, the "Free U" grew from 2 courses to 300 courses (straight out of
Accepted). These guys have placed a geo-locator for anyone able to teach a course. They have a search engine, capability of listing your potential course - and a chance for signup.
Similar site: moodle.com and other free ones. They have standards on form and business objects - can we connect with them? Yes - we "broker" relationships. Get people together face-to-face in the real world.
Will include a reputation engine, right now focused on established people who have business. They will determine demand for classes and show the demand geographically.
Andrew, thepoint (from Chicago)Arose from the problem if - what if all of us did something against a bad thing ("what if we all cancelled our contracts on the same day?") - interesting that Andrew describes what Nate Westheimer described as VentBox - which is now
Bricabox.
"Challenging Authority" - hitting a tipping point where the cost of the action exceeds the cost of the policy (e.g. change the policy or the action will cost the company/authority of the policy XXX money).
Has similarities to
essembly from before - with a twist on petitions (sign this campaign). Some of the actions can be on issues that have no laws (e.g. upset with university for doing XXX, you can have a group of people do YY).
How much would it be to have the XXX campaign happen to you? Then you could pledge what you feel it is worth to you - ONLY when the campaign reaches the tipping point. (e.g. When we raise $10B, we will build a winter shielding dome over the city).
This is a platform for people to come together and combine in collective action. Aiming for an algorithm such that they understand how a problem will occur to changing the general public.
Concepts: register your "vectors of interest", browse policies you can affect, express willingness to contribute - thepoint will inform you of when you (and the other pledges) can now act to change the policy.
Future of self-government - a DIY-type culture.
Clay Shirky, Here Comes EverybodyThe Power of Organizing with Organizations - sharing, conversation and collaboration - and the fourth is "collective action". We are on the cusp of hitting this point.
Example: flight delays and how the people did not together - media had a field day. 1999 and 2007 -- in 2007, the airlines made it happen. How/why?
Kate Hanni was pissed - builds a blog, contacts the media, reaches out to other passengers, builds a petition, 10s of thousands - could not negotiate with the collective since they wanted on thing.
Thinking is for doing, Publishing is for acting. Every URL is a latent community. (Uh oh - sounding like the tail end of 1999 - where everything was "community").
FlashMobs - point of flash mobs was to tease the hipster community. In Belarus would not allow people to act in concert to coordinate. Case of collective action leading the media - part of the goal was to demonstrate the action against the government. (Tinges of "V for Vendetta").
When group tools applied in free communities - always laughed at. But in Egypt, twitter is becoming a powerful community tools. Have to look at the context and the tool to understand.
Fighting Costa Nostra - collaborating with others to fight the Mafia. (Reminds me of
BALCONY)
"Media is moving form a source of information to a site of action." - Clay Shirky
In 2008 - less creative use of collaboration tools - think that it has become the "third rail" because of what happened with the Dean Campaign. Being used in quite effective, quite utiliarian operations.
[Ed comment: Democrats are often on these tools because their structure for organizing is available from their spare time, Republicans have a large number of offline connection mechanisms which does not need to "fill their spare time". I wonder how people will connect to these social actions that leverage these technologies.]
"Silicon Valley is obsessed with data and information, New York is about media - helping the world's people self-organize is the real interesting way of sparking the future." - Scott Heifferman
Q: Connecting offline organizations to these tools - spare time fillers versus engaged people.
Q: How do you measure results? Effectiveness? A: their own success metrics - there are no comparison metrics. My suggestion: use the measurement of the value of the actions to generate an equivalency for the action in some financial metric.
Metrics - sounding like what we were doing back in the beginning of banner ads - why not come up with something that is a utility metric for success?
Thought: the technology of accountability will actually force the change that is expected.
Q: Are you going to take over or usurpt the incumbents - or will you work with them? A: Jesse from MeetUp wants to work with them. Jordan from Stickk is trying to work with charities.
