Liveblogging from the social impact track of feedback session 2.

• feedback
  
  • Micha Sifry (Personal Democracy Forum, Sunlight Foundation)
  • Diana Scarce (Monitor Institute)
  • Alexandra Samuel (Social Signal)
• projects
  
  • Genocide Intervention Network
  • Nabuur
  • Global Women's Leadership Network
  • Social Source Commons

• Genocide Intervention Network
  
  • overview
    
    • building the idea/brand of an antigenocide movement
    • these are resources available to everyone, which they can use to speak with their own voices & establish their own leadership
  • questions
    
    • there is a variation in clarity of what various organizations are doing & the outcomes of their work
      
      • how to make the outcomes more apparent so people can see how their work is affecting activism & genocide (e.g. GWLN gives sidebar of anecdotes)
      • directory of images: genocideintervention.net/sample
      • the people you have reached out to can be plotted on a map: visual feedback on their impact
      • also want to put up metrics on how many invitations have been sent out, how many actions have been taken
      • in the long term, want to have this be a place where people can tell their own stories: amplifying voices
    • positioned as a "catalyst, not a gatekeeper"
    • w/ grassroots approach, how do you know that you're making progress? indicators beyond participation levels? at what scale do you reach critical mass, how long will it take to get there?
      
      • integrating with advocacy campaigns like Darfur Congressional scorecard, Change.org & ChipIn widgets to raise money
    • why $100,000 spent on developing more site features would be better spent than hiring developers to work on widgets or Facebook components, etc.
      
      • want to give people ownership over their own movements: build the identity around anti genocide (not just Darfur, etc.)
      • offer tools that MySpace, Facebook don’t offer
  • questions from the floor
    
    • how do you know that people you see as activists see themselves as activists? Do they want to be about anti genocide, or just Darfur?
      
      • have done collaboration with other organizations that are working on non-Darfur issues (e.g. Armenian groups, Burma, Holocaust); response from members has been positive
    • where does their group fit into the ecology of groups working on genocide?
      
      • see themselves as a catalyst
      • get information from partners like Holocaust Museum, rely on them for on the group work
      • humanitarian relief - Oxfam, Doctors w/o Borders
      • what hasn't been tried before in the US - create a sustainable movement around anti-genocide
    • organizational capacity
      
      • 10 full time staff, 1.5 million/year
      • 30,000 on email list
      • STAND - student wing that is chapter-based; 800 chapters
    • thoughts about GPI's approach that has been so successful in engaging younger activists?
      
      • started as a student organization, had connections to previous genocides from the beginning (weren't just focused on Darfur)
      • book came out on history of US's lack of response to genocide (Samantha Powers) due to lack of political pressure to act

• Nabuur
  
  • questions/feedback
    
    • plans for learning & adaptation as they scale?
      
      • local communities are in charge of their own project. Wasn't the initial set up - they made this change in respond to a lot of feedback they got about groups wanting to have ownership over their project
    • paradigm seems to be of helper to helpee; people as both contributors and recipients, possibility of P2P?
      
      • actually, most of online volunteers are from the Global South
    • interaction is fairly flat - you don't see pictures or video; want to integrate better illustrations of the problem as well as social context
    • how can they help it spread, make it viral?
      
      • now, local communities are telling each other --> 5-10 applications/week: the need is for a supply of online volunteers
    • skills matching for volunteers?
      
      • yes - basic one-time matching to a project; need to develop it so it becomes automatic
    • ensuring quality?
      
      • aggregation
      • it is an expert P2P network: through "neighbors", possibly several degrees of separation, can find someone who does have expertise in the issue
      • expectations of villages
    • need to be able to see how your action contributes to solving the issue (feedback) - they want to improve this functionality
    • projects in villages are limited to 6 months - can see results on a shorter timeline
    • where are end users accessing the site from? internet cafes
      
      • if people log on 1x/week, it's enough to get the process going
    • why isn't this connected through SMS? need to build the capability

• Global Women's Leadership Network (notes got a little hazy here)
  
  
  • overview
    
    • do their evaluation of impact based on the work that women who have come out of their program do
    • experimenting with Synergos for planning & evaluation
  • questions/feedback
    
    • what is the targeted group, what are their needs, why this group
      
      • have proven the
      • couldn't bring everyone to the US - too expensive
      • need to go in country, partner with local organizations
    • the site now is not a good indication of where they want to go
    • clear calls to action on the website; what are the opportunities for people to be contribute?
    • what is the engine for growth? what "itch" are they scratching?
      
      • through partner organizations; already have some (do localization, cultural customization)
  • questions from the floor
    
    • targetting different demographics? they have had women 24-78yrs old go through
    • selected based on leverage for project.
    • partners: Global Fund for Women, Global Voices
  • biggest success?
    
    • Lydia - story of a woman who worked on settling widows on government land, has worked on matrimonial land rights
  • metrics
    
    • 3 month quantifiable target
    • coach every 2 weeks in small groups
    • the rest is done trhough Yahoo groups, surveys - qualitative

• Aspiration - Social Source Commons
  
  • questions/feedback
    
    • "there is limit to how much impact you can have through one WRL". want to have widgets or plugins for blog
    • Wireless Networking for the Developing World - have been trying to figure out how to distribute it
      
      • Social Source Commons gives them a toolbox for pulling together the suggested tools that handbook refers to
    • how do you make it accessible to the average user?
      
      • star
      • partnerships with IdealWare, others: create richer media & content (e.g. videos, etc) to make more accessible to the average user
    • finding them - Google vs. references - about 50/50
    • they have explicitly targeted getting an international presence
    • goal for 2007 - rolling out a 2nd language version
  • questions from the floor
    
    • how do you get people who are coming to the site to contribute in terms fo comments?
      
      • current platform is designed to build a critical mass of data before opening it up to comments & building a system of recommendations, tech support based on similar user profiles
    • interaction with other knowledge aggregation tools
      
      • explicitly are trying not to compete with anyone else: how to be an information substrate with what get said in different forums
        
        • automate inbound information: aggregation & redistribution. microformats?
    • profiles : can create profiles to front for organizations, groups
    • why do you need something specifically for nonprofits? published in language that is social mission, outcome oriented, signal/noise problem (e.g. %age of tools on Cnet that is just not relevant to nonprofits)