Mobilizing Youth

Weekly! Presidential Address

Just got an email from Change.gov promoting Obama's weekly video address via YouTube. As you can see from the photo above, he's sitting in a typically presidential setting with American flag draped to the left. The staged setting seems strangely at odds with the medium. Here is the president elect comitting to talk to us on a weekly basis - not on television - direct and on demand via YouTube. And they're asking us to respond with our thoughts in the forms to the right - which illustrates their strategy to gather contact information for every citizen - to be in direct contact with each and every one of us.

I'm struck by the magnitude of this moment. Television is dead. Our President is on demand. The Internet is a requirement for civic particpation. The government (to be) is asking for our help, ideas, and comments and actually has an avenue to intake that help (harvesting it is be another matter, of course). The sitting president is still in office and Obama is calling the shots, revolutionizing politics with the tools of our time.

And here it looks like just a typical presidential address. But it's the furthest thing from typical that I've seen in my lifetime. I half expect him to be sitting on the desk, a phone in one hand, some aids running behind the scenes. With the level of transparency and innovation that we're seeing from the campaign, I expect the setting to be more like MTV's Real World and less like every other presidential address. Perhaps this is what we'll get in weeks to come...  And even if we don't, I'm fairly elated to see how this transition team is making decisive moves in their use of the Web.  

Wireless Innovation Challenge

Looks like a good new contest is afoot. Details:

This is a new competition that seeks to identify and fund the best innovations using wireless related technology to address critical social issues around the world.

 

Three winners will be awarded prizes of $300,000, $200,000 and $100,000 for unique, late-stage wireless innovations that offer the best potential for creating social change in the areas of education, health, economic development, the environment and access to communication.
 
More information and the online application is at: http://challenge.vodafone-us.com

We're definitely going to apply for The Extraordinaries.

FrontlineSMS wins major grant from Packard Foundation

This is big news from the folks at Kiwanja who just won a 400K for 2yrs grant to continue the work of FrontlineSMS. It's another testament to the great work that has gone into this SMS application. If you've got a low budget and low throughput needs, Frontline is one of the best options out there. And some of the options on the new release enable folks with high throughput needs to meet needs as well. I did a review of Desktop SMS tools some time back in which I reviewed FrontlineSMS - and it came out on top. Here's info from the press release:

“The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation have today announced a major grant in support of kiwanja's ongoing activities. The grant, worth a total of $400,000 over two years, will see the ongoing support and development of FrontlineSMS, the creation of an MMS (multimedia messaging) version of the platform, FrontlineSMS outreach, the creation of a non-profit online text messaging aggregator, and the scaling of thenGOmobile competition

ephemeral volunteering using mobile devices

Hey - an interview with me and Kristen Taylor of the Knight Foundation just went live. Check it out:
Have twenty minutes, a mobile phone, and a desire to help others? from Knight Pulse on Vimeo.

The full post is here: http://www.knightpulse.org/blog/08/11/19/have-twenty-minutes-mobile-phone-and-desire-help-others

Energy & Environment -- Of the People, By the People

Check this out. Obama has published a video of the transition team talking about climate issues. Wish there was a full version of the session up - not just highlights - but this sort of CSPAN-like preso on the presidential level is unprecedented.

Notes from Mobiles for Change Session

These are a little late in coming, but here they are - notes from the session that I facilitated on mobile phone application development at the M4Change conference in San Francisco on Nov 4, 2008 (organized by Katrin Verclas from MobileActive.org). We had a strong contingent of developers there - some who had recently built mobile apps for some of the leading companies in the valley. So, lot's of good information was shared.

Prime takeaway: Due to various factors, the best foot forward right now is to develop an app for the iPhone, but to rely heavily on the platform's Web-integration tools so that you can be ready for a quick transition to other platforms when those platforms become viable.

So, ok, what are these various factors?

#1: Distribution & montetization

Even though many other phones are in the hands of many more people, when it comes to mobile apps, the iPhone is #1. People use their apps more on the iPhone, consumer more data, and download more apps.

#2: Controlled Platform.

Love it or hate it, the iPhone platform and system is dependable. gPhone is not really a gPhone. It's a gOS bundled with tMobile - and without Jobs the dictator, things do fall apart. For example, I followed a link on Google's site to purchase the gPhone a few weeks ago and I got to an area of tMobile's site where they had me login, which i did, and then they told me that the gPhone was not available for me to purchase. Just one example of how when the Dictator is not in charge, the process isn't as smooth. Developers in the group said that they had had similar experiences. 

Other stuff we talked about:

* It would be cool to have a Yahoo Pipes for mobile apps. [The Extraordinaries project that we're working on comes close, actually]. Yahoo's Blueprint and Tarpipe.com were mentioned.

* We mentioned TacticalTech's Mobiles in a box. It's a lot of great info about running mobile apps and campaigns.

* The problem with developing just a mobile web site is that you don't get access to any of the nifty phone APIs

* We talked about developing countries - saying that there really wasn't anything significant you could do with mobile apps quite yet. 

* Someone mentioned that in Japan people use their apps primarily to consume - while in the US, people use their apps more as utilities, for doing.

* Someone noted that iPhone penetration among lower income brackets in the US is increasing.

Wow, wow, wow.

It's only been a few days and already we've got this:
http://change.gov

This administration is going to be transformational. First, they're telling us what's up - directly - with the formation of the staff. Second, they're asking for our ideas and stories. Third, they're taking job applications (I put in my name). Fourth, they have a blog. This is doing it right, and fast.

The Extraordinaries in the news

Hey, the first article about The Extraordinaries just came out in the San Leandro Times by reporter Michael Singer! Singer interviewed Jacob Colker and I at the Craigslist Boot Camp where we gave a talk about Web 2.0.

Prop 8

The results are nearly tallied. Apparently, Californians think that some couples are more equal than others. Orwell had a bead on this one.

Post-Broadcast Politics?

Does this historic election imply the end of broadcast politics? I keep asking myself this question - wondering if we're seeing an ephemeral or long-term trend. Certainly, future political campaigns will attempt to mimic Obama's tactics - which may mean that the age of speaking at voters (exclusively) is coming to a not-too-soon close. In my book, I transcribed a great speech by Seth Godin, where he talks about how people are never going to listen if you scream at them... well, this method has worked for the last several decades, but not for much longer b/c people expect to engage in conversation more. They expect to invite advertisers and politicians in, rather than listen to marketing messages.

Of course, I can't help but think about McLuhans famous adage that the medium is the message. Have we just witnessed an era of politics transformed by the Television? Prior to the age of the TV (and commercial radio), it seems that politicking was much more about engaging the citizenry in conversations (need to do more research to back up this assumption). And then along came commercial radio and TV and we got used to being talked at. And so politics took the same approach. We got our politics served to us in sound bytes over the tubes. Not surprisingly, a lot of people tuned out. Politics just wasn't as interesting as the rest of the media fare.

And now, the Internet has lassoed us back into conversing with eachother - into participating in addition to consuming. And lo, one really smart charismatic guy and a hellova lot of really smart staff figured out how to re-engage the populace who's interest had been waning... by actually talking with them - and, more important, getting them talking to eachother.

What do you think? Are we done with broadcast politics?

--- later ---

oh hey, i just went to Seth's blog and he has a recent post on just this topic.