Roundtable on Virtual Worlds and Nonprofits

I had the pleasure of representing Digital Democracy at the Global Kids’ Virtual World Capacity Building Program, a four-week intensive exposure to virtual worlds for public good institutions. At the end of the program, each of the participants gave presentations at the Global Kids-hosted Fall 09 Roundtable on Virtual Worlds and Nonprofits on MacArthur Island in Second Life (surl teleport link).  Representatives of five leading nonprofit organizations gave brief presentations on their initial explorations of Second Life and other virtual worlds, and how they are thinking of integrating these virtual tools into their organizations’ respective missions.

Specifically, the following organizations presented:

• Rik Panganiban, Amira Fouad,  & Joyce A. Bettencourt of Global Kids. SL: Rik Riel, Lutz Zapedzki & Rhiannon Chatnoir
• KC Swopes and John Englander of Facing History and Ourselves. SL: KC Homebuilder & Johner Composer
• Theresa Dawson of Jacob Burns Film Center. SL: Veda Piers
• Emma Lloyd of Eyebeam Art and Technology Center. SL: Dakini Oh
• Bruni Burres of International Center for Transitional Justice. SL: Qed Ireto

For us at Digital Democracy, new media literacy is critical to education in the 21st century. Dd partners with a variety of groups on programming, trainings and curriculum that educates people – particularly youth and students – on new media skills, focusing on communication, education and participation. It was fascinating to explore the potential of these virtual spaces and understand it as a tool, rather than a concept. Most people think of Second Life as a game or a social network, all of which it can be. To learn to use the tool, we had group conference sessions in the virtual space, utilizing voice and characters and ideas that we could project into a space. I’m a big proponent of Twitter & Video Conferencing in the workplace as ways to minimize the inevitable misunderstandings that arise via email. Second Life, with the proper bandwidth and commitment of people, could be incorporated as well. Unfortunately, I think that’s unlikely as there are constant tech problems and by the time the bandwidth issues are taken care of, especially for international group conferencing, projects like Skype or Oovoo will have cornered the market.

My full virtual presentation was covered by Betterverse: Nonprofits in the Virtual World Covering. Or you can catch the video here:

Mark Belinsky of Digital Democracy (SL: Rocket Repine) presented next about their experience in virtual worlds and new media. Digital democracy empowers human rights activists around the world with technology.

I was working on the border of Thailand and Burma with youth democracy activists. There we found a correlation between internet access and self-identification of “activist.” We are interested in supporting activists like these with tools to help them do their work.

Rocket Repine (me) presenting with Rhiannon Chatnoir

Our SL interest comes from hearing about the virtual Camp Darfur. We were interested in moving beyond an exhibition to direct connection to refugees.

In a refugee camp I worked with youth on a photo project where they chose the topic. (see Video about Digital Democracy “Project Einstein”). We created a Digital Pen Pal program between youth in schools in US and youth refugee camps. We would love to have a wall in in SL where people could post questions and messages and those could be answered by refugees.

We are working with Eyebeam to develop a virtual classroom where youth can communicate their stories to a larger world.  But in countries with minimal tech access, what is the possibility for interaction in these spaces?  Cell phones, cameras, other mobile tools.

We are creating a small space to exhibit some of their projects in SL (Teleport link .)

Some of my favorite takeaways were the places I visited during my time on Second Life.

• Virtual Hajj in Second Life
• US Holocaust Memorial Museum Kristelnacht exhibit in SL
• Eyebeam’s Jeans Factory
  

And while Second Life is one of the most popular of these virtual worlds, new ones are popping up all the time and growing fast. Even though adults are going wild buying property and creating on SL, in worlds like WhyVille and SmallWorlds, kids are learning how to interact with one another. I want to see how to really start blurring the lines between different worlds by incorporating technologies like mobiles with GPS & compasses that allow for Augmented Reality, creating virtual spaces that mirror real spaces to allow us to develop a more hands-on understanding of places and experiences that would otherwise be inaccessible. For instance, plotting a virtual refugee camp in a US schoolyard, based on the GPS positions created by a sister school in a Bangladeshi refugee camp. Then having a more thoughtful exchange when the kids on the US side learn how far their beds are from where elephants get water. And, of course, vice versa as the youth in Bangladesh learn exactly how far it is for many children in the US to actually get to school.

For a list of non-profit people on Twitter, check out the fantastic list by @RhiannonSL.

Open My City Project Retrospective

This project started as the brainchild of the Pioneers, a group of “innovative thinkers at the frontier of active citizenship.” Brought together by the great people at Humanity in Action and Felix Meritas, and supported by the Dutch government as part of the NY400, 20 Amsterdam and 20 New York City “P!oneers” set out to tackle the issues facing our societies. The initial ideas broke into 4:

1. Alternative Histories – working with educators to amplify marginalized voices to tell their own history
2. P!oneer Network – finding other P!oneers & expanding the ability to think openly
3. Ministry of the Impossible – re-imagining what is possible in society, politics, & culture by locating “impossible” but note-worthy tasks
4. Open My City – Imagine what you’d like to know about your city and then describe what you would do with that information.

The goal of the project was to get community organizations to answer: “If I knew this… I could do that”. How do people see their community and how would they rather see it? Is there a way for government transparency to usher in a new era of civic participation? Founded by Andrew Rasiej, Baratunde Thurston, Andrew Hoppin, Corline Van Es, Dr. Andrew Rasmussen, and myself, it was an exciting start to the project.

I spent time presenting this project at conferences on both US coasts and around the world – from Participation Camp to Barcamp Yerevan. 20 summer Humanity in Action volunteers interviewed dozens of community organizations in New York City, including Posse Foundation and Global Action Project.  New York City District 6 Councilwoman Gale Brewar has been at the forefront of “better use of technology to save money, improve City services, and bring residents, businesses and non-profits closer to government and their communitie” and her support has been an important addition to this and other Open Government discussions in NYC.

As the project developed and as the conversations grew, here are some of the answers that followed:

*    If I knew government spending on social services    <->    I could create a map to inform newly resettled refugees of the best access to services for their community.
*    If I knew the leaders of community centers and churches in my neighborhood    <->    I could invite them to my coop board meeting to talk about building mutually beneficial community relationships
*    If I knew who owns the 1.2 million sqaure meters of empty office space in Amsterdam    <->    I could my best to convince them to open their doors to those in need of space
*    If I knew The history of past rents for my apartment and those like it    <->    I could find out if i’m being overcharged and possibly save a tone of money
*    If I knew which buildings with a good floor were empty    <->    I would organize silent discos and hit-and-run milongas
*    If I knew how to find living space in Amsterdam via the official ways    <->    I could live legally in my own home-town
*    If I knew of Free municipal Portuguese language classes in my neighborhood (lower Manhattan    <->    I could volunteer on Saturdays as a mentor to the newly resettled immigrant Brazilian students we recently interviewed in Astoria, Queens, for TRACE magazine
*    If I knew what services were available to New York City public school students in the private sector    <->    I could facilitate the creation of a database that would be available to students, families, educators, city officials, and everyone else.
*    if i knew who all is in need of creative input/ideas    <->    i would happily put my mind to work
*    If I knew which elderly people were lonely    <->    I could help them connect to young people with time and an ear for their life stories
*    If I knew what citizens wanted and needed in their daily lives    <->    I would be a better representative and politician by focusing on people
*    If I knew where all the camera’s in public spaces in Amsterdam are    <->    I could orgaise a public spectacle using each and every one of them
*    If I knew (more about) the government’s/ municipality’s vision on arts and innovation and how they support these fields    <->    I could come up with ways to influence this vision and benefit from this knowledge
*    If I knew who in my neighbourhood doesn’t know how to use their computer to type documents or use the internet    <->    i would help them with a few friends to explain it
*    If I knew what created sustainable collaboration across political party boundaries     <->    I would get elected officials in my city to reduce homelessness
*    If I knew how to arrange the necessary city permits,    <->    I could (help) to realize more community and public art projects
*    If I knew where to put my trash (including and especially cardboard boxes)    <->    I would be able to prevent being fined or arrested
*    If I knew how to get $ for municipal projects    <->    I could pay for food, tools & supplies to do neighborhood clean up.
*    If I knew wich idiot decided to take away the soccer field for the kids..    <->    I would tell Johan Cruijff so he would open a Cruijff court for my neighbourkids

Word cloud from text provided from “If I knew this… I could do that” public entries. Clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently.

Data is still something that people find it difficult to wrap their heads around. One of our biggest challenges was the cognitive leap it takes for people to be able to answer “If I knew this… I could do that.” Matt Cooperrider, the organizer of many of New York’s Open Government projects, and I spent some time trying to hash out a “man on the street” strategy to bring in more people than exist in our existing civic and non-profit networks. Getting people to know what they don’t know, understand what they could know, then postulate what they’d do if they knew that, proved to be more difficult than initially anticipated.

Matching available government data with social groups is a bit easier, but requires a level of transparency that most institutions still find uncomfortable. In NYC, initiatives culminated with  our initial goal – the release of a Data Mine NYC, supplying many (though not all or even most) sets of public data produced by City agencies. Despite the newly launched Data Mine, having only 120 available data sets was an underwhelming amount to some, certainly limiting the ability to have a breadth of new project ideas. There is even a competition, NYC BigApps, to turn that data into useful applications for the people of the City. Graffitti awareness, restaurant inspections, taxi ratings and other ideas that come from a very specific demographic of programmers. To really target marginalized communities and make information technologies work for the city as a whole, they need to be brought into the conversation.

At the second installment of P!oneers, the ideas behind Open My City evolved into Open My Story. Combining with many of the ideas from Alternative Histories as well, the project turned interactive civics program. Here’s the pitch: This photography based program gives marginalized youth a transatlantic lens into the past, interaction in the present, and plan for the future. What are youth perspectives on their communities? What do they want to see it become? It provides a lens into a potential future based on the needs that they see. Ideas are then exhibited in the city to broaden the discussion. Utilizing new media tools youth can now become engaged players in the civic process & create the community they want to see. The cross-Atlantic platform is Project Roebling, which is currently being developed by Digital Democracy, in partnership with MIT & Eyebeam. There is a striking lack of FOSS (free and open source software) in the educational sphere and it’s exciting to be a pioneer in the field.

Stay tuned as the project continues to develop!

links for 2009-11-25

• IBM staffer posts pics on Facebook, loses benefits | CNET
  Insurance companies are now using Facebook to screen members
  (tags: usa internet socialnetworking job economy privacy)

links for 2009-11-23

• Sarah Palin, WWE Star | Taibblog
  Matt Taibbi always nails it with analysis.
  (tags: politics culture media funny journalism news blog usa)
• Asia's Most Comprehensive Social Media Wiki | Digital Media Across Asia
  Fantastic resource for anyone working in Asia
  (tags: socialmedia social media internet statistics asia research digital online resource)
• world within new york graphic | NYTE
  This graphic from New York Talk Exchange illustrates the global exchange of information in real time by visualizing volumes of long distance telephone and IP (Internet Protocol) data flowing between New York and cities around the world.
  (tags: nyc maps society visualization infographics)

links for 2009-11-16

• Barack Obama criticises internet censorship at meeting in China | Guardian
  Obama frames liberties as a question of political culture rather than international legal norms, but still, one Twitter user wrote: "I will not forget this morning; I heard, on my shaky internet connection, a question about our own freedom which only a foreign leader can discuss."
  (tags: china obama usa censorship policy)
• Obama and Chinese Netizens | ChinaGeeks
  Fascinating discussion of the Obama's responsibility to netizens on his upcoming trip to China. Excerpt – "But this really wasn’t a political meeting; the attendees also discussed how to best use technology for commerce, for the public good, and for spreading science. To put it precisely, everyone is using the internet to search for better ways of living."
  (tags: china obama usa policy internet censorship)
• Gates Blocks Photographs of Prisoners | NYTimes
  When doing something wrong, try to hide it – Robert M. Gates censors photographs of foreign detainees abused by their American captors.
  (tags: usa censorship war)
• Cyber War: Sabotaging the System | 60 Minutes
  Reviewing cyber security in US via scare tactics
  (tags: usa internet security government cyberwar)
• How to Profit off the Poor… and Keep Your Soul | TechCrunch
  Poorly named profile of Hole in the Wall in India – group that gives internet & tech training to youth by letting the kids hack
  (tags: india education technology internet)

links for 2009-11-14

• Those Who Hate The Fairness Doctrine Should Love Net Neutrality | Huffington Post
  Art Brodsky posits whether conservatives are rallying againt net neutrality based on a false premise. But is it purposefully false?
  (tags: netneutrality conservative law activism usa government economics internet)
• Rupert Murdoch and Google Part 2 | blog maverick
  Mark Cuban brings up a good point: what does Murdoch have to lose by testing an alternative model? Nothing.
  (tags: journalism google newspapers economics business)
• Worse-Case Internet | Make
  For when you need the internet & have difficulty connecting
  (tags: internet diy computer satellite crisis Disaster howto network emergency preparedness)

links for 2009-11-11

• Net Neutrality Worst Case | Gizmodo
  Rupert Murdoch's statement about being able to take on Google and that he would prefer fewer paying readers of the WSJ than more freeloaders. What if the net wasn't neutral? What would/could it look like…
  (tags: netneutrality internet politics opensource freeculture)

links for 2009-11-10

• Obama Seeks Revision of Health Plan Abortion Limits | NYTimes
  but is he willing to veto?
  (tags: usa healthcare abortion obama)
• Rammstein album to be banned from display in Germany | Music | guardian.co.uk
  Rammstein's album "Liebe ist für alle da" censored in Germany with & without box set featuring 6 pink latex replicas of the band-members' penises
  (tags: germany censorship music latex sex)
• Technology Review: Faster Maintenance with Augmented Reality
  Job security stifles innovation. Could augmented reality be the solution? AR for a greener planet!
  (tags: technology augmentedreality idea environment engineering)
• Unite to condemn homophobic laws | Guardian
  Campaign to stop Uganda's proposed anti-homosexuality bill, which will make gay relations between disabled people and those under 18 a capital offence
  (tags: uganda homosexuality law activism)

Presenting at ITP Social Activism using Mobile Technology class

Back in May I had the pleasure of exploring The Future, also known as NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program Spring Show 2009. Last night I had the pleasure of actually molding it by guest lecturing Nathan Freitas’ Social Activism using Mobile Technology class at ITP with my colleague Emily Jacobi.

Social Activism using Mobile Technology class & Dd Advisor Abby Goldberg

The topic of our class was “Grassroots Development – Techniques & Strategies,” discussing Digital Democracy’s experiences doing fieldwork.  Before introducing the process by which we developed Handheld Human Rights and the story of developing it in the field, we wanted to have an understanding of how the students have begun to grow their own ideas. Having just completed their midterm assignments, we went around and had each group introduce themselves and their project, touching on these four points:

1. Who are you and what is your project?
2. How did you determine the need?
3. What’s your biggest barrier to success?
4. What impact do you hope to achieve?

I’m curious to watch the projects as they grow develop and change. Here’s where they are so far (in no particular order):

My personal favorite was Hikomen (sp?) – a lifestreaming robot that people bring outside with them to introduce agoraphobic people to the outside world. It’s connected to either a person’s heart, creating a response mechanism for the person outside to literally feel the response of the agoraphobic person, but who sees the world via this robot. I see it as an arduino meets lifestreaming meets Tamagotchi versus agoraphobia. A lot of people have the disease and look to the few friends they have help. Similar to last year’s kokoro (that I obsessed over) in terms of the body response, I think understanding how humans are interacting with computers can make us more human is a powerful idea to explore in more depth. The biggest problem the creator identified was adoption, which I think is true and isn’t. For the agoraphobes, it could definitely be complicated to engage with and will be a fantastic exploration of successful UI for psychology. For those who want to help, I think it’ll be a lot of fun to figure out how to get users to adopt these things. Tamagotchi first came to my mind because of how popular those things were in my youth (absolutely dating myself here). Now imagine if there was a human being on the other side. And you were helping them?? I want one!

BK PK tackles the issue of finding a parking space by creating a gift economy around parking spots. Sort of a take a penny / leave a penny for parking spaces with your cell phone. Biggest problem identified? The government. Department of Transportation (DOT) won’t give up the data that belongs to citizens (despite Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications’ best efforts). The impact that they hope to achieve is stronger community, better access to local businesses, & a better Main Street. BUT WAIT! If the goal is community, why not utilize it as a resource? My recommendation was to through community parties get them involved and interested in gathering the data needed for the project themselves. Why bother with the government when people will be happy to crowdsource it themselves under the right circumstances? Key to project development: to thine own self be true. First step: check out stoop sales in Park Slope this weekend and talk to the young professionals with babies who are likely to have cars and ask them how to access their communities with this kind of tool.

ytbprty (YouTubeParty) is a project to circumvent censorship in Turkey. YouTube has been blocked for a while as I mentioned in an earlier post I had written from Istanbul. This project traverses two problems: government & marketing. The first by being smarter than their censors. The second by having a party to make the project go viral. The impact sought after is “making people feel like they’ve lost something” rather than what I initially thought would be making people feel like they’ve gained something. At the peak of the party, everything shuts off, making people more aware that they are being censored and that they now have a tool so that they don’t have to be. Citizens take charge.

One student abandoned his original project to create a suicide prevention game with the Trevor Project to focus instead on making an outrageous game that has user buy in. His stated barrier is that the issue is too serious for a test case. The actual problem is one that the non-profit sector often faces where serious development takes serious time and ample resources. This could potentially be a great time for partnership to harness the skills of some people who have been focused on gaming (MIT comes to mind), researchers concentrating on suicide prevention and practitioners at the organization and synthesize it into a mobile project. A difficult project indeed, but power in numbers.

One student is creating a flash-based game to prove inventory management skills. It involves stages of finding and sorting crabs to prove cognitive ability. The mobile port is an experiment to traverse the challenge that people are not accustomed to using phones while they are comfortable with computers.

NOAH (Networked Organisms and Habitats) – spot living organizsms, geotag them into an “ark” (database). Problem? How biodiverse is a neighborhood. Solution? Have people document it. Challenge? Product Appeal. Solution? Great product design for smart phones. Creative. Simple. Clear. Also has missions for connecting into sympathetic organizations. The backend sorting is probably going to be the trickiest part of this. Check them out as they crack that on GitHub.

Givkwik is proprietary & confidential so I won’t mention anything about it other than I find it interesting that there are still some people working on closed source projects for non-profits despite the trend in the other direction.

Reducing Long-Term Homelessness with Mobile Technology seeks to alleviate some of the issues that people who have become homeless face, namely their ability to get back on the grid. This allows just that by giving homeless people an actual phone number without having to supply a phone or a financial contract. It’s free and accessible at any public computer. Partnering with Google Voice, who provides the number, they’re test a small sample and see whether this is a tool that will be used by a population that is known for tech inaccessibility. Should be something to draw lessons from.

Some other projects include SMS No Smoke – a message-based system that helps people quit smoking by being supportive and providing reminders. earth255 is an on demand carpooling service. And i <3 pv campaign

One of the most interesting things to me when I’m acting as educator is to see how students are engaged with the technologies around them, not just how they talk about them. It was curious to note that at ITP it was nearly 100% Mac-based, aside from the Netbooks here and there. The phones were mostly either Androids or iPhones. The students were generally typing away the majority of the time (doubtlessly taking notes), until the end where I started to give more of the details about how Handheld Human Rights works and asking for feedback.

What I found most interesting was what forms students chose to send in their assignments. Surprisingly, as some of you may have noticed from this posting’s lack of links, most were not using social media sites to distribute their work. I found it to be a frustrating mess to keep track of all the students projects. While some at least have links to PDFs from their blogs, many still sent attachments. A lot communicate visually and there was certainly a general adherence to visual forms such as presentations and videos. None of these were on what I consider my go-tos (slideshare, YouTube, Vimeo). One was drop.io, an interesting new player in the mix. Even at this stage, education seems to be a place separated from the rest of the world and outside conversations. How could anyone find out what’s happening here? Thankfully there are a couple of people blogging about it.

During the ITP show last year, I went around speaking with students from the various classes doing amazing things with Asterisk, asking if they heard of the Freedom Fone project out of Zimbabwe, which expands the power of community radio through mobile phones. Unfortunately and surprisingly, no one had heard of it. As educational institutions change and shift in this digital era, it’s going to be crucial to close that communication gap. With the energy and intelligence in ITP, it’s important to connect these students to open source projects that are realities around the world and have them build upon, improve and innovate rather than reinvent the wheel or, worse yet, not learn from others mistakes.

Emily and I chat with Nathan skyping in from India (@D__o photo)

Be sure to stay tuned as I keep an eye on how things develop and with Nathan’s every day interactions with the students.

Nathan and I chat NYC to Dharamsala

Mobiles Hidden in Monks’ Robes

My colleague Emily wrote  an article about our experiences during the Saffron Uprising and the creation of Digital Democracy. It was published by MobileActive:

On Sept. 26, the protests were still going strong. It was 11 am, and Aung Aung Ye was juggling two computers and a mobile phone from his office in Thailand. That morning he was on his mobile talking with contacts in Burma’s commercial capital, Rangoon. At 1:34 am EST, he told me that more than 10,000 people had gathered near Traders Hotel in downtown Rangoon.

By 1:40, the mood, still palpable electronically, changed. He had received frantic calls – the military had begun using tear gas and bullets against the peaceful demonstrators. His status message read, “Now, shooting in North/Oakalapa.” Two minutes later, it changed again – “Don’t brake my heart into a million pieces.”

Make sure to check out the rest.