Geek Power
This blog post is one of series exploring various aspects of the Feb. 15-17 Tech Soup Global Contributors' Summit. Find a subjective report from Daniel Ben-Horin about the Summit here. A tagged, searchable report on all the projects planned coming out of the Summit will be posted with a target date of mid-April.
Summit Topic: Geek Power
Todd Khozein, Noel Dickover, come on over. Todd's organization Second Muse is the operational lead of Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK). Noel helped start Crisis Commons; his 'other' hat is at the State Department. Honestly, I got a shiver when Todd said the biggest issue RHoK (founded and sponsored by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, NASA and the World Bank) faces is problem-definition. But it's true. The social sector has a hard time defining its problems in a way that technologists can apply their skills to. What made my little pointy ears perk up was the point made by Gavin Clabaugh of the C.S. Mott Foundation, longtime consigliere to many of the projects at the Summit, that in the room were exactly the individuals and groups who could help on the definition side.
Broadly stated, there are two big obstacles blocking the unleashing of the full creativity of the (huge) socially-minded component of the technology workforce toward the solution of social problems. The first obstacle is that the nonprofits and NGOs that will necessarily play a key role in implementing these solutions (increasingly in collaboration with social entrepreneurs and other civil society actors) don't know how to frame their problems and ideas in a way that technologists can grasp and work with. The second obstacle is that all this collaboration and implementation takes resources — money and also time — which are in short supply; civil society organizations don't typically have R&D budgets.
We can't make money appear magically, but we can address the first obstacle. We can create use cases at a high level where the participants in Campus Party, RHoK and Crisis Commons can make demonstrable contributions based on their skills. It was great to get Noel's post-Summit feedback, "We at the State Department are looking to foster a platform to support the TechCamp model, which fosters dialogue between local civil society participants and local technologists. Based on the discussions at the TSG Contributors' Summit, I was able to crystallize how we should be interacting with the larger network of sponsors, volunteer organizations, civil society organizations and digital volunteers. We are putting together our requirements document for our platform right now. Thanks again to discussions at the TSG Contributors' Summit, this will be a more thought out approach than we previously would have put forth."
There is so much that seems so darn do-able to me on the interface between individual technologists, social needs and nonprofits. In my idle moments, I dream of a continuum of help with a common, low bandwidth access point—from stand-alone articles and knowledge base material…to webinars and interactive online formats….to specific answers to specific questions….to personal online engagement by qualified volunteers…to offline engagement… to paid assistance from qualified ‘nonprofit-attuned' consultants and firms.
What is hopeful is that so much of this is already in place. For example, TechSoup's Learning Center is an incredible knowledge base for nonprofit tech needs and TechSoup's Community is standing by to answer specific questions quickly and authoritatively. And there are dozens of other sites that offer similar services. (Please list any you think are particularly good in comments section or in email to me.)
The problem, of course, is that (a) all those resources are disaggregated; (b) using web search to identify the right resource is challenging in the best of times and impossible under the pressure of an urgent technology problem in need of solution; (c) all the ongoing barriers toward inclusion — e.g. language and bandwidth costs — apply to this issue as well.
We can, and should, continue to create solutions. Thus, Simon Gee from Connecting Up Australia, reports on a Drupal/CiviCRM tool, MatchIT, that will connect nonprofit-oriented technology providers with NGOs in need of services. Allen Gunn of Aspiration has taken over the reins of the TechFinder project previously housed at TechSoup and NTEN, and will be trying to adapt it to current needs (and technologies).
On the volunteer side of the equation, Greg Baldwin/VolunteerMatch, Randy Paynter and Joe Baker/Care2, Jesse Salinas/HandsOn Network, Peggy Duvette and Angus Parker/WiserEarth, Ami Dar/ Idealist and Bill Strathmann/Network for Good were all in the room and all seem to me to be working the same side of the big boulevard, serving somewhat differently defined audiences with somewhat differently defined services. I'd be curious what, if anything, arose among them at the Summit.
All of which brings me back to Geek Power. It seems to me that there's a problem in need of an elegant, macro-level solution here. It's not as if the organizations I listed above are going to merge tomorrow. And there are plenty of valid organizations and resources that were not present. But a set of common standards for querying and information sharing? A simple, super-accessible interface that is 'smart' about matching questions with answer sites and can be accessed through the simplest, cheapest technology? A viral global campaign to let people know the access point?
Is this so much to ask?
