Not to be outdone by the CNN/YouTube debates, the Albuquerque Journal will host an online debate with candidates for an open city council seat.  Using Forum One's Live! Interviews Online hosted service as the debate platform, candidates will take questions from the public as well as from Journal reporter and moderator Dan McKay.  The "Race for City Hall" debate on September 12 will include all four candidates for Albuquerque's District 6 and is the Journal's "first online chat with candidates for City Council." 

Call them what you will - online debate, live chat, discussion, or interview - facilitated events like this one encourage participation in politics, give candidates a chance to interact with voters, and draw attention to the event's sponsor.  And, one advantage over the YouTube approach, is that you don't have to wear makeup or create flash cards to ask a question!

This Friday the Center for Global Development is hosting a live online interview about the future of the IMF in Latin America.  People from around the world can ask Liliana Rojas-Suarez, Chair of the Latin American Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee, where the IMF is headed.  It isn't too late for you to ask a question.

Yesterday, scientists from Conservation International took questions about the implications of climate change on the Galapagos Islands.  One of the scientists was actually on the Galapagos during the interview.  Turns out this story may not have a happy ending.

Next month, the lead author of a new World Bank report on the financial status of East Asia and the Pacific will be taking questions.  Their story looks to be much brighter.

It is great to see more organizations providing direct and global access to senior staff and experts via interviews and live chat. 

The Associated Press reports that "Online message boards and chat rooms are replacing rural coffee shops and feed mills as places for farmers to talk farming and trade tips as more of rural America goes online." 

Tip-Seeking Farmers Swarm Online Forums

I found three things of note about this article:

• despite all the web 2.0 buzz, traditional message boards are still important.
• it is rural America.  Connectivity is less and less the issue.
• these communities "get work done" -- questions and answers about seed, machinery, purchases.

Increasingly, the Internet itself has become the venue for protest -- the new Mall, so to speak -- where online-only activists deploy new technologies to challenge governments and corporations and promote causes mundane and sublime.

Where Have All the Protests Gone?  Online.  Washington Post, Feb. 4, 2007

Jennifer Earl's article highlights a particular corner of the emerging policy commons -- focusing on petitions to put topics "on the agenda".  She points out that the topics and targets will both be very wide -- ranging from calling on the Backstreet Boys to do a concert in Asia "besides China & Japan" to lobbying video game manufacturers to opposing the war.  I'd add that we'll increasingly see a global dimension as activists use online tools to tackle global povery, trade, climate, and more.

 

Amazon is leveraging its data storage product and its Mechanical Turk task allocation service to help locate missing computer science whiz Jim Gray.  Gray has been missing since January 28, 2007 after going sailing alone near San Francisco.  Werner Vogels, Amazon CTO, has asked people support the search effort by reviewing digital images of the ocean where Gray is supposed to have been. 

This peer production effort leverages thousands of eyeballs to support the search and rescue effort.  The idea is a lot like NASA's successful project to identify martian craters.  However, I have to say, this task is much tougher.  The resolution of the images means that the sailboat would be at most 10x4 pixels -- pretty small -- and white "noise" on the images makes it tricky to spot regular shapes.  I'm not sure I was able to add any value for the images I reviewed.  I'd be curious to hear from others about their experience.

But I don't want to dissuade anyone from participating -- join the search.

The Washington Post reported Sunday from Pearlington, Mississippi that "charity efforts have constituted more than 80% of the home rebuilding completed so far."  The largest home builder has been Habitat for Humanity.  In addition to highlighting the embarrassing government response to Katrina, this makes a huge statement for the power of volunteerism, or to use "new media" terms "social production" or "peer production". 

But peer production isn't just for social good anymore.  The Post also reports on how Doritos will be running "make-your-own" Super Bowl ads saving millions from production costs and leveraging content from over 1,000 ad-makers gunning for the $10,000 price.

Or check out the Netflix Prize where teams are competing for $1M if they "substantially improve the accuracy of predictions about how much someone is going to a love a movie". (Thanks to Ken for this tip.)  According to their Leaderboard, over 19,000 contestents from 130 countries are competing and the best are 2/3's of the way to the Netflix goal.

What's so motivating about peer production? In simple terms, the huge labor pool available to be tapped.  We know there are about 1 billion internet users.  If each of them has 1 hour of discretionary time per day to spend on a problem that amounts to half-a-million work years of labor per day!  Put another way, that time amounts to 47 times the daily labor from the entire Federal government civilian work force of 2.6 million people. 

What could you do with that many staff?

Here are the references:

• As Aid Lags, Volunteers Shoulder Rebuilding on the Gulf Coast

• $2 Million Airtime, $13 Ad

• Federal Civilian Employment (Jan 2006)

I didn't know the term "social retailing" under I read it in the Post this morning -- Interactive Mirror Mirror on the Wall.  Turns out the term has its very own concept paper [.pdf] and was the topic of a panel [.doc] in the UK. 

I'd like to introduce the concept of collaboratively paying off my credit card -- social bill paying?

Virginia-based citizen journalism innovator, Backfence, is going through wrenching changes with the departure of much of its management team including a co-founder.  The Washington Post reports that in spite of receiving $3 million in funding from private investors and the Omidyar Network and launching a dozen community sites, Backfence is now "downsized to a modest team of people and they're out of money."

“We were young, we were foolish, we were arrogant, but we were right.” -- Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers) - Via Wikileaks.org

The Washington Post leaked the (soon to happen?) release of Wikileaks.org.  Though there is no there there yet, the Post says it will be "a Web-based way for people with damning, potentially helpful or just plain embarrassing government documents to make them public without leaving fingerprints." 

It will be great to see how well this works out.  Is it the kind of tool that can respond to governance dodges like Henry Reid's recent "dead-of-night legislating" or will we need more specialized responses? 

In any case, it is certain that for the policy commons to be effective, transparency will be a critical dimension and Wikileaks is addressing the transparency need head-on.

 More activity in the Q&A space. Amazon released the beta of askville, their question and answer website, at about the same time that Google Answers closes up shop.  Of course they aren't strictly comparable. Google Answers was a "professional" Q&A board with approved contractors answering questions.  (There is a good article about GA on Wikipedia.) 

askville says it is using Amazon's Mechanical Turk service to "help provide good quality answers".  I'm not sure how that is working out but nice to see questions & answers about it.

Last week must have been "Social Networks Week" at the Wall Street Journal with a front-page article about Facebook prices in the $1B range (assuming Mark Zuckerberg frees himself up to attend the meetings), an inside article about social networks and campaign 2006, a bit on book swapping sites, another one about "the Facebook frenzy", one about social network-based travel sites and even article about "fashion" in Second Life.

It is a sign of the resurgence of "community," not to mention just plain more fun, to see these topics covered by the Journal.

[WSJ links probably require registration.  Send me a note if you want an article and I'll email you a link - dave [AT] forumone.com]

Jim Fruchterman, CEO of Benetech, was awarded a "genius grant" by the  MacArthur Foundation.  He'll get $500,000 with no strings attached and we've no doubt that he'll do good with the dough.  Benetech has been a leader in innovation for the social good with tools like Martus. 

We're really glad to see his contribution and that of his team recognized this way!

When I talk to our, admittedly often wonky, consulting clients about what they can do with their websites I often say that users want "solutions to their problems" and "answers to their questions".  I'm a big fan of the question and answer as a knowledge nugget -- it usually represents a real issue (the question), valuable experience (the answers), is often interesting, is flexible and easy to repurpose, and people are generally willing to both ask and answer.  But are questions more than handy knowledge management content, can they be community building too?

We're seeing questions and answers breaking out all over the web.  At Forum One, we started experimenting with the idea of answers-for-hire years ago -- we nicknamed the never-launched question/answer marketplace "jbay" for the idea's originator Jason Lefkowitz. I still like the unmoderated question and answer board we run on the International AIDS Economics Network -- despite studied inattention, it keeps chugging along.  And, of course, our newest hosted service Live! Interviews Online is based on a question and answer structure. 

Now we are seeing a lot of action in the Q&A space (it is a "space" now, isn't it?) with Bono using Yahoo! Answers to generate over 29,000 responses, Microsoft launching its Live Q&A board, and even little guys releasing APIs to reuse Q&A content.

Sure they are useful and popular, but the question was "do they help build community?"   I think the answer is "absolutely". Questions and answers are a great way to reveal personal information -- what you are thinking about, what you are worried about, what you are trying to do, what you know, whether you are helpful.  Moreover, asking and answering is great social sharing -- lightweight, structured, "favors" that help to build goodwill and cement relationships. 

Are you seeing interesting question/answer activities? Tag them "Q&A" and share them.  Here's the current del.icio.us list.

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools is using online interviews to produce an exciting and innovative online event that will engage with supporters, leverage high profile connections, and take advantage of the news cycle -- check it out. (Disclaimer: Forum One is providing support for this event!) 

On September 6, 2006 NAPCS hosts Virtual Back to School Day with online interviews of Gov. Jeb Bush and Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, among others. They have a full day of interactivity planned including inspirational stories from parents, teachers and students, as well as pointed conversations with senior policymakers.

The event uses Forum One's new hosted service Live! Interviews Online which provides a flexible moderated interview format. NAPCS Communications Director Colleen Sutton said, "Live! Interviews Online helped the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools create a compelling event for Virtual Back to School Day quickly and easily. Live! Interviews Online was inexpensive, easy to setup, and easy to use."

Go ahead, don't be afraid to ask a question! - http://www.virtualbacktoschoolday.org.

Read more about Virtual Back to School Day and learn about Live! Interviews Online.

If you have questions about Live! Interviews Online please ask Dave Witzel (email: dwitzel@ForumOne.com or phone: 571 641 3029).

The Policy Commons is going to need many components in order to achieve the objective of developing and implementing improved public policies.  Greg Schnippel's Open Debate Engine, described as "a collaborative wiki-like tool for structured debate on a topic," offers many of them. The genius of Greg's platform is that it makes it possible to conduct collaborative, distributed, rational discussions. 

The Open Debate Engine provides a rhetorical framework allowing interested folks to tackle an important topic, build on kernels of reference information to create an "argument tree" wherein people structure and justify their thinking and engage in discussion (okay, "debate") with others.  Like a wiki, the framework supports many users, is editable, changes are tracked, and back channel discussions are supported.  The system provides flexible syndication which allows content to be widely and easily shared and monitored.

The framework comes from Greg's many years in competitive debate where teams argue for and against a specific proposition with arguments supported by extensive research.  His prototype at Spacedebate.org offers two "positions" -- that the US should or should not weaponize outer space; each position is supported by a series of arguments; and each argument is supported by evidence.  Definitions and reference materials are tracked for verification.  In a competitive debate the judges would decide which team -- "for" or "against" -- did a better job in making their case.

I'm convinced that the Open Debate Framework will be a boon for debaters and academics as they organize materials for their work.  I can imagine a whole new genre of virtual debate where teams develop websites like Spacedebate.org which judges evaluate to decide who did a better job of structuring arguments, research, and presentation. 

However, debate decides the winner and loser of the whole argument -- we should or shouldn't weaponize space.  For the policy commons our objective is to define and then implement reasonable policies which are likely to be more fine-grained and which we will improve as we learn more.  Thus, we need a "so therefore now we should..." component in the framework -- a way to compare arguments, decide which is more compelling, and recommend what we should do given what we know.  

I expect Greg's already working on this for release 2.0.