Thesis Revision

In the past few weeks, I have spoken to folks who work in HIV prevention/awareness and social/mobile media about my thesis project. My fears were confirmed in that this is all very new, people are excited about it but it is highly difficult to measure/evaluate the impact of such programs. I am questioning if my scope is too narrow, for example, focusing on New York City LGBTQI youth. I want to take a step back and broaden the scope because I believe the project has more potential for success and may provide value to a population I had not initially intended on targeting. While my research has proven the market penetration of mobile devices (including smartphones) in youth populations, the ability to incentivize an app such as the one I am proposing is complex and perplexing at best.

Functionality

• Find testing sites
• Find Condoms
• Get information on safer sex
• Find a testing center

All of this seems to be very possible already on a number of sites and mobile projects but not in one location. I am really wavering on whether or not it would be a useful tool.

New Plan of Action

It would be a subject shift, but same platform. I am thinking of a mobile app that can be used as an organizers’ tool for social justice organizers to connect with other organizations, but to also have a way to disseminate action alerts and meeting reminders so sort of innovating on what is working already on twitter….adding functionality such as meeting reminders and volunteer recruitment, maybe a social aspect.

I say “social justice” instead of “global justice” here because I think in a future iteration it would include multiple languages and a text-only version as well as any other cultural nuances to make it pragmatic and relevant to the place in which the organizers would use it.

The functionality would include:

• Twitter API / including Twitter Feeds
• Social component to connect with other organizations (“allies”)
• Action Alerts – a way to disseminate action information
• Meetings – a way to coordinate meetings and send reminders (It was suggested I look at Twilio and Beluga.)
• Volunteers – a way to recruit volunteer
• Search – search for organizations by name or by subject of interest ex. human rights, environmentalism
• Fundraising

Inspiring Projects in this field

• WE by Riseup / Crabgrass.
  

  This site is powered by Crabgrass, a software libre web application designed for group and network organizing, and tailored to the needs of the global justice movement. The long term goal is to provide the technical tools to facilitate active, confederal, and directly democratic social change networks.

• Mobile Phones in Mass Organizing: A MobileActive White Paper
• Change.org
• MobileActive
• How Oxfam America is Using Social Media for Good #FindingTheGood
• Organizers’ Collaborative – Information and communication technologies can be powerful tools to promote change. Organizers’ Collaborative believes that such power should be in the hands of the many, not just the few. We believe that affordable, easy-to-use, and accessible technology as well as the knowledge to use it is a basic right. If you think so too, then join us in our quest for a more equitable world.
• The Dynamics of Technology for Social Change: Understanding the Factors that Influence Results: Lessons Learned from the Field
• Cause Wired
• Social Actions (donation tool)
• New Nonprofit Aims at Tech Collaboration, Social Change
• How Can Technology Impact Social Change?
• Jumo
• Sukey – Sukey is a multi-platform news, communications and logistical support system designed to ensure safety for protesters during demonstrations.

I had an interesting conversation with someone in AIDS research work who said that online petitions are out and  coordinated Twitter efforts are in and with measurable results as documented at the World AIDS Conference in Vienna this past summer. Four years ago at WAM! I was told the same thing. The worst form of communication are faxes, followed byonline petitions and email. The greatest impact was through phone calls. However, at this time Twitter wasn’t taken into consideration. For this reason, I believe the potential for social media and mobile technology to be a way to coordinate organizations and campaigns could prove to be really useful. The recent peoples’ uprising in Egypt is one impressive example of this.

Production Calendar

At this juncture, I have a full ten weeks but we’ll drop two weeks out of the calendar — spring break (though I hope to get a lot done) and the week after thesis paper is due before thesis week. By this point, only final touches and adjustments should be necessary. The project is essentially complete.

Things to accomplish before then

• Commit to base functionality
• Wireframes
• Design
• Implementation / User Testing
• Second Iteration / User Testing