shuru.org

This page is a copy of my reply to Philip Smith (communitybandwidth.ca)

Thanks Phillip!

While ‘tool’ is apt for explaining the idea to people who are not familiar with the other advocacy systems, it’s the wrong word to use with you – I am going to create a self reinforcing community of social action, the birth of a deliberative democracy, and a primary driver for political and social involvement of anyone under 25. Are you familiar with the story of text messages bringing down the government in 72 hours in the Philippines? I want that level of ease and efficiency, and more.

All that big stuff aside, the advocacy systems that exist today: a) ...

Actions are the most important part of the social cause. They guide people to simple things they can do to help the cause.

Cause actions that relate to replication are mandatory. These include actions to ‘forward to friends’ via email or mobile phone text message. As a part of this ‘forwarding’ the user must enter some sort of a testimonial that becomes the intro to each email forwarded. Tracking of points encourages high quality content in this area. Also, by taking any form of action, the user is, in effect, also signing her name to the cause, creating an evolving petition.

Technology:

1. Database Questions
2. Coding Framework
3. Payment mediation
4. ‘Grey’ options for replication
5. Generational metrics and stats
6. Integration and tracking of actions

Design

1. User profile page
2. Cause landing page
3. Groups
4. Communication cycle strategy
5. Navigation
6. Email notice
7. Flash badge
8. Cause creation wizard

The core feature of Shuru is the cause or campaign. Driven to the site by either an email or a text message, prospective activists are able to quickly, in under 3 minutes, understand, evaluate, and replicate the cause.

To allow understanding and evaluation of the cause, the cause author(s) must define several key areas:

There are 478,042,355 people with daily access to the internet in the United States, Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, South Korea, Canada, Australia, Taiwan, Netherlands, and Sweden. The rest of the world accounts for an additional 540,015,034 people. The ‘Internet is implicated in the new global activism far beyond reducing the costs of communication, or transcending the geographical and temporal barriers found in other communication media’ (Bennett 2003). A well designed viral social campaign could reach all 1.02 billion internet users in less than 18 steps – all starting from just one individual. The success of email chain letters is evidence merely of the potential for more advanced viral messages. Evidenced by Peretti’s (2003) accidental experiment in which email communication …

Steps and sound bytes... “It’s your world – start something.”

The headings you have on your blog are good but let’s streamline and get to the guts of this. If the headings are set in stone then you can figure out how to organize what follows into them.  

I borrowed this (or its essence) from your blog b/c it boils it down nicely…   ...one messed up world + the power of network coordination + low cost information distribution = Shuru – the most powerful tool of social change that the world has ever known

What is it? A [virtual] tool to create [actual] social change. ...