Welcome to the Shuru design site! The following pages, and this blog, are designed to show anyone the details and big ideas behind Shuru. Once you have seen enough, get in touch and tell us how you would like to help. We are hoping for a launch date of July 1st, 2007 – so get reading!

Tool. Shuru is three things: a tool, a community, and a starting place. It is a tool for interested people to leverage the viral potential of the internet and mobile phones to spread a social message. Then, using the same technologies, the tool empowers these ‘message readers’ by allowing them to take real world ‘actions’ that the message suggests. This meticulously designed tool will unleash the viral potential of communications technologies, and will be freely available to all – anyone can make a message, suggest action, and tip the first domino. Then, if people are convinced, thousands or even millions of people can easily join in.

Community. As more and more people take action on individual messages, or causes, a social network of action takers and cause creators will form. This will be a broad scale network, with automatic membership resulting from use of the tools above. Individual action history will be tracked, and publicly displayed, for each user – around this core community feature, groups will form. These groups might allowing people to make connections and collaborate on future social action, or they might simply let a casual user brag about her interests and impact on the world.

Starting place. If the design of both the tool and community is correct, Shuru will ride (and help create!) the next wave of an evolution in democracy. By creating an intelligent way to debate and make choices about the complex realities of our connected world, and then coordinating the actions of millions of people at the same time, Shuru is a starting place for a truly participatory democracy: one where a la carte political participation becomes the norm, and existing political structures better serve the needs of all people. The disproportionate power of special interest lobbies threatens western democracy. Shuru will give individuals the power to build a groundswell support for any worthy issue – in effect, becoming the people’s lobbyist.

Let’s zoom in. Think of the email pleas you have undoubtedly received requesting help in saving the life of child cancer patient, or to organize a boycott of some product or company – they don’t work, or they are hoaxes. Take away the hoaxes and spam, keep the millions of readers, add a web community, add outcome and reputation tracking, multiply the reach by a factor of 10, and you have Shuru. By using a reputation system and smart filtering to eliminate spam, and a central page for each cause that tracks outcome and success (think: ‘The Arctic Wildlife Refuge is saved! Thanks! and you can stop forwarding!), as well as providing the ability to take action immediately, easily, and directly – Shuru is can coordinate the actions of millions.

But it doesn’t stop there; the Shuru design encourages civic and issue education. And careful consideration of emotional feedback will ensure that people – especially young people – keep coming back for 10, then 20 causes. Imagine the excitement of a 17 year old member receiving an update email two weeks after first signing up and forwarding the cause to 10 friends, the message read: ‘you directly caused 10,000 people to sign up, and $25,000 to be donated. Thank you’. Think of the emotional rush! It will will keep users coming back; both to participate in, and create new Shuru causes. We want, ‘I changed the world today’ to become a normal thing to hear in casual conversation. Our mission is complete when 10,000 user generated causes change the face of democracy and politics as we know it. Are you ready? We need your help! It’s your world. Start something with Shuru.

Where do you want to go now?

Learn more about the business model

Learn more about the big ideas

Learn the details of Shuru’s technology and design

See an example of how Shuru works

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

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) don’t work well (from a viral replication POV), and b) can’t reach a critical mass that has a truly massive impact. The best practices of viral web marketing have NOT been applied to these tools, especially the open source ones – those were designed by techies for techies. I am going to create a revolution for 13 – 16 year girls (example), where they can create a campaign, and tip the first of 10 million dominos, all without any technical skills. The emotional feedback from this (you just got 10,000 people to do something!) will spawn 1000 new campaigns. Viral x viral. Neat.

<snip!>

Regards,

Simon

Hi Simon,

I admire your enthusiasm, and wish you luck on this project. Given how far along you are, I suspect that you’ve done your homework and are aware of the plethora of advocacy systems that are on the market, and of the projects that have come before Shuru that aim to do the many of same things, e.g., e-mail/fax campaigns, tell-a-friend, phone bank, media mentor, social network, etc. And, as you probably know, many of them are open-source software and have significant developer energy behind them.

So, needless to say and given my experience with viral activism—e.g., Billionares for Bush, Greenpeace, Council for Canadians, Marry an American, etc.—I’ve got my online tools pretty much covered for now.

Many thanks for you note and, again, good luck. Please keep me updated on your progress.

Best,

Phillip.

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:

• Name – a short, and easy to understand name for the campaign.

• Description – a longer description of the issue, including reasons to support or participate.

• Resources – links to educational materials that allow those who are interested.

• Next goal – a ‘tactical objective’ which is easy to understand, and can be achieved directly – i.e. pressure an elected representative to vote for a piece of legislation, or force a company to change hiring practices.

• Actions – are explicitly linked to the ‘next goal’ and should contribute directly to achieving the goal. The only mandatory action is the ‘forward to friends’ [is this a good name??] action, which provides the ability for all causes to replicate virally. Actions are discussed in more detail here.

 In addition to these 5 ‘author defined’ areas, the cause page will display 3 system generated sections:

•  Feedback and conversation – an area for vibrant discussion of the cause, including dissenting views and debate. Some of this content is automatically generated from the ‘plea’ that some users have written to introduce their viral emails and text messages to friends. A breif summary of the larger ‘cause conversation’ will be shown to allow quick review. Summary filtering will be determined by reputation points, allowing the most respected and influential, and coherent users to be seen first.

• Participation statistics – an automated measure of the success of the cause; described in % of people who have taken action, and in absolute numbers who have taken action. The higher the percentage, the more universal the appeal for the cause.

• Social network features – intelligent display of people close to you in both social network distance and geographic measures – i.e., cause participants who are friends of friends, or who live in the same neighborhood, will be displayed to address concerns of social proof.

These 8 sections are the only content listed on the cause display page, and must be designed to be easy to quickly review, sticking to the 3 minute goal. This page, and the sms/email notifications, represent the viral kernel. If they are designed correctly, the messages will propagate to millions.

Questions?

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 between Peretti and Nike was forwarded to a few friends and resulted in a global email distribution that may have reached as many as 15 million people

This is an excerpt from an early Shuru academic argument. The questions below must be expanded on to allow for inclusion into marketing materials, communication pieces, and growth models

• How many internet and mobile phone users are there?
  
• How many of these people live in liberal democracies?
  
• Does the nature of the use in each country – i.e. the level of social integration – mean allow meaningful political discussion and coordination to occur?
  

If anyone has suggestions on this, please let me know through a comment or by email.

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. [Without undermining the integrity of your concept, when talking to people, it might help to liken Shuru to something else that is already a household name like “myspace” with a social conscience or whatever… It offers a frame of reference which makes it more accessible and understandable.]  

How will it do this? [Think in terms of the input(s) and outputs]. Include a bit about the process but don’t describe it in terms of site forms/templates/fields. A user will [initiate] a cause, [formulate] an argument, [compile] relevant educational materials, [identify] a tactical objective, [outline] a series of critical actions and [start] something by distributing a call to action mobilizing members of their personal and social networks to effect change.     

Who is it for? Target audience(s)? Individual citizens….  I think it may be effective to break this down. Every virus starts somewhere right? Who will be the initiators or your primary customers (the cause authors)? Primarily, Y Generation (the folks on MSN, myspace, friendster, etc…) & potentially the tweenies or “S” Generation (labeled the “Spoiled” Generation = very “me” focused right now but in a year or so they will be young teens and may care about more than pimples and hiphuggers).  

Why is it necessary? What is the rationale behind creating Shuru? If a need doesn’t currently exist, you must be able to explain why you feel a need should be created.  

What is the projected impact? Change the world through individual action…. Okay so show me a diagram maybe? 20×20 x 20×20 x 20…..and 15 million people later…  

Why will it work? I guess this is where you can talk about the BROADER “power of network coordination” and “low cost info distribution”. You could also introduce the ”reputation” component and pay-out (“feel good” feedback, points, bragging rights, etc…) and the Darwinian process of evaluation to bring forth the most effective “cases” and actions for a cause.  

Also, Money! Get some…to cover start-up and first 3 months of operation! [Not everyone projects and prepares for expenses this far in advance but you should b/c I’m telling you to and I’m doing that b/c it would really suck if you or someone who worked for you couldn’t afford to survive as a result of poor planning or the advent of a crappy reality]. You will need to develop a communications piece directed at funders and where appropriate, make it “fit” into a funding stream. That is where those “buzz word categories” like youth engagement come in handy.