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Online International Declaration of Human Rights: Seeking 1 Billion Signatures!Tuesday, May 6. 2008 I just had the pleasure of hearing Mary Robinson, the first woman president of Ireland (1990-1997), speak tonight at the InterAction Forum, which is going on this week here in Washington, D.C. InterAction is a large coalition of U.S.-based non-governmental organizations working in international development and humanitarian assistance, and they've been a client for serveral years. Ms. Robinson is part of an elite group called 'The Elders' -- a group of 12 distinguished world leaders who 'work to support courage where there is fear, foster agreement where there is conflict, and inspire hope where there is despair' (Nelson Mandela). The group includes Kofi Annan, Desmond Tutu, and Jimmy Carter. At the end of her talk, Ms. Robinson promoted a modest web site with a huge cause: They are seeking 1 billion signatures on a Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Why not aim big? 1/6 of the world's population. I've never heard of such an audacious goal--but I love it. I'll certainly be watching to see how they progress. It would be fantastic if they would add some kind of tracking chart to show which countries show the most support. Sign on and help them spread the word!
Return from JerusalemMonday, May 5. 2008 I've just returned from a short trip to Jerusalem where I had the honor of participating in some meetings with health officials from both the Palestinian and Israeli governments and from the United States. I was able to get in a few hours of touring as well, and my head is still spinning from all of the impressions during the 4-day adventure. I hope to post some more concrete online community-related ideas later, but wanted to share this photo from the Mount of Olives lookout as we drove around the outskirts of the old city walls. Quick impressions: I really had no idea what to expect as a first-timer to Israel. It certainly seemed a lot safer than I would have thought. Thanks to media and other warnings, I was skeptical of how safe I really would be. But security at the airport and on the borders is exceptional--I have heard they are often used as models for top-level airport security and believe it after passing through 3 checkpoints on my way out. During my brief trip in the old city I passed by people from many religions and nationalities. I met Muslims running the market; Christian Americans; and nuns from all over the world; American Jews and Israeli Hassidic Jews; Polish Catholic pilgrims; Russian Orthodox visitors; Palestinian merchants and shoppers, some whom I learned cross the border daily to sell fine art and jewelry; and local Israelis with a wide array of backgrounds. To the naive observer it seems that everyone goes about life in a very peaceful way, which (unfortunately) surprised me. We were fortunate to have the opportunity to listen to the Israeli Minister of Health speak to our small group, and he was incredibly warm and charismatic. Most Palestinians are able to visit Israel for only one day at a time. This means it is very difficult for people to receive longer-term medical treatments such as chemotherapy in Israel, or even to visit family who happen to live on the other side of the border. I learned that there are many dedicated people from both sides who work tirelessly to obtain legal passes for people in dire need of medical or other kinds of assistance. Internet-wise, Israelis are very well connected and use tools we use every day. No surprises here. I'll share some other thoughts on online collaboration in another post!
Social Networking in the Woods? New ConserveOnline launches.Monday, May 5. 2008
Putting Audiences -- Not just Facebook -- FirstThursday, May 1. 2008 Next week, we're hosting a usability seminar at the National Press Club titled "Putting Audiences First, Again and Again." Registration has been steady, but it's at half the clip of our previous session "Social Sites for Social Good."This is a shame, because this session's topic is equally important. Certainly Facebook, MySpace, digg.com and all of the other new social sites possess huge potential to build prominence, recruit supporters, and drive traffic. Orgs need to be actively incorporating social approaches into their online strategy -- as Tim has pointed out previously. But it can't be at the expense of fundamentals. Usability gets to the essence of why some sites succeed more than others. It's what separates the iPod from the Zune. Those of us who build web sites spend a lot of time hypothesizing about how our visitors experience our sites. Rarely do we actually sit back and watch them in action. For this reason, next week we're dedicating a significant portion of our session to useful examples of straightforward usability testing. Many of us know we should be testing our designs and sites, but we think its too complicated, too expensive, or too time-consuming. Or we think we can't convince the boss that it's worthwhile. Next week, our presenters are going put these myths to rest. Speakers from FDA, Voice of America, senate.gov, and the Environmental Defense Fund will explain how they approached usability testing. They'll explain its benefits, and how the results satisfied their visitors, and propelled their mission. So while social media help connect people with your organization and bring them to your site, good user experience is what keeps them coming back. There's still time to register. I hope you'll join us!
Event: Scott McNealy - May 5th - Sharing as a Business Strategy for the Social SectorTuesday, April 29. 2008
Ask Your Lawmaker, Web 2.0 StyleThursday, April 24. 2008 The US election season is in full swing ("are we there yet?" plead the kids...) and one of the more interesting related online political efforts is the "Ask your Lawmaker" service of Capitol News Connection (CNCNews). We worked with CNCNews in 2007 on the strategic planning for the new service, and we also did the information architecture. What AYL provides is an online tool for people to pose questions for specific legislators, for people to vote on the questions of most interest to them, and then for AYL staff to go out and get answers to the most popular questions. Our lead Information Architect for the project, Nam-ho Park has recently blogged about the "Web 2.0" interactivity that AYL provides: What differentiates this site from the Digg's of the online world is that this site has a physical component. The CNCNews reporters actually go out and accost lawmakers in the corridors of the US Capitol, waiting for them in various strategic locations, where they know they will be passing through. It's a pretty innovative service - read more of Nam-ho's review of it.
LiveInterviewsOnline! Connecting New York, New Zealand, and the World - on Climate Change ModelingWednesday, April 23. 2008
Trends in internet and mobile users worldwideThursday, April 17. 2008 Following Joe's post about the Unite for Sight conference, I thought I'd share some statistics from a presentation I gave at our panel discussion on 'Global Health and the Internet' on Saturday. I showed three charts from December 2007 showing the status of worldwide internet users (Courtesy of www.internetworldstats.com): The charts on www.internetworldstats.com shows the total number of internet users worldwide: 1.3 billion. That number has grown by over 1/3 in the past 2 years. So this means that over 1/6th of the world is connected. Africa and the Middle East have much smaller numbers than other regions – but still they total nearly 80 million people: 71% of North Americans are connected. 4% of Africans are connected. And the percent of growth over the past 7 years has been 920% growth for the Middle East and nearly 900% in Africa. But that’s just the internet—mobile phone usage is huge in Africa and does help close this gap in connectivity significantly. Dr. Joel Selanikio of DataDyne.org provided us with some very interesting statistics on mobile phones: Approximately 82 million Africans had cell phones by 2004, and the average annual subscriber growth for Africa was 58%. (ITU 2006 Report) Mobile devices are a very relevant way to reach a lot of individuals who do not have computer access...and may not in the foreseeable future. Joel encouraged our audience to think creatively about what can be done with these mini computers that so many--even the very poor--are managing to acquire. His group is working in this area, and it is indeed something we must remember as we continue to need innovative, practical ways to include developing country audiences in our online communities, our dialogues, and our global development work. He argues that the technology is there--we just need to generate good ideas. To put it into context, look at the capacity of the very first computers released in the 1980s, vs. today's common mobile devices: Then: IBM PC (1981-1987): 4.8Mhz, 640K RAM Apple Macintosh (1984): 8Mhz, 128K RAM [Aside: My dad bought us the first Apple Macintosh in the 1980s and I remember sitting at the desk waiting for the floppy disk to churn and churn while it saved my very fancy papers--which was all it ever got used for. Talk about expensive word processing.] Now: Palm Treo 650 (2004-Present): 312MHz, 32M RAM Apple iPhone (2007-Present): 620MHz, 8 G RAM I heard recently that today's cell phones have more technical sophistication than the first space ship we sent to the moon. When we look at these numbers, Joel is right. The capacity has grown astronomically. There surely have to be creative, and perhaps life-saving widgets/tools/uses that can be devised so that the divides between us--north and south, rich and poor, educators and those who need to learn more, health care providers and patients--can slowly diminish. It's an exciting time to think about what all of this connectivity means in the global health context. Feel free to share thoughts or links!
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