Echo Ditto

Last week, we talked about thinking creatively to preempt failure. In this installment of "Sensible Strategy", we examine how failure can be snatched from the jaws of success by being too focused on the ends and not being mindful of the means. I have discovered three simple tests that can help stop bad ideas or broken processes dead in their tracks. This is the second of them.

Test 2 - Synthesize the Approach
Once a decision to take action has been made, place it within a rollout framework, a "getting it done" work plan. Careful thought and attention to how the task is carried out and how this track of work relates to other activities in the broader project can make the difference between victory or defeat, success or failure. Even good ideas can fall apart here if they are not placed within a strategic context and carried out to complement the work that the rest of the organization is doing.

Case Study: Google Buzz

One of the most spectacular cases of recent epic failure is the much-maligned launch of Google Buzz. Back in February, Google acknowledged the magnitude of its catastrophe, but despite the fact that it was a late arrival to the social networking scene, the idea of Buzz (even though many couldn't quite figure it out) was actually a good one. Like the search innovator's other tech creation, Google Wave, Buzz featured some interesting twists on a familiar formula. But because Google had not considered how the rollout of Buzz might impact how people use its Gmail and Google Talk services, a significant communication (and later, technical) disconnect emerged. And so, no one used Buzz: pretty much everyone turned it off because they considered it noise and opted out because there wasn't anything revolutionary or game-changing about it. It's become little more than a tinkering toy these days, and like Wave - which only ever just showed promise, never caught on, and became failed and cancelled - Buzz has become sort of an expendable working laboratory for social networking features that might be used in a future Google Social Network.

Failure is nothing new for cutting-edge companies like Google and Apple, and what keeps them successful is their willingness to learn from mistakes and continue innovating. A misunderstanding of Google's own demographic derailed the launch of Buzz and even the government of Canada weighed in with opinions about the subsequent privacy issues. By rolling out a good idea that was not yet ready to see the light of day because it needed more time to cook, Google's shortcomings with Buzz were glaringly apparent when compared side-by-side with its own successful Gmail and Talk. By comparison, both Gmail and Talk were launched incrementally to staged audiences with cautious perspective on how these tools would mesh with the rest of the Google platform. Careful consideration of how Buzz might fit in with the suite of products and services Google offered would have revealed early on in development that the tool needed much more thought into how it could integrate and perform.

One of my earliest memories is standing on a street corner in the Mission district of San Francisco with my mom -- she’s handing out fliers and talking to passersby about the (first) Iraq War. Activism and working for social justice is in my blood. I’m filled with pride every time we launch a website or finish a project because I know how important our clients’ work is in bettering the world.

A few weeks back, we launched the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s new website. NAACP LDF is the nation’s oldest civil rights law firm. LDF works in the highest levels of our justice system and congress to protect our most basic rights. LDF came to EchoDitto in early March in desperate need of a site overhaul – their old site was difficult to manage, full of old content and didn’t reflect the quality of their work.

This new website is a product of over 5 months of planning, development, and testing by a team of over a dozen people. I was lucky enough to be the project manager and see it go from the initial idea to wireframes to a live website!

Some highlights:

• Cool search tool for cases and issues LDF works on: http://naacpldf.org/program-search & publications http://naacpldf.org/publication-search
• Dynamic home page with a list of news updates and related issues/cases.
• Dynamic program area landing pages. For example, http://naacpldf.org/category/criminal-justice
• Case spotlights on various pages like: http://naacpldf.org/ways-give

I’d like to thank Actual Size Creative who did a superb job on the design and all the great folks at LDF including Mel and Charles who never thought in a million years they would learn what a nodequeue was.

Pop quiz: What do the resurrection of long-extinct species of dinosaurs and iPhone app development have in common?

Answer:

“[They] were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” - Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jurassic Park, 1993)

Okay, so a poorly conceived iPhone application won't (necessarily) go on a murderous rampage slaughtering extras and supporting actors, but like the failed theme park, it will end with you flushing large amounts of money down the proverbial toilet.

Full disclosure: I am a registered Apple iPhone developer. I've loved both iPhones I've owned and I plan to buy another.

That said, I’m also a pragmatist who believes in using the right tool for the job, even if it’s not the bandwagon tool of the minute.

I'm not suggesting that there should be no app store, or that native iPhone apps are evil. However, it's important to realize that not all mobile applications would be best served as a native iPhone apps.

Problem #1: Barriers to entry and discovery
With the explosion in popularity of the iPhone and App Store, and the ubiquitous “there's an app for that” slogan, the past year has seen a veritable flood of new apps hit the market. Some apps are genuinely fun (Carcassonne), useful (AroundMe), or make clever use of the iPhone’s unique hardware (Zen Bound). However, there is a darker side which includes significant growth in the AppSpam/AppScam industries (such as the $199.99 Allergies Relieft app).

The App Store has a relatively high barrier to entry as it is. To even develop an app, at minimum you have to spend $99/yr on a developer's license, months of design, programming, and testing, and jump through hoops at every stage (register all testing devices, generate and install provisioning profiles, etc).

Once you have an app finished, then comes the nerve-wracking app store approval process where your app content and code are reviewed and can be rejected for any number of reasons including being too clever or for other, more obscure reasons.

After all of that, if your app made it into the App Store, it will most likely be swept away in the currents of the aforementioned app flood. The exceptional apps float to the surface for a brief gasp of air on the “Top” or “Featured” lists, while the rest quickly lose sight of the sun and wallow away in dark obscurity.

Additionally, the App Store does not really help that much in getting your app noticed. No matter what, you will still have to market your app to some extent.

Problem #2: iPhone apps are expensive to create
...and all of the available revenue streams (purchase price, in-app purchase, and in-app ads) are driven by popularity. If no one is downloading your app or running your app, you won't make any money on it.

Additionally, the bar has been set pretty high. Unless you have a lucky stroke of genius that gives your app some unique twist that causes it to go viral, your app will likely not be touched unless it is polished to within an inch of its life. Polish takes time and talent, two things that significantly increase the development costs of an app.

Finally, there's the app store review process. Rejections can mean anything from a few hours of extra development time to rewriting significant portions of the app to killing the fundamental concept of the app and flushing the development costs with nothing to show.

Solution: Consider all Options

Let’s face it, not every idea is best expressed in a native iPhone application. Every app is different, and every situation is different, so what I provide below are two questions to ask yourself before investing in a native iPhone application:

Why target the iPhone?

Is it the popularity of the platform? Device/service features such as the camera, accelerometer, in-app purchases, or push notifications? Is it worth alienating the other mobile markets (or requiring additional concurrent development for other markets)?

Can the same solution be created using a web-based solution?

If the proposed app does not need any of the native-only features such as the camera or accelerometer, and doesn't need an app-store-purchase revenue stream, a mobile web app may provide a better solution and alleviate several of the barriers to entry (app store rejection, developer license, objective-c), and additionally mobile web apps can easily support multiple mobile platforms (droid, blackberry, etc) with little-to-no additional work required. With the increasing support of html5, the gap between that which can be done in a web app and that which requires a native app to do is rapidly closing.

Skeptical? Just have a look at the new html5 YouTube or take it for a spin yourself at m.youtube.com on your iPhone.

Now, clearly there are some apps that would do really well as native iPhone apps, and others that can't be done as a mobile web app. However, a significant portion of apps available on the app store can be readily created as a mobile web app and continue to be just as effective.

Solution, but only half a glass

Want the flexibility and portability of web apps, but be able to tap into the hardware and services only a native app can get? Consider a hybrid app.

Hybrid apps are apps written to run a web app inside of a native app wrapper. It will still require a talented developer and app store approval, but it's possible to reuse much of the app and write similar wrappers for other devices (droid, blackberry, etc).

All of the power, much of the flexibility, and much less of the risk. I expect the hybrid app to only grow in popularity.

Update: Related Article
Craig Hockenberry posted an excellent article on Apps vs. the Web over at A List Apart, in which he more fully explores the benefits and tradeoffs of going native.

Failure is a pretty scary proposition, especially in the context of project management. And yet, it doesn't have to be this all-consuming nightmare; it is a challenge that should be confronted head-on. According to famed political economist Douglass C. North, institutions lose their ability to lead strategically because they stop thinking creatively and instead become tied down to process, often because they are paralyzed by the fear of failure. North also observes that the most successful organizations look at challenges as opportunities to thrive. Over the past few weeks, I've come across a number of examples of projects failing needlessly that I think are helpful to consider in the context of a strategic "gut-check", a series of three simple tests that can help stop bad ideas dead in their tracks.

"Sensible Strategy" is a blog series that explores these three simple tests and showcases real world, high profile case studies of spectacular yet entirely avoidable failure.

Test 1 - Evaluate the Purpose, Objectives, and Goals.
Every project needs to start out with a clear vision of its intended end-state and then all actions, including policies and processes that exist in the project, should be put to a basic standard: does it fit? It's more than simple compatibility; it's the "Why am I doing this?" of any project, from building a website or sitting down to write a cookbook. If the task at hand isn't directly involved in the furtherance of an objective or goal, then, it's probably out of scope and irrelevant or worse, detrimental.

Case Study: Real ID Forum Fiasco

The universes of computer gaming and project management unexpectedly collided earlier last month when the world's most popular online game, World of Warcraft, enacted (and revoked three days later) a policy of requiring that customers' real names be publicly displayed when they post to their community forums. This policy was promulgated under the auspices of Real ID, a program intended to link in-game accounts with out-of-game social tools, like Facebook and Twitter. Don't see the connection? You're not alone: users didn't see the connection either and they posted over 50,000 replies to a forum thread protesting the change, citing it as arbitrary censorship at best and an invasion of privacy at worst. It quickly got the attention of the international news media: it was a featured leader on MSNBC.com's Tech category, was being reported by the BBC News Service, and was even being discussed on the morning news. After days of silence and inaction, Blizzard's CEO Mike Morhaime had to deliver a humiliating public reversal which cost the company precious prestige.

The Real ID Forum Fiasco is an example of a bad idea that tried to solve one problem (moderating forums by mass-removing disruptive users) by linking it with another challenge (adding value to users by allowing them to link their game accounts with trusted social networks). Often times, there are synergies between different programs and using policies to cross-pollenate the administration of two or more projects can be effective. This was definitely not the case because there were no shared goals or objectives between these two, and instead, by trying to advance one set of objectives by leveraging tools and resources designed for a completely different set, Blizzard ended up undermining both efforts and caused tremendous waste, needless drama, and a costly loss of confidence.

The problem with most sorts of planning and organization, is that if they're not ingrained into you, at the first hint of a crisis, it all goes out the window. This is particularly true about the use of technology. As the technologist for disaster-driven nonprofits, I found that technology, for many nonprofits, is much like the umbrella, most needed when it rains suddenly, but somehow always left at home.

What do I mean by disaster response? I am not referring to the colloquial use of the phrase. I mean not only the direct application of aid, but handling media and political strategy around campaigns.

Project management has improved dramatically throughout the years, aided by online technologies that can create timelines linked to to-do lists, wikis, forums, all motored by automatic email subscriptions and collaborative documenting. Why is it that nonprofits aren't using these technologies for coordinated response to disasters?

During a disaster, people are at their worst. Many disaster-responders have been through crises in their lives, and disasters can trigger either mild or severe PTSD. This can make the always difficult work of coalition-building, particularly around a unified platform, even more difficult than in peaceful times. The tendency can be towards a splintering of will and purpose, with replication of effort and disunity of message. It is precisely at this time that strategy and calm unity of purpose could serve as Archimedes' lever for the world.

Not only is it difficult to collaborate, but those without an aptitude for technology can find their difficulties magnified. An online project management tool may seem like an unnecessary "bureaucracy" for interaction, a hindrance rather than a help.

But this is not the end of the online project management tool for disaster response. No, it is not. I believe that technologies can moderate interactions, create action out of discussion, make interactions transparent and centralized, and clearly designate responsibility along well-planned timelines. So nonprofits, in not taking advantage of these technologies, are scratching a living from the dirt outside a well-apportioned Garden of Eden.

What will it take to expect the unexpected, to plan for disasters that have not struck? I advocate for the pre-emptive use of technologies: coalitions would increase their potential for collaboration and concerted response to crises if they would, in peace-time, agree upon and begin to use a set of online tools.

I believe that something as simple as Google Docs, or online spreadsheets, can be effective as an organizing tool. Sometimes the simpler the tool, the more likely groups will be to use them. A solution like collaborative Google Docs can be multi-purposed and can offer a low barrier of entry. Google Wave might have some potential.

Basecamp is a (for limited accounts) free service with full-on project management offerings. Basecamp is used by professionals and will not let you down. However, Basecamp is not open source and therefore cannot be altered or customized except through Basecamp itself. Congenial folks, I'm sure.

However, if you are planning a long-term strategy for project management and have a clear idea of your needs and desires, that is, you want a platform customized to your elaborate needs, you can use Open Atrium, a Drupal distribution put out by the good folks at Development Seed. Open Atrium, however, is a full-on open-source content management system that has, built on top of it, a set of tools that can be used in much the same way as Basecamp, but can be customized as heavily as needed by a seasoned developer. At EchoDitto, we also offer Open Atrium installations and customization.

The key is to agree on a platform and to dig in, the sooner the better. Remember, whatever you do poorly in peacetime, you will do even worse in times of crisis.

Thanks to Jessica Duda for many of the ideas here.

If your facebook and twitter feed is anything like mine, you've run across "RSAnimate" videos more than once over the past few months.

Taken from lectures given at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (let's stick with "RSA" for short!), our ears hear the standard lecture that we would get if we were in the room with the presenter, but our eyes are afforded a wonderful gift: sequential and overlapping illustrations of the topic at hand, synced up with the speech.

Part comic strip and part animation, in a way it's the anti-Powerpoint. Whereas bullet points and random clipart more often serve to distract the listener from the very words the presenter is speaking, the RSAnimate videos illustrate and drive home every sentence and phrase (and sometimes every word) that's said.

If I had to trace a lineage to videos that came before this series, I'd point to Anne Leonard's excellent Story of Stuff. While it's an animation in a much more traditional sense, the basic form & function is the same: make otherwise complex or lengthily-described ideas understandable and meaningful for a large audience, using an adorable and accessible cartoon/stick figure/whiteboard aesthetic.

While this style of video is certainly more time-consuming than plugging your camcorder into iMovie and clicking export, for groups and organizations with the resources to do something like this, soon it will be expected (watch out, TED!).

Here is RSA's latest video, a lecture by theorist and critic Slavoj Zizek on the pitfalls of the "ethical consumerism" trend:

Last night, Nicco and I attended the New Leaders Council's 40 Under 40 Leadership Award Ceremony here in Boston.

The New Leaders Council (NLC) is dedicated to fostering (in their words) a “new generation of progressive political entrepreneurs” -- young leaders willing to work outside traditional power structures, to think creatively and to act boldly in order to rebuild the institutions that make up our civic and political community.

The purpose of the 40 Under 40 Award was to spotlight a few of those young leaders. The award's importance derives from its scale -- the event was one in a series of similar events held all across the country -- in San Francisco, San Diego, Lexington, KY, New Orleans, Atlanta, Washington, New York -- all dedicated to celebrating young progressive "political entrepreneurs" who are leading important progressive projects.

You can see a full list of the 40 winners from around the country here: http://www.newleaderscouncil.org/40under40/winners/2010

Of course, this mission is very close EchoDitto's heart. This year, in fact, the NLC New Media Award was renamed the "NLC EchoDitto New Media Award" in honor of EchoDitto's support for the organization and its work, and our shared belief in the power of technology to make the world a better place.

The NLC EchoDitto New Media Award was given this year to Joshua Levy, the online campaign manager for Free Press, a national media reform nonprofit. Josh is not only a leading voice on media reform issues, having worked at Free Press, techPresident, Personal Democracy Forum and Change.org -- he’s also a genuinely great guy. (I know because I had dinner with him.)

The other award winner at the Boston ceremony was Victoria Chapman, founder of Boxxout, an organization dedicated to improving educational and extracurricular opportunities for low-income children in urban settings.

All in all -- after many rounds of applause, introductions, and appetizers, and a few poems recited from memory by Nicco -- the night was a very good one.

As a young progressive -- one who would still qualify for an award for “Aspiring Progressive Leaders Who Can’t Legally Drink” -- the night was inspiring, heartwarming, even educational. To have so many people there who care so deeply about the work they do -- who really do believe in the dictum (brought up last night) that "those to whom much is given, much is required" -- helps a kid like me understand a bit more about my beliefs, and what I want to do with my time.

The purpose of the 40 Under 40 Award, the NLC and the night, one imagines, is more profound than the simple recognition of others: it's an opportunity to recognize ourselves. Our own capacities. Our own responsibilities. Our own membership in a movement larger than any one project or cause or evening.

The purpose of a network of progressives is to underscore the timely and yet utterly timeless fact that the next generation of progressive political entrepreneurs is always us. We are them.

And what could be a more important message than that? Indeed, what could be more progressive than that?

Progressivism, after all, is about more than just “getting politicians into office.” It’s that, of course -- but it’s more than that. Progressivism is a disposition, a way of thinking about our everyday relationship to the world. At it’s best, it’s the belief that ordinary people can come together to rethink, rebuild and improve the communities that we live and work in. Progressivism is defined most simply as the faith in our individual and collective abilities -- each of us, all of us -- to change the world for the better.

That faith was alive and well last night.

In the age of information and technology where people are bombarded with choices and overloaded with visual stimulation, it's very important to to consider the age old theory- less is more when designing and planning your homepage. Many studies have been done to test the theory and one of my favorites is by psychologist, Sheena Iyengar at Colombia:

"The jam study showed when you present 30 flavors of jam at a gourmet food store, you get more interest but less purchasing than when you only show 6 flavors of jam. All of a sudden, it became an issue, or at least a possibility, that adding options could actually decrease the likelihood that people would actually choose any of them." (see the complete interview between Jared Spool & Barry Schwartz for more compelling examples)

As a designer, I find the study useful because I'm always looking for ways to improve user experience and conversion rates. Rather than giving users every option available and creating a high probability that they may give up altogether, we can limit the choices presented and make it simpler for them to accomplish their goal.

Compare the experience you have with the home pages of one.org vs. usgbc.org: Which one is easier for you to decide your next interaction with the site? USGBC has so many links I'm not even sure where to click to find the "About" page. One.org's site design is easier to digest because there is a clear visual hierarchy of information. Important campaigns appear in a simple slider front and center, and in the three columns below: a form to fill out to get involved, an about section and the top three blog posts. However on USGBC there are 12 blog posts, 18 million links/navigation items and different programs and conventions they created special designs for that are placed throughout the site like msnbc.com's advertisements.

Bottom Line.

• Don't have your users reaching for the easy button.
• Edit your content and focus on what is really important. If everything is elevated to high importance than nothing is important.
• The success of your site design is directly effected by the content on your site.
• If you need to have a news heavy homepage, learn from industry leaders that do a great job with their homepages. (Guardian, USA Today)

Photo by Flickr user prometheusradio

Two weekends ago I was lucky enough to get to Detroit for the 2010 U.S. Social Forum. The USSF is a gathering place for more than ten thousand activists & organizers from all over the country to meet and learn from from each other - and attempt to chart a course forward for the many U.S. social movements represented there.

The USSF started as a result of the first World Social Forum in 2001, which was itself set up to be a counter-balance to the elite-centric World Economic Forum. 2010 was USSF's second incarnation (the first was in 2007 in Detroit).

Having been to both U.S. Social Forums, there are quite a few differences, though all pointing in a positive direction. Here are three:

• This USSF was much more diverse. Even though minority groups were well-represented in 2007, I noticed many more people of color and differently-abled people in attendance this time. It was also geographically diverse: I met folks from every region and, it seems, just about every state in the Union.

• The facilities were much better arranged and planned. One of the drawbacks to the 2007 Social Forum was that due to lack of space, many workshops had to be held in far-flung buildings, sometimes more than a mile away from the main conference center. Add to that searing heat and humidity as only Atlanta in late June can offer, and you end up with a lot of great workshops that are very poorly attended. This time, almost all the workshops were held in either the main convention hall or one of the buildings right next door.

• The third difference I'd like to highlight is the focus of this blog post: this was a much better-designed conference.

By better-designed, I mean that just about every printed material I saw there clearly bore the mark of a designer's touch: from the official conference packet, to the glossy postcards and fliers every other person tried to hand me, to the posters and swag on the myriad of organization tables. This is a marked improvement from USSF 2007, where there were far more Microsoft Word-created fliers than I had energy to cringe at.

I talked to folks who were tabling, and many of them told me that over the past year or two they had for the first time dedicated a part of their budget to design work, and they had connected with volunteers who had design skills. This is a phenomenal development.

One of the prerequisites of growing social movements is accessibility to new and prospective participants. A key component of that is visual effectiveness. If our outreach materials look haphazard and poorly made, it costs us in very real terms - terms that are all too-often overlooked when planning a campaign or action.

The left has brilliant ideas, inspiring visions of a better world, and increasingly uses effective and compelling rhetoric to convey them to everyone else. For those groups who do everything else right, our task becomes finding an opening in today's advertising-soaked mental landscape to actually reach people. In those cases, "what about design?" is a make or break question.

I'm happy to report that if the U.S. Social Forum is any indication, the left is answering that question very well.

Of course, the Justseeds Artist's Cooperative was there, with the best designed posters of all.

The time has come, I'm buying an iPad. I am writing to tell the world of my transition in thought, from Luddite to Early Adopter.

I am perhaps the last person who owns a dumbphone. Yes, I have reveled in my un-wired-ness. I was the last person I know to get a cellular phone. In college, I developed for a Java class on a computer without internet. I have not owned a TV since I threw mine over the balcony in a symbolic (drunken) ritual at age nineteen. (We had to throw it off several times until we were satisfied.)

I am a futurist of the apocalyptic variety. I am convinced that someday the internet will become sentient and arise like some undead yet incredibly sophisticated thing to impose a peculiarly rational and terrible order upon the world. Of course I am kidding. Or am I?

Technologies become a part of the working mind and we adapt with immediate alacrity. But there is a dark side to the mind's adaptation. We do not simply gain, that which we leave behind, we lose. It is not so much that we are improved so much as changed. I am suspicious of new technologies, and have preferred to let the beta testers work out the bugs on their own gray matter.

I am also skeptical of consumer products, as they are generally infused with the blood of workers. That is, they are created in ways that are problematic to both the environment and to human rights. I strive to live simply as a matter of faith and social justice.

If the internet is to arise as an unkillable automaton, I want to be there on the front lines working to chainsaw it to death. It is those on the cutting-edge that shape the debate and will be first responders in case of full-on internet sentience. Here, I am actually kidding, but using internet sentience as a trope for the real perils to humanity that arise from our love affar with the Machine.

I have also learned, that as a programmer and activist, I will be most effective working for social change if I am able to bring to my causes cutting-edge thought based upon the use of innovative technology. If you read further down in the article I linked to earlier, activists are using Facebook, youTube and other technologies to hold the vendors of coltan accountable.

You decide, is it moral to buy smartphones when our demand fuels this conflict? I will not answer the question for you, but I will say that workers in most industries do not actually call for a boycott until they are entering into union negotiations or some other bargaining in which the boycott can be used as a trading chip, like in the very successful Coalition of Imokalee Worker's campaigns. If you boycott when there is no boycott called, you may be depriving those workers of their jobs and livings. But it is important to also respect the boycotts called by international unions. And remember, the earth still groans with each of our purchases. So do not decide lightly.

I have found that regardless of what I have tried to do, as a thinker and programmer, my mind is formed to the modern internet. I have traded already. I find myself less able to focus on the long-form media like books, despite my struggles, I find myself distracted by questions and answering those questions on the internet. I often rabbit-trail, despite my best intentions (though I will never abandon my books!). The question becomes how to harness its power, and how to use it more effectively, not how to shut it out and maintain mental virginity.

Smartphones are revolutionizing the way that the human mind works, incorporating the internet's vast store of knowledge so that it is accessible upon the merest stirring of curiosity.

Which is to say, sometimes living simply is not as easy as it once was. To drop out is an enticing spiritual option, as it allows space for meditation, prayer, and reflection, but one must be connected to the struggles for justice across the world if one is to participate.

Microblogging is the next phase of communication in a cultural battleground whose prize is your focus. It is impossible to fully participate in these forms in traditional ways. You have to spend your day going back and forth from life to laptop and back, or you use a less obtrusive device to record your immediate thoughts.

I lament the loss of long-form focus, but that is not sufficient. As a writer, the struggle is now to inject something of substance into a 140 character medium.

Why an iPad not an iPhone? If you examine my dumbphone, you will see that I am not kind to my tiny, pocket-borne electronics. Also, carpal tunnel and big thumbs.

But do I really have an answer? No. But I am making the leap and I'll tell you later. Delivery: July 23rd.

Though I am somewhat of a dropout and contrarian, I am learning what it means to be plugged in. I'll let you know how it goes.

I don't consider myself an early adopter, but this is likely just a result of denial as I upgraded to the iPhone 3gs the week it came out, and purchased an iPad on the first day it was possible to do so. I love gadgets more than my bank account can handle. Though in my defense, I haven't gotten the new iPhone yet. I was considering buying a Kindle right around the time when Steve Jobs announced the iPad, and figured if I was going to get an e-reader, I may as well get one that has a whole bunch of other bells and whistles. I read a lot of reviews about the iPad and participated in a few angry forums arguing with Apple haters (it's a losing battle, let me tell you) but when it comes down to it, everyone who got the device probably got it for different reasons and uses it in different ways. I'll make this quick and easy to read.

Ready?

Why I got the iPad

• It looked cool.
• I wanted to be able to leave my laptop at work whenever possible, but still be connected at home by a device bigger than my iPhone.
• Whenever I travel I have a desire to bring at least 10 books with me. I wanted an e-reader.
• I could afford it at the time.

What I use it for now

• Reading. I use the Kindle App as I've found that most books are significantly cheaper than on iBooks. I've read more on the iPad in the last two months than I did in the last year. I read faster on the iPad, and highlighting specific passages or taking notes is all too easy. The one thing I miss about reading on an e-reader vs a real book: I always enjoyed flipping to the end of a chapter to see how many pages I had left. I can't do that as easily on the iPad.
• Watching TV/movies. If I want to watch something before I go to sleep, or in the airport or on a plane, the portability and lightness of the iPad (vs. having a laptop on your lap) makes it worth it. I wish they had thought to put speakers on either side of it, though. I only ever watch in landscape mode, and it takes some getting used to to hear audio on one side only.
• Docs. Much of my time at EchoDitto is spent using Google Docs and Dropbox. I can edit, save, and email docs using Gdocs and Dropbox all too easily. App of choice here is Quickoffice HD.
• Watching baseball. The MLB.tv app on this thing blows me away. I canceled my cable earlier this year, and the one thing I missed the most was baseball.
• Games. Orbital, Smiles HD, Carcassonne are my top 3.
• I don't use it for email as much as I thought I would, but when I do I enjoy the experience. I wish there was a way to view my inbox on one page, instead of in the dropdown on the side.

I've also recently fallen in love with the Wired App. It's a completely new magazine reading experience, but also totally intuitive, and it can only get better.

What I want to see in the future

• I'd like to see more of a mesh of the Mac OS with iPhone OS. It's actually already a little bit of a combination of the two - those who claimed it was just a giant iPhone, well, they were partially right. But a) what is so bad about having a giant iPhone? and b) there are aspects of the iPad that remind me of using my Mac. But being able to have actual files on my iPad desktop, that then open with the Pages app would be amazing. Some semblance of Finder, folders, better spotlight search, a dashboard, would all be huge additions to the device.
• I want multitasking (who doesn't?). Folders. Dual view for apps, so I can have safari open on one side, and a document open on the other half, and use both at the same time. Texting. I know it's not a phone, but for those of you who have an iPad just imagine if you could text from it. I dream ...
• Built-in video converter. This will probably never happen. But, dearest Apple, not every video that isn't iTunes compatible is stolen. Some, like the ones I have, were made by my brother in his travels, or by me on my flip video. But instead of being able to sync them easily to my iPad I have to spend hours converting using Handbrake.
• UI standards. Not every app has to work/act the same, but I can see that Wired is setting the standards for magazines on larger touch devices like the iPad. It just works so well. There were standards set for apps on the iPhone for the most part, and I'd like to see that happen on the iPad more broadly than it has thus far.
• Fix the glare issue, por favor.
• It'd be nice, though would likely make it heavier, if there was some kind of built in stand. Something you could pop out of the back to prop up the iPad. That would certainly cut down on the number of iPad case purchases, so again, I dream...

I'm curious if others have found it as useful a device as I have. Tell me your favorite apps in the comments, or what you think it's missing, or why you hate Apple so much (okay don't tell me that ... or at least make it constructive).

At a recent training for a nonprofit client, I began my talk on online promotions with that proverbial slide filling the entire frame with logos of online tools. Then I flipped to Edvard Munch’s painting, “The Scream.” Indeed, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by all of these possibilities that seem to change by the day. At the same time, web producers sometimes have to temper their principals who say, “let’s get on [insert latest tool]” when their target audiences don’t use it or they lack the resources for proper maintenance.

In turn, the following questions can help plan your online promotions, whether it’s for content, an event, products or an advocacy campaign. Keep in mind, though, all online promotions must flow from your goals, objectives, audience(s), and key message.

1.Why is the audience going to this site or service?
People generally use the internet to research information, discuss, connect, or purchase goods and services. Some tools provide all of these, but to focus your targeting, consider why the medium first attracts the audience. For example, people can discuss topics and connect on YouTube, but they mainly go there for information suited for video – from entertainment and news to how-to. The following are examples of where people go to satisfy these needs that can be specific or related to your work.

Research

• Search: first step to identify resources
• Blogs: topic-specific, experiential, advocacy
• Megasites: topic specific, such as WebMD
• Email/RSS: newsletters, advocacy campaign updates via subscription
• Social News: news + updates, such as Twitter or Digg
• Online video: Youtube, Vimeo for short videos

Discuss

• Bulletin boards: quick, in and out to share stories, comment or Q & A
• Listservs: regular interest on a topic for work or personal (support groups, hobbies, interests)
• Social Network Pages: topic specific, experiential, advocacy

Connect (online + offline)

• Social Networks: friends and family on Facebook, music for Myspace
• Trade Associations: networking, professional development, advocacy
• Linkedin: industry-specific discussion forum and networking
• Meetup, Ning: hobbies, interests, advocacy, politics, professional networking
• Partisan politics: Care2.com, Gather.com, Townhall.com

Purchase Goods & Services

• Craigslist: panoply of goods, services and job opportunities
• Care.com: services for parents
• Amazon: consumer and professional products
• EBay: consumer and professional products

2. What type of content fits into this online space?
After identifying where and why your audiences visit these online spaces, assess the nature of the content and context in order to produce for that format effectively. For example, Twitter is used for news and updates requiring short, compelling statements with links. However, some use it to regurgitate content formatted for a different, traditional format. For instance, some TV broadcasters (not all) use Twitter as a digital TV Guide by listing their schedule. Instead, they should post related and interesting quotes to drive tune-in and traffic. Another example is that it’s well known advocacy emails should use a tone as if it's from a friend and include ‘the ask’ in the first paragraph. Yet, some nonprofits still write wonky tomes and bury the ask at the end. With the format needs, research the best practices across platforms, such as metadata for search, embeddable media for blogs and social networks, and so on.

3. What is the level and impact of your presence?
Understand if your presence is central, participatory, or peripheral on the site or in the forum. Doing so directs the editorial, policy, and metrics needs. If you are central to the space, such as with a Facebook page or a feature on your website, you’ll need an editorial strategy from soup to nuts: tone, primary audience, key messages, content types, and publishing schedule. Policies, such as privacy, moderation rules, or response to questions, need to be decided ahead of time. Metaphorically speaking, since it’s your party, the metrics need to be concrete and map to real outcomes to achieve to your objectives, including a feedback loop to report your success or change plans as necessary.

If you are a participant, such as discussing or connecting in a public forum, the editorial considerations can include external messaging, types of information/urls to promote, or how to approach other active participants, known as ‘online influentials.’ The policies should include your disclosure rules, messages to avoid, and other considerations related to “what is essentially community relations,” as my boss Nicco Mele says. Here, it’s easy to crash the party, such as with trying to sell a service or idea on listserv instead of adding to the discussion with relevant comments or useful links. It’s similar for in-person Meetup.com events, say for a support group for parents with sick children. You could go there to find people to join your healthcare advocacy campaign but offend them by coming unannounced. Introduce yourself ahead of time to offer substantive information; be a nice guest before getting to the ask. With the metrics, set a baseline for what is too much time for too little pay-off in order to decide when to drop off. This could include tracking urls promoted in discussion forums or monitoring email response rates from lists compiled from events.

Being on the periphery, such as with online ads or related content (i.e. YouTube related videos), requires an editorial strategy of compelling titles and visuals, because your presence is not audience-selected or even in their eye line. With the policies, ensure your external communications are approved and consistent with public relations efforts. Given that it is on the sidelines, the metrics are a third degree of conversion or click-throughs. This isn’t to say the effort could not attract impressive numbers, but the expectation is different than maintaining a page on a social network.

4. How will you connect all of these efforts?
Be prepared to welcome people when you attract them to what you are promoting, such as when they join your email list, watch your YouTube Video, or click on your ad. If they click on your ad and you make them start over on a homepage with numerous options, you’ve lost them. If they sign up for an email, send a thank you note and what to expect. If it is your Facebook page or discussion forum, ensure a community manager is there to respond to misinformation, anger, questions, etc. It sounds simple, but organizations frequently fail to follow-up to respond to the attention that they worked so hard to create in the first place. From a technical perspective, ensure your IT staff has the infrastructure to absorb the increased traffic and respond to issues.

To recap, when planning online promotions, research why your target audiences use these online spaces, understand the unique format needs, know the impact of your presence, and integrate your workflow across the mediums. I can't resist in being cliché, but whatever you do, don’t put a square peg in a round hole or crash the party.

I recently collaborated with Chip Hayner of centresource and our very own Madeleine Perry on an echoditto labs post about communication as a developer. The post can be found here:

http://echodittolabs.org/blog/2010/06/being-developer-communication-woes

But, if you just want the short and simple, it can be summed up like this:

Communicating on any level is vitally important. We developers, often introverted in demeanor, need to fight everything inside of us to get rid of the "island" mentality where we work in a little bubble and only emerge when we're done and need to hand the project to someone else. Instead, we need to stay in the middle of the communication stream -- talking to our teammates to ensure we don't spin our wheels for too long on a given problem; talking to our project managers to ensure they are updated on the status of the project and can be continually updating everyone's expectations; and talking to our clients (as needed) to ensure that their expectations are in line with internal expectations (regarding scope, timeline, budget, etc).

There’s an obvious appeal to having a large email list: you have the ability to reach many people with one click. But recently I’ve begun questioning the value of large email lists, and the effectiveness of bulk email in general, specifically for the types of clients EchoDitto works with – non-profits, progressives, NGO’s, etc.

In our company staff meeting the other day, Michael brought up what he thought was a core takeaway from the recent PDF conference, and something he wrote about here. The gist is, people in our industry, and in general, care less about how big your email list is, and more about "your ability to leverage technology and a community of interested citizens in creative ways to solve problems and make a positive social impact." A 100k email list doesn’t make you influential anymore, or at least, it’s not the most important aspect of an organization or campaign. Your email list could be huge, but it doesn’t matter unless you try to engage people in something real.

I just read this post by Julie Germany, and thought she made a good point:

"As we convince more of our clients to invest money in online tactics like email (or online advertising), we need to realize that the more sophisticated we get, the more sophisticated people will get at filtering us out."

I think what’s interesting is that we often separate "people" from ourselves. It’s hopefully obvious that "people" in this sentence also applies to us. There are so many of us who work in this industry, who are regularly advising our clients on online tactics like email or advertising, and while we do it I think most of us try to imagine what would inspire us to click through on this email, or this ad. What would inspire me? 99.9% of the time, unless I get an email from someone I know personally, I delete bulk emails without even looking at them. These days, especially with the iPhone (Blackberry, etc), deleting emails from your phone is easier than unsubscribing. As Julie said, "Congratulations! You just received more advocacy and political email! Delete."

But I digress.

My takeaway from all of this is that we don't just need to re-examine the value of email lists, but the effectiveness and importance of bulk, and often impersonal, emails. More importantly, we should take a closer look at the types of emails we send. Just as a website isn't always the best solution to your online presence, "standard" bulk email isn't always the best form of outreach. I don’t have any hard numbers to back this up, but my feeling is that most people know exactly what they are looking for online, they know exactly which organizations they want to support, what events they’d like to participate in, and more often than not a bulk email is the last thing that inspires someone. We are no longer bringing information to the people, people are going out and finding the information they want.

When asked about social media, Nicco said, "…It’s not mass. Nothing about social media is mass. It's many to many, one to one, it's my friends and family. You can't reach large numbers of people through it. …The Internet is much more analogous to the telephone than it is to TV or newspapers. Everyone has an email account and they use it to talk to their mother."

The most successful form of outreach I implemented this month was not a bulk email, but rather emailing 20 of my friends, asking them to take 2 minutes to do something, and seeing it expand into 200+ responses within 5-6 hours. I think sometimes we forget, and we forget to remind our clients, that our personal networks can often be the most influential audiences we know. Reaching out to 100 people from your Gmail account quite possibly will have a greater effect than reaching out to a bulk list of 5k.

I'm not saying that we need to stop sending bulk emails, building our email lists, or appealing to people's greatest interests. As I said earlier there's great appeal to reaching 20k or 100k or 1 million people with the click of a button. And reaching that great mass of people is still important. But we shouldn't forget the point that Michael made – we need to stop focusing on building lists, and start focusing on making a positive social impact. What exactly are we trying to accomplish when we send an email? Are we simply checking something off of our to-do list? Are we aiming to have a high open rate, click through rate, or do we want to increase actual active participation? Do we want people to click, or would we rather they understand our objective and then tell their friends about it in their day-to-day conversations? Have we strayed from caring about organic Word of Mouth to focusing too much on statistics and data? Numbers are important to any organization, so how do we shift our focus and still satisfy our organizations' needs?

For those of us plugged into tech news, the development of Diaspora is a promising one: true decentralization of social networking.

Diaspora is a grassroots-funded open-source project started by four NYU students. The idea? Instead of hosting photos, links, messages, and friend connections on a centralized server, host it on your own computer. Each person's host is called a "seed" in Diaspora lingo, a borrowed term from bittorrent.

Bittorrent is actually a pretty apt metaphor for what Diaspora aims to do. Diaspora contributor Maxwell Salzberg says, "Friend another seed and the two of you can synchronize over a direct and secure connection instead of through a superfluous hub." Diaspora will pull in info from many of your existing accounts online: Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, and others will be brought into your personal Diaspora feed (at your discretion, of course).

This isn't the first open source social networking software out there, but its fully decentralized nature makes it pretty unique.

That being said, we are venturing into somewhat new territory here, and there are a few nagging questions when it comes to the basics of implementing this idea. Just like you can't find a torrent without an aggregation site, how will we find long-lost classmates and childhood friends, without one (or many) sites that will host searchable basic information about us?

Will Diaspora be a stand-alone program users have to install? Would the web browser still be the main means of interaction? If the web server is your computer, how easy - or possible at all - would it be to send updates from the road? In a smart phone world, that last question is crucial.

If done well, Diaspora will join an ever-growing list of open-source projects that have broken into the mainstream (Firefox being the most prominent example). That's a good thing. And just as Firefox's open architecture spurred an incredible ecosystem of useful plug-ins, we should anticipate a successful Diaspora spurring a panoply of tools for us online organizers to better connect with our friends and community members.

Participatory Alienation?

Here's where I put my theory hat on. By removing the intermediary servers of the old centralized social networking services, we're given the ability to better control, view, and filter the streams of data we and our friends send out. But is this a qualitative psychosocial improvement, or have we simply made our alienation from reality more "participatory?"

Let's take a step back for a moment.

For social theorists like Jean Baudrillard and Guy Debord, the age of electronic media heralded further abstraction of social relationships, away from reality. Debord's Situationist concept of the spectacle describes how human experiences are turned into commodities and sold back to us. As Larry Law put it:

"Things that were once directly lived are now lived by proxy. Once an experience is taken out of the real world it becomes a commodity. As a commodity the spectacular is developed to the detriment of the real. It becomes a substitute for experience."

Living life by proxy. That sounds a lot like Facebook. When most of one's social bonds are online, real world events in essence never happen until they are documented online. At first blush it seems clear that every piece of information we post online is commodified. However, as any ad executive will tell you, mainstream media's primary product isn't TV shows or newspaper issues. It's viewers and readers. We're the products that media outlets sell to advertisers.

The same is even truer for the completely ad-supported Facebook, which uses personal information and updates to tailor and customize advertisements: the more we participate, the more we ourselves are commodified.

In many ways, Diaspora heralds the promise of a way out — the ability to connect to each other on our own terms, without intermediaries and beyond (hopefully) the market drive for profit. Less alienation, right?

But Baudrillard warned that the Situationist idea of the spectacle didn't go far enough. We're no longer in an age of the spectacle, he argued, but in an age of simulation. Whereas the spectacle still requires a reference to the physical world (e.g. purchasing the latest Madden instead of actually playing football), the world of the simulation whittles away any need to refer to external reality. Especially with the explosion of online communities, social networks, and entire industries whose products exist only on the web, our actions, communications, and thought are becoming increasingly self-contained and self-referential within the larger online world.

It's reasonable for us to push for Diaspora to replace Facebook. I know I do. However it remains to be seen how a world where social networking is Diaspora-dominated differs from the present in terms of the relationship between the virtual and the real.

What We Learn vs. What We Do

There's a difference between online data interaction and online social interaction - and it's a distinction that we seemingly need frequent reminders about.

Just because Wikipedia is in most ways qualitatively better and more useful than physical encyclopedias doesn't automatically mean online poker is better than real poker, or that helping "tend" someone's Farmville farm is more rewarding than actually growing a neighborhood garden.

The coalescing of what Baudrillard called hyperreality — the sum of all these simulations — grows at the expense of the real world: more online social interaction (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, World of Warcraft) means less physical interaction (sporting events, nightclubs, walks, group dinners, concerts).

Where are we headed, as more of the social becomes informational, and the qualitative becomes quantitative? What happens when a brain designed to thrive on the open savannah in close physical contact with others removes itself entirely from the anchor of an evolutionarily appropriate environment? As author Sven Birkerts recently put it,

The short answer is that we ourselves will become mediated, living with the anxious sense of not being connected to what used to be primary. This will create a vicious circle — our only solace from this anxiety (aside from serotonin reuptake inhibitors, sleeping aids and intensive therapy sessions) will be to plunge more deeply into the distraction at the root of our unease. The big question for me is whether there will be any kind of "return of the repressed" kickback and what form it might take. How deeply programmed are we with the need to feel "real," to recognize ourselves as independent selves?

Let us take the opportunity looming before us to not only change the way we relate to each other online, but to meditate on how tangible we want — need — our relationships to be.

This consideration is of crucial importance to the social change sector, as we all engage further into the latest technologies and services — we must be vigilant that our means to achieve short-term ends (e.g. legislation, awareness) does not sabotage our long-term goals (the creation and strengthening of empowered communities).

Will we collectively use the tool of online social networking to enrich and enliven our real world social lives? Or will we take refuge in it from an increasingly hostile, ecologically degraded, and isolated society: a diaspora from reality?

iHobo: bad taste, yes. You can read more here.

But I'm inclined to think that bad taste is better than no taste at all.

Sometimes, I think that what people are offended by is the juxtaposition of the iPhone user and the homeless person. That is, next to the homeless, our wealth feels crass. Therefore, it is tempting to dismiss an iPhone app out of hand that deals with homelessness, because it points out our own wealth compared to their poverty.

However, this is our reality, the disparity between rich and poor. So we cannot dismiss the iHobo just because of the sick feeling we get watching the over-fashionable video with the young, fit, hoodie-wearing hobo that reminds me of my (and your) friend Thomas.

Or the idea that we are actually so bourgeois that we would buy an iHobo and tend to it at 3am but not give money to a hobo in the street. But this is actually where our society is at.

If we are to dismiss it, it would be because it assumes the homeless people live and die because of our attention to them, that they need or crave our attention. That we are somehow the gods of their life and death.

Anyways, we are actually having this conversation, and I bet the org in question will make money and give that money to the homeless, so that's a huge plus. I bet the iHobo will actually make iHobo-ers think about homeless people at 3am.

What a great practical joke to play on a technophile.