c.Figallo

Composing a Technical Specification and Action Plan (serving as Project Manager)

The Client

A well-meaning individual would like to build a site on the Web that involves as many people as possible in creating solutions to the world’s most pressing social problems. The best solutions submitted would be voted on, and the winning solutions would be presented to world leaders and politicians who would try to implement them.

The Problem

My responsibility is to assemble a Spec and Action Plan that the client can use to compose an RFP and then proceed with implementing the project. Our team – which included two stakeholders in the social conflict the client chose to begin with – immediately recognized that the client was starting at an unreasonably large scale. Especially for his first issue, the volatility would blow up any discussion and, besides, what would most people know about the real on-the-ground issues that the stakeholders had to deal with each day. We reformulated the problem to be one that two neighboring communities could work on using social media provided by our client. If problems can be solved on that scale, we advised that the knowledge gained could inform problem solving on larger and larger scales.

My Approach

Empower the people closest to the problem to have ultimate say-so over the design and the process they believe will work for their situation. Offer them my knowledge and experience with social tools and online social processes, but accept their input on how their communities differ from the ones I’ve worked with. Assure them that the platform I recommend can be easily modified to fit the reality, and that the pilot project will be just that – a learning opportunity from which a better arrangement may emerge. Provide collaborative observation and coaching when the pilot community launches and use a light touch in offering advice.

Design Input

The end users from the two communities speak different languages, come from different cultures, and have been on opposite sides of dispute for their entire lives. There are not many Web-literate citizens there, so there will need to be translation services, training, and lots of handholding by those who know how for those who don’t. The technology should be selected for utilitarian reasons, not aesthetic ones. Two versions – serving both languages and scripts – will be needed. Most of the problem solving activity and collaboration will take place face-to-face, but planning and tracking will be recorded online. Printed reports will regularly be posted in the neighborhoods to keep others apprised of the activity.

Site Creation

We have not reached this point yet, but we continue to meet online to refine the plan and get an approximation of how the site might look and operate. This is why you have pilot programs.

Marketing

The strength of building an online community to serve a geographic community is that the marketing is relatively simple – launch it with a demonstration and a party, promote it with respected community members, get the community leaders and role models to buy in, then use it to make a difference. As to marketing our client’s idea on the more global scale, if he is willing to get traction through success at this grassroots level, his reputation will grow, as will his credibility as a solution sponsor, and larger scale efforts will have a chance of success.

Building Community

We are hoping that the online community will demonstrate more unity than is found on the ground between the two culturally different citizen populations.  If the goal of the online community is to find mutually beneficial solutions to local problems – rather than attempting to take on he overriding cultural bellicosity – then we may find a pleasant juxtaposition of virtual peace where there is non-virtual tension.

Farmer-Veteran Coalition (serving as webmaster, principal blogger, editor and Web community liaison)

The Client

The Farmer-Veteran Coalition serves as a matchmaker for young military veterans and opportunities in farming and agriculture. FVC intends to be a solution at the confluence of two problems: too few small farmers and too many jobless veterans needing healing transitions to civilian life.

The Problem

There is tremendous good will toward our military people today and a great percentage of them are returning from the battlefront with mental and physical injuries. At the same time, we are rediscovering the critical need to rebuild our population of small farmers, especially in proximity to our cities and population centers. How can we connect the jobless veterans with the gap in trained farmers?

My approach

We know that many soldiers in the field have become skilled at using social Web tools, which they used constantly during their deployment. I’m confident that word about FVC will go viral if we tap into that network of veterans. The challenges are to earn trust, find the tap-in points with the most networking energy, and provide good take-aways for veterans who visit the FVC site and fill out the forms we provide.

I’m less confident on the farming side since there is not yet such an online culture for them, though an increasing number of young, new farmers are online. The search for people with available land and resources to contribute or loan takes place largely through personal relationships.  And more possibilities arise every day for training and mentoring through schools and projects funded by the Department of Agriculture to bring more new farmers into employment.

Design input

I recommended that we build the Web site on the WordPress platform – a free (to non-profits) suite of technical tools that could serve as a weblog – posting new stories on a frequent basis – and as an information sharing space to help vets and farmers find one another. The use of blog articles as the central dynamic content piece would also support the posting of comments from readers, thus fostering dialog and connection.

Site creation

The prototype site was built first as a demo, last summer, then expanded as a beta site through the winter as the founders of FVC sought affiliation with a fiscal sponsor. Meanwhile, we used the website to generate interest from potential funders and members of the farming and veteran communities.

Now that FVC has a fiscal sponsor (Community Partners), we are upgrading the website, migrating the server and integrating the site with Salesforce, which will be used to hold and manage databases of veterans, farmers, trainers, donors and supporters.

Marketing

The marketing of FVC will take place through a combination of online communications (using the website, Facebook and Twitter) and face-to-face meetings at veterans gatherings, farmers markets, job fairs, local food supply sources and more mainstream media stories. FVC will join in alliances with related organizations and will actively network with them to bring about collaborative, mutually helpful arrangements for the benefits of veterans and our local food supplies.

Community building

Once the population of visitors has reached critical mass – where there are ongoing conversations happening in both our weblog and through email to our site – we will consider implementing a more conversational interface where members of our veterans and agriculturalist communities can share ideas and make connections.

Currently, we are on the verge of a public launch where FVC will announce it alliance with the Coalition of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans. We are poised to begin exploiting the attention this will bring to get FVC’s name known by all returning vets and localized farmers and land owners.