Social Software and Social Capital: Designing a Platform for Civic Activism for the BBC. 
BBC New Media: http://www.bbc.co.uk/
Matt Jones: http://www.blackbeltjones.com/
James Cronin: http://www.stand.org.uk, http://www.FaxYourMP.com/
  

Project name: iCan
Matt Jones and James Cronin

Design of a system to augment and enhance people's lives, not replace.

Ethnographic schema utilised for technical design. "Deep Hanging Out"

Recruited and contacted ~15 individuals at diff stages in working with their civic (local or national) apparatus.  Wanted to nderstand the process they were following, as well as the level of their engagemtn in the operation.

Types:
    Sympathisers: Most people have only a single issue, sometimes "minor".  

    community watchdog:  Concerned about their local geography alone.
    
    Crusaders: Those passionate about single issue.

Enlist both sympathisers and first timers.

Next step, process.  Built rich oral history / pictures / etc of their environment.  Found that across all participants, similar construct of gates and opportunities.  Trying to identify the pain points in the process, and throw a design in the template.

5 stages.

1: discovering - finding what is not right in their locality.  Triangulation around the issue. Building a knowledge structure.  Obviously, started by design team first.

  assist in finding awareness.  Building a democracy database of 
    civic information and 
    how-tos (for running a campaign and how local/national govt work)

  Q: imposing values?
  A: Attempting to provide most balanced information.
  
2: Deciding - deciding whether to campaign or not,  This is where the project falls into social software trap.  Not about not knowing where to start, but not knowing you are not alone.  

  [aside: angst between people looking at emerging tech vs people looking at emerging situations]
  
  Concept of local notice board, aggregation of local interests in one place. 
  Lower barrier to participation
  Start 'conversation for action' [1]
  Shipbuilding: a vehicle to move, not just a place to stay and talk
  
  This is the decision point between consumer vs participant role in society.  
  
    a: whether to stary
    b: should we continue, grow, etc
    c: change tack
    d: success?

3:  Planning

  Have now met and done handshaking
  Folders for mebers of group, and tools for organization.
  Tools with 'books' for journaling and feeds.
  Enable outside editor/mentor
    Peer and editorial review

4: Acting

   "where everything goes bananas"
   Folder previously created goes live; ability for other groups to discover and share shared work and links.
   At this point, broadcast media becomes possible - this is where BBC gains news from this internal project (reference to fuel protests of mid/late 90s),
   
5:  Retiring

   not intended to invent new technology, but in this area.  When action dies, archive into creation of a knowledge library, folding labguage, etc back into the systems taxonomy.  
   Encourage quality through collaborative editing.
   Utilise CC licenses for user-created data.
   
"Taking action is habit forming"  Create a "virtuous circle" of mentorship and skills and time.
    ["You can create tools that amplify collective action".  -- Howard Rheingold, keynote]

Screenshots and so forth to be put online.

=Tools=

One size does nt fit all. different tools for different scales of activity.
Robert Dunbar, U.Liverpool (JC Herz talk last year)


Power Law exhibit themselves into community.  As peole note that issues are federated which will effect this curve (note lumps in curve).

Issues to stay at a given scale, try to identify tipping points in the scale factor.

StopESSO campaign (not BBC related??).  Used Geocoding to identify which areas had critical mass.

Also, different tools work better for different people.

  Gladwell's definitions of Mavens, Connectors and Salespeople.  Mapped tools per each of these definitions.
  
----- metadata ------

Email for bounceback:

  esinclai@pobox.com
  richard_gayle@excite.com
  allen@hutchison.org
  tom@plasticbag.org [don't forget to save!]
  jmay@pobox.com
  etcon@crystalflame.net (this and all hydra documents)
  tfsmith@parc.com


Cited links and references:
  
  [1] Discussion of Winograd and Flores "Conversation for Action" ( http://www.inf-wiss.uni-konstanz.de/RIS/1996iss01_01/articles01/sitter03/02.html )
  http://www.malcolmgladwell.com?  


Anecdotals:

    The BBC's Sian Kevill gives a sneaky peek into their new online democracy platform, which used to be called iCan.
      http://www.voxpolitics.com/weblog/archives/000239.html  

    In 2004, the BBC will therefore launch iCan, a kind of Internet-meets-Watchdog-meets-politics: "a driving force for engagement in democracy".
      http://www.vnunet.com/Analysis/1136868

    Sian Kevill, former Newsnight editor and now head of the New Politics Initiative at the BBC, spoke about a funky new BBC initiative called iCan
      http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/00000006DCF1.htm

    the article centers on the BBC Online's iCan project -- a social software project to build social capital in local communities to foster democratic participation -- and claims its means and ends are misguided with flawed logic.
      http://radio.weblogs.com/0114726/2003/03/22.html
      (dissent: http://www.spiked-online.com/articles/00000006DCF1.htm )