Comments on: Why I Want a Million Quid

By: Rob Blackie

Rob Blackie — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:37:50 +0000

A great idea – and you guys certainly deserve it.

I’m not sure where you’ll find the philanthropist – though I suppose some of the big tech co.s might stump up.

If you get your £1m let me know since I know the ideal lobbyist for you to employ (not me!) who would fulfill the spec perfectly.

By: Charles Dixon-Spain

Charles Dixon-Spain — Sun, 03 May 2009 10:47:39 +0000

While following a different thought process I came across your post and then read Martin Stewart-Weeks’s comment about defining what you want and still being very unclear. You’re working in the same ecosystem which will manage (albeit unintentionally) to compromise any big project you might attempt. And in my view this is why the smaller projects work so well (love the landscape one btw) because they’re chewing at the edges while not engaging at the deepest level with the central problem, ie. conventional politics controls the message and stifles open, ongoing and meaningful discussion for everyone who wants to be involved. The big project in my view is an Open Source Political Party which uses existing technologies (like Alberta Cottica does in his comment above) to create momentum in the right direction, and maybe influences mainstream politics into a more congruency with its electorate.

I posted more on this here: http://www.arbu.biz/2009/05/an-uk-open-source-political-party-anyone/

By: Martin Stewart-Weeks

Martin Stewart-Weeks — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 00:46:37 +0000

This is the key (from an earlier post):
“The objective being less obvious than changing the glass of mud-water for a clean water one, (used for their campaign) there will be a serious effort needed on projecting a clear image of what the benefits and changes could be in the event of a successful outcome…”
maybe task #1 is to work on the ‘clear image of what the benefits and chnages could be’. But, as usual, Tom and the mySociety team are on the money

By: Alberto Cottica

Alberto Cottica — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 11:45:19 +0000

Hello, Tom, and thanks for sharing your thoughts. I manage a gov-funded project in Italy (google Kublai) targeted at getting creative people involved with regional development policies. We write no code: everything runs on existing and free tools. But I agree with you, the less standardized the service, the more human input is needed. And human input costs. Of course, to the extent that users appreciate its value and a community develops, some of the human input will be for free, on a p2p basis, so all of this internet community ethos ends up increasing a lot the efficiency of taxpayers € or £ anyway. But for sure there is a different dimension to it from, as you say, fully automated service.

By: SecretHen

SecretHen — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 10:26:01 +0000

Great idea, but why is £1m needed to seed this approach?

Can you not just add “trail-leaving” components to the existing mysociety codebase? After all, functional elements involved in leaving and later reconstructing “a trail of advice, contacts and insider information” are not very dissimilar to freely available components e.g. threaded messageboards. Your proposed approach could be simultaneously piloted by friendly sites, made available freely for adoption by others, and evangelised (on twitter or whatever). For not much incremental cost to what you alerady do.

Am I missing something here?

By: Ben

Ben — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 00:17:27 +0000

Absolutely agree. We are trying to create similar tools to let the community bootstrap each other thru short lived non commital volunteering.

Please see our blog for more. Cv is in the mail ready for when you get the cash .. seriously.

By: Christoforos Korakas

Christoforos Korakas — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 14:42:56 +0000

Excellent piece of thinking …

I agree on the leap needed and the necessity of a mistake safety-net …

The problem is that 1m or 2 for that matter do not usually come without conditionalities … the sort which cannot easily be accommodated by free-thinking unconventional change agents like mysociety people…

I think that fundraising on a clear idea or project with the promise that you will “try” to bring about the change is possible, given the reputation you have acquired and integrity you enjoy is possible.

If twestival.com managed to mobilise such a crowd in 270 + cities in a global fundraiser party through twitter in just a couple of months to help a charity bring clean water in Africa … mysociety can do it as well …

The objective being less obvious than changing the glass of mud-water for a clean water one, (used for their campaign) there will be a serious effort needed on projecting a clear image of what the benefits and changes could be in the event of a successful outcome…

I know that mysociety prefers to fly below the radar and lead silent revolutions but fundraising needs greater visibility on objectives met and future ones…

If you allow for people to easily contribute I think they will… you already count thousands of email newsletters subscribers …

- paying 20 quid to go to a fundraiser party is easy
- Setting up a fundraiser party Is not that hard either
- Allowing paypal donations that will put me on your site as sponsor of my preferred eDemocracy project is easy too
- …

It might not get you the million right away … but it will get you something … and it will be all yours … no conditionalities attached …
just our hopes for a better future and our understanding for honest failures …

By: Dennis North

Dennis North — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:30:22 +0000

Partnership sugestion – Citizens Advice Bureau & other smaller services e.g. Brixton Advice Centre (@brixtonblade is Director). Not just for help with mapping paths & solutions, piloting, evangelising, supporting end-users, etc. Nor just as a potential interim ‘crowd’ to give you a way to make the leap in two steps. But also for funding, Directly, to replace existing, discrete ICT support; and as joint applicants for new funding; bigger voice, more contacts & chanels etc.
After all this is just the sort of handholding they try to do, albeit in largely web 0.0 ways at present.
But you probably already thought of this?

By: will perrin

will perrin — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 11:30:21 +0000

we discussed this sort of thign a few years ago i think – a sort of universal get stuff done engine that helps you progress your problem with public sevrices or large companies

after 200 years of modernish democracy, 150 years of contract law and 60 years of the welfare state our social systems and systems for redress when they go wrong are bound to be complex. short of a revolution they aren’t going to get radically simpler. evene simplicity brings new types of complexity (see the competition act). but the scale of the complexity for a general or universal resolution engine is daunting.

a crowd sourcing method to help map pathways must be possible, if one keeps to straightforward non-Political issues.

if you focus on a group of five things people have problems with – say a social housing problem such as a broken tap, a neighbours roof extension they don’t like, a noisy pub, some persistent fly tipping, a faulty mobile phone. then sketch out the perms of the pathways people have to go through across the uk the scale and need for local and regional subdivision will become clear. eg ‘fred has fixed a broken tap in his islington council flat, follow him’

happy to convene a bunch of grass roots community activists in kings cross to real world test an approach

BTW – i don’t have £1m

cheers

By: Tom Stienberg wants £1,000,000 « Designed for learning

Tom Stienberg wants £1,000,000 « Designed for learning — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 09:57:52 +0000

[...] Stienberg wants £1,000,000 Tom Steinberg wants £1,000,000. And I hope he gets it. MySociety.org have been leading a quite revolution. Not only have they set [...]