Author: Denis Pitcher

What NEED does this meet?

I’ve been struggling to establish real democracy in my home country of Bermuda. Typical politics works much too slowly and the system of “representative democracy” simply does not match the growing needs of present times.
I decided what was needed was an online collaborative effort to build a platform of the people. So that each individual can work to build the ideal political platform to give to their representatives as a guide to what the people want to see happen.
I have grown much too tired watching as small groups decide the will of the people in a top down approach when really politics should be about all people involved from a bottom up approach.

What is the APPROACH?

I wanted to make The People’s Platform a reality. First I tried using the wikipedia engine, unfortunately because it is not WYSIWYG enabled, the interface was much too difficult for some.
I then tried using a discussion forum, which was good for it’s voting potential, but didn’t allow submissions to be made to modify ideas.

Here is what I ideally want to see built.

An online collaborative “People’s Platform” website.

1. Individuals can create topics just like on wikipedia
2. Individuals can vote on topics
3. Individuals can post submissions on how an idea or topic should be revised
4. Individuals may discuss and debate revisions
5. Individuals approve of revisions by voting upon them
6. Changes are launched, and members of that idea are notified to rereview and vote.

What are the BENEFITS to people?

If we could convince our leadership what it is that WE want rather then having them tell us what we want, we would be closer to real and true democracy.

The best possible platform is one that can take in the needs and desires of the greatest many individuals possible. Revisions can be made that make an idea stronger by allowing people to discuss the best possible solutions, suggest why they won’t work and how to revise them so they will.

What is the COMPETITION?

If you know of anything that already does this, let me know, I’ve been looking.

My idea must win because it’s what all people interested in convincing our politicians to make a difference need as an open collaborative tool.

What BUDGETS & LOGISTICS are required?

This is relatively unknown. It would take a fair bit of coding or modification of existing platforms to create. I have considered a number of wiki projects as a starting point, but many arn’t designed in this manner and would have to be revised quite a bit to match the needs of this project.

It is doable, just not by a single individual

Author: Matthew Edwards

What NEED does this meet?

Currently in the UK (and globally) there is a profound ‘democratic deficit’.

In other words, there is a disconnection between the decentralised political campaigns run on the ground and the mainstream political institutions that are meant to represent and enact the needs and will of the people.

In particular, the electorate are now massively alienated from Parliament.

This does not mean, as is often suggested, there is mass apathy.

People are as politically active, vibrant, and creative as ever.

They are simply failing to listen to those whose profession is politics, and many of those whose profession is politics are failing to listen to the people.

To regenerate our mainstream institutions we need to build as many bridges as possible (with as few tolls as possible) between the people, between different campaigns, and the politicians.

What is the APPROACH?

This proposal is eminently simple.

I noted with interest the stunning progress of the Million Dollar Homepage (http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/) run by Alex Tew, a 21 year old who decided to pay his way through university by selling a million pixels of internet advertising space for $1 each.

The page is now sold out.

I like Mr.Tew’s inventiveness. However, I feel the world has plenty of advertising already.

A Million Campaign Homepage would do exactly the same thing. It would sell (or, better, give away) pixels to non-violent political campaigns throughout the UK, thus creating a website bursting with links which would be a valuable resource as well as looking extraordinary.

It could be done as a one-off, single webpage with no particular limits on the kinds of campaigns involved.

It could also be run as several websites each dedicated to campaigns in a particular field – eg. anti-torture, peace campaigns, animal rights, pro-science, disarmament, etc etc.

What are the BENEFITS to people?

The idea is, in essence, to build a vast Sim City-style grid of links to political campaigns. This would have potential in building bridges between campaigns which might otherwise be isolated. It would also serve as a very direct, very visual, and very easy to use set of bookmarks – or a kind of library index, with each book (the website of the campaign in question) accessible at the click of a mouse.

What is the COMPETITION?

There may be copyright issues with Mr.Tew’s website. However, since it would be dedicated to political campaigns it would, I trust, make the seven changes necessary to overcome copyright considerations. It would, after all, be a very different enterprise.

There are not really directly similar services out there, although people’s use of Rupert Murdoch’s Myspace as an Ourspace to spread political consciousness is in some ways similar.

There are all sorts of sites with useful links pages.

Nobody has, to my knowledge, yet attempted to weave them together into a tapestry which can be navigated by somebody at a computer.

What BUDGETS & LOGISTICS are required?

This depends on how it is organised.

In theory, it would cost the price of hosting a single webpage, and the hours of labour involved in organising it.

If it were run on a not-for-profit basis it would be theoretically free, if the volunteers involved are happy to offer their labour for nothing.

There would, I am sure, be the potential for sponsorship and help.

As for difficulty, the beauty of it is that it is utterly simple.

Author: Kristy Lyn Levings

What NEED does this meet?

With the rapid change in climate and geopolitical strife possible in our lifetimes, we will see mass migrations of peoples. History has shown us that the movement of peoples has inevitably damaged or destroyed the social fabric that creates unique, diverse, and necessary cultural wisdom.

What is the APPROACH?

I would like to suggest a Cultural Wikipedia. We are in a technologically advantageous place in time where we have the capabilities to record and store things visually, auditorially, and in writing. I’m advocating that we create an uploadable website which people globally can add pictures, songs, writings, and more benchmarking cultures and civilizations before they disintigrate, or disappear entirely.

What are the BENEFITS to people?

Having a website dedicated solely to cultures would be priceless. And lets not forget about the advantages of having generational oral wisdom accessible to all people. Or to those who want to know the details of their ancestry.

What is the COMPETITION?

Obviously, there’s already Wiki- but its not dedicated to any one thing, and ours would be solely for the storage of cultural information.

What BUDGETS & LOGISTICS are required?

It’s just a website.

Author: Jack Nichols

What NEED does this meet?

This is aimed primarily at university students, although has equal applicability to the wider student body.

There are plenty of events for students to get involved in to stimulate their interest in the wider world and community – model UNs, model EUs, moot courts, essay competitions, etc. However, it’s very hard to find out what’s going on, and how to get involved, to the extent that it’s often the same people time after time.

What is the APPROACH?

I have started developing a website along the lines of a database of student events (www.studentactivitynetwork.com) which has some advice on how to get involved and make the most of these events.

However, there are no websites that bring all these events together in one place. I believe that you’d get much more involvement from a wider range of people if these kinds of opportunities were made obvious in one central location.

What are the BENEFITS to people?

At the moment events are too narrowly targeted. Student event/competition/activity managers have limited resources to contact students. A central resource would make their work easier and students’ lives easier to find an event to develop their skills and interests or bring a new element to their lives.

What is the COMPETITION?

Similar sites – www.studentactivitynetwork.com. This is a website I am working on, but it does not have the key element yet – the database of events. This will add so much value that it would win out.

There are no other similar sites with a database that could be sorted by region/subject matter/type of event/date, so there is no immediate competition to win against.

What BUDGETS & LOGISTICS are required?

I envisage a mySQL/PHP database which would not take much to build. The advice pages could be made very simply and easily.

Additional elements could be added, although these would be slightly more costly: wikipedia-style advice pages so people could make their own changes; a message board, so that new people could get advice on what to do, and competitors could catch up with friends – networking possibilities for students.

Author: Mita Williams

What NEED does this meet?

This project would encourage community. It would help others. It would make one feel a little less lonely in the world.

This website would assign interested indivduals to a randomized group of 150 people and would provide for them an online message board that would be private and exclusive to those members of the group. There are only two rules. One: once assigned to a group, you cannot leave that group. And two: you can only join one group. After that, it is up to the group to decide what is next for them.

What is the APPROACH?

What makes the approach of this plan distinctive is that it removes choice out of the formation of one’s social network. While most social software and web services attempt to bring together a person with others holding similar interests or from a similar background, my150.org will strive to bring groups of strangers together.

What are the BENEFITS to people?

Imagine if you had a group of 150 people that you could go to whenever you had a question, a problem, or a need that couldn’t be handled by yourself. You could tap into their collective knowledge, expertise, compassion, and tough love. And you could return such favours and the feel the good that comes from helping others. Over time, you would get know these fellow members. You would play online games with them. You would use Pledgebank with them. You would meet them in person. Perhaps you would begin to consider some of them friends.

According to research in cognitive psychology “the figure of 150 seems to represent the maximum number of individuals with whole we can have a genuinely social relationship” and that if you comb through the anthropological literature you will find that “the number 150 pops up again and again”. These quotes come from Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point [how little things can make a big difference] which also offers the idea that “small, close-knit groups have the power to magnify the epidemic potential of a message or idea.” which is why mySociety should consider this project.

What is the COMPETITION?

The closest service that I could find is the “Slapstick / Lonesome no more” middle name generator at http://thesurrealist.co.uk/lonesome.

Unlike the “middle name generator”, my150.org will provide the necessary next steps to bring individuals together online. Not every group will be successful but some groups will have the right combination of indivduals to generate and sustain benefit, especially as the first groups to form will most likely come from those who support the efforts of mySociety, a population of those interested in promoting civic and community values. Word of mouth (“I found out about this restaurant from a girl in my150”) will encourage others to join.

What BUDGETS & LOGISTICS are required?

The expense of this project would not stem from its design or but from its inherent promise to be hosted for at least a lifetime. It would be too difficult for me to build this idea but not too difficult, I don’t think, for someone with some experience.

Author: Tim Pateman

What NEED does this meet?

The intention of this project is that it would remove the barriers for people to act on aspects of public life they wanted to change. From people curious about a planning application down the road to those who’ve just seen a documentary about a global issue like AIDs and want to help, it would serve as a human ‘coin-sorter’, taking in large volumes of people and pointing them in the most efficient direction to fulfil their aims.

The premise is simple: the majority of people in the majority of situations would not know how to make a contribution to public life. This will continue until people know that there is always one port-of-call for the information they need.

What is the APPROACH?

In essence, the plan would be to build a website along the lines of existing ‘My Society’ projects, but with a much broader remit i.e. encouraging people to participate in public life in all kinds of ways.

There are many possible ways of sorting information – but only one element is, I think, absolutely neccessary. That would be to divide information along the lines or strategies on which people are observed to act. The front-page of the web-site would therefore have to grab people based on those distinctions e.g. having clear routes covering; for example:
– people who want to write a letter or make their opinions known;
– people who would like to be prompted or consulted in future;
– those who wish to change their habits or personal consumption patterns;
– those who can give one-off free time to a cause;
– those who can give regular free time to a cause ;
– those who have the energy or skills to start something new

Beyond that core structure, the project could be as big or as small as resources dictate. As a smaller initiative it could provide basic information on each route – a single webpage perhaps taking your postcode and then presenting you with links to the key organisations (e.g. your local volunteer bureau). It would rely on people using search engines to look for terms such as ‘write a letter’, or on usual publicity routes.

At the other end of the scale it could act as a massive umbrella group for charities and voluntary groups in the UK, by providing a publicly advertised ‘one stop shop’ service for anyone wishing to get involved in any aspect of public life. Obviously this is highly ambitious, but the project could deliver real benefits as a small initiative, and bloom into something that more and more people would hear about.

What are the BENEFITS to people?

The aim to broaden and deepen participation in public life beyond those who are already well-informed. Furthermore it would stop wasted efforts by putting people in contact with the information they need, rather than leaving it to chance.

It would also serve to remove excuses to act. People often moan about a problem to each other, but they very rarely say ‘you should do this’, or ‘I’ll do something about that’.

What is the COMPETITION?

There is no organisation currently providing a similar service that is well-known. My instincts are that people who do more than moan might choose one of two common strategies a) writing to their MP or councillor or b) writing to the local press.

This only brings results in some situations. If someone is concerned about global warming then contacting their MP is ideal when a new piece of legislation is being scrutinised; however MPs do not have the resources to suggest practical life-style changes the person might make, groups they might volunteer with, or projects they could support. All that information is out there, but it is not well connected. It is not a case of damming the river, but one of following the flow of the water and gently re-directing it in some places!

What BUDGETS & LOGISTICS are required?

Potentially very cheap or very expensive. A system that simply provides basic information and links on each action-strategy could be done using some of the existing My Society technology and a moderate amount of web-developer time.

If the initial site proved potentially useful, then it could well attract funding to expand significantly. Ultimately a ‘dosomethingaboutit.org.uk’ website could become the source of information people think of first whenever they want to contribute to public life but are unclear as to how!

Author: Simon Gibbs

What NEED does this meet?

Ensure our public spaces are clean, safe and inviting. Maintaining a public “bug tracker” to ensure graffiti, broken street lights and other issues are dealt with quickly. Gather objective data about trends in council performance.

What is the APPROACH?

Merge the concepts of writetothem and bugzilla to make reporting council issues a breeze. As well as a sending message capture photographs, date, time and location data (postcode, lat/long) to make life easier for the councils as well.

For fairness, users would have to positively and regularly assert that problems remained unresolved to keep the problem in the public domain and to ensure accurate performace stats. Give councils a link so they can anonymously ask the reporter if resolution was acceptable and ask them to sign off for statistical purposed.

Entries would be categorised so that different kinds and sizes of problems could be analysed separatley. e.g. you would imagine dead flowerbeds, road subsidence and grafitti would be resolved on totally different timescales.

What are the BENEFITS to people?

Gives people a central reporting process for all types of problem. The interface would be standard for the whole of the country keeping it simple for our increasingly mobile population.

Trends in council performance would be transparent. We would know objectively whether problems are resolved more quickly in rich areas, what the real relationship between council tax and service performace was, and which political parties gave the best value for money.

Problems would tend to get resolved quicker resulting in cleaner, safer, and more inviting communities.

Other proposals advocate a street-level approach to online communities. I’d imagine this idea would work best on a street level so it could be built into related services.

What is the COMPETITION?

I really wonder why upmystreet isn’t doing this already, oh yeah, they are big corporate now 😉

Seriously, I’m not aware of any competition, but upmystreet could be a good commercial partner.

What BUDGETS & LOGISTICS are required?

If you did allow photos of the issues then there would be a storage issue, but this is far from an essential component of the system. I do think photos would help councils prioritise more objectively, however.

Otherwise fairly cheap to run with mostly automatic processes. Would probably require a moderate coding effort upfront to repurpose and dumb down a bugtracking system.

Capture the location of each case using google maps.

Author: William Perrin

What NEED does this meet?

organising grass roots sports teams and fixtures is a nightmare. getting 22 or 30 people plus a referee to a muddy field at 1000 on a sunday is an absolute pig of a job for the team captains. the hassle of organising teams eventually gets the most public spirited people down. and then everyone loses out as the fixtures fall apart. in some sports (rugby, rowing) if enough people don’t turn up the whoel fixture is lost. the parallels to pledgebank are obvious. the technology can be turned around to help team captains organise games and confirm that the fixture will happen

What is the APPROACH?

users receive a message –

‘we shall all turn up at pitch 4, muddy marsh, midfordshire to play scrugby against the ‘old scrots’ at 1000 – you will get a text three hours before the game to confirm that we have enough people. if you can’t make it reply to this’

a modifed pledgebank engine could make it look more like the normal signing up process for a team, storing address lists for club pools to make the captains’ lives easier. A lot of team organisers use email but pledgebank cuts over into text/SMS hugely increasing the reach into demographic groups who are not online

What are the BENEFITS to people?

Lowers the barrier for hard-pressed volunteers who organise sport. This is an area that the web curiously has not yet been unleashed.

one of the reasons individual sports (gyms etc) do well is the sheer hassle of takign part in team sports in a post-industrial-sports-team era. anything that lowers the barriers and uses modern media can only help

It stops people getting fat

What is the COMPETITION?

There are rumours of sports teams organising sites but run on a commercial basis. Though i can’t readily find them. This would be completley new and have international appeal. I think the world is gagging for this

What BUDGETS & LOGISTICS are required?

it should be quite cheap not a full project – a rework of the pledgebank engine with a new front end(s) and appropriate messaging for say rugby, cricket, football etc. and some niche ones perhaps – croquet, rowing. Some of the major sports governing bodies should be willing to fund or at least advise on this. I shoudl think that the big web companies would leap at it (google, yahoo etc)

Author: Jake Cracknell

What NEED does this meet?

We would be serving everyone. We would be recreating the sort of old-fashioned community that used to exist by creating a network of websites devoted to individual streets whereby every road in England would have their own website in which they could meet each other, rely on each other, share resources, etc. I have already started one for my road in London SW13 (www.ourlittleroad.com) and it is working. For the first time ever, I am meeting my neighbours and we are helping each other.

What is the APPROACH?

I’m 11 years old. Like a lot of people, I don’t really know my neighbours. Even though I’ve lived on the same road my whole life, I only know one or two of my neighbours so I decided to start a website so we could introduce ourselves to each other and, maybe, make our road a friendlier, happier, safer place to live. My hope was that, once we knew each other, we could watch out for each other, lend and borrow things, do house-sitting and childminding, anything friends would do for each other. Also, the website might be a good place for people to give away things they no longer needed rather than just throw them away. My motto is ‘our best resource is each other’ and that’s what ourlittleroad.com is all about; a sort of old-fashioned approach to what communities used to offer. Progress is slow but, gradually, we are winning people over and hope, some day, to get sponsorship and expand beyond our road to Barnes, to other parts of London and beyond!

What are the BENEFITS to people?

We can share resources. why buy a saw when someone down the road will loan you their’s. Elderly and need some food from the shops? Why get it yourself when someone down the street is shopping anyway and would be happy to get it for you? Have things you no longer need or want? Perhaps a neighbour needs them and so you can make some space in your house and help them at the same time. If you actually know your neighbours, they can help you and you can help them. This website allows people to get over their shyness and introduce themselves to each other.

What is the COMPETITION?

There is nothing like this. This is an individual website for every street in England.

What BUDGETS & LOGISTICS are required?

I don’t think it will be too expensive as, once it’s up and running, it will run itself.

Author: Julius Huijnk

What NEED does this meet?

Make a person find the charity he/she likes and can trust.

What is the APPROACH?

Using social network aspects (as a means to provide quality content, not as a goal on itself). Decentralizing the way the content is created.

Simply said; You can have a personal page that states what charities you support and who your friends are.

You can read all about the project at www.makingthesite.com

What are the BENEFITS to people?

Makes it easier to find a charity they can trust. In particular smaller charities that get outshouted at the moment.

What is the COMPETITION?

greatnonprofits.com is the closest I think. Also Care2connect.com
Also there are a lot of centralized charity websites.

Greatnonprofits is about evaluations and might be great, Helpalot has more of a focus on social networks.

Care2connect looks like it is trying to do a thousand things, thereby not making it easier to find charities. Helpalot will be made with making charities findable as a main focus.

What BUDGETS & LOGISTICS are required?

I’m no expert on estimating how much it would cost. It would have about 40 static pages and it will hugely scalable. It is supposed to include every charity in the world, so you’ll needs some solid coding.

It’s not possible to build it in a week, but it’s also not like Helpalot requires you to invent new stuff.