It would be really nice if a brief acquaintance with the truth could set us free, but it cannot. In practice, most people follow the advice and example of close friends, role models, and cultural norms. It is not necessarily bad that social connections tend to be the primary source of an individual's world view and behavior. It does mean, however, that our social ties are like magnetic fields that encourage us to "fit in" to our community, rather than challenging it (just Google pluralistic ignorance). Some people enjoy being contrary to that magnetism, proud square pegs not quite fitting into the round holes of their social environment. That's great, but it can be stressful. Most other people challenge social norms that they see as unjust by becoming part of a community where each individual empowers the others to be the change they wish to see in the world. In our experience, It's a lot more fun to be maladjusted to societies' round holes when you are not the only Square Peg in the box.
Change is social. Peer pressure is a fact. Whether or not you want to make that peer pressure a positive force is up to you. As more of our lives go online and more of our social interactions are digital, making peer pressure a positive force also depends on the social technology we use. Our project is building tools that will empower activists to change the way they interact socially on the internet. We think offering a new environment for online communication is really important. We are also building some fancy tools to help people find and connect with friends who will inspire them to become changemakers in their own lives, communities and the world.
The Interweb is a big place. Opportunities, ideas, events, conferences, protests - the information comes from a lot of different places. SquarePeg [SP] mashes it up with social data, to remind you that your community wants to help you change the world.
Example:
1) Karen is on SP, and she signs up to read to some kids at an elementary school in Brooklyn.
2) Rick is friends with Karen on our site. SP notices that Rick also lives in New York and has volunteered for youth related events in the past.
3) Karen receives a notice: "It looks like your friend Rick likes to volunteer with youth. Want to ask him to join you?"
4) Rick receives a notice: "Karen is volunteering at an elementary school, we thought you might want to join her. If you can't make it, why not just let her know how great she is?"
Rick already knows he could find volunteer opportunities on the internet, but he is more likely to take time out of his busy schedule if a friend asks him to. Karen could just as easily have found the volunteer opportunity with another resource, but sometimes it's just nice to hear that your friends care.
We are excited about our current team, but we will launch SP sooner and better if we get help in a few key areas. We would love to speak with Ruby on Rails developers, marketers/experienced entrepreneurs, and accountants about how you might help our project (Don't know Ruby on Rails yet? Maybe you should consider learning it with a fun side-project like SP).
We are building SquarePeg to be a tool that organizations can wholly adopt and integrate with their offline activity. If you work for or know of an organization whose mission relates to bringing people together, but that is not yet using an effective online social tool, we would be interested in hearing from you. We are also very interested in hearing from people who attend or work for a university or college.
Finally, funding is a constant concern. We have a very small grant that pays for some start-up expenses (not including labor). Additional financial help would be greatly appreciated.
Some data will come directly from users or organizations that implement SquarePeg in their advocacy and networking strategies. Other data will come from general sources like these:
superlarge volunteering databases.
http://www.volunteermatch.org/
giving.
http://www.changingthepresent.org/
local gigs.
http://www.handsonportland.org/
| Additional Project Idea Representative: | Jonah Geil-Neufeld | jonahgn |
|---|---|---|
| Project Designer | Laura Snider | lesnider |
| Project Engineer | John Wagner | johnskyler |
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
TechSoup, CompuMentor. 2008. Share our content.
Comments
Changing times
It's been interesting to see how much the internet has changed political campaigning. Looks like it can do the same thing for social movements. Is this site going to be set up more for individuals and small organizations, or for larger organizations already in existence, too?
better tools for individuals working with small and large groups
Many large, well established organizations already have websites that allow people to create profiles, organize events, etc., so these organizations will be less likely to use Squarepeg in the immediate future. This isn't because their existing site does the same things that Squarepeg will, but because many CEOs at nonprofits think that they are using an equilivant tool. In practice, even relatively large organizations tend to lag when it comes to implementing engaging networking tools.
Squarepeg also offers some benefits for users that a Nonprofit cannot offer if they host their own tools. For example, it is annoying and inneficient to create a new profile and password for each organization you volunteer with, it makes it less likely that a user will join any one nonprofit's networking tool. There are also privacy issues e.g. I want to network on the save darfur site, but I will be more stingy with my profile information and some kinds of networking if I know the organization is able to access every bit of my profile data the next time they want to decide how to ask me for money. When organizations host their own networking tools , they also must bring each user onto their site, rather than letting users find them via the networking tool (one of the highest potential areas of online networking for social change organizations).
So, initially we will work the most with a few small to mid sized organizations organizations and campaigns who are ambitious about growing but may not have the resources to build excellent networking tools on their own. We think we have a lot to offer much larger campaigns as well, and will be better prepared to market to these organizations once we have proven ourselves with slightly smaller groups.
Opening double doors wide
This project seems like a way to open a big, gorgeous set of double doors WIDE. I grew up wanting to make a difference but the scale was small: local soup kitchen, litter clean-up day, reading at a nursing home. This project could be what I'm looking for to really blast those doors open and go from thinking limited and local to networking with others on a grand scale. And if my local ideas have merit, maybe they'd work in a 1000 other localities.
Good luck and happy trails!
Hopefulist
PS I'm wondering if there will be a system for forwarding your site information to others, like an "email this page" function. I'm involved in several local groups including Habitat for Humanity and AFS student exchanges and the volunteers tend to be middle aged and older. In general we're less internet savvy than our kids' generation; it would be good to have an easy way to get others in the loop.
This is a great idea, and
This is a great idea, and could be a great part of much-needed R&D on the social dynamics of the web. I think yall might want to think more about how the messaging system would go (ie would people be able to recommend organizations easily, or just activities?). But this is a great way to proactively respond to technological change already going on right now with a call for social change.
Thanks for your comment, we are working on that
Hi,
Thanks for your comment. I agree the messaging system is central to how people will interact with each other, and how they will interact with organizations on the site. The key is making sure that the nature of the communication on the site doesn't just make people feel good about themselves, it actually needs to encourage people to get out and do good things - offline and online. Translating the online social dynamic into offline activity is one of the holy grails of this project.
cheers