Scott Stadum, User Experience Analyst from Idealist.org talks to us about the importance of data portability and shares his vision of a perfectly optimized online network of volunteers.

Jed Sundwall: What's the rationale for Idealist to have a presence in Argentina? How did that get started?

Scott Stadum: What had happened was there was a non-profit sort of doing similar work. Res Non Verba was the name of the non-profit. They shared some of the similar goals that we had, but they were focusing on South America, and doing more tech-oriented outreach. Our founder, Ami, asked if they were interested in a partnership, and they were. What had happened was we sort of absorbed them, but not really. They're still an independent non-profit from us, but we basically work together. From there, we had developed the Latin American side of what we're doing, as well as the U.S.-based side in New York. Some of our developers were already there, actually. It was easier to have them all there in one place. So they brought me down and brought down another guy, and they're looking to possibly bring down more, we'll see. But, it's easier to have them all in one place, it's less expensive and nicer to have everybody local in one spot, as opposed to in all the different offices that we have.

I've got to admit, I'm jealous, I've been to Buenos Aires three times.

I love it, I love it. I've only been out of the city just a couple times, but the few places that I've gone, I loved, and I loved the city. No complaints out of me.

Tell us what your title is and what you do.

Well, I'm a User Experience Analyst. And what I do is, basically, I look out for the user. I try to figure out where the biggest holes are in our technology, where the biggest gaps are. I advocate both for the user and for new technology what I think would benefit the user, what we're doing, what we're not doing, what gaps we ultimately need to fill. I research those technologies, those approaches, those ideas, I document them, and then, I push them to the right people in our organization. And then, ultimately, to Ami Dar and our developers to try to get them either to implement it, get the ideas accepted, or a new approach, a new direction for wherever I've found a gap.

In that research, what have you found with regards to social media tools?

Right now, I'm working on media outreach. We have presences on Flickr, MySpace. We just set something up on Twitter. We have our blogs, we have a couple of different podcasts. Our strategy is sort of disjointed. It's not entirely cohesive. I'm working to get everybody on the same page. And this is inherent in most non-profits that are bigger than the smaller folks. They're using all these different tools, but not really leveraging them to maximize their output. And so, right now, I'm doing it incrementally, trying to develop the best approaches to using our blogs, podcasts to complement each other, to aim them towards Twitter, to integrate the different applications, RSS feeds, into sites like Facebook, MySpace, with that whole movement. And then, same thing with You Tube, Flickr.

Basically, I'm working on a more cohesive strategy and approach to all those different media tools.

The second thing I'm interested in is data portability. And that's sort of down the road. But, we're definitely interested in implementing OpenID and OAuth semantic tools, like hCard and HCal, like Wiki technology, integrating comments, feedback and tools into like FriendFeed and Get Satisfaction, those sorts of tools. So, the idea behind the data portability is definitely not just for the user to be able to export and fluidly connect their profiles, but also, to sort of provide transparency where it's necessary. So, those are the two biggest, I guess, overarching things that we're working on.

What you just said about providing transparency, using these tools to provide transparency, can you explain that more to me, and why is that important to you?

Well, I think that's definitely important for non-profits, in general, and I don't think it's emphasized enough. A lot of folks don't really understand culture, our decision-making processes and things like that, and I think that definitely reflects more when you take the good with the bad. And that includes negative comments and negative feedback, as well as the positive feedback. We need to make sure that our community knows that we're listening, we're interested in a dialogue, and we're interested in a conversation, as opposed to a top down dialogue. We definitely are interested in more of a conversation.

Based on what you said, what makes the most sense to me is something like Get Satisfaction, bringing transparency there, where you're saying, "We're listening; say whatever you want to say and we'll listen to you.

Right. There's a lot of potential for that. There's a lot of potential for us, personally, if we use that for our services, I mean, for an Idealist-hosted space, as well as integrate it into our services for our orgs, potentially. Down the road, if we want to consider that, the API would allow us to do it. So, transparency on that level, on the macro and the micro level, would also be beneficial all the way around.

And now with FriendFeed, what you're able to do with that API, if somebody comments on one of our blogs or our pod casts, the blog RSS feed will then show up on FriendFeed, but the comments can go back and forth, as well. So, if somebody comments on FriendFeed, it will show up on our blog. If somebody comments on our blog, it will show up on our FriendFeed, as well. So, that's another outlet.

Right, and I guess that sort of dovetails with what you were saying about the first thing you're working on, which is trying to consolidate your outreach across all these different channels. So, your RSS feeds and all the contents that you produce, sort of systemizing how you push that out. What FriendFeed allows you to do is receive comments and consolidate that conversation, right?

Right, right. I mean, there're so many technologies, so many different tools, and they're all excellent, some more excellent than others. But we definitely need to sort of streamline them all together without a lot of redundancies and overlapping. More dovetailing, I suppose.

To me, that's what always sets off alarms in my head when I have these conversations. You've named a whole slew already, and we've been talking for about 10 minutes. You've already mentioned all these different applications to use. Do you feel like you're overwhelmed at all?

It's more like I'm not overwhelmed so much as I'm anxious for these technologies to get off the ground. What I'm really excited about is OpenSocial sort of getting off the ground. We've heard rumors of it before it launched, was it November of last year? And then, Facebook opening up, as well, more so than it already has. So, I'm more anxious that these technologies start maturing and start getting off the ground and we can really see how effective, say, an Idealist application on all these platforms would be, how many more people we could reach that have never even heard of us, have no idea what we're doing. And finally, people can see our work across all these platforms and interact seamlessly, and not have to worry. With OAuth, they'll be able to share some data without giving away their whole personal profile. And so, you can include some of the more tepid people like the Linked In folks, who may not be so excited to interact with the MySpace folks.

But, once this technology starts to mature and there's this fluidity across all these networks, the potential there is absolutely exciting. The growth will be exponential, not just for us, but in the space, in general, for a lot of other web spaces. So, I'm sort of waiting. My job is also I like to predict what's going to happen down the road, and a lot of that's hard with so many technologies jumping in here. So, I'm sort of trying to piece this puzzle together with only fragments of what already exists. Does that make sense?

It really does, and that's what I was actually going to ask you, if you can predict any winners. You're talking about OAuth, you're talking about OpenSocial.

Any technology that promotes data portability, and you've got a progressive working group that's building these standards out, data portability and semantic/data portability technologies, I think there'll be some competing standards. Who the big winners are? I think OpenSocial's got a good group of properties on there. But, Facebook is also a big presence. It's huge. It depends on how much they open up and how secure their code is. I know there's been some, I don't want to say inconsistencies, from how they implemented FHTML in their Facebook Java script. There's been some security holes, but it just depends on how secure it is and who decides to go in what direction.

Right, and there's really no way to tell that in advance, it's so complicated.

Yeah, it's hard, but you know what? The competition's great for us in the end, and the speed at which these technologies mature, it's getting faster and it's accelerating at exponential speeds. I'm excited, but I'm waiting, you know?

Right, so you've mentioned security is a concern. What are deal breakers for Idealist when you're adapting technologies, lack of openness or . . .?

Well, security-wise, you definitely need openness and transparency, but you've also got to make sure the users' data's entirely secure and we're not sharing too much of their information without either their approval or their consent. We don't want to expose too much about them. We definitely have to wait, also, for all those technologies like OpenID and OAuth to mature. I don't know. I suppose we're just taking it slowly. We don't need to stick our necks out there. There are people that will do that and get paid for it or not get paid for it. We'll just sit back and see what happens with them first, and then, decide what we're going to adapt.

Could you describe for me your pipe dream vision for how Idealist would work within social media, from the user's side, their user experience?

For sure, yeah, my biggest interest right now is the potential exists within, you take data portability and you take OpenSocial and the fluidity that's going to exist between all the different social networks and how either our network's going to be a part of that, or we're going to be an application within that, however we ultimately decide to go. I'm interested in the fluidity and how across all these spaces, we're going to find a niche within each one of them, how we can fill them, how people can use us. And then, you take this fluidity and you take it off the desktop and you put it in the mobile sphere. You put it on iPods, and on Google Android. And you'd put it on, what is it Symbian just decided to go open source?

Yeah.

You'd put it on all these networks. You know in Buenos Aires, there's WIFI everywhere, and it's all free. I would love to see that here in the States more. When you take that technology and you take the immediacy, time sensitive, location sensitive events and volunteering opportunities, outreach sort of programs, and things that exist now, based off of you predicting what you're going to be able to do in the future, as opposed to saying what you can do right now, when you have this device, that sort of opens up more opportunities.

So, I'm interested in seeing how we can apply this fluidity to time sensitive, location sensitive sorts of events and information.

I'd actually written a blog post on it for Idealist, I don't know, maybe a month ago, just saying how I think mobile technology is going to break open volunteering opportunities because a lot of how we volunteer now depends on when we think we'll have free time (see Shifting Time: The Future of Volunteerism?). And for the most part, we know, say, Saturdays are open, or every other Friday we don't have the kids, that sort of thing. That's how we decide when we'll have time to either volunteer, or time to do something, outreach or whatever. Say, you've already set your criteria and you're already associated with a number of non-profits, you've already decided what skills you have. If you have a mobile device and you just realize well, heck, the movie I was going to is sold out. I'm just going to go get an ice cream and hang out for two hours until the next movie. If you could ping Idealist or ping whoever and maybe we could be that source, the medium between whoever, we could ping that and say, "I've got two hours, these are my pre-set skills. Who in the area can work with me right now?"

And so, basically, it's like time shifting. It's like a TiVo for your non-profit life, you know? And I think there's going to be enough opportunities like that connected to enough mobile devices that people can now start to really interact with their communities and interact with the non-profits they care about. It could be anything in the world, you know? If I have my laptop with me and I've got two hours, I could do some web design work for somebody or something. So, I'm interested in connecting more people through that fluidity, through mobile devices to more transient sort of opportunities. That's a mouthful!

I apologize, I didn't explain what NetSquared is, and I don't know how familiar you are with it. 

Oh, no problem. I've been following NetSquared off and on for a couple years.

My point is you'll probably get a few NetSquared readers to shed a tear with that vision. 

(laughs) I'm als interested in the work that TheCommon.org is doing. They're kind of on the right track, as well. I supposed I shouldn't be naming them, they're probably a competitor. But, I don't see them quite as that yet. They don't quite have the brand recognition, but they're working on it. And so, what they do is they say, "This is our community, this is our group. Within this community, we offer these skills." And it's sort of like a matching service to match like-minded organizations and non-profits to like-minded other organizations and people and so on. It's akin to Time Banking, where it's we have these skills, these abilities. I'd like to trade them for other skills and abilities that we don't have, but we need.

So, I'd like to take that off the laptop and shoot it out into the ether, and let people be able to take those things up while they're on the go.

Right, because there's so many latent groups of people that could be working, but they just don't know how or where. And then, of course, all the redundancies, the skills that are being wasted in one organization when they'd be better used in another organization or two organizations doing the same work. 

Yeah, like-minded organizations, one has too many resources or too many people, and the other one doesn't have enough, and there's little overlap or too much overlap. I would love to see Idealist ultimately be able to make that more efficient amongst all these non-profits because there just isn't enough of it. There's so many people with so many good intentions, but not the best outlets to organize everything.