YAKANA.ORG

Q: From Expert - Why you over any other project?
A: Latin america lacks access. Want to bring access for the purpose of supporting people in their respective fields. Who is our competition? There are many tools available, but there is not technical support for the community. Want to make tools available without barrier of having to understand how the tools work. Just want give access to apply the tool.

Q: What about access? What is the issue?
A: Ecuador only has a 10% internet access. The government is installing centers to give communities access. Yakana.org is promoting low cost internet access for organizations as well.

Q: Does it make sense for yakana.org to use the web 2.0 approach the right answer? What problem are you really trying to solve and is there a better way of addressing it?
A: Most cel phones in the area do not have many functions that phone around here have. Have two pronged strategy: 1) online tools and 2) telephone support for effective use of those tools. Scaling: Starting in Ecuador and then moving to other countries.

Q: What tools will provide the best solution for your audience? Standardizing services is also helpful in providing consistent support.
A: CMS system, email address and .org domain name provided up-front to organizations. Mailing list, wiki, video and podcasts will be additional tools, but not minimum. These items together are the minimum package to help these people generate their own content; give themselves a new voice.

In Ecuador they are not getting beyond using hi-5 (a site like myspace) and msn messenger. They need to take the next step in developing and using the technology.

Q: from audience - Of the people you are trying to reach, how many have computers? Of those how many have internet access?
A: 1 million PC's and 10% have internet access.

Q: from audience - Why do you (Ecuadorians) need a website?
A: Information share in more rich ways

The intention is to connect organizations to other organizations, not to reach the people they serve. The people they serve do not have internet access.

MAPLIGHT.ORG

Q: from expert - What sets you apart? Why you?
A: We are the only group merging data sets. For example, you can visit the Center for Responsive Politics and get good data. Take that data and merge with other public data.

Q: from expert - How will you address users that may be interested, but don't have time to sift through the data.
A: At maplight the data will be aggregated data related to a given bill.

Q: from expert - That answer still requires a user to know about maplight.org. Is there a way it could be sent to me because I live in a given area.
A: Going to produce widgets so other websites can present information relevant to their interest area. Users can find it in that way.

Q: from expert - Aggregating data still requires you to do lots of work related to filtering it effectively for the user. Are you doing that kind of work to make this project sustainable?
A: Sunlight Foundation is doing a lot of work to get more information from the government in better user-friendly ways.

Q: from audience - Is there any talk about making this information more helpful to smaller localities?
A: Immediately we won't be able to do things like city councils, but interest in allowing local activists to update data.

Q: from audience - What would be the editorial control in that scenario?
A: Existing tools indicate to user when data is user contributed and does not guarantee results.

Q: from expert - If you took approach of wikipedia, have you also thought about taking the approach of voting things up and down?
A: Want to build out more tools that allow for verification of information.

Q: from expert - What data sets are you specifically merging?
A: 3 data sets Center for Responsive Politics(opensecrets.org), library of congress, and maplight researchers uncover data

Q: from audience - Interested in pushing data out for other orgs to mash it up?
A: Yes

Q: from audiences - Are you considering developing standards in data feeds?
A: No, not doing a lot of advocacy work around how government presents data. Yes, doing work on standardizing xml presentations of the data for the purpose of scraping sites.

Comment from audience - Adding hcard to pages to government pages helps users to add every member of congress they want to their address book. Takes away tech heavy burden off more average users.

FARMERTOFAMER

q: from expert - Why you?
A: Asked farmer to specifically post information about activities on their land. Have 60,000 users on site currently. Why Farmertofarmer? Because it results in real money in farmer's pockets.

q: from expert - If farmers have so few computers, why put it on the web?
a: it works for economic practices purposes.

Done a lot of research on what other people are doing in this area - farming.

q: from expert - At this point you are collecting information from farmers and putting it on the web. That is not sustainable as you grow. Have you thought about how to get the farmers to input the data themselves.
a: there are organizations that are related to the farmers that could be taught how to use the system and input the data.

q: from expert - Farming is very hi-tech now. Who's more hi-tech than a farmer now adays?
a: that is true here in the U.S., not other places.

q: from audience - You don't have the illusion that farmer are going to access the site directly. Great that you acknowledge you are using intermediaries to collect and distribute information. Do you distribute by paper?
a: yes, distribute data by paper.

q: from expert - how do you prevent purposefully bad data from being submitted from someone as competition grows?
a: service provider visits the farmer weekly and has the ability to do some basic reality checks.

q: from expert - what is the farmer's incentive to contribute to the project?
a: within a village where everyone knows each other there is not economic loss, it doesn't impact the cost of coffee. if data is shared with competitors it impacts pricing. won't be doing that.

Youth Assets

Want to provide information to orphans in Swaziland to enable 2 way communication. Interested in learning of new technologies that may be able address these issues.

q: from expert - Is there a hardware cost?
a: yes, want to give phones to orphans. interested in transcending literacy issues, for example, receiving podcast by phone

q: from expert - What problems are you looking solve through this?
a: focus on relevant content such as access to water and living conditions for the purpose of offering them information about good practices for things like clean water, etc.

Comment from audience - people are not going to have the minutes to use the cel phone. your proposal is missing funding of the minutes and/or use text messaging technologies.

q: from expert - no cost for receiving a call?
answer from audience - in many countries, yes? they can ping your system and have the information sent to them, or you can contact them to minimize their cost.

Comment from expert - suggestion of use of kiosks that provide video and allow them to record video.

Idea from audience - deepening connection between someone funding an orphan and the orphan, perhaps by text messaging.

Comment from audience - necessary to work with local ngo's so the child is protected.

q: from expert - scale and sustainability; why do a technological solution vs. doing something on the ground?
a: scalability of technology is the reason we'd want it. the number of orphans is growing exponentially right now. to use technology to reach a greater number of people.

q: from audience - do you have experience that the orphans are looking for the information or would seek it out in a podcast format?
a: experience is you can't "trick" kids. if something is not valuable to a kid they won't use it.

q: from audience - what about the cultural aspects of the project and the legal rights of the children?
a: plan on partnering with local service providers that have cultural knowledge. issue of privacy important one.