Screenshots: http://www.theextraordinaries.org/screenshots.html

OVERVIEW

For people, we allow someone to have a fun, rewarding, cause-related, social, repeatable experience with a few minutes of their spare time.

For organizations, we provide a new set of tools to take advantage of the cognitive surplus among their tens of thousands of members whose spare human energy was previously inaccessible. We allow them to harness the power of the crowd to advance their agenda.

Mobile is the logical vehicle to access someone's latent spare time. Nearly anything you can do on a regular computer you can do on a smartphone, plus you have all the advantages that a mobile device delivers including instant access, mobile Internet, phone, GPS, camera, audio recording, video playback, touch screen, accelerometer, and more.

Our system creates an entirely new micro-action experience, delivering a rich media narrative, tied to instantly rewarding actions, all within a mobile platform that bridges the world of online content with tangible real-world community engagement. Our dream is to answer this question: "What social change can millions of people create with powerful smartphones and a few minutes of their spare time?"

THE PROBLEM AND THE PROMISE

73% of Americans don't volunteer (2007 U.S. Dept. of Labor), and the overwhelming reason is for a "lack of time."

The root cause, is that most volunteer opportunities require vetting, many hours, and a long-term commitment. It's akin to a second job, and the old industrial age model of traditional volunteerism has been outpaced by our rat-race society. For most of us, doing social good is inconvenient, takes too much time, and doesn't easily fit into hectic lives. As a result, most of us don't do it.

But Americans *do* have spare time -- billions of hours! -- yet this time comes in small windows of idle moments: sitting in an airport, waiting in a doctor's office, riding the bus to work, and more. If we can reach people during these spare moments, we harness a huge pool of untapped human energy for social good.

The Extraordinaries proposes to create opportunity for people to use their skills and interests to do social good during spare time. We're not talking about any random tasks -- we're talking about real, productive, rewarding, and beneficial use of people's skills and interests, completed directly on smartphones from anywhere on Earth within cellphone reception.

With our system, translators can translate a paragraph, or speak to an immigrant to improve English skills, or add translated subtitles to an advocacy movie, while they ride the bus home from work. They perform the task right there on their smartphone.

Astronomy hobbyists can connect to NASA's crowdsourcing space exploration opportunities while they stand in line at the bank, and perform the task right there on their smartphone.

Photography enthusiasts can help the Library of Congress tag entire photographic eras in American history and perform the task right there on their smartphone while they sit in the doctor's office waiting room.

Bird lovers can collect Citizen Science birding data for Cornell University Ornithologists in the park down the street from their office during a lunch break.

By 2012, over 700 million people will own smartphones (Washington Post, August 2008). Realizing this was our moment of obligation: "How can we use this technology for social good?"

THE PARADIGM SHIFT

Until recently, it has almost always been a challenge to tap a volunteer for a few moments: It was a management issue and a productivity issue.

Then in 2007, Apple introduced iPhone and revolutionized the mobile industry.    

It was just the beginning, as mobile is now the focus of innovation for Apple, Google, and more. With smartphones, we finally have mobile Internet fast enough and devices powerful enough to make someone truly productive from any place with cell reception. It is now possible to harness a few minutes, and have it actually matter. We can actually use the time that someone spends riding the bus for social good. These aren't just phones anymore, these are powerful tools that we can use to change the world, a few minutes at a time.

The media industry recognizes the value of brief spare time. Apple offers more than 100,000 audio and video podcasts from independent creators and big names like HBO, NPR, ESPN, CBS, and more! Podcasts are based on the ability to access content on-demand during spare time, and have obviously been a huge hit. Why can't we use this same spare time for social good?

So, we created mobile smartphone software designed to facilitate crowdsourcing (a large task, broken into little pieces, and worked on by many people). Typically, these tasks are small, requiring only a few minutes to complete.

Many successful businesses use crowdsourcing. In only two years, iStockPhoto dominated the stock photo industry by crowdsourcing its photographs. InnoCentive has solved tough scientific problems by crowdsourcing solutions from amateur scientists. Wikipedia uses crowdsourcing to generate millions of articles from writers all over the world.

We bring the concept of crowdsourcing to volunteering and community engagement, and we've created a mechanism for organizations to take advantage of previously inaccessible volunteer labor.

OUR THEORY OF CHANGE

We cut the time cost from several hours to several minutes and deliver tasks directly to the volunteer via smartphones, that they complete *on the phone* while riding the bus or waiting in line. Using mobile puts a direct link to social good in the pockets of over 100 million people, 24/7/365. It simply couldn't be more convenient.

In principle, our project is based on volunteerism, as there is no exchange of monetary compensation just people's spare time. Further, the exchange does happen online, facilitated by mobile smartphones. However, in practice, it is far from the traditional mental image of in-person volunteering or online-volunteering. We're talking about an entirely new way of using people's micro amounts of spare time for social good. Our tool harnesses an untapped natural resource -- a "few minutes" of someone's spare time.

ONLINE PRESENCE

Facebook Pages: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Extraordinaries/31109282065?ref=ts

Facebook Causes: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/135936

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/theextraordinaries

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/extraordinaries

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1359757