"if we ran the world" about turning good intentions into action
Posted on May 13th, 2009 by Craig Newmark
It's still in process, but Cindy Gallop was thinking about one of the biggest of problems, how to turn the good intentions of millions of people into actual action. The idea is to use crowdsourcing to get people together. This is really worth looking at.
Cindy Gallop found herself thinking that the single biggest untapped pool
of natural resource in this world is human good intentions – that never
translate into action. She and developer Wendell Davis decided to act on
that thought, and so they are launching IfWeRanTheWorld – an extremely
simple web platform designed to turn intentions into action.
IfWeRanTheWorld uses a combination of crowdsourcing and algorithms to
break any answer to the question, 'If you ran the world, what would you
do?' down into Micro-Actions.Micro-Actions can be generated, matched with and picked up by anyone, and
also sent out as targeted Invitations to Act. IfWeRanTheWorld integrates
gaming dynamics that leverage competitiveness to drive action, with 'Action
Branding' (user profiles are entirely dynamically generated by actions, so
you self-identify literally as 'you are what you do'), and is designed to
plug into anything where someone wants to make something happen. It
launches this summer
There's more from Wired mag: Yes, We Plan: How Altruism and Advertising Could Change the World
Craig,
Today I read a piece of citizen journalism in the Sacramento Press http://sacramentopress.com/headline/6422/Is_Anyone_Paying_Attention about a local duck pond in Sacramento. I immediately thought of this blog post. Even the smallest actions echoed in an article can mobilize the best intentions of people. Thank you for your post.
Marilyn