[OK] Creating a 'Dating Site' for the Climate Action Movement!... reviving Project Matching

[Suresh Fernando]

Hi Everyone,

I have some exciting news! I will be working with the Coalition of the Willing project to create a 'dating site' for the Climate Action Movement. The objective is to create a technology platform and associated processes to enable climate action projects to identify each other and align in a swarm like fashion.

See Tim Rayner's description of the Coalition of the Willing Project!

There are many projects with similar objectives that wold be better served if these projects connected with one another. By coordinating and converging on common goals, climate action projects could achieve the critical mass necessary to bring about massive social and systemic change.

The theory underlying the 'dating site' was developed under the OpenKollab umbrella along with the contribution of many of you that are still on this list. The details can be found in this presentation as well as here. I have also attached an executive summary describing the project.

The stages in the development of this project can be found in the table below:

To get things going, we are scheduling a Skype chat session to discuss the project, answer questions, and to identify those that might be interested in participating.

If you are interested in participating in the call, please provide your availability in this Doodle link.


IMPLEMENTATION PLAN

Preparation Phase

This consists of two tracks that we can work on in parallel:

Technology/Platform Track	Outreach Track
Develop Project Ontology: What information do we want to collect and why? We need to remember that the function of the information is to facilitate matching.	Develop Project Selection Criteria: what sorts of projects do we want to approach and why?
Develop Supporting Collateral Material ·         Executive Summary ·         Powerpoint Presentation ·         Short Video	Develop List of Suggested Projects: ·         Develop central list to identify contacts we have that can assist us ·         What databases do we have and what projects have we been tracking?
Develop Web Platform ·         Basic website ·         Input form: some custom fields based on project ontology that we develop as well as mechanism to solicit natural language input ·         Upload all associated collateral material ·         Ensure that project information that we collect is visible. This need not be complicated at this stage. Maybe a simple online spreadsheet is enough.	Identify Supports/Partners ·         What organizations can we work with that can support our efforts? ·         Wiserearth, 350.org… etc.

 

Information Gathering Phase: target information from 100 projects. More generally we need to develop an outreach strategy that might look something like the following:

Identify Information Gathering Team: those within the COTW project that will commit to forwarding emails about the project to prospective projects and conducting follow up to solicit the required information.

Subdivide Database Amongst Information Gathering Team: Clearly it makes most sense for those to contact people with whom they have an existing relationship. Those that we don’t have a relationship with can be divided up amongst the group

Send Out Information Gathering Emails: the Outreach Team can forward emails to the various projects with a description of the process

Arrange Web Conferences: Conduct weekly web presentation on PMS in order educate interested parties; partners, projects etc.

Conduct Follow Up: actively solicit and engage projects in order obtain project information

 

--
Suresh Fernando
BLOG, YOUTUBE, OK WEBSITE, OK FAN PAGE, OK GROUP, OK-WE, PHILOSOPHY,  TWITTER,  FACEBOOK, WOTW FAN PAGE LINKEDIN, SLIDESHARE

'The counter cultural revolution was a rhizomatic meshwork of loosely-coordinated, loosely-affiliated struggles. The goals of these struggles weren’t always complimentary, but the struggles were aligned and together they staged a mass offensive to shatter the status quo'. - from The Coalition of the Willing

[Suresh Fernando]

Oops - forgot attachment!

--
------------------
Coalition of the Willing
------------------
The Coalition occupies several spaces for communication and action. Keep the discussion on this list civil & assume good faith. Strive for brevity.

For the what-why-where of Coalition work, look to http://cotw.cc. That wiki functions as a routing-portal and a locus for some of the work. All group efforts should maintain an updated statement of current focus, channels and spaces of work and anything necessary to support orientation & keeping up-to-speed.
 
"BetterMeans" is where we coordinate our work: making proposals, endorsing & signing up for work, and tracking tasks. https://secure.bettermeans.com/projects/163
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[John Bunzl]

Hi Suresh,

 

If you're concerned with climate change, you might like to check out the attached paper, Solving Climate Change - Transforming International Politics. It's been published as a short pamphlet and an abstract as well as endorsement from Ken Wilber can be found on the cover, also attached.

 

As you'll see, it outlines an existing initiative which shows precisely how all those concerned with climate change and other global problems can align behind a very powerful political programme. It could perhaps benefit from the OK process you outline.

 

So if you feel there's anyway I might help your efforts, please let me know.

best wishes

John

 

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[Suresh Fernando]

Chris - see my comments inline.

On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 7:03 PM, Chris Watkins <chrisw...@appropedia.org> wrote:

I love this - I'd like to help with working on ideas for the algorithm.

The dating & meeting people site OkCupid.com has a remarkably good matching algorithm - achieves extremely good matching based on a series of questions (including many user-submitted questions). It's a free site, so it's easy to check out. It's so far of the competition, I'm sure it would be huge if they had a decent advertising budget.

Thanks for this, we should certainly explore various sorts of matching algorithms... hopefully people advance other options as well!

It's not open unfortunately. But the general approach is clear enough, so it would be possible to copy the basic model (multiple-choice questions and weighting) and hack around with different algorithms. And I think we could be a lot simpler than OkCupid (i.e. less questions) and still have good matches.


Another thought:  the algorithm and platform don't need to be limited to climate change, or even to organizations. That means we could potentially attract collaborators who are interested in making their own sites for dating, matching activity partners, and other kinds of people-organizational matching. 

Clearly the matching concept has very wide application, but getting traction will require focus. I strongly suggest that we restrict ourselves to the climate change ecosystem to get things started. The 'problem' posed by climate change is a good motivator to get people to pay attention to what we are doing. It is also the obvious fit with COTW.

Once we have our infrastructure, processes and algorithms developed we can abstract, generalize, and apply in other domains.

Excessive generalization at this stage will, in my opinion, serve to fragment our efforts...

Can we work with WiserEarth on this? (BCCing Bowo from WiserEarth.)

Chris

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--
------------------
Coalition of the Willing
------------------
The Coalition occupies several spaces for communication and action. Keep the discussion on this list civil & assume good faith. Strive for brevity.

For the what-why-where of Coalition work, look to http://cotw.cc. That wiki functions as a routing-portal and a locus for some of the work. All group efforts should maintain an updated statement of current focus, channels and spaces of work and anything necessary to support orientation & keeping up-to-speed.
 
"BetterMeans" is where we coordinate our work: making proposals, endorsing & signing up for work, and tracking tasks. https://secure.bettermeans.com/projects/163
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[sureshf]

John - thanks for the follow up and for introducing this work... The reality is that a problem of this scale needless to say has to be tackled from many angles. We are going to be as focused as possible and will try to develop the infrastructure and processes described in the document. That'll be enough of a challenge.

If you are interested in supporting this specific approach, you're help would be much appreciated!

Regards,

Suresh

[Suresh Fernando]

Hey Markus - do you know Markus? Are you able to provide an intro?

On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 7:36 PM, Tiberius Brastaviceanu <tiberius.br...@gmail.com> wrote:

I think Markus Frind, the creator of Plantyoffish.com, a free dating site that runs on its own, can give you the best advice. I remember back in 2006, when I was working on my Matchmaking Device System Markus was the star of the dating industry. His very popular free dating site, a one-man-show, sent a chilling wave into the dating industry running on a monthly fee model. Yahoo Personals collapsed during this crisis. Plantyoffish.com is easy to run but I don't know if you can convince Markus to collaborate.  

Also consider this idea (I already proposed it in a previous email): 

Self-awareness: tools for increased stability and management of modern social movements

This architecture allows you to delegate most of the work to the crowd. Moreover, the analysis, managing, and in your case the matchmaking algorithm becomes open and collaboratively maintained. 

Tibi
    

On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 10:03 PM, Chris Watkins <chrisw...@appropedia.org> wrote:

I love this - I'd like to help with working on ideas for the algorithm.

The dating & meeting people site OkCupid.com has a remarkably good matching algorithm - achieves extremely good matching based on a series of questions (including many user-submitted questions). It's a free site, so it's easy to check out. It's so far of the competition, I'm sure it would be huge if they had a decent advertising budget.

It's not open unfortunately. But the general approach is clear enough, so it would be possible to copy the basic model (multiple-choice questions and weighting) and hack around with different algorithms. And I think we could be a lot simpler than OkCupid (i.e. less questions) and still have good matches.


Another thought:  the algorithm and platform don't need to be limited to climate change, or even to organizations. That means we could potentially attract collaborators who are interested in making their own sites for dating, matching activity partners, and other kinds of people-organizational matching. 

Can we work with WiserEarth on this? (BCCing Bowo from WiserEarth.)

Chris

On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 03:06, Suresh Fernando <sures...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Suresh Fernando]

Hey Tiberius, I should say ;-)

On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 7:36 PM, Tiberius Brastaviceanu <tiberius.br...@gmail.com> wrote:

I think Markus Frind, the creator of Plantyoffish.com, a free dating site that runs on its own, can give you the best advice. I remember back in 2006, when I was working on my Matchmaking Device System Markus was the star of the dating industry. His very popular free dating site, a one-man-show, sent a chilling wave into the dating industry running on a monthly fee model. Yahoo Personals collapsed during this crisis. Plantyoffish.com is easy to run but I don't know if you can convince Markus to collaborate.  

Also consider this idea (I already proposed it in a previous email): 

Self-awareness: tools for increased stability and management of modern social movements

This architecture allows you to delegate most of the work to the crowd. Moreover, the analysis, managing, and in your case the matchmaking algorithm becomes open and collaboratively maintained. 

Tibi
    

On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 10:03 PM, Chris Watkins <chrisw...@appropedia.org> wrote:

I love this - I'd like to help with working on ideas for the algorithm.

The dating & meeting people site OkCupid.com has a remarkably good matching algorithm - achieves extremely good matching based on a series of questions (including many user-submitted questions). It's a free site, so it's easy to check out. It's so far of the competition, I'm sure it would be huge if they had a decent advertising budget.

It's not open unfortunately. But the general approach is clear enough, so it would be possible to copy the basic model (multiple-choice questions and weighting) and hack around with different algorithms. And I think we could be a lot simpler than OkCupid (i.e. less questions) and still have good matches.


Another thought:  the algorithm and platform don't need to be limited to climate change, or even to organizations. That means we could potentially attract collaborators who are interested in making their own sites for dating, matching activity partners, and other kinds of people-organizational matching. 


Can we work with WiserEarth on this? (BCCing Bowo from WiserEarth.)

Chris

On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 03:06, Suresh Fernando <sures...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Suresh Fernando]

Venessa - thanks for joining the conversation! If you know Mark, please feel free to invite him into the loop!

Let's all try to keep both the Coalition of the Willing group and the Cooperation Commons Group in the loop!

On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 8:36 AM, Venessa Miemis <veness...@gmail.com> wrote:

yeah, as bowo mentioned, it's not so much that projects need to be
matched.... that information is out there, it's not hard to find
similar projects. what would be useful is resource matching - having
the ability to list things needs/offers. there's a lot to be said for
being able to offer skills, tacit knowledge, and social connections to
each other, if there was a way to do so.

someone who thinks/writes a lot about this is mark frazier, @openworld
- http://www.openworld.com/

- venessa

On Feb 8, 2:18 am, Wibowo Sulistio <wibowosulis...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thank you Chris for including me in the loop. Hello everyone :)

> This is Bowo athttp://www.wiserearth.org/user/bowo

>
> I'm pretty excited to be part of the conversation and will try not to enter
> that mode of "my platform is cool, please use it"... so the spirit is
> sharing what WiserEarth is doing related to our discussion here and see
> where this will take us. So, here we go...
>
> I read through most of the links that Suresh shared.
> Seems like the 'matching' process goes something like this?
>
> 1. Develop project matching ontology
> 2. Identify projects for seed database. Gather metadata based on no. 1.
> Includes authentication process.
> 3. Build algorithm for project matching, along with manual matching. Tweak
> overall process.
> 4. When a match happens, 'initiate' discussion/collaboration (somehow).
> 5. Scale the process to reach (much) more organizations, projects and people
> 6. Aim to use the whole process to accelerate change on a mass scale on
> urgent issues.
>
> I really like the idea of matching based on a standardized (or
> user-generated) ontology. I see the main challenge lies in step no. 2,
> authentication process, step no. 4, in facilitating collaboration between
> two projects, and no. 5, scaling the process. And I'm still curious as to
> how no. 6 would look like. Would love to hear more as the concept evolves.
>
> As for WiserEarth, these days we're thinking less about being a 'central'
> space, and more about being a place where information, relationships and
> resources freely flows (in, through, out) and is enhanced/synergized along
> the path (via singe sign in, read/write API, RSS in/out, recommendation
> engine, Twitter/Friendfeed output of information, etc.). It may end up that
> we strive for a reasonable balance between the two, as we already are to
> some extent.
>
> Related to match-making, especially around goals, needs and offers, we're
> actually working on that as I write this. If you're interested we have some
> mock-ups and discussions happening at:http://www.wiserearth.org/group/WEtech
>
> This is the wiki especially on this idea:http://www.wiserearth.org/article/46ba9442d676043f1f95be54d683725b
> (We're at the 5th iteration of the mockups)
>
> Basically it aims to match needs and offers between WiserEarth members based
> on their Areas of Focus (interests), social graph, location and language.
> Part of this work is that, we're also building a recommendation engine, and
> has been testing Google Prediction

> API<http://code.google.com/apis/predict/docs/getting-started.>to that

> end.
>
> As you will notice, WiserEarth and this needs/offers exchange is centered
> around individuals, not on projects or organizations. We find that
> authenticating organization accounts is a challenging process (How do we
> know that someone is indeed a representative of an organization? What
> happens when that person move on? What happens to the organization account
> then?). However, it is possible to (hyper)link an offer / a need with an
> organization via links (or maybe also via our network connection

> tool<http://www.wiserearth.org/article/0827337923eb992299cc08e9c98509de>)

> and the poster's association with that organization as shown on his/her
> profile page.
>
> For scaling up and better connectivity with major platforms like Twitter,
> Facebook, LinkedIn, we're integrating Janrain

> Engage<http://www.janrain.com/products/engage>in stages. The first

> phase is done (single sign in), and we're moving on to
> the next stages of enabling address book invites, and social sharing (will
> be tied into the status update and need/offer creation process, as part of
> the community exchange idea linked in the wiki above).
>
> Interestingly enough, as Suresh mentions about "internal, reputation based,
> economic system" to facilitate the exchange of "time and labour", we're also
> toying around with the idea of integrating an open money system (virtual
> currency)... probably a long shot, or something for the far future, but
> we're starting that by integrating reputation-building mechanism in the
> needs/offers exchange above. Simple 'thank you' badges and "nominate as
> expert" mechanism.
>
> Also, there was a mention of integrating a web conference system in the OK
> Platform, and I immediately thought of this opensource app:http://bigbluebutton.org/
>
> Hope any of this information will help push the conversation (and
> collaboration) forward.
>
> With best regards,
> Bowo
> Online Community Manager

> WiserEarth.orghttp://www.wiserearth.org/user/bowo

>
> More about WiserEarth:http://www.wiserearth.org/article/about
>
> Date: Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 10:03 AM
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Subject: Re: [OK] Creating a 'Dating Site' for the Climate Action
> > Movement!... reviving Project Matching
> > To: openk...@googlegroups.com
> > Cc: Cooperati...@googlegroups.com, coal...@googlegroups.com

>
> > I love this - I'd like to help with working on ideas for the algorithm.
>
> > The dating & meeting people site OkCupid.com has a remarkably good matching
> > algorithm - achieves extremely good matching based on a series of questions
> > (including many user-submitted questions). It's a free site, so it's easy to
> > check out. It's so far of the competition, I'm sure it would be huge if they
> > had a decent advertising budget.
>
> > It's not open unfortunately. But the general approach is clear enough, so
> > it would be possible to copy the basic model (multiple-choice questions and
> > weighting) and hack around with different algorithms. And I think we could
> > be a lot simpler than OkCupid (i.e. less questions) and still have good
> > matches.
>
> > Another thought:  the algorithm and platform don't need to be limited to
> > climate change, or even to organizations. That means we could potentially
> > attract collaborators who are interested in making their own sites for
> > dating, matching activity partners, and other kinds of people-organizational
> > matching.
>
> > Can we work with WiserEarth on this? (BCCing Bowo from WiserEarth.)
>
> > Chris
>

> > On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 03:06, Suresh Fernando <suresh2...@gmail.com>wrote:

>
> >> Hi Everyone,
>
> >> I have some exciting news! I will be working with the Coalition of the

> >> Willing <http://cotw.cc/wiki/Coalition_of_the_Willing> project to create

> >> a *'dating site'* for the Climate Action Movement. The objective is to

> >> create a technology platform and associated processes to enable climate
> >> action projects to identify each other and align in a swarm like fashion.
>

> >> See Tim Rayner's description<https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1kLA1g58tMZbb0-4uqkZU5vDkMMoH...>of the Coalition of the Willing Project!

>
> >> There are many projects with similar objectives that wold be better served
> >> if these projects connected with one another. By coordinating and converging
> >> on common goals, climate action projects could achieve the critical mass
> >> necessary to bring about massive social and systemic change.
>
> >> The theory underlying the 'dating site' was developed under the OpenKollab
> >> umbrella along with the contribution of many of you that are still on this
> >> list. The details can be found in this presentation

> >> <http://www.slideshare.net/sureshf/openkollab-project-matching>as well as
> >> here. <http://wiki.openkollab.com/wagn/ProjectMapping> I have also

> >> attached an executive summary describing the project.
>
> >> The stages in the development of this project can be found in the table
> >> below:

> >> *

> >> To get things going, we are scheduling a Skype chat session to discuss the

> >> project*, answer questions, and to identify those that might be
> >> interested in participating.
>
> >> *If you are interested in participating in the call, please provide your

> >> availability in this Doodle link. <http://doodle.com/3cnvhuixsqyz6sf2%20>
> >> *
>
> >> *IMPLEMENTATION PLAN*

>
> >> *Preparation Phase*

>
> >> This consists of two tracks that we can work on in parallel:
>

> >>   *Technology/Platform Track*
>
> >> *Outreach Track*
>
> >> *Develop Project Ontology:* What information do we want to collect and

> >> why? We need to remember that the function of the information is to
> >> facilitate matching.
>

> >> *Develop Project Selection Criteria: *what sorts of projects do we want
> >> to approach and why?
>
> >> * *
>
> >> *Develop Supporting Collateral Material*
>
> >> ·         Executive Summary
>
> >> ·         Powerpoint Presentation
>
> >> ·         Short Video
>
> >> *Develop List of Suggested Projects: *
>
> >> ·         Develop central list to identify contacts we have that can

> >> assist us
>
> >> ·         What databases do we have and what projects have we been
> >> tracking?
>

> >> *Develop Web Platform*
>
> >> ·         Basic website
>
> >> ·         *Input form:* some custom fields based on project ontology that

> >> we develop as well as mechanism to solicit natural language input
>
> >> ·         Upload all associated collateral material
>
> >> ·         Ensure that project information that we collect is visible.
> >> This need not be complicated at this stage. Maybe a simple online
> >> spreadsheet is enough.
>

> >> *Identify Supports/Partners*
>
> >> ·         What organizations can we work with that can support our
> >> efforts?
>
> >> ·         Wiserearth, 350.org… etc.
>
> >> *Information Gathering Phase: *target information from 100 projects. More

> >> generally we need to develop an outreach strategy that might look something
> >> like the following:
>

> >>   *Identify Information Gathering Team*: those within the COTW project

> >> that will commit to forwarding emails about the project to prospective
> >> projects and conducting follow up to solicit the required information.
>

> >> *Subdivide Database Amongst Information Gathering Team:* Clearly it makes

> >> most sense for those to contact people with whom they have an existing
> >> relationship. Those that we don’t have a relationship with can be divided up
> >> amongst the group
>

> >> *Send Out Information Gathering Emails*: the Outreach Team can forward

> >> emails to the various projects with a description of the process
>

> >> *Arrange Web Conferences: *Conduct
>

> ...
>
> read more »

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[Suresh Fernando]

Wibowo,

Thanks so much for the detailed response! We would be extremely interested in exploring how we can collaborate with WE! See my comments below. I've done my best to respond to your questions!

I haven't had the time to dig into the WE matching work that you are doing, but plan to do that very soon.

We would love to work as closely with WE as possible and find a way to leverage all of the data that your group has on top of the conceptual model and the processes that we have developed. It makes no sense for us to develop similar initiatives in parallel.

Please note that there is a very exciting unconference called Contact: Towards Social Organism that is being organized by Venessa Miemis and Douglas Rushkoff taking place in NY in October. As you can see, there are already some cool speakers that are confirmed. Since there is still a lot of lead time, we can expect this to ramp up more over the coming months.

There is an opportunity to present this project at the conference and it would be cool to explore some joint effort!

Let me know what you think!

We are also trying to convene a Skype call that includes all interested  parties! I'd like to invite you to join this initial call to explore ways of collaborating. If this is of interest, please let us know your availability here.

We look forward to discussing this further!

On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 11:18 PM, Wibowo Sulistio <wibowos...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thank you Chris for including me in the loop. Hello everyone :)

This is Bowo at http://www.wiserearth.org/user/bowo

I'm pretty excited to be part of the conversation and will try not to enter that mode of "my platform is cool, please use it"... so the spirit is sharing what WiserEarth is doing related to our discussion here and see where this will take us. So, here we go...

I read through most of the links that Suresh shared.
Seems like the 'matching' process goes something like this?

1. Develop project matching ontology
2. Identify projects for seed database. Gather metadata based on no. 1. Includes authentication process.
3. Build algorithm for project matching, along with manual matching. Tweak overall process.
4. When a match happens, 'initiate' discussion/collaboration (somehow).
5. Scale the process to reach (much) more organizations, projects and people
6. Aim to use the whole process to accelerate change on a mass scale on urgent issues.

This is bang on!

I really like the idea of matching based on a standardized (or user-generated) ontology. I see the main challenge lies in step no. 2, authentication process, step no. 4, in facilitating collaboration between two projects, and no. 5, scaling the process. And I'm still curious as to how no. 6 would look like. Would love to hear more as the concept evolves.

There will no doubt be many challenges. Here are some thoughts...

Authentication: The quality of the data at the start of the project should be quite high in the sense that we will be soliciting information manually. We will literally be emailing people and getting them to fill in data. The challenge will be to figure out how to ensure that this data remains relevant. Clearly if the system works, that will be a motivator for people to continually update information.

Another way to think about keeping data relevant is to build in real time features like New Feeds. The question one might as is: why is Facebook information relevant?... because it simply represents current activity. Can we replicate this dynamic in the project space?

Facilitating Collaboration: To get this working we need to, at the least, do the following:

Create Shared Infrastructure

1. Group email: includes all members of both (or however many) collaborating organizations
2. Real time chat space (Skype): set up a shared real time interaction space that is inclusive of all organizations
3. Shared Document Spaces: set up spaces where people can start co-creating and planning together. This would naturally include a wiki.

Commit to Collaboration Process

1. Weekly skype chats or conference calls
2. Development of Collaborative Agreements. This is an example of one.
3. Development of Strategic Plan

Of course this will require those with knowledge in collaboration process to work with the organizations.


Scaling Up the Process: There are many factors that will contribute to scaling up this process. This includes:

1. Success!: if we gather data on 100 projects and can develop an alogorithm that generates meaningful matches, people will jump on board!
2. Viral Model: we need to make it really easy for people to have access to the system. This will require seamless ways of enabling people to forward the input page, buttons on partner websites, links to existing social networking platforms; facebook, twitter etc.
3. Frictionless Input: It needs to be really easy to gather data. We need to design forms that don't take a lot of time to complete. We need, in time, to be able to process natural language input.
   

Accelerating Massive Social Change: The way to understand this is to reflect on the revolutionary activity in Egypt that is taking place. Why are they getting attention? Because there is a convergence of Alignment and Intention. It is because it is visible to everyone that there are many people that feel the same way. Why is this visible? Because people are all in the same space... physical space... in the streets.

Can we not think of virtual space the same way?

Can we not generate VISIBLE ALIGNMENT OF INTENT AND ACTION in virtual space?



 

As for WiserEarth, these days we're thinking less about being a 'central' space, and more about being a place where information, relationships and resources freely flows (in, through, out) and is enhanced/synergized along the path (via singe sign in, read/write API, RSS in/out, recommendation engine, Twitter/Friendfeed output of information, etc.). It may end up that we strive for a reasonable balance between the two, as we already are to some extent.

Related to match-making, especially around goals, needs and offers, we're actually working on that as I write this. If you're interested we have some mock-ups and discussions happening at:
http://www.wiserearth.org/group/WEtech

This is the wiki especially on this idea:
http://www.wiserearth.org/article/46ba9442d676043f1f95be54d683725b
(We're at the 5th iteration of the mockups)

Basically it aims to match needs and offers between WiserEarth members based on their Areas of Focus (interests), social graph, location and language. Part of this work is that, we're also building a recommendation engine, and has been testing Google Prediction API to that end.

As you will notice, WiserEarth and this needs/offers exchange is centered around individuals, not on projects or organizations. We find that authenticating organization accounts is a challenging process (How do we know that someone is indeed a representative of an organization? What happens when that person move on? What happens to the organization account then?). However, it is possible to (hyper)link an offer / a need with an organization via links (or maybe also via our network connection tool) and the poster's association with that organization as shown on his/her profile page.

For scaling up and better connectivity with major platforms like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, we're integrating Janrain Engage in stages. The first phase is done (single sign in), and we're moving on to the next stages of enabling address book invites, and social sharing (will be tied into the status update and need/offer creation process, as part of the community exchange idea linked in the wiki above).

Interestingly enough, as Suresh mentions about "internal, reputation based, economic system" to facilitate the exchange of "time and labour", we're also toying around with the idea of integrating an open money system (virtual currency)... probably a long shot, or something for the far future, but we're starting that by integrating reputation-building mechanism in the needs/offers exchange above. Simple 'thank you' badges and "nominate as expert" mechanism.

Also, there was a mention of integrating a web conference system in the OK Platform, and I immediately thought of this opensource app: http://bigbluebutton.org/

Hope any of this information will help push the conversation (and collaboration) forward.

With best regards,
Bowo
Online Community Manager
WiserEarth.org
http://www.wiserearth.org/user/bowo

More about WiserEarth:
http://www.wiserearth.org/article/about

Date: Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 10:03 AM
Subject: Re: [OK] Creating a 'Dating Site' for the Climate Action Movement!... reviving Project Matching
To: openk...@googlegroups.com
Cc: Cooperati...@googlegroups.com, coal...@googlegroups.com

I love this - I'd like to help with working on ideas for the algorithm.

The dating & meeting people site OkCupid.com has a remarkably good matching algorithm - achieves extremely good matching based on a series of questions (including many user-submitted questions). It's a free site, so it's easy to check out. It's so far of the competition, I'm sure it would be huge if they had a decent advertising budget.

It's not open unfortunately. But the general approach is clear enough, so it would be possible to copy the basic model (multiple-choice questions and weighting) and hack around with different algorithms. And I think we could be a lot simpler than OkCupid (i.e. less questions) and still have good matches.


Another thought:  the algorithm and platform don't need to be limited to climate change, or even to organizations. That means we could potentially attract collaborators who are interested in making their own sites for dating, matching activity partners, and other kinds of people-organizational matching. 


Can we work with WiserEarth on this? (BCCing Bowo from WiserEarth.)

Chris

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Chris Watkins

Appropedia.org - Sharing knowledge to build rich, sustainable lives.

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From: Chris Watkins <chrisw...@appropedia.org>

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[Wibowo Sulistio]

Thank you Chris for including me in the loop. Hello everyone :)
This is Bowo at http://www.wiserearth.org/user/bowo

I'm pretty excited to be part of the conversation and will try not to enter that mode of "my platform is cool, please use it"... so the spirit is sharing what WiserEarth is doing related to our discussion here and see where this will take us. So, here we go...

I read through most of the links that Suresh shared.
Seems like the 'matching' process goes something like this?

1. Develop project matching ontology
2. Identify projects for seed database. Gather metadata based on no. 1. Includes authentication process.
3. Build algorithm for project matching, along with manual matching. Tweak overall process.
4. When a match happens, 'initiate' discussion/collaboration (somehow).
5. Scale the process to reach (much) more organizations, projects and people
6. Aim to use the whole process to accelerate change on a mass scale on urgent issues.

I really like the idea of matching based on a standardized (or user-generated) ontology. I see the main challenge lies in step no. 2, authentication process, step no. 4, in facilitating collaboration between two projects, and no. 5, scaling the process. And I'm still curious as to how no. 6 would look like. Would love to hear more as the concept evolves.

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Chris Watkins

Appropedia.org - Sharing knowledge to build rich, sustainable lives.

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twitter.com/appropedia

From: Chris Watkins <chrisw...@appropedia.org>