Civic Media Projects

What is it?
backchan.nl is tool for involving audiences in presentations by letting them suggest questions and vote on each other's questions. backchan.nl is intended for conference or event organizers who want a new way to solicit questions from the audience and make better use of question and answer time.

How might communities use it?
While people attend presentations, panels, and lectures to learn something from the people at the front of the room, there's a lot of potential for creating spaces where audience members can interact with each other and the people presenting. This project focuses on augmenting the physical space of the auditorium to provide a venue for the audience to ask (and filter) questions for presenters. This approach also makes it easy to engage audience-members who might not be in the auditorium, but who are participating on the web, in an overflow space, or in an environment like Second Life.

At what stage of development is it?
backchan.nl has been used at many events including Futures of Entertainment 3, ROFLCON 2008, Free Culture 2008, Mixed Realities Symposium. It is still being developed and can be activated for specific events by request.

What is it?
DIO.Radio is a street-level YouTube for audio. It allows you to call into the DIO.Radio site from any phone, and your audio is instantly uploaded and posted online. You can also call in to hear recently added audio so you can share stories and follow a developing topic - or an individual user.

It is also a simple online clearinghouse that allows you to manage, edit and re-mix audio content with a simple browser-based drag-and-drop tool. A time-stamped conversation tool allows you to comment on audio clips, link to relevant sites, and follow discussions live – or whenever you want.

It is still in an early stage of development, so stay tuned.

What is it?
The Open Park project looks to define an 'ideal' or at least improved model and practice for online collaborative news-reporting and -writing.

As newsrooms across the country and beyond are grappling with the new economic realities of reduced budgets and news media professionals are busy drafting and testing plans for new models of news production and distribution, the little-explored practice of 'Don't compete, collaborate!' is well worth considering.

Collaboration and the sharing of skills and resources have already proved in other professional spheres that it is a winning formula--one especially well adapted to these economically demanding times. It is thus only logical to explore what this new practice could do for the future of journalism.

What is it?

Between the Bars is a blogging system that makes it easy to blog on paper, using standard postal mail. It consists of software tools to make it easy to upload PDF scans of letters, crowd-sourced transcriptions of the scanned images, and the usual full-featured blogging tools including comments, tagging, RSS feeds, and notifications for friends and family when new posts are available.

What is it?
Scratch Day is a network of face-to-face local gatherings, on the same day in all parts of the world, where people can meet, share, and learn more about Scratch, a new programming environment that enables people to create their own interactive stories, games, animations, and simulations.

How might communities use it?
Since the launch of the Scratch website in 2007, a thriving online community has developed around Scratch. Nearly 300,000 people from around the world have registered on the website, where they share Scratch projects and ideas with one another. On Scratch Day, we shift from global to local, enabling people to meet and collaborate with Scratchers from their own neighborhoods and communities.

We believe that these types of face-to-face interactions remain essential for ensuring the accessibility and sustainability of initiatives such as Scratch. In-person interactions enable richer forms of communication among individuals, more rapid iteration of ideas, and a deeper sense of belonging and participation in a community.

At what stage of development is it?
The first Scratch Day took place on May 16, 2009. More than 120 events were held in 44 countries around the world. We plan to organize more Scratch Days in the future.

What is it?
Speakeasy is a community-based telephone service that connects people with a network of language translation volunteers.

How might communities use it?
It was developed to connect new immigrants with volunteer "Guides" who give advice and agency referrals and offer language interpretation services. In practice, Speakeasy is not a new concept as many multilingual individuals are already serving as informal interpreters for their family members and friends, but often with uneven results and compromising privacy. Speakeasy leverages the widespread use of cell phones and connects non-English speakers to guides promptly, reducing the undue burdens placed on callers' families and friends. It provides individuals access to critical social services and resources while they learn English and acclimate to their new society.

At what stage of development is it?
Speakeasy received a $2000 prize from the MIT Ideas Competition. It was piloted in Boston's Chinatown neighborhood. The City of Boston and the Center are working together to expand its use to other languages in the city.

What is it?
Virtual Gaza is a website where ordinary Palestinians under siege can describe their experiences in their own words, and where the destruction can be documented by those experiencing it directly. It was created as a response to the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip in January 2009.

How might communities use it?
It can be used by other communities to document crises, tell stories, and share experiences with other contributors and the world. It is designed to aggregate stories by neighborhood, using local geography as a guide.

Code is available on request.

We intend to expand to allow entry by SMS text message for more direct and immediate reporting. Additional data layers documenting the destruction and rebuilding of the Gaza Strip will be added over the summer after field research.

At what stage of development is it?
We currently have thirty authors (residents of Gaza, as well as international activists on the ground) contributing diary entries, photographs, and video testimony. It has been developed in collaboration with the Alliance for Justice in the Middle East at Harvard University.

What is it?
ExtrAct, a set of Internet-based, databasing, mapping and communications technologies for communities impacted by natural gas development, is a novel platform for community education and civic action.

Its objective is to create and distribute open-source, web-based tools for mapping, analyzing, and intervening in this industry based on supplementing data obtained from state and federal agencies with user generated reports, complaints, and experiences.

All of these tools, though accessible individually, will share information through a unified database. Given that these tools will be serving both urban and rural populations, we are also developing innovative paper and phone interfaces to the web-services. To develop these tools we are working with a network of lawyers, citizen’s alliances, national activist organizations and environmental health experts in Colorado, New Mexico, Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Texas.

What is it?
Hero Reports, in the form of a website, is a security campaign that reports civic courage. It asks citizens to report moments when others make a difference. Acknowledge those stand up, not in fear, but in hope.

What is it?
Holla at Me is envisioned as a low-cost, adaptable set of mobile tools designed to support and enhance communication for a diverse range of community organizations.

It is a keyword-based SMS auto-responder, written in Python for the s60 smartphone plaform, built on Mike Edwards’ Sydewynder SMS server framework, and tested on the Nokia N95.

How might communities use it?
A central phone number could be publicized to serve users with common information about day-to-day local activities or services. Users of the system can learn about the number in a variety of ways: in conversation with friends, from a community leader, on the radio, or at a church service. It might be published in a local newspaper or printed and hung in a public place. It could also be printed on a business cards and passed hand-to-hand among citizens.

At what stage of development is it?
Holla at Me is in early development. Next steps include:

• Develop a simple user interface for creating keywords and associated messages on the handset.
• Develop hooks into the phone’s Contacts and Groups to filter messages by sender.
• Design remote administration via SMS.
• Deploy a test scenario with a group in the Greater Boston area.
• Contribute to the continued development of Sydewynder.
• Test the tool on a wider variety of handsets.