villagerswithpitchforks

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Voting Psychology + Why People Give

A few months ago my colleagues and I mapped the charity organizations near our business. The idea here was to identify the organizations we could work with most easily based on convenience and proximity. From here we circulated a number of the options to our members and voted on our first volunteer efforts. I recognize that this isn’t the way people assume we’re coming to them. Most organizations assume that volunteers/donors are there for a few reasons:

SOCIAL TIES: In this case, a large network of friends and family already give and volunteer with the organization. This donor/volunteer is highly motivated as their entire family network and sometimes church use volunteering/donating as a way to socialize and connect.

SINGLE ISSUE: Often a single issue will be the crux of a whole series of volunteer/donation efforts. Armies of volunteers and donors have mobilized to help prevent breast cancer, to support pro-life or pro-choice organizations, and to eradicate poverty.

IDENTITY: This volunteer/donor identifies with the underdog served or the person doing the service. This might look more like a duty-based Talented Tenth approach to giving.

You’ll notice that each of these reasons also tend to be the reason why individuals vote for a particular political candidate. In my past experience in the Public Affairs Bureau, I know that most voters (and their family) vote for a party first, a single issue second, a charismatic party leader third, and that last group is the swing voters. So it makes sense that a similar psychology might carry over to community affiliations.

So let’s talk strategy about swing voters. Campaign managers go after swing voters because they’re generally easier to persuade than someone with a deeply rooted belief system about a party or community organization. They still go to their polling station with a booklet in hand, but when they aren’t convinced on a particular platform, they tend to vote on a convenience basis.

People Want to Vote/Give. But it's Not Always for You. Californians recognize that convenience is a factor in political affiliation to the point that the order of candidates on the ballot is randomized. And despite the that that we’re definitely not a swing State, there are clues as to how to design for voters who are present but unconvinced. For example in the 2000 presidential race, George W. Bush received 9 percent more votes amongst Californians when his name was listed first on the ballot than when he was listed later. You might see this as a travesty, but it poses a huge opportunity. If the convenience-factor behind voting can apply to community contribution — how can community organizations design for maximum engagement?

Does it make sense to bombard a “swing voter” with literature, make them sit through a barrage of Youtube commercials, or talk at them for 2 hours? Sometimes it’s best to just give people a quick and easy way of doing or giving.

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Inclusion vs. Anti-Harassment

Last month I got a chance to "shape culture" in my new position as the Director of Programs at Heavybit. I was honestly pretty proud to work with my coworkers on our Inclusion Policy.

We chose to make our policy about "inclusion" instead of a "anti-harassment" because we think we can do better than the baseline of making our workplace a non-threatening and harassment-free space. It quite honestly disgusts me that anti-harassment policies are necessary, but my last post was about the consent in silence and I'd be pretty damn hypocritical if we didn't put something in writing proactively.

SO WHY INCLUSION?

I think the root cause of harassment isn't just a series of shitty actions. It's about broken thinking -- that "others" are less or incomplete. An inclusion policy tells people that we don't believe that. We want to surround ourselves with as many smart people as possible and we believe that traditionally marginalized groups can and are contributing to a greater body of knowledge and work. If you're optimizing for awesome, then narrowing to a homogenous pool is illogical. It's not about welcoming people despite their differences, it's about honoring those differences/experiences as valid and useful to the company experience we want to design.

This isn't just a social justice or identity politics issue -- an inclusion policy cuts out the broken thinking and actions that lead to harassment while at the same time establishing the best possible cabal of bad ass allies and friends.

I'll be real -- I'm a woman of color with absolutely no Ivy League pedigree and a slight chip on my shoulder. The more "others" I get in the building, the more comfortable I feel. And the more comfortable I feel, the more productive I become.

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The Consent in Silence: What Tech Companies Can do to Prevent Violence and Bullying

At the moment there’s some really serious talk about tech leaders and their connections to domestic violence and bullying. I have no interest in discussing these cases nor do I have any insider knowledge, but I do want to talk about early intervention. It shouldn’t take this level of disaster to remember that the world isn’t a perfect bubble of safety and supportiveness. Responsible companies should get proactive. If we believe that technology should be accessible and built for real users, then perhaps our companies should be designed for a diverse group of employees. This means two things:

That employees feel empowered to be the eyes on the street; and,

That we prioritize safe spaces (and put grownups in charge of consistent enforcement).

EYES ON THE STREET Berkman Fellow and Microsoft’s Principal Researcher danah boyd just wrote, It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens. In it she discusses urban theorist Jane Jacobs’ theory of the “Eyes on the Street”. The theory is that the safest streets are those where a thriving community deters crime, vandalism and neglect. It's not far off from Linus' Law where "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." For the last decade, boyd has applied Jacobs’ theory to the role of social media communities in identifying warning signs amongst at-risk and suicidal youth. In other words, she believes that the average online Good Samaritan can prevent crisis simply by identifying and reaching out to those in need. So what are the early warning signs to prevent workplace misconduct or domestic abuse? And how many employees know what to do in the wake of witnessing either of these things? (My guess is not many.) THE LAND OF GROWN UPS In Lord of the Flies, a group of school boys are shipwrecked on an island and govern themselves with disastrous results. This is what it's like in some startups. For whatever reason, a number of tech companies forgo formal HR leadership and policies. Although unintentional, this lack of clarity can come with serious consequences. Without explicit policies, employees might be confused about what to do in instances of bullying, harassment etc. This confusion, coupled with a potential risk to their own careers, creates a chilling effect. As a result, witnesses are tempted to ignore bad behavior. And unfortunately, this collective silence is interpreted as consent. What might begin as a single person’s bad behavior or poor judgement, can escalate into a corporate culture that excludes or hurts valuable team members. SO NOW WHAT? Here are a number of generic tips for friends and family members to help those they suspect are being abused. Instead of pretending violence is isolated between a victim and an assailant, companies can use tips like these as a starting point to design their own action plans and discuss them with staff members. In light of recent events, I’m hoping that more startups work to make employees feel safe, supported, and empowered to do the right thing. And let’s be crystal clear: As neighbors and colleagues, the right thing to do for each other when bad things are happening, is to intervene. Period. Instead of being the silent bystander or the judgmental peanut gallery, let’s build inclusive companies and be the eyes on the street.

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SF Local: Tech and the Politics of the Free Lunch

The tech industry is being demonized for what many describe as its “Ivory Tower syndrome” and in some cases, rightly so. There are a number of companies who haven’t made good on their Community Benefit Agreements despite looking for their Central Market and Tenderloin tax exclusions. Apart from Zendesk, the vast majority of those applying, are missing the mark. And it’s all about procurement. One of the indicators of community contribution is sourcing vendors and caterers from within the neighborhood. But to get around this, some companies are using a 1 mile radius of their business as their cut off. Because San Francisco is tiny, 1 mile from a Tenderloin business includes caterers in SOMA, Hayes Valley, Japan Town, Union Square, Pacific Heights and the Financial District. So apparently the free lunch is rife with politics. While it certainly doesn't solve a housing crisis, Ellis Act evictions, and wage disparity, it is good to spend money with neighborhood businesses. If you're working in what realtors are calling “New Market”, please try to source your caterers and vendors from the area. Some of my Favorites

Saigon Sandwich

Lahore Karahi

Brenda’s French Soul Food

El Tesoro

Burmese Kitchen

A La Turca

Lers Ros

Little Griddle

Moya

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The Coding CEO of the Company with a $175M dollar Valuation

At this year's SXSW, New Relic CEO Lew Cirne took the stage to offer his "Confessions as a Coding CEO". Among his many feats, the SF-based entrepreneur and developer is known for continuing to code well after his first success with Wily Technology. In the case of New Relic, Cirne not only built the organization's first product, but continues to build the second. Perhaps what no one is saying here, is that this particular CEO is coding for a company with 80,000 active customer accounts, powering more than 3 million apps. In other words, this isn't a 3 person baby dev shop with a technical co-founder -- this is a REAL company and there's a lot at stake when someone at the helm opts to ship code rather than spending that time shaking hands. Nevertheless, Cirne defends his role as the "Coding CEO" and offers advice to others who want to follow in his footsteps: 1. Surround yourself with exceptional people: Cirne revealed that in order to ensure his company was running smoothly while he was off coding, he needed to find the right people to trust and delegate. He cites hiring Chief Revenue Officer Hilarie Koplow-McAdams and President and COO Chris Cook as two individuals who've helped the company excel. These individuals have allowed Cirne to free up time for development and product iteration. 2. Take Time to Yourself: Says Cirne, "I spend at least a week alone in a cabin in Tahoe doing my work, and from there I believe I'm actually making better decisions." Most recently Cirne has been working on the next iteration of the New Relic offering (Codename "Rubicon") and taught himself Node.js in order to better understand his growing Node customer-base. 3. Disrupt Your Own Business: Cirne also believes it's important to start building your next product and innovating well before it's a matter of survival. In the case of Rubicon, Cirne began work alone in 2012 and has since brought in a number of developers to help him scale it. The product itself is expected to be released in 2014. This launch is hotly anticipated given rumors of the organization's impending IPO.

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Being the Interviewer at CfA's Summit: What it's Like to Speed Date US Mayors

Transitioning from consumer electronics publishing to the world of civic technology hasn't been an easy one. While everyone is wonderfully committed, bright-eyed and idealistic, there's also the recognition that for the time being, there will be no free trips to Croatia or Paris. And y'all know that mama likes her champagne and junkets. Nevertheless, the Code for America Summit was an incredibly moving experience and despite the fact that I was locked in a small windowless room interviewing Mayors and high-powered public servants, I realized that at the end of the experience I had been locked in a room speaking to some of the country's most powerful and innovative leaders. It was a bit like an elite brand of speed dating. There's Mayor Sly James of Kansas City whose band once opened for Jefferson Airplane in 1967, there's CIO of Louisville Beth Niblock who cures her own meat and forages for mushrooms, there's California's Lt. Governor and SF's own Bruce Wayne character Gavin Newsom and there's young South Bend Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg -- a man whose Kennedy-esque grace is impressive given that the Navy Reserve is about to deploy him to Afghanistan. I'm incredibly proud to be a part of an organization that not only brings together these leaders, but that also rallies new international groups and local brigades. As a whole, this has been a truly eye-opening experience and the optimism of these individuals has been infectious. Truly…my black heart melts. For more on the Summit, check out some of the session videos:

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Oxford Dictionary Online Accepts Derp

Modern Spanish is still sometimes referred to as the "lengua de Cervantes" because its poetic qualities continue to shine through. Meanwhile, the Oxford Dictionary Online just published its quarterly update and while I'm all for portmanteaus like omnishambles being included, it saddens me to see lazy colloquialisms like grats (short for congrats) and vom (short for vomit) make the cut. I'm also not thrilled about squee and derp either, but feel that their onomatopoeic quality makes them far more acceptable. Says Angus Stevenson of Oxford Dictionaries Online, “New words, senses, and phrases are added to Oxford Dictionaries Online when we have gathered enough independent evidence from a range of sources to be confident that they have widespread currency in English." Can you smell the blatant SEO play? Based on this approach and the fact that Miley Cyrus' hotly debated VMA performance continues to gain momentum, it's not surprising that twerk was also included. Thank goodness food baby and space tourism remain aspirational reminders of how far our culture has come.

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How Publishing Has (and Hasn't) Changed

On Friday, Damien Walter's recent Guardian article asked the question, "Who owns the networked future of reading?" The journalist discussed the Readmill e-reader annotation app and the fact that "every book and every comment about it [can one day be] owned, and profited from, by a handful of major corporations." While I recognize that the terms of service of an Amazon might well dictate how these books and comments are shaped for future audiences, I see little difference between this type of ownership/distribution and the way Shakespeare's works are currently treated. Years ago, my husband actually worked on an online Shakespeare Edition and we attended many of the group's parties. Despite having spent 6-8 months of deep study on Shakespeare's Tragedies, Histories and Comedies I was lost by the obscure references made by other party attendees. The fact was that I was a literature student and generalist, and they were true scholars (and honestly a little exclusionary in their conversations). Even today, the reality is that while anyone can comment on a work, it's the scholars that will dedicate their lives to specific texts and police the communities. The networked future of reading can be owned by a corporation or academic publisher, but the conversation will always be led by these diehard fans. One significant difference with today's publishing environment is that today's popular writer may be more likely to correct interpretations of their work. While this may dispel some of the myths around a particular piece, it would admittedly leave so many of my own hastily written essays dead in the water.

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Releasing Ideas

I'm reading Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine and thoroughly enjoying it. A masterful storyteller and an amazing poet, in the introduction he discusses his process of waking up and spending a few hours recounting the smells and sounds of his childhood in order to write from the perspective of twelve-year-old protagonist Douglas Spaulding. Says the writer,"Like every beginner, I thought you could beat, pummel and thrash an idea into existence. Under such treatment of course, any decent idea folds up on its paws, turns on its back, fixes on eternity and dies." Bradbury instead focussed on a few word associations and wrote free form. In this way he observes, "truths leap out of bushes like quail before gunshot." These are the words of a peaceful and brilliant mind.

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Fake DMCA Takedown Makes Lessig Livid

Egads! At what point would you think it was ok to send a DMCA takedown notice to the father of copyleft Larry Lessig? According to a post by Ars Technica, Liberation Music demanded that Lessig take down a recent video for his use of the exclusively licensed "Lisztomania" by Phoenix. Best known for his work on the Supreme Court's Eldred vs. Ashcroft case and for his inspirational speeches on Fair Use and remix culture, Lessig has enlisted the help of the Electronic Frontiers Foundation to sue Liberation Music for damages. This is like last year when I saw the Pepcom people turn Robert Scoble away from their CES tradeshow. At some point your gatekeepers should recognize the heavy hitters in your industry and avoid raising their ire.

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What the SEOMoz Guy Can Teach Us About Love

At some point marketers got lumped into the bad guy category. We're there -- ranked well above politicians, but somewhere near the IP lawyers and salespeople. We're the red-headed stepchildren of journalism and the creepy cousins of graphic design -- and we're here to steal your kids by placing subliminal messages in Bieber songs. But the thing is, it's not that easy. Firstly, it's tough to get that Bieber gig and secondly, being a decent marketer is hard. You have to try to change people's attitudes and beliefs about a product, service or org without making them think you're a cheesy and gutless wonder. Moz.com's Rand Fishkin recently did a presentation where he offered up the image of two legos casting the shadow of an airplane. It's campaigns like this that melt my heart, remind me of my childhood and make me want to offer that same experience to others. Says Fishkin, "Know what is at the core of your audience's love."

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Want to be a Successful Writer? Lower Your Standards.

For the past few years and as a recovering tech blogger, I've reduced my writing output and increased my consumption of Tyler Perry movies. Part of this has to do with the fact that author Andrew Keen convinced me that I was killing culture and part of it was because people started reading my posts. The presence of an audience made the writing more careful, more business-like and honestly, more of a chore. JUMPING BACK IN I've changed my mind and want to jump back into writing. At today's Hubspot Inbound conference, UX Writer Beth Dunn made some extremely salient points today about the need for a daily practice. Said Dunn, "It's easy to write a poem or joke everyday…you just have to lower your standards. Even if you write like crap everyday, the act of writing will help you improve." Dunn likens the daily writing practice to her own use of a quantified self app to track her daily exercise. In just a year, she's lost over 70lbs. It was her interest in keeping the streak of alive that allowed her to keep going despite her initial hatred for exercise and running. Today, she loves running and is actually good at it. GETTING ON THE PLAN I love writing, but I hate the stilted business writer I've become. If you don't already know me in real life, you should know that I think I'm hilarious. And I'm fully aware that most of my posts sound like they've been written by an automaton. This is day one of what will become a daily practice. I haven't decided whether or not to publish everything but bear with me, I'm told it gets better.

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Elysium, Summit Eden and Planned Communities

Quite frankly, this video made me uncomfortable.

It reminds me of an ad for a planned community in dystopian movies like Elysium and George A. Romero's Land of the Dead. While I love the idea of living on a snowy mountain, working remotely in tech and seeing my friend's babies grow up -- something doesn't sit right with me. The geek in me knows that when the wealthy abandon earth to the unwashed and undead masses, it never turns out well. These Summit people seem like well-meaning techies with a nice ski hill, but deep down I'd rather be a free-range zombie. At the recent Esri Conference Will.i.am said, "The people in inner cities are fighting for something. If we want America to change, it's going to start there. It's not going to start where people are pacified…Tomorow's America is going to come from inner cities who are changing inner cities to desired places of living." He's right. Don't jump in your learjets and helicopters just yet. We've still got a shot to fix the communities we're currently living in. We just need BRAAAAINS!

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What Engineers Can Teach Marketers about Communicating

Engineers are often stereotyped as being anti-social and yet in my experience they've built some of the best communication habits and tools in order to foster sustainable infrastructure. Most engineering teams are expected to scale and grow -- and perhaps because meetings are seen as loathsome, a great deal of the collaboration is automated. Agile project tracking, in-line and automated documentation and an interest in reusability ensure that certain tasks and lessons are communicated amongst developers. Tools like Pivotal Tracker, Jira, Sphinx and GitHub are used daily in addition to automated real-time reports. Show me a marketing team whose systems of tracking and planning are as diligent. While I'm not an engineer I'd like some of their habits and tools to cross the floor. While it's great to win creative awards, marketing infrastructure is what ensures we're reaching our audiences in consistent and scalable ways. The infrastructural tools I'd like to lift from developers include: 1. Project Repository & Consistent Naming Conventions: I've given up on getting people to decide on Dropbox, Google Drive or Sharepoint. That being said, I wish we could all agreed to store and document under the same naming conventions. Perhaps systems offer an aggregated feed with folder alerts and you're refused upload unless you choose from a pre-selected category and date your work: YY_DD_MM_Title. 2. Automated Project Tracking:I'd like a dashboard that tells me which aspects of marketing/PR are broken and who is responsible for fixing them. Perhaps this can be done in Pivotal Tracker but I just don't know what tests to write. The system depends on weighted priorities, clearly delineated responsibilities, an agreed-upon response time, and well-calculated conversion metrics. I know Asana shows promise, but it's hardly automated. Perhaps if a standard naming convention exists for files, then folder feeds could be logged in the project tracker. 3. Reusability: One part of reusability is creating repeatable processes and materials. The other is setting priorities and budget for each project. Most engineers have a system for prioritizing incidents (crises) as well as a system for prioritizing actions. When used in conjunction, a marketer might take the same decision-making tools to reduce costs and de-prioritize design and engineering resources for those projects that are low on the priority list. 4. Building Core Messaging as Platform:Whereas a company's vision, mission and core message is unlikely to change significantly overtime, individual campaigns are constantly in flux. One way to ensure a solid foundation is to train well on core messaging and values and cascade every company goal and job description from these. There are also plenty of opportunities to templatize the message by cascading the exact same phrasing across all materials. While pitches frequently change depending on the audience, the "What We Do" and "What We Believe" should be consistent for every employee. While each of these tools can prove useful, their effectiveness depends on widespread adoption from team members. Naturally the easiest tools to introduce are those familiar to the marketing end-user. If you've got ideas on how to easily solve the above problems or tools for discussion, let me know in the comments below.

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My New Gig!

A few months ago I left my position of 3 years to pursue a new and interesting project. This may sound funny but I’m happy to say I’ve decided on something particularly challenging called “America”. You are currently reading the words of Code for America's new Senior Marketing Manager. Thanks to all those who've helped lead me to this decision. For those who don’t know, CfA is headquartered in SF and is best known for leveraging the collective wisdom of tech-savvy netizens to build government apps and infrastructure. Programs like the CfA fellowship, brigade and accelerator are reinforced by awesome staff members and leaders like Executive Director Jen Pahlka, Chief Strategist Abhi Nemani and Board Member Tim O’Reilly. While I owe much of my decision to the amazing people within the organization, I have to admit Ryan Gosling’s recent refusal to eat his cereal also led me down this path. Both Gov 2.0 and Gosling's cereal Vines have been called "memes" and I'm totally ok with that. WHAT’S IN A MEME? In a recent article, Tim O’Reilly and supporters of Gov 2.0 were criticised as a "meme hustlers”. But to me, memes can be more than just Ryan Gosling mashups and cat videos. They’re popular concepts reinterpreted by various subgroups and distributed amongst peers. So by this logic we might consider the civil rights movement a meme. Most of us would gladly hustle for that and any other meme that contributes to a just and responsible society. That’s precisely why I’m joining CfA. Since inception, CfA's apps and projects have proven their value to society. It’s not just a good meme and a noble hustle, but it’s helping government become the platform to encompass the hopes, dreams and innovation of millions. As a marketer, it’s thrilling that I can contribute to a project that each of us can own and hack on in our own way. If you’d like to Code for America or can offer insights on how to market, fundraise and partner, email me at dana[at]codeforamerica[dot]org. If you’re a marketer with ideas on how you can spread good, by all means keep hustling.

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Society as Platform: H(app)athon and Hacktivism

My friend Chris Heuer organized the H(app)athon Project event on March 20th and I'm happy he did. The event is a mini hackathon that combines quantified self, internet of things and Bhutan's Gross National Happiness Indicator. Basically we're taking trending technology like Nike Fuel bands and real-time operational intelligence and applying them to improving people's lives. What I find most interesting about this project is that while it applies to Bhutanese models, it doesn't carry a sense of "otherness" that a number of "social good for tech" projects do. This project doesn't have to be about saving others, it's actually alright to save ourselves. It's completely within our capabilities to hack on increasing our own standards of living, education, psychological well-being, health, work satisfaction, community vitality and ecological diversity. There's even a personal indicator survey to help you determine your own happiness. While it may seem counter-intuitive to approach this from a selfish perspective, it's completely natural. In the Details: How to Lose Potential Leaders I've worked as an anti-poverty and feminist organizer and I've seen where we lose people. It's easy to rally around an injustice or grievance, but when we drill down into specificity -- that's the point where people diverge. The fact is, you can't tear down one all-encompassing pseudo-solution only to prop up another one. Society isn't a homogenous mass and I have my suspicions that it doesn't want to be one. Rather than offering partisan one-off solutions for healthcare, housing etc., it's better to offer a platform and assume that iteration outside of an administration is inevitable. Don't build apps and force them on people, build platforms and watch them grow. The Civil Rights movement and the Green Revolution weren't about a single issue being solved. They were conceptualized as larger platforms for civic engagement. The fact that there were offshoots meant that there could be leadership and recognition at a number of different levels. This feeling of ownership and achievement is very important. Administrative grunt work is a necessity and any self-respecting person should get their hands dirty. But let's face it, we're not all benevolent and selfless beings. When we work in social justice or volunteer with an organization, most of us want to do more than alphabetize the filing system. The H(app)athon Project is part of a larger trend we're seeing alongside groups like Code for America. We are looking at society as a platform waiting for a better app environment. But don't take my word for it, Tim O'Reilly has been saying this for years. The videos from our H(app)athon project brainstorm will be available here and for more on the project itself visit happathon.com.

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Is Citation Theft? Google Bends to Publisher Accusations

If someone with a greater distribution than you republished an excerpt of your article and cited you, would you accuse them of copyright infringement? I wouldn't -- but then again, I like it when people read my posts. This doesn't seem to be the case for a number of traditional publishers. According to GigaOm's Matthew Ingram, Google is in talks to settle with a group of French publishers who accused the search giant of copyright infringement. The group believes that the act of excerpting and citing articles is a violation of the publishers' rights. I suppose they just don't understand the concept of search and aggregation. But judging by Eric Schmidt's Friday blog post, Google is surprisingly ready to bend to publisher demands in order to avoid litigation. Schmidt announced a 60M euro Innovation Fund and plans to help French publishers increase revenue through the company's ad technology. These actions are incredibly strange to me for the following reasons: 1. CITATIONS AS ENDORSEMENTS: By settling, Google is admitting that the aggregation of excerpts and citations is in fact copyright infringement. To me this is preposterous. Just as radio stations are encouraged to play new music , so too should Google's Search and News be considered a discovery mechanism for new audiences. It's actually an extremely effective driver of traffic and what's more, it is highly personalized and targeted to the end user. 2. ORGANIC SEARCH AS A REVENUE DRIVER: French publishers may benefit from understanding more about Google Ad Technology, but they're far more likely to see an increase in revenue by driving organic search discovery through search itself. Assuming that news sites are receiving a conservative 18-25% of total traffic from organic search, it seems silly to penalize a distribution channel that is driving inbound readers and CPM-based revenue. 3. CONTENT PRODUCERS SHOULD WANT READERS: Tim O'Reilly once said, "For a typical author, obscurity is a far greater threat than piracy." To me this is the single greatest reason we should encourage others to link to and share our content. Anyone with anything worth saying should be thrilled to see their ideas proliferate. Period. Networked distribution is a privilege and the simple fact is that the value of content and ideas only increases as it is spread.