I am posting this for Sam:
Thanks folks for great presentations on Friday. We got pretty good and useful feedback on both projects. Regarding Better Letter, the
overwhelming response from our audience is that Better Letter is a
simple idea that fills a need and that they see this as something that
can be easily adopted by the media, especially at the local level. They
feel we should start courting local media instead of waiting to pitch
it to the Toronto audience. I agree. But we need a prototype.
I met a coder who is interested in helping us with our prototype. He
was present during our Friday presentation and liked the idea. He also understands HTML, Php, and MySQL. He will do it for a thousand dollars. I have sent an e-mail to Angela to see if we can split the cost with KU and I am waiting to hear from her. BUT keep talking to other coders so we can pick the best from the pool. I hope to have this sorted out by the end of the week so the coder can start working on it. We don’t have much time.
The written feedback from our Friday presentation is pretty good. Here is a list of some of the suggestions we received to help improve our Better Letter project:
(1) That we should think of a better way of identifying users to make
sure the innovation is not misused by the same vocal people (safeguard against nuts).
(2) Consider grading responses from politicians/public officials
(3) What do you do when response to an issue is overwhelming, especially at the state and national levels? (Address issues of scale)
(4) Make it possible for users to add their name to a letter/petition
that may be circulating
(5) Try and approach public officials in Lawrence and Manhattan and get their feedback on Better Letter
(6) You can add to that list our earlier suggestions that we need to do
some research and find out the best ways to incorporate video, voice
and Google maps to our project.
The best way to do these things (effectively) is to assign
responsibility and set some benchmarks (XYZ volunteers to do a
particular task by a certain date). So here is my suggestion: Let's
look at the above suggestions and discuss them on this blog. Once we have agreed on which ones to incorporate, then we assign duties and deadlines. Thank you.
--Sam Mwangi