[This post is by Chris Blow, one of the longest serving Ushahidi community members, and one of the brains behind the whole SwiftRiver platform.]
I just had a meeting with some Knight fellows at Stanford who have some very interesting ideas about how to use Ushahidi in a journalistic context — very exciting stuff.
As a way of giving some quick advice, I drew this little chart in the meeting to show what I think is one of the biggest problems with most launches: the “if you launch it they will come” idea. (As David Kobia puts it.)
The simplicity of Ushahidi setup sometimes leads to some crestfallen administrators.
Just because you bought a domain name and ran the Ushahidi installer doesn’t mean that anyone is going to use they system — and even if you somehow get a lot of reports, you might not be relevant to the existing systems (that is, all the other people who are working on the same problem). So as Ory said in Cape Town, “Don’t get too jazzed up! Ushahidi is only 10% of solution.”
Systems like Ushahidi have turned enormous communication barriers into a trivial installation and training process. But there is a whole other 90% of real work.
One way to solve this: forget about crowdsourcing. Unless you want to do a huge outreach campaign, design your system to be used by just a few people. Start with the assumption that you are not going to get a single report from anyone who is not on your payroll. You can do a lot with just a few dedicated reporters who are pushing reports into the system, curating and aggregating sources.
27 Responses
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100% agreed, Chris! Have been sharing your graphic widely ever since you Tweeted it. Thanks!
Great post Chris. We’re always preaching this to the potential users in Kenya, but I think your picture is definitely worth a 1000 words in this case! I’ll be sharing it widely.
LOVE the visual, Chris! Ushahidi is a tool, not a project – couldn’t agree more.
Spot on. We fully realize in Arizona and Cairo that without a plan and resources to do “All the Other Stuff”, it will be impossible to have an effective deployment. Thanks for sharing Chris and Erik!
ok,i like this,thanks a lot’!
bang on
I’d posit that this graph applies to any “tech” solution to real-world problems; the tech may be the shiny, tangible product — but the secret sauce is the massive, intangible, full-of-hard-work-and-sweat 90% of any solution
Absolutely crucial point! But before support exists for deployments, small-scale 10% projects can have a strong impact as a lesson about what civic engagement can be in the future. It undercuts cynicism.
Mark, I think you have to make a distinction between small-scale and those that only put in 10% effort because they fail to think through the entire program, as Chris is talking about. Small-scale projects feed cynicism, because they give critics fuel and hinder the trust that the wider public has in the platform. Even if an effort is small in scale, it should be an 100% effort in terms of taking into account how crowdsourcing fits into all aspects of a program model and a set of partnerships in order to gain the trust and the critical mass of users that will be required to ensure the success of future Ushahidi deployments.
Great post Chris. We’re always preaching this to the potential users in Kenya, but I think your picture is definitely worth a 1000 words in this case! I’ll be sharing it widely.
Continuing the Discussion