Archive for March, 2007

HelpMatch State of Play

March 26, 2007 at 6:27 am · Filed under HelpMatch

Here’s a status update on where things are at on HelpMatch.

HelpMatch Vision and Strategy

We are working on a “vision pitch” slideset; Al de Castro currently has the baton on that. This will be available for review and reaction shortly. I’m thinking it might be an idea to create a vision “webcast.” We will also use the HelpMatch wiki and HelpMatch blog for sharing and refining the HelpMatch vision.

We have worked an initial draft of the Identity (Mission, Core values and principles, vision) and Value Propositions, and have done an initial batch of work on competitive analysis, context analysis, etc. feeding into this strategy work. We still need to do more work on the capabilities tier of the strategy map, but it is already clear that a collaboration environment that will support a highly distributed team of global contributors to HelpMatch is a key capability area. Constraints like no immediate budget, and utilizing a flux workforce of volunteers are also clearly part of the picture.

Next Steps

Currently, this strategy work is hosted on the HelpMatch area of the Bredemeyer site, and I need to consolidate emerging thought with prior work and reflect the current state of the vision and strategy on the HelpMatch wiki. At our next face-to-face meeting in the Indy Architects Group, we’ll share a draft vision/strategy and use that as a starting point to refine the vision and strategy and create a draft roadmap.

  • We have taken a stab at Context Maps in various forums, but we need to create a Context Map for each distinct Use Context, and an overall Context Map that captures and illuminates the big picture landscape for  HelpMatch. 

  • A cut has been done at competitive analysis, but we need to extend this work to community/social networking sites, and drive it to a deeper level of analysis.

  • We need to do more work on the capabilities tier of the strategy map.

  • We need to share, elaborate and validate this work, and formalize a business plan.

HelpMatch.org Incorporation and Non-profit Status

We are actively exploring in this area, reaching out to connections who are or have been members of a Board of Directors for a non-profit, in part to learn lessons from those who have learned them the hard way, and in part to get candidates for the HelpMatch Board of Directors (BoD). We recognize we need to incorporate and file for non-profit status. But we need to form a board. And we need a good lawyer who is willing to do some pro bono work on this for us so we do it right.

Next Steps

  • Draft board selection criteria and identify candidates

  • Identify and work with a lawyer on articles and bylaws for the HelpMatch organization

  • Draft 501(c)(3) application

  • Persuade BoD candidates to invest their attention and energy in HelpMatch

  • and do whatever else is needed to prepare for and hold our first meeting of the Board of Directors and formally incorporate HelpMatch, and get non-profit status!

HelpMatch.net Collaboration Environment

Jarvis Ka has set up the HelpMatch wiki, and it is just waiting on me to add some starter content and then we’ll release it to the broader community on HelpMatch.net. Jarvis has also set up a HelpMatch blog. Carl Ozkaynak has set up a HelpMatch Google Group. Jarvis has been setting up conference call-in meetings using Yugma, and we’ve had several evening meetings working on the vision and the collaboration environment/wiki/etc.

Next Steps

In addition to these immediate enablers of start-up work, we are also advocating either finding (if its out there) or creating a collaboration environment needs assessment for distributed strategy and architecture work, with product comparisons, to help us set up the environment that will support collaboration among the teams of teams that will design and build HelpMatch.

If you know of such an assessment (or even point assessments for different aspects of this collaboration space) or have an interest in contributing in this area, please do let us know about them. Following Kevin’s suggestion, what we do here will be documented on the HelpMatch wiki, so that the community can keep it updated as the space moves, since it is such an actively evolving area.

HelpMatch Architecture

Recognizing that we have made a number of passes at the business strategy, but we are not done there, we are ready to start to identify architecturally significant requirements areas and architectural challenges, with a view to a first cut at architectural strategy. This whole space is still fluid, but this is as it should be. We shouldn’t begin to work on architecture after the strategy is as immutable as concrete reinforced with rebar–which is what we get, once egos get all wrapped up in a “perfect” strategy formulation. We want the architecture strategy to inform the business strategy, and the business strategy to inform and provide direction for the architecture work.

Next Steps

  • Create the initial organization in the wiki to create placeholders for the architectural work. 

  • Identify what complementary capabilities we need on the Architecture Leadership Council.

  • Begin work on stakeholder value propositions and system capability requirements and system constraints, to make decisions about the scope of system, and scope of different stages of the system roll-out.

  • Begin work on the architecture strategy: identify architectural challenges and principles, architectural style, organizing concepts and metaphors, and possibly key technologies.

  • then drill down, learn, refine/elaborate, etc…. oh, and build the thing! ☺

Feedback: What do you think? What’s missing (bearing in mind that we want to lay a solid foundation for the organization and for the architecture work)?

 

 

 

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Exploring HelpMatch Value

March 11, 2007 at 8:36 pm · Filed under HelpMatch

Value Proposition Through Scenarios

Let’s explore the HelpMatch value proposition through scenarios or vignettes describing how HelpMatch could be used. I would like to get to more vivid stories, but here’s a start that will seed ideas. Please remember that we are in vision exploration here. We try to be specific and vivid, to be compelling and explore possibility. But we will need to go through scoping to set system bourdaries and feature sets for early versus later releases. Then we will need to refine our understanding still further. We are explicitly encouraging exploratory, out-of-the box thinking at this point.

After the Tornadoes

Tornadoes hit communities across the Midwest and Southeast killing at least 20 people, including 8 high school students. What can anyone do, and how could HelpMatch help?

How about this: a family member or friend of someone impacted by the tornadoes gets on to HelpMatch and forms a “project” (we will settle on tags later) to co-ordinate assistance. For those who lost homes and possessions, it might be easier to see how we can help: the project coordinator can enter needs and establish credibility through their network, and their network’s network, and out as far as trust and the desire to help reaches.

On the need fulfillment side, one way this could work is as follows: Those who want to help, can go to HelpMatch, and register to be reached through the links in their network to a source of need associated with the tornadoes. (This will test out the theory that it only takes 5 links to reach someone else!) Then they can search the entered needs and decide how to help–with items they already have to donate, or by coordinating a drive to collect/fund these items. For example, my kids school could sign up to replace books or a computer, or other equipment lost in the school hit by the tornado.

For those who lost loved ones it might be harder to imagine what we can possibly do. But to the extent that anyone can figure out what could be done to help, in little and big ways, that person could form a project to co-ordinate that help. The project can be local, and co-ordinate care being provided by a close group of family members and friends. Things like meals, providing childcare relief for younger siblings. And it can be bigger, and more distributed–helping to raise funds to help the family with counseling and with time off from jobs, or using the network to put the families in touch with grief counselors and other families who have lost a teenager and who have found ways to cope with the loss, and so forth.

The point is, as soon as we have “the obvious place to go” on the internet, and a set of tools for individuals, communities, organizations to form “help projects” or “sponsored networks” to coordinate needs and matching help, then we have a powerful mechanism for help to assemble as needed by the situation! And if we have a ready community of technical people, then as new ways to serve needs emerge, we can act to put the tools to support that help mechanism in place. So the HelpMatch solution set can grow organically as we envisage the full power of help networks through actually using help networks to match help to need–all over the world!

Room to Read

Let’s take another situation. One where an individual forms a help community to raise funds or goods for an established organization, like Room to Read. Say “Maybel” wants to raise the funds needed for Room to Read build a school in Nepal; she could use HelpMatch as the rendezvous point for the help community she forms and champions.

She would create a project page. Then she could:

  • tell the compelling story of the need for the school, maybe even put pictures or video clips on the project profile

  • use her project page as a bulletin board for announcements about the project

  • put a blog on the project space, to keep her help community up-to-date on developments, and to allow her community to comment and offer her suggestions, etc. (what a concept! chuckle)

  • put a donations button, and a “how we’re doing against target” gauge showing level of donations to date, on the project page

  • get visitors to that region to stop by the village where the school will be built, and get “on-the-ground” stories and photos, to make the story still more compelling and keep it right up-to-date with what is happening as the school gets built

  • broadcast an invitation to join her project to her network of friends on HelpMatch, and email her network of friends not yet on HelpMatch

  • make her project open, so any of her friends could broadcast to their friends, and on through the extended network, finding people to help make the dream of a new school real for a village that desperately needs one

  • put an icon to sell John Wood’s book on the project page, set up so that the Amazon Associates (or other) referral fee goes to Room to Read.

And I’m sure Maybel would come up with lots of other good things she could do, with the help of some technical friends, to rally her extended network around her cause and give them concrete ways to make a difference to it.

HelpMatch: Tools for the Help Community

HelpMatch will put quite sophisticated on-line community tools, as well as the ability to manage an inventory of donated goods or services, in the hands of help projects (individuals, and individuals working on behalf of individuals or organizations). It is like giving ad hoc as well as more formal help projects an IT staff!

Room to Read keeps overhead absolutely barebones so that it has an extraordinarily high proportion of donated funds going to the cause rather than the organization that supports the cause. HelpMatch would give people, and even organizations like Room to Read, the online community space tools that they would not otherwise have, due to their focus on keeping administrative and fund raising costs low.  Then not only can Room to Read have more information, coordination and network marketing support to raise funds for their good work, but other organizations who have invested proportionately more in fund raising could use HelpMatch to reduce their costs and have a bigger portion of their donated dollar go to the cause they serve.

Exploring Other Scenarios

We welcome other ideas on how HelpMatch could:

i. directly, personally help individuals who need help

ii. provide support to individuals and groups who are trying to help individuals or groups in a situation of need. 

 

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HelpMatch: Collaboration Tools Selection Subcommittee

March 2, 2007 at 10:14 pm · Filed under HelpMatch

 If you didn’t read the March 1 HelpMatch Call to Action post, you might like to read that before this post. We urgently need to move on getting HelpMatch.net set up with a wiki and blog.This is the foundation for the HelpMatch technical network that will get HelpMatch designed and built.  HelpMatch.net will become a great big world-community action center, and the choices here matter!  We need (at least) a small team to work on a recommendation for:

i. collaboration tools: wiki and blog; other? ii. hosting service that works with your blog and wiki platform choices

If your ideal solution costs a lot, what do we put in place in the interim, while we get the organization side set up to take donations?

If no-one signs up to move this forward by Friday March 9th, I’m going to make unilateral choices! That, my friends, is a threat! “All the important mistakes are made on the first day” (Rechtin, 1991) and I’m happy to make most of them! But, you’ll have to live with the consequences, so in the style of the best architects reacting to this challenge–which I have stolen from one of the best technical managers I ever worked with (Anthony Dicolen)–I am sure you will rise to the occasion and save the community from me setting up a legacy you have to suffer with!

If you know someone who should be involved (like, say, they could donate the hosting service without dictating how the community-at-large needs to move forward; for example, hands-off on dictating technology choices without building community buy-in) do motivate them to pitch in here! Do whatever it takes–buy this person lunch, harangue them mercilessly, etc. This whole entire HelpMatch initiative is going to give you plenty of opportunity to practice your architecting skills. Let’s start here–persuade and influence!!!

Go to it:

 

  • Volunteer for this “sub-committee” (you’ll pick a leader from among yourselves; if you can’t, I’ll pick; chuckle, I love this! Anthony, thank you!!!)
  • You can volunteer in the comments, and/or send me an email. I’ll put you in contact with one another.

 

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HelpMatch: Call to Action

March 2, 2007 at 10:13 pm · Filed under Architecture, HelpMatch

HelpMatch: Redefining the Humanity of Humanity!Join the cast of characters who are seizing their defining moment; pitch in and help create something that will redefine the humanity of humanity! Sounds big, overblown even, but such is the potential of HelpMatch! If you just think of a “MySpace” for help, for connecting people who are touched by an event or a story, a trip, something that makes them want to reach directly to a person in need and help them, then you are onto the potential of the idea. Big huh?

Well, bigger. Add an “eBay” for donating and finding goods to help those in acute or chronic need, and you’re getting closer to the potential. Big huh? Well, think bigger still! Think of Room to Read. Think of microfinance networks. Think of anything you can to do to help, and organize a community around. The HelpMatch technical network will build the tools to create and run that community.

We are only limited by our ability to draw on analogies and experiences, because the creativity of the technical community is huge, the desire to learn and build in the technical community is huge, and the desire to help is a big as the need for help!

(I expressed some hesitancy on the willingness of our technical community to really ante up and make this happen, and it was Craig Jordan who took me gently but firmly to task, giving me the words: the desire to help is a big as the need for help.)

Carpe Diem: Seize the Day

HelpMatch, as a social networking space focused on providing help to those in chronic or acute need, has a window of opportunity that will close as other kinds of solutions are put to the market survival test. If we architects want a great big sandbox of an application, one that can truly make a difference in the world, then we need to seize the day!

I have registered HelpMatch.org for the HelpMatch help network, and HelpMatch.net for use by the technical community forum as we architect and build HelpMatch. I would like to very shortly have HelpMatch.net launched with community conversation/collaboration tools like a blog, wiki, etc. So, areas you can immediately help in are:

  • recommending a wiki engine for HelpMatch.net (what does wikipedia use?) and a blog tool (I’d default to WordPress; other recommendations and considerations?)
  • recommending a hosting service for HelpMatch.net, recognizing the need to start low cost and potentially/hopefully scale quickly
  • provide vision input, and vision review
  • submit HelpMatch logo ideas
  • tell us what I am forgetting (all the good ideas are someone else’s; all the bad ideas are mine!)

We need to get the vision statement pounded into shape quickly, so that we can form a Board of Directors and get HelpMatch formally launched as a non-profit organization that can take donations to get infrastructure in place. In addition to the Board of Directors, I’m suggesting we form an Architecture Leadership Council, and hold an “indaba” pretty soon. (indaba n. A council or meeting of indigenous peoples to discuss an important matter.)  But this needs to be an open process, so if you disagree on how to organize for effectiveness here, please do comment on this post!

Again, we need the vision in place to do this. I’m hoping the Indy Architects Group will give some face-to-face time to this. Of notable mention–Al de Castro and Barry Crist, as the two primary/consistent sources of inspiration for HelpMatch ideas, and also Jeff Price, Gene Shin, and Kurt Kirkham. We also have new members who are just joining.

Architecture workshop attendees have worked on facets of HelpMatch, from vision to architecture, and in this post I am representing a lot of good ideas that have come from many, many people over the past 18 months or so.

There’s No Time like the Beginning to Make a Difference

If you have contacts with philanthropists who’d like to help people help each other, please put me in touch with them. This is an opportunity you can offer your contacts, and there is no time like the beginning to make a difference! While it will be good to have people involved on the HelpMatch organization side who are committed to putting real time into this, money will also help speed this engine for social change up the network effects curve!

As soon as we get some collaborations infrastructure in place, we’ll all have to start serious viral marketing to create the space where our technical networking habits can translate into goodness for humanity–personal, individualized yet massive scale help! What a vision!

Be a Link in the Chain Reaction

You can stand on the sidelines and observe, and be part of the damping force of disbelief. Or you can pitch in and make this happen. You have the power to make this technology’s biggest contribution to the plight of poverty and disaster, chronic and acute need, at the individual, family, community and organization level! Each person who reads this and does not do something active to contribute, shares responsibility for inertial drag. You are the first link in the chain reaction that will spread HelpMatch around the world. Each person who acts, shares responsibility for beginning the network process that this needs to reach its potential. Your involvement will give you the satisfaction of seeing this through its crucial beginnings, setting in process the technology hub that will link people to people committed to making a difference.         

You can start to connect the flow of influence by linking to

Architect a Better Future 

Very soon we’ll have the HelpMatch portal up and running, but in the meantime, why hold back? If you have something against my facilitating getting this ball rolling, let’s talk about that. If not, link! Or, alternatively, create your own statement (and tell us where it is, so we can point others to it)! The least you will get is embarrassing me if I idle instead of playing a role in getting this into high gear! But the time is now! This is our defining moment!

Yes, this is daunting: “The most serious mistakes are made on the first day.” “The end depends on the beginning!”

And it is exciting too: “Begin with the end in mind.” The end, my friends, is the obvious place to turn to give and receive individual help: to connect directly, or through people and groups we trust, to those we can directly help. Technology is ready for this. It just takes some leadership, initiative, and yes, hard work with a hammer (see Bono’s commencement address). We are the architects of a better future.

We Need YOU! 

So, give us your words; refine these words; let’s build the vision together.

Yes, we will have to scope and stage what we deliver as we build HelpMatch to its potential. But there is a big world-shaping opportunity here. Little seeds growing into huge maple trees all over the world, starting with each bit of contribution that you make now! Throw your idea seeds into the soil of HelpMatch.

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