Hey, folks!<br><div class="gmail_quote"><br> I met with Stephane from <a href="http://www.citizensmarket.com" target="_blank">www.citizensmarket.com</a> yesterday. They are another Cambridge based non-profit start up with a mission similar to ours: user generated social responsibility ratings that can be accessed through cell phones. Our tech team pounded some extra hours this week to make sure that our prototype in progress was at an good stage for that meeting. I wanted to make sure to meet with Stephane from a strong position. He was impressed by the ambition of our service, by how far we are along, and by the wacky thoroughness of our promotional materials.
<br><br>They're behind us in some things and ahead of us in others:<br><br>They started their effort as part of a class at the Kennedy School of Government. They haven't applied for non profit status yet. They haven't started market research. They don't really understand how SMS text messaging works. They don't have a human face to their website. They don't aspire to track as detailed a corporate model as we do. They don't have a lot of technical work finished.
<br><br>Stephane works for Oxfam America and understands a lot about the current state of global efforts by NGOs to get corporations to report on their socially responsible impacts. They do have a full Advisory Board. They have an interface design which is more intuitive than ours, but which has less potential to describe (and therefore influence) actual corporate practice. They do have a 50 page business plan that Stephane will be sending me soon.
<br><br>The most important thing is that they're willing to collaborate. I went into the meeting deliberately playing cool because I wanted to let our interaction evolve naturally (thank for the advice, Ona!) So it was Stephane that first brought up how great it would be to collaborate. We started talking about a many headed hydra or starfish model for collaboration. The general idea being that if we can work together at a very deep level then we can begin a coalition of similarly minded groups that share information. Following are the potential ways that we discussed collaborating. I've listed them in order of increasing connectedness. I want to make sure that this discussion takes place deliberately and with all of your blessings. So please give me your feedback so that I know where our comfort level with each issue stands. Then I'll sit back down with him and discuss possibilities:
<br><br>We could share:<br><br>-Perspective. This has already been very helpful to me and to Stephane. We discussed having a social meeting up between our teams. We might have more in common than even our services.<br>
<br>-Links. Since different users will respond more to our complete and locally motivated process or their general look at big companies, it might be nice to be able to give users the choice of which to use. These links could be more or less prominent. They already link to a for profit competitor of ours that is struggling to survive:
<a href="http://dotherightthing.com/" target="_blank">http://dotherightthing.com/</a>.<br><br>-Gaps in service. For the moment it looks like the main gap to help each other fill is data. <br><br>-Data. Sharing our underlying data would be a big win once we're both up and running. If we don't make it clear to users that we share data then anyone that discovers both of our sites may be confused and turned off by not knowing which site to contribute to. Certainly we don't want to require that users must add their data twice.
<br><br>-Users. If we get collaborative enough to share a user base then we're are flirting with becoming the same company or formal coalition. That's something to do very carefully. We don't want to share our user list with each other unless we are formally associated (otherwise it feels wrong.)
<br><br>-Legal. We have the same model, legally. We'll require the same assistance.<br><br>-Team Coordination. We're getting a lot more done than they are. So if we share team process I want to make sure that it's a shared effort and that they have a lot to add.
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</span></font></b><br><br>-Specialized Software. I told him that Delicious Monster is hooking us up with bar code recognition software from images. <br><br>-Front-end Standardization. Stephane brought my attention to the Global Reporting Initiate's work to standardize corporate disclosure reports. Their system of "interests" is similar to our "dimensions" except that their list is based on GRI's. The GRI's list is very different from our user-centered list, but standards are critical to deep collaboration.
<br><br>-Status Comparisons. If a user is on both of our sites then it makes
sense that we both give them credit for what they've done on each
other's sites.<br><br>-Community Organizing. I'm not sure if they are
planning to do as much real world activism as we are. But their
connections, especially in the non-profit world, could be really
helpful.<br><br>-Back-end Development. As we know, technology is a big hurdle. They currently only have one guy who is actively looking at their technology. But their system is simpler than ours. We would both benefit from shared development and a final system that integrates easily. But it's important to let this happen naturally. So I look forward to hearing what our technologists say when they meet. If they want to work together then perhaps we can figure out how to share costs, etc.
<br><br>-Advisory Board. They're ahead of us on this one. So perhaps our
formal alliance could also mean that we share board membership.<br><br>-Spending Money. For example, if and when we get our own SMS gateway then it would be nice to be able to split the cost with someone. There will be other examples down the road. A delicate topic.
<br><br>-Earning Money. They are considering charging users for text message access. But if we offer it for free (as we plan to) then that shoots them in the foot. Other possibilities that we've both identified are advertising (which our idea to add ratings to will make palatable), consulting with industry, and donations. They aren't not applying for grants now (good, it would look bad if grants got applications from both of us.) We didn't really approach the idea of sharing our revenue streams.
<br><br>-Leadership and Board Structure. Depending on how negotiates develop
we may want to rethink how we operate. Will we adopt the same mission?
Will we remain entirely separate? Will we found a coalition that both
of us are a part of? I think that Stephane wants to continue to operate a separate project. I know that I'm committed to leading our effort until it stands on its own in a few years. I think that we want to be very careful to make sure that there are bright lines around our areas of resonsibility. If it looks like the best thing is to functionally merge then redundant leadership will not be helpful. In that case, perhaps Stephane would be willing to lead our coalition building efforts while I continue to lead from our current mission statement.
<br><br>OK, so that's a big list and a lot to chew on.<br><br>Let me know what you think!<br><font color="#888888"><br>-clay<br>
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