[Dev-flock] Big collaboration opportunity.

[Clay Ward]

Hey, folks!

I met with Stephane from www.citizensmarket.com 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.

They're behind us in some things and ahead of us in others:

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.

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.

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:

We could share:

-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.

-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: http://dotherightthing.com/.

-Gaps in service.  For the moment it looks like the main gap to help each
other fill is data.

-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.

-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.)

-Legal.  We have the same model, legally.  We'll require the same
assistance.

-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.          * *

-Specialized Software.  I told him that Delicious Monster is hooking us up
with bar code recognition software from images.

-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.

-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.

-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.

-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.

-Advisory Board.  They're ahead of us on this one.  So perhaps our formal
alliance could also mean that we share board membership.

-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.

-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.

-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.

OK, so that's a big list and a lot to chew on.

Let me know what you think!

-clay

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