mobilephone3.jpg

Welcome to Day One of Echoing Green’s Mobile Technology in Social Innovation online series. Today’s focus is on Advocacy.

Panelists: Emily May of Hollaback!, Holly Ross of NTEN, Michael Sabbat of Mobile Commons, and Stephanie Shih of DoSomething.og.

How does your organization use mobile technology?

Stephanie Shih: Most companies have been using mobile to push out (as a marketing mechanism) or to pull in (mass voting/polling), but we've been exploring ways to use mobile the way its users use it, as a platform for two-way conversation. DoSomething.org wants to be a unique resource for young social changers, and meeting them where they already are (on their phones, of course) is a huge added value for them. They are still surprised every time it becomes apparent a real person is on the other end chatting with them live.

Holly Ross: Like all shoemaker’s children, we've been slow to adopt, even as we preach the importance of mobile. But we are focused on a few initiatives. SMS is not the right fit for us, but we have focused on making our site and community tools accessible via the mobile web. Our conference community was specifically designed to be accessible on a phone and allow people to find sessions and each other easily. We also use QR Code mobile apps extensively at our in-person events. Our next step is to build a mobile version of our website.

Michael Sabat: At Mobile Commons we use mobile technology a lot. Most of the time we are teaching our customers how to use mobile technology to drive opted in SMS and email from media, communicate directly with customers and supporters and get people to take action when timing is critical. Our customers have built some of the largest and most active opted in mobile lists in the world.

Emily May: Hollaback! is a movement dedicated to ending street harassment using mobile technology. Street harassment is one of the most pervasive forms of gender-based violence, and one of the least legislated against. Comments from "You’d look good on me" to groping, flashing or assault, are a daily, global reality for women and LGBTQ individuals. By collecting women and LGBTQ folks’ stories and pictures in a safe and share-able way with our mobile phone applications, Hollaback! is a crowd-sourced initiative to end street harassment. Each “hollaback” is mapped, putting a face on the everyday harassment and assault, and breaking the silence that has perpetuated street harassment.

Text to give campaigns have raised the bar on mobile advocacy and fundraising. What’s next?

Michael: The next step is a true integration of mobile donations and communications. The smart organizations out there are using mobile to find supporters and develop them into donors and the mobile phone can be much more than a transaction mechanism.

Holly: I think it's all about mobile and geo-location to organize and mobilize communities. Imagine if ordinary citizens could report city problems simply by taking a picture with their phone, which is tagged with geo data, and uploading that to a municipal site and then sharing it with their neighbors? The work that Ushahidi and others are doing has tremendous implications for the role of mobiles in creating social change.

Emily: Sending emails to legislators or text-to-give programs can be effective at sustaining change, but they don’t ignite it. New movements will ignite with mobile tech the same way movements have always started: with people telling their stories. The good news here is that mobile tech is changing the way stories are told. In the days before the internet, there was only one mic. But now, everyone has a mic in their pocket. And it’s not just who speaks the loudest or who rules the airwaves. It’s all of our voices. And access to these stories is changing the way we change the world.

Has mobile technology changed the way we organize?

Holly: I don't think it has, yet. But it's coming. In the same way that social media is changing communications from a call and response format (we put out a call to action and the community responds), I think that mobile will empower our advocates to get good work done for our causes at any time, day or night, seven days a week. We'll need to help direct them and figure out how to measure and respond to all this activity.

Michael: The mobile phone gives a voice to people that previously didn't have a voice. Whether the mobile is bridging digital divide issues or allowing people to engage during the work day when they could not normally be online, serious changes are happening. Mobile is also the best way to get critical information read quickly.

What is the greatest issue facing organizations around advocacy?

Emily: Disengagement. People want to lead–not follow. Hollaback!’s decentralized model has scaled tremendously over the past year from three Hollaback! sites to twenty-four. Local leaders have the capacity to bring the movement to end street harassment home using whatever strategies they see fit including their blogs, their projects, their media, their partnerships, and their decisions – and the result is that they are stronger, more effective, and more engaged. It also means that the people who are most attracted to this work are the people that don’t have traditional access to leadership: 74% of our site leaders are under the age of 30, 44% are LGBTQ, and 26% are people of color. These aren’t just the leaders of the movement to end street harassment–these are the future leaders of the world.

Michael: It's important to target communications and advocacy campaigns and it’s also important to track. With today's technology we can deliver advocacy calls to the right legislator at the right time. We can track those calls to know how many calls are being made, who the most active advocates are, and all associated data. We've come a long way from posting a switchboard number on the homepage and hoping people take action.

Holly: I think it's about getting the right message to the right person at the right time—real personalization. There's an opportunity for us to use data about what actions people take in these digital environments to really tailor our messages to specific segments of our list, but most are still sending the same alert to everyone. We have to start using that data not to drive action, but to deliver value to our activists, and we'll see a lot more return on our investment over time.

How can the government use mobile technology to more effectively connect with people?

Michael: The mobile phone is simply a communications channel. This question is really asking how can government communicate better, and I think we all have specific opinions. We are seeing governments start to use mobile smartly. San Francisco is launching SFpark to help relieve city traffic by helping citizens find parking spots with text messages and an iPhone app. Iowa uses mobile to communicate with home buyers, banks and real estate agents to help educate everyone involved about home purchases. Many city and state public health departments are communicating with populations to help them find flu shots or quit smoking. The possibilities are literally endless.

Holly: I think they should all follow the city of San Francisco's lead Opening up the data encourages mobile developers to create apps and sites that citizens can use in a variety of ways. SeeClickFix and Crime Desk SF (both at http://datasf.org/showcase/) are just two examples.

Emily: As more and more people turn to mobile technology to tell their stories, it is government’s responsibility to listen. Here in New York City we are working with the New York City government to connect our iPhone and Droid apps—and to establish an SMS texting option—so that people who report their street harassment to Hollaback! can also have the option of letting us forward those reports to the city. If funded, this project would make New York City the first city to document street harassment, and we would use those reports to conduct more in depth research with Cornell, and ultimately open policy doors to this stubborn social problem.

How will mobile phone technology be different in 5 years?

Michael: Wow, five years!? Things are moving so quickly that it's hard to predict one year ahead. I can't imagine where the technology will go, but I'm pretty certain that almost every organization will be doing something mobile and probably have full-time staff dedicated to mobile.

Stephanie: I think more and more our mobile phones will become the home base of the technology we use, like a kind of universal remote control almost. Already companies are developing ways to swipe or scan your credit card on your phone—a portable credit card machine, how convenient for all those consumer products companies! I think this type of tech, the kind that follows us home, and everywhere, really, will increasingly be the norm.

Holly: I think it's going to be about the browser. I'd like to think that we're going to see more standardization across the mobile browsers, allowing us to design more content, more easily for our audiences.

Excerpted interview. Download full transcript.

Add your voice to the conversation by commenting below or on Facebook and Twitter (use hashtag #mobileinnov).

Join us tomorrow to discuss Journalism in Mobile Technology, and for the global Twitter chat on June 22, 2011 from 1-2:30pm EST.

Tweet