ProjectEvolve The Listserve History
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Learning from our Design Briefs & Building a Platform

Overview:

  • 4/7 design briefs talked about a crowdsourced platform to help turn ideas into actions/things.
  • This platform is solving the same challenge ProjectEvolve is experiencing - no infrastructure.
  • We’re building a platform that sources good ideas and develops them by leveraging the skills, time, and knowledge of our internet community.
  • Platform diagram at bottom of PDF (thanks Mike Lai) and questions we need to answer to build it.
  • To-do: Divide responsibility and ask/research/answer questions associated with the proposed ‘platform.’
  • We’re going to be holding multiple info call sessions. Will schedule as needed.

So far, the best part about this project has been hearing other people’s ideas about how to move forward and weaving those ideas in with the project roadmap. There are two core concepts in this email that I’m going to borrow to describe 1) what went wrong with the idea of breaking into design teams, and 2) how we’re going to use that learning experience to develop a system or platform that crowdsources ideas and resources to turn ideas into realities.

What went wrong?

Here’s a simple analogy from Mike Ringland:

“Imagine we all have access to a grocery store and instead of someone saying as the doors open, “Make a vegan three course meal for 12” they say “meet me back here in a hour.”

There is little direction, a dysfunctional infrastructure (Slack), and no well-formed goals with the current ProjectEvolve. I hoped that collectively we’d be able to develop a number of methods and systems to serve as vehicles for turning an idea into an actual thing, but unfortunately the environment wasn’t nurturing enough for those structures to form.

What we learned from the Design Briefs?

First of all, thank you to everyone who completed a design brief. It was a bit weird and I’m sure to some it felt unnatural, but that is by design. There were 7 design briefs and 4 of them talked nearly about the exact same idea.

What is the problem you’re trying to solve?

Ingrid Wong: Using the knowledge, drive, enthusiasm, brilliance, bright ideas of people I do not know personally. How can I contribute to smaller and larger projects that help the world in a positive, constructive way?

Mac: In its current format, the ListServe is primarily a one way communications tool for individuals to send a message of their choosing to thousands of people around the world. Some feedback is surely generated but it is also very likely that there are many individuals who would actively participate in activities that would promote the common good if given the right opportunity.

Mike Lai: Help people on Listserve turn good ideas into action(s) that can produce positive outcomes by leveraging the skills, time and knowledge of the Listserve community.

Chris: The Listserve is an awesome idea in principle, but I think the question - what would you say to 1 million people - distracts winners. I think there should be a better way to get good ideas from winners, and for there to be a platform that nurtures and extends these ideas. There have been a lot of interesting projects started by winners of the listserve that have eventually gotten lost because of the lack of a platform.

After reading all of these design briefs, it became clear to me that the problem expressed in a majority of the briefs is the EXACT same problem ProjectEvolve is suffering from - basically no infrastructure to turn an idea into a real thing. The other Design Brief’s themes touched on 1) better education about our environment, and 2) the issue of isolation in a connected world - these are real problems and need addressing. Unfortunately given it’s current state, ProjectEvolve is not able to do anything about these problems.

The next step is clear

Bulletpoints:

  • We’re building a platform that sources good ideas and develops them by leveraging the skills, time, and knowledge of our internet community.

  • We’re building a platform to help others turn their ideas into actions.

  • We’re building a platform for the exchange of ideas with the intent to develop them to better society.

  • I know it’s cliche to include a TED talk, but I want to create a literal platform for ‘Ideas to have sex’

  • No time to watch? What individual knows how to make a computer mouse? Literally nobody… We all know little bits, but nobody knows the whole. What we’ve done in society is created the ability to do things we literally don’t understand. By leveraging technology we’ve gone beyond the capacity of the human mind. What is now relevant is how well a society is communicating their ideas. What we’ve done is create a collective brain. Any one individual is just a node in the network of the collective brain.

Platform phases and accompanying questions:

  1. Source ideas for projects
    • How do we get people to share their best ideas?
    • What types of projects (e.g. concept, software, hardware, local gatherings, other)?
    • What areas are projects targeting (e.g. environmental, social, political)?
  2. Sort, filter, and prioritize ideas for projects
    • What criteria need to be considered for filtering ideas?
    • How do we ensure that there is adequate representation across demographics of project ideas?
    • How can we give feedback to the community improve the source of ideas?
  3. Decide on projects
    • How do we decide the scope of the project?
    • How do we determine the outcome or deliverable for the project?
  4. Assemble ‘fireteams’ for projects
    • How do we determine the project team(s)?
    • Are they self-determined?
  5. How are time and resources allocated?
    • Build / deliver MVP
    • What methodologies and processes are used for deliver the project?
    • What standards and guidelines should be followed?
    • What tools should be used?
  6. Share / publish the outcome of the MVP
    • How do we present the final deliverable?
    • How do we market the ideas to grow the platform?

Platform Diagram

platform diagram