search

openoakland / ideas

A place for storing and discussing new project ideas
2 stars 0 forks source link

Experiments with outreach media (SMS, signs, phone calls, AdWords) #11

Open daguar opened 10 years ago

daguar commented 10 years ago

I think an interesting role OpenOakland might be able to play is experimenting with radical new ways to engage with people in the community.

In the spirit of the notion of a "civic labs", we could run small-scale experiments -- with an explicit focus on designing to allow for easy evaluation -- to figure out what works to connect with people, and for what subsets of people.

Some examples:

In any case, I feel like if we ran some experiments with these kinds of things on a really small scale, it would be a force-amplifier for not only our other work, but also the City in engaging with citizens.

tbarreca commented 10 years ago

I think this is a great idea. A necessary idea to implement in some way.

My questions: Is it the best methodology to test the various media against one another? Might it make more sense to do some A-B UI testing within each medium first, to determine the efficacy of the tested alternatives?

I think it improbable that we'll ever want to limit ourselves in terms of outreach media. A-B testing uses known methodologies, can be reasonably rigorous, and may therefore make a significant difference in utilization rates.

Just my $0.02.

spjika commented 10 years ago

This is very much in line with how we should be working yeah- I do like the idea of the vacant buildings aspect- taking ideas form other projects and testing them out- put up text in signs to ask what people would like to see happen with a property, putting up URLs on some to see how people respond, even try a cityvoice alpha to see how that works. Would be a great chance to try out some burgeoning approaches for validity in Oaktown.

ixley commented 10 years ago

Sounds like a good idea, though I wouldn't try to overgeneralize 'engagement' tests like this. The efficacy of different media type is particularly contextualized by the project and content, so if you're looking to test different communication/outreach methods, I would keep the comparisons scoped to individual projects to begin with. Signs and mobile or text-based apps might work great with location specific issues, like vacant lots, whereas something like online ads might be more appropriate for something like Oakland Answers.

daguar commented 10 years ago

@tbarreca:

Might it make more sense to do some A-B UI testing within each medium first, to determine the efficacy of the tested alternatives?

I think that's right, but I think we want to focus on key questions first, which may not be within a medium, but just a gut-check on whether people actually use it (and who they are.) An example would be a call-in number -- I have no clue how many people or who would call in if this were out there on flyers; it'd be good to get a baseline.

@ixley:

The efficacy of different media type is particularly contextualized by the project and content, so if you're looking to test different communication/outreach methods, I would keep the comparisons scoped to individual projects to begin with.

Totally agree. What are some projects that fit this mold?

I feel like the economic development project -- because it's so broad -- might actually be a good candidate (though I think a specific thing we want feedback on would be necessary.)

Tagging @elinaru, because I know you're also interested in marketing/outreach.

ixley commented 10 years ago

I don't have any immediate project suggestions (especially since I am not super familiar with all the current projects), but this sort of initiative seems like it might benefit from having informal cross-project teams. Per Phil or Neil's suggestion about creating skillset teams, I've been wanting to corral the various designers in the group together, even if just for loose communication on design focused tasks, and more of a centralized pool for distributing efforts across projects.

Any suggestions for reasonable, but low-fuss tools for managing something like this? I was thinking a subgroup of our Google group would be ideal, but it doesn't look like that feature exists.

What would be awesome would be to have a roster of all active members, with filterable tags for current projects, skillsets, whatever, but that's probably a little excessive for now.

spjika commented 10 years ago

we are slowly rolling out CiviCRM which will give us that member level management stuff- who can do what, contacts groups etc. It's an important piece of our growth yes.

Spike openoakland.org www.stealingbeautyphotography.com

On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 12:22 PM, Jeff French notifications@github.comwrote:

I don't have any immediate project suggestions (especially since I am not super familiar with all the current projects), but this sort of initiative seems like it might benefit from having informal cross-project teams. Per Phil or Neil's suggestion about creating skillset teams, I've been wanting to corral the various designers in the group together, even if just for loose communication on design focused tasks, and more of a centralized pool for distributing efforts across projects.

Any suggestions for reasonable, but low-fuss tools for managing something like this? I was thinking a subgroup of our Google group would be ideal, but it doesn't look like that feature exists.

What would be awesome would be to have a roster of all active members, with filterable tags for current projects, skillsets, whatever, but that's probably a little excessive for now.

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/openoakland/ideas/issues/11#issuecomment-37575700 .

ixley commented 10 years ago

Sweet. I've been hearing talk of setting up CiviCRM, but wasn't personally familiar with all it's capabilities and use cases.

On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 12:51 PM, Spike notifications@github.com wrote:

we are slowly rolling out CiviCRM which will give us that member level management stuff- who can do what, contacts groups etc. It's an important piece of our growth yes.

Spike openoakland.org www.stealingbeautyphotography.com

On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 12:22 PM, Jeff French <notifications@github.com

wrote:

I don't have any immediate project suggestions (especially since I am not super familiar with all the current projects), but this sort of initiative seems like it might benefit from having informal cross-project teams. Per Phil or Neil's suggestion about creating skillset teams, I've been wanting to corral the various designers in the group together, even if just for loose communication on design focused tasks, and more of a centralized pool for distributing efforts across projects.

Any suggestions for reasonable, but low-fuss tools for managing something like this? I was thinking a subgroup of our Google group would be ideal, but it doesn't look like that feature exists.

What would be awesome would be to have a roster of all active members, with filterable tags for current projects, skillsets, whatever, but that's probably a little excessive for now.

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub< https://github.com/openoakland/ideas/issues/11#issuecomment-37575700>

.

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/openoakland/ideas/issues/11#issuecomment-37578605 .