OneWebDay

Want to help OneWebDay? We’ve teamed up with an organization called The Extraordinaries to give you two easy ways to take action. To take part, you’ll need an iPhone, and The Extraordinaries iPhone app. Get the free app

Once you have the app downloaded, click here from your iPhone to launch our profile: “extra://orgid/19722e8″

In The Extraordinaries app you’ll find two actions you can take.

Action #1) In the lead up to OneWebDay, on Saturday September 22, help us spread the word — right from your iPhone! Ride the bus? Share this video with fellow commuters. Work in an office? Share this video with your co-workers.

Action #2) On OneWebDay — help us collect photos and stories! While attending a OneWebDay event, take photos, share share the stories of those photos, and transmit your GPS location so we can mark you on the world map! The more photos we get, the more we can tell the world what happened on OneWebDay. You can be a part of that.

Ready to start micro-volunteering? Download The Extraordinaries app today: http://download.BeExtra.org Once you have the app downloaded, open it, and launch the OneWebDay profile page!

Originally posted by OneWebDay Sydney Organizer, Vicky Pinpin-Feinstein at http://my.onewebday.org/profiles/blogs/when-radio-meets-the-web (log in required)

When radio turns its back, even if only partially, from the old way of doing things and begins a plunge into the new and the unknown, one cannot help taking notice. That is what ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) Radio has done with the Pool project, a pioneering effort in the bold and new world of active audience engagement, Web 2.0 style.

Pool describes itself as a collaborative space where audiences become co-creators, bringing together media professionals with their audiences in an evolving process of participation, co-creation, and collaboration.

“For me City Nights [an ABC Radio program] became symbolic of the Web 2.0 experience. Quite different to the traditional role of radio feature maker in which the producer makes all the decisions about a program, instead it became a very personal involvement of give and take.”

That is how radio producer, Gretchen Miller, describes the way in which Radio National producers and the Pool team worked to use materials from Pool contributors that have led to new program ideas, attracted new audiences and developed new work flows. To date, the radio programs, My Street and City Nights are two of Pool’s most successful initiatives, illustrating how a collaborative approach to public media produces outcomes markedly different from those that are produced through long- standing broadcasting practices.

Since its inception in 2003, Pool has endeavored to create and sustain an online space which some users described as:

“a groundbreaking experiment in user-generated content.”
“a treasure trove of productivity [where] anyone can post stuff—poems, pictures, videos, audio, animation, music…..”

In addition, indications are that, despite Pool’s growing pains, it has the competency as well as the capacity to:

• Encourage and elicit the active participation of users that are drawn by the core Web 2.0 principles of collaboration and co-creation.
• Provide a high level of staff engagement that is responsive to users’ concerns and challenges in using a technically limited site.
• Help ABC Radio evolve into a medium that is quick to react and is receptive to the rapidly changing new media landscape.
• Partner with leading research and academic institutions in the investigation of complex web issues and challenges.
• Empower communities to engage in civic activities through web-based tools.
• Contribute to the dialogue on digital literacy, community engagement and the evolving role of the media worker, to name a few.

Unlike many of its social media counterparts, Pool enjoys a higher level of engagement by its users — about 25% of all members contribute works compared to 1% that create and produce in most social networks, according to the Australian Cooperative Research Centre for Interaction Design (ACID). A vibrant online community has grown despite the site’s design constraints and limited web development. Users are willing to overlook these limitations because the site has allowed them to experiment under a very supportive environment as evidenced by the high level of responsiveness by Pool staff. For artists, writers and the like, this has broadened their creative reach far more than conventional creative spaces.

Judging from references made about Pool from several quarters, the project has brought prestige to ABC Radio because it is being seen as an early pioneer of Web 2.0 application. But more importantly, it has initiated a new concept of audience engagement where audience and broadcaster come together to “share skills, entertain and surprise each other.” This is cutting-edge audience participatory engagement, a trend that has caught the attention of a few public sector figures in Australia.

But with innovation of course comes the ensuing tension with worker issues. As broadcast media grapples with the evolving role of the media worker, it would do very well to reassure workers that it is not drastic and radical changes that the medium seeks but rather, how workers will remain relevant in the face of a rapidly changing media landscape. Tensions that emerged between innovation and deeply entrenched practices can be substantially reduced if policy-level efforts have built-in measures to protect the worker from obsolescence or redundancy.

Despite Pool being in beta version, it is sufficiently forward-looking in that it has already formed partnerships with organizations that are focused on advancing research and scholarship in this new and evolving field. The Australian Centre for Interaction Design, the ARC Centre for Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI), and the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Faculty of Law and the Australia Council of the Arts are some of the organizations that Pool saw fit to partner to study these challenges.

To be sure, the seeds of innovation have been sown by ABC Radio. Life, too, may have become less gilded for those media workers who still believe in doing things the old way. But the time for hesitation or opposition to this kind of experimentation has passed. ABC Radio will do well if it keeps looking forward, making way for other Pool-type innovations to percolate. If it does, it will indeed make a sound investment in contributing to digital inclusion hence reducing the digital divide.

OneWebDay, September 22, 2009, is upon us!

On our new home page, we have provided lots of ideas for this you can do to join our global network of volunteers in celebrating, educating, and activating communities, online and off, to build a society where the Web works for everyone.

You can take any of these actions, you can take them all. But most importantly, make OneWebDay your own. Organizations and individuals are coming up with great ways to celebrate OneWebDay.

The Center for Democracy and Technology has posted a “A Call to Defense and Celebration of the Online Commonwealth,” and you can sign it.

The Mozilla Foundation, in addition to organizing Mozilla Service Week, and helping to raise awareness and funds for OneWebDay, is hosting a OneWebDay Poster Contest! Professional and hobbyist designers alike should check it out.

In Washington, DC, KG Yoga is providing a free OneWebDay Yoga class on September 22.

What matters most about the Web is the network of people that it empowers. We created OneWebDay to unleash your creativity so that together we can all find ways to bring more people online, give them the knowledge they need to be empowered users, and stand together as a community that celebrates the Web and will work to see it reach its fullest potential as a force for enhancing everyone’s lives.

Please use the comment section below to post your actions and ideas for OneWebDay 2009.