OpenCauses.org - Do Good.

Finally we've gone public...

Re-posting from blog.jayway.com


I had the opportunity to present the Way Group initiated project OpenCauses.org at TED@PalmSprings this year. It was a fantastic experience and I got a great response on the project. But what is it we are doing with OpenCauses.org?

For good or for bad, the market is unprecedented in its power to generate wealth. What if we could use this power, not to generate wealth, but to generate good?

Since the market understands money really well, why not create representative money based on donations? If we do this, everyone will be able to handle donations as money. We could own it, measure it, trade with it, work to generate more of it... and every cent of it would represent donations for good causes.

This is what OpenCauses.org is doing.

OpenCauses.org really only aims to change one word. Instead of saying “I make donations to good causes” you will say “I buy donations to good causes”. This slight change makes all the difference.

What is it we are doing?
We are creating the Open Causes Platform, a non-profit donation platform, which will enable donations to causes aimed at the UN Millennium Development Goals. The Open Causes Platform will also hold Cause Credits. Causes Credits is representative money based on donations. This means that each Causes Credit represents a donation made to a good cause.

When you donate through the Open Causes Platform you receive Cause Credits for your donation. Your Cause Credits are measurable and accumulative, and they are also transferable between users of the platform. All this combined effectively makes Cause Credits into a means of trade.

The Open Causes Platform is an infrastructural platform which exposes a number of web-services. With these services integrators can integrate basically any site or Internet connected product to the platform. Anyone can create pretty much any implementation of donation based services imaginable. They will be able to make donations, show how much users have donated, compare and transfer donation.

Using Cause Credits
If you, as a person or an organization, own 100 Cause Credits you have donated $100 through the Open Causes Platform. If you later donate $10 more, you own 110 Cause Credits.

Now, let’s say that I have a cellular phone that I don’t use. If you give me your 110CC, I’ll give you my phone. If so, I have made the actual donations for $110 and you have bought my phone in two steps. The value of my phone has paid for the $110 donation. You now own a phone, but have not made any donations.

Summary
We are implementing a currency based on donations. Essentially we want to complement the market of today with a market based on generosity. Just imagine if every corporation where to accept a currency based on donations for 1% of their services and products... What couldn’t we do then?

Mattias Ask,
Founder of OpenCauses.org

If you have any questions or want more information about the project, go to OpenCauses.org or contact me at mattias.ask@opencauses.org.

Talking at TED

Last week I got to know that I will talk at TED! Before you get to fired up I have to say that I won't be talking at the main venue in Long Beach, but the Palm Springs multicast venue which me and Peter Neubauer will be attending. I really hope that my talk will be multicasted back to the main venue in Long Beach and the 1300 or so people sitting there. I'll know this in mid-December... and of course I also hope for the video to be published on TED.com after the conference :)

The presentation at TED will be "the great unveiling" for this project, which means that after TED, the cat is out of the bag and the project will be out in the open! I hope we'll get a good response from the crowd there, and the public in general.



PS. If you're reading this and wondering why I haven't written anything the last month it's because I haven't had time due to other obligations. That's the way life is. I hope that I will have time to write here on a more regularly basis from now on.

I didn't apply to Project 10 to the 100th

I decided not to apply to Project 10 to the 100th. You might think I'm crazy but trust me, I gave this decision a great deal of thought.

Project 10 to the 100th is Google's initiative where they dedicate 10 million dollars to projects that will make the world better. This seemed to be a perfect fit for this project but, after careful consideration, it wasn't.

In the application you where able to describe your idea in 300 word and with a 30 second movie on YouTube. These ideas will later (Oct 27th) be subjects for an open vote which will result in the pick of a couple of project for a final consideration made of experts. A conceptually complex idea, like I have found ours to be, will have a slim to none chance to get past the open vote due to the sparse information that can be provided. And, yes, of course I did a 300 word informative description and a 30 second movie of the project. In whatever way I did it, it lacked the soul of the project... that thing that makes people excited when they hear about it.

The most probable outcome of applying would be that we go public with the project, do not get Google to do it and diminish our TED talk-value since the theme is "Great unveilings" and we would already have unveiled our project.

The fact that Google has last say regarding who should implement the project has had little to no impact on this decision. If Google where to implement this project they would most certainly make it a hit. The problem is that I don't think they would do so within Project 10 to the 100th. This, combined with a certainty that the companies within Way Group and our friends are able to get this project running, has lead me to the conclusion that not applying was the correct thing to do. I just hope I'm not proven wrong on this...

Should I hope for TED or for Google's Project 10^100?

I am faced with a predicament... As man of you know, I have a chance to get up on the big stage at TED for a 3-minute talk. The 3-minute talks will be set now in mid October (yes, there has been delays) and because of this I don't know if I'll get to talk yet. The theme this year is "The Great Unveiling" and the talks will be focused on projects that has not been disclosed before. This might be a problem...

Google has started a project called "Project 10 to the 100th" which will fund projects that helps a large amount of people... like our project! The application is due on October 20th and Google (legit and to no surprise) claims the right to publish all applications... You see my problem now?

If comes the 20th and the 3-minute TED talks aren't set yet, what should I do? Should I bet on getting a spot at TED or getting funding from Google? Drop a comment and tell me what you think I should do...

The prototype is finished!

Yes, the prototype is finished :) It is as simple as it can be, but it shows the basic concept in action. This is good since I have a meeting with a fundraising specialist this Friday and for the first time I will be able to show what it is we want to do instead of just talking about it and showing conceptual pictures. Hopefully that will pay off...

Jayway blog

I have to say one more thing... Jayway now has a public blog which is great! Check it out at blog.jayway.com.

One-man agility

I'm still working on the prototype, but I've suffered from context switching the last week. I have decided to be more open inside Way Group with what I'm doing and thus tried to formalize a project backlog and a prototype backlog. It takes some time to get things to a good level where it communicates what I'm doing and supports me in my daily work without adding extra load. I think I have found a balance now...

I've worked with Scrum the last couple of years and I love the feeling of progress you get when you see burn down charts and tick things of in your sprint backlog. I tried to work with Scrum at the beginning of this project but it's hard when you're the developing team, the project owner and the Scrum master. Instead I have figured out what I loved the most about Scrum and I came up with three things that are the most important elements for me:

1. What did you do yesterday?
2. What are you going to do today?
3. Ticking of things in a backlog.

Well, no one asks me what I've done or what I'm going to do on a daily basis so I added these questions to the wiki page I have in the Way Group wiki. Every morning I open the page and write down what I did yesterday and what I'm going to do today. Then I tick of things in my backlog (or todo-list) as I've finished them... and all of the sudden I feel that I have enough structure to help me without adding extra work as well as communicate what I do to people that are interested.