Article just came out in the CSR about us - check it out!
Thanks to Marnie Web for listing The Extraordinaries iPhone app as one of her top 5 apps!! Check out the full article here:
Thanks to Robert from VolunteerMatch, the leading online service for volunteerism, for interviewing Jacob at N2y4. And check out their new blog here.
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Great article and interview with Extraordinary teammember Nathan Freitas over at UgoTrade. Nathan talks about his work in the mobile/social good space, the Extras, a bunch about Android (including a list of Android sensor APIs. hot), and about his work with http://olivercoady.com/, and his new rad GeoReporter http://openideals.com/greporter/. If there's one reason that I'd move back to Brooklyn, it would be so that I could hang out at the Tea Lounge and shoot the shit with Nathan.
Hey everyone,
I wanted to reach out to you all, and give a big update about The Extraordinaries.
First, we have some new digital real estate to share with you.
• We have a new YouTube page at www.youtube.com/
• You can now find us on Facebook "Causes"
(http://apps.facebook.com/
Second, we have had some blog coverage of our idea. These are two of my favorites:
• http://philanthropy.blogspot.
• http://
And third, we will have submitted to seven competitions before the year is over. These include:
Google - http://www.project10tothe100.
Amazon - http://aws.amazon.com/
Knight - http://www.newschallenge.org/
Echoing Green - http://www.echoinggreen.org/
Nokia - http://www.
Ashoka - http://ashoka.org/
Draper Richards - http://
WHEW! That was a lot of links. I hope I didn't wear you out!
So, The Extraordinaries has reached a point where we are ready to move into the next phase of our project development, and complete the engineering of an iPhone application. The problem is that we need to raise some more money before we can take another step. If you have any ideas on how we might find $20,000 in the next two months, I would love to hear them.
Thanks so much for your time, and for your continued support of this awesome idea. We are so close to making this a reality.
__________________________
Jacob Colker
Co-Founder / Project Lead
The Extraordinaries
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The eve of any long anticipated moment is often rife with excitement, sometimes so great it appears to burst at the seams. Inherent to that excitement, is an awareness of the kinetic energy about to set in motion:
- The moment before a gunshot sounds the start of an Olympic race.
- The early morning on Election Day just before the polls open.
- A rollercoaster slowly inching over the edge of it’s first big drop.
Here at The Extraordinaries, these feelings now grip our team. Months of research, planning, and development have morphed this project from a conversation in a bar to a tangible organization. Tireless volunteers and supportive advisers have given us a strong foundation. We are ready to introduce our idea to the world and thrilled to open our virtual doors.
We are at that magical moment of energy release.
But this project is not about us, it is about you, and it is our hope that you will join us on this new adventure. It is your spare time that will help NASA explore the planet Mars. It is you who will help the disadvantaged learn new computer skills to compete in the 21st century. It is you who will help give abused fighting dogs a new lease on life.
After all it is you, The Extraordinary volunteers, who will ultimately make this project a success.
What is The Extraordinaries?
The Extraordinaries is a new approach to volunteering. Our mission is to collect moments of spare time and convert it into social good. We use mobile phone technology to deliver, short, on-demand, simple, and rewarding volunteer opportunities to people whenever and where ever they are available. Got 20 minutes free? Be extraordinary.
The Problem.
Busy people rarely volunteer. In the rat race of 60-hour workweeks, going to school, running errands, and driving kids to soccer games, many people wish to give back but only have small increments of free time. Most volunteer opportunities require training, vetting, and lengthy time-commitments, making it extremely difficult for busy people to get involved.
The Solution.
We want to make it easier for busy people to volunteer by providing instant, rewarding, useful, and simple opportunities via mobile phones. Using the Extraordinary system, people tap into mini-volunteer opportunities, wherever and whenever they have time. For example, an astronomy hobbyist could help NASA identify craters in photographs of the surface of Mars. A Spanish/English speaker could translate a paragraph for an immigrant-advocacy group. A college math major could tutor a high-school student struggling with an Algebra equation. An IT professional could help a nonprofit employee resolve a networking problem. All of these acts take less than 20 minutes, yet all of these acts (and thousands more) are both extraordinarily useful to the person being helped, and extraordinarily rewarding to the volunteer.
The Innovation.
The real innovation of this concept lies in the combination of the 20-minute experience and mobile phone technology. This combination allows instant access for both the volunteer who wants to help, and the organization or individual in need. Standing apart, one person with 20-minutes of spare time is rather minor. Linked together, thousands of people with 20-minutes of spare time comprise an enormous pool of high-value and high-expertise time, just waiting to be tapped.
Volunteer opportunities have rarely been considered from the perspective of convenience and high-value for the volunteer. When you remove the constraints of physical location and lengthy time commitments from the picture, opportunities that look nothing like the world of traditional volunteering suddenly become feasible and useful. In the same way that volunteers help the NASA clickworkers program find craters on Mars, volunteers who speak Chinese or Tibetan could help to digitize old Buddhists texts on their mobile phones. In the same way that homework hotlines help thousands of students each night, volunteers who enjoy solving math problems could help a student work through a difficult algebra equation. There is nearly limitless potential to this approach. In every community around the world, there is someone with a few minutes free, and someone with a few minutes of need. We want to connect them.
Core components.
There are several core components that will add to the success of our approach.
#1: Game mechanics.
Our approach borrows heavily from the world of gaming. Emerging research on game mechanics shows that people have a primal drive to collect things, earn points, provide feedback, exchange socially, and customize their experience. Our technology is built on this research; it provides users with a fun, engaging, and rewarding experience.
For example, have a component within our system that broadcasts “Extraordinary Points” via a “Good Deed Feed” that people can embed into their blogs, or social networking profiles like Facebook or MySpace. For each good deed done, the volunteer is rewarded a number of points, and these are displayed marquee-style in a widget on their social networking profiles. They are basically showing off to their friends how “extraordinary” they are, and it becomes a game to see how many points you can score. We also envision partnerships with Best Buy or Zipcar, where you can trade-in your Extraordinary Points for merchandise or driving credits. The Points component acts as a viral marketing mechanism by tapping into people’s social networks and bringing in new volunteers.
#2: The Super Hero Community.
The Extraordinaries is about people. They have the power to make a difference and they are the agents of change. Establishing a strong community will be a huge part of our success.
Therefore, we will work to ensure that users:
- Are energized and feel that they have ownership.
- Feel engaged and feel that their feedback is being listened to.
- Have autonomy to make our system better.
- Feel that they are making a difference and contributing.
- Have a vehicle to form bonds and friendships within our system (a mini social network).
- Have an ability to create, edit, and contribute to a best practices training forum so that new volunteers can gain from the knowledge and experience of those who came before them.
#3: Skills tags, and needs tags.
As people begin to use our system, they will enter a series of skills into their profiles in the form of tags. These can be anything from computers, to parenting, to database management. Likewise, as volunteer opportunities are posted, they list skills that fit the opportunity. The system then matches them up.
#4: Location-based GPS technology.
Most new mobile phones include built-in GPS technology, and we will take advantage of it! In addition to accomplishing a volunteer task through the phone, we want to give a volunteer the ability to complete the task in-person, using the GPS in the phone to find opportunities within a short distance from them.
For example: You are on a business trip in Toledo and a meeting gets cancelled. You pull up The Extraordinary software on your mobile phone, select “volunteer in-person”, and discover that two blocks from your hotel is an individual or an organization that could use your skills. We even use Google Maps on the phone to give you step-by-step walking directions. How easy is that?
#5: Feedback.
Trust is a critical component for our concept to succeed. Like eBay, we envision that people will build up a reputation using a feedback mechanism. For example, if someone is rated at five stars, and they translate a paragraph for an organization, it is fairly trustworthy, whereas, if someone is rated at two stars and they translate a paragraph, the organization should take that work with a grain of salt. The same goes for organizations that do not provide a rewarding experience, or try to take advantage of a volunteer.
Impact on Citizens and Society.
Our market research shows that when you ask nearly anyone if they’d like to give back to their community, they say “yes, but I don’t have time.” The answer is consistent across professions: lawyers, doctors, computer programmers, designers, and more. We’re talking, just about everyone. Now imagine any community, organization, or individual who could benefit from the free labor of a high-expertise person. The Extraordinaries creates an avenue for busy people to fulfill their desire to give back… This desire doesn’t currently have an outlet. There is no system in place that allows a busy person to do anything other than write a check. The Extraordinaries could create a new ecosystem for good deeds, which will substantially aid those in need and strengthen the level of civic engagement across the board.
When we mean everyone, we really mean, everyone. Nearly 80% of the world owns a mobile phone, so it’s highly likely that when a person has 20-minutes free, they also have a phone in their purse or pocket. Further, when you remove the constraints of physical location you open up the potential for instantaneous international volunteering – where people whose skills match a need can help each other regardless of gender, ethnicity, or national borders.
Our Dreams.
It is our dream to truly revolutionize how people approach volunteering. We want to break the old ways of thinking and create the potential for extraordinary social good to occur in small increments of 20 minutes. We want people to think, “spare time = social good”. We hope that you will join us on this new adventure.
Got 20 Minutes? Be Extraordinary!
Thanks for your interest,
Jacob Colker
Co-Founder / Project Lead
The Extraordinaries
jacob@theextraordinaries.org
