I rarely do this here on kthread.com, but I am using this blog post to pull together the materials from a Social Media Week New York panel this afternoon called “Forget Fans, Get Partners” held at BBH New York. I wasn’t able to talk about all of the slides, but leave me comments and I will be so, so happy to explain more about what I find interesting and important in each.

Thank you to Saneel for inviting me (and to Kevin for connecting us), Shaun for moderating and working through panel structure and questions, and my co-panelist Peter of LEGO. I’m glad to now know about the AFOL community. Nice crowd of people with smart questions in attendance and thank you for those of you who cheered me on from the Internet.

The uncut video (it is an hour and lots of change long, I appear in the beginning half and then at the final forty minutes of Q & A) is below, and the slides below that.

Thoughts? I’d really like to hear from you.

This summer, as I was on a sabbatical in Santa Cruz, I was also secretly building a geolocative mobile application.

Last night, the application went live in the iPhone store and now I can tell you all about Galvanize, the way to hide and find real gifts with your friends. (Our Twitter and Tumblr)

Please know that the Galvanize application is really in alpha, but we are opening it up so we can make it better faster! We need your feedback as we decide what to build into it next and how to make the game more fun.

As with all alpha (and most beta) projects, things will break and sometimes look a little wonky. We will be working to fix things just as quickly as we can, as we so appreciate your patience and specific thoughts as we improve the game and the overall experience.

And please forgive the length of this post—I have much to tell you about and some amazing people to introduce.

This is how big my smile was last night when I heard that the app was up in the store:

I was with my friends Sloane and Taylor (who is a very good photographer) in line for Ignite NYC when Taylor took the picture.

Thank You

This personal project would never have been possible without amazing friends who cheered me on as I leapt, once again, into the unknown, all of whom are pursuing inspiring personal projects and new directions of their own. Margaret Rosas, Kevin Slavin, Karen Barbarossa, Ethan Zuckerman, Catherine Bracy, Clay Shirky, Laura Hertzfeld, David Sasaki, Solana Larsen, Dave Coustan, Jessica Smith, Brian Oberkirch, Tricia Wang, Andrew Hyde, Nina Walia, Fil Vocasek, Keryn Gottshalk, Sarah Graalman, and my sisters Kat and Kass—thank you more than I can say.

UPDATE 9/28 6:15p: I knew I forgot someone important in the list above, and that would be Lisa Williams, who also gave me a wonderful piece of advice; “You can’t see the final destination with the headlights, but leave them on and you’ll see far enough ahead to make it all the way there.” (The other best advice I received was from Ethan, who encouraged me to do the thing that was scariest when I left my job.)

How Galvanize Works

Now, let me walk you through what Galvanize does right now, starting with the home screen:

There are two big things to do: hide a gift and find a gift. Both have notifications attached—e-mail for now, SMS as an option later, that arrive in your inbox when you have joined Galvanize, when someone adds you as a friend, hides a gift for you, and when you have new points in the game from finding a gift or when someone finds a gift you have hidden for them.

For hiding, choose your style of map (street view, satellite, or hybrid from the buttons at the bottom), go to your hiding location, secret the gift (be sneaky!), and then hit the “hide here” button.

The next screen (that we’re making more beautiful even as I write this) lets you title the gift, choose the recipient, and leave a hint.

When someone leaves you a gift, you will receive a notification, then be prompted to join Galvanize if you’re not yet a member, and after that, be taken to a map. The present icon marks the spot of your gift.

After you have located your gift, take a picture. There will be ways to share the story of how you found the gift soon.

For now, when a gift is discovered, both the hider and the finder are awarded points that show up in your dashboard. You can give these points to one of three featured organizations that are doing truly awesome (and serious) work making the world a better place.

Right now, we are featuring three social good organizations that I met through my time at PopTech as their Director of Community. Each of these orgs is part of the PopTech Social Innovation Fellows program; I so admire the work of Erik Hersman and Ory Okolloh at Ushahidi, Josh Nesbit at Frontline SMS: Medic, and Tevis Howard at Komaza.

Expect more in this part of the application after we work through a few wrinkles in sponsorship; ultimately, Galvanize points may become support from outside sponsors to these organizations and others that we feature. We want to reward your attention and effort with a gift you give to one of the featured organizations.

Who Made It Real

And now, let me introduce the really incredible people behind this first version. Galvanize is a bootstrapped group right now, and I’ve funded it out of what I have saved the past few years.

I cannot say enough about how Jason Wolfe of Technicolor Grayscale made the ideas and wireframes real. All the code is his, and I am so impressed with his passion for making things work and bringing the rest of Technicolor Grayscale into the project. If you’ve ever wanted a developer to stand beside you and be supportive of your strange and wacky ideas while figuring out how to code them, this is that guy. (I also know that the app is lightweight, all kinds of things are cached and others stored in the cloud, and other smart technical things to tell you more about in future posts.)

Matt Benson of TS directed design, iterating wireframes and solving for a way to make sure adults and kids both know this is an application for them–not an easy task. I asked Matt to make it feel fun and snazzy without being slick and he delivered.

Stephanie Ross of TS smoothed out userflow and used her background in social good (remember Hands Across the Sand this summer? That was Steph.) to think through how points in Galvanize roll up into support for featured organizations. We hope later this area will be sponsored and those points will become incremental donations, making everyone in the game a microphilanthropist.

The wonderful illustrations are Chris Bishop’s work. Chris is one of my favorite illustrators, a former colleague at PBS HQ, and I am so delighted that characters he drew show you how to hide and find gifts in Galvanize. If you’re wondering where you’ve seen his work recently, it might be in his recent illustration in Longshot Mag (more on the illustration and the prints in his Tumblr post).

Another former PBS colleague of mine, Cameron Nordholm, is also helping out in his free time on product development as we plan for the next builds; more about Cameron’s work in future posts too.

When I first had the idea, I met with my friend Aaron Taylor-Waldman, who came up with the original logo and first set of wireframes. I like Aaron’s tidy design sensibility, and I think his initial sketches are one reason we’ve being able to simplify some of the intricacies of geocaching and focus on the fun. (And a contact of Aaron’s, Adam Varga, did a proof of concept using a shared SMS service and some Symfony in the spring too.)

What’s Next

We are already hard at work on the next few updates for Galvanize and planning some exciting events in the coming months. If you have an idea for how to use Galvanize and/or you think it would be great to host a Galvanize gift hunt in your neighborhood, let me know! Let’s make those ideas happen.

I would also love to know your thoughts and questions as we begin to test Galvanize.

Thank you again for supporting me in this new adventure…

In Los Angeles a few weeks ago (after seeing the wonderful Ben and Jeremy), I drove down to Costa Mesa to spend a few days talking online community strategy with Roadtrip Nation, a group that loves to empower personal life paths…and cupcakes. They really love cupcakes.

One of the staffers convinced this mobile sugar delivery system, through repeated tweets, to swing by the headquarters of this team that puts students on the road to interview their personal heroes. (I know Roadtrip Nation from my days at PBS HQ.)

Like the students they work with, this is a younger group, inspiring to spend time with,

as the Founders (from left to right, Mike, Nate, and Brian) continue to expand the audience and focus their happy team on creating work they are all proud of as they build the Roadtrip Nation movement.

After work, the staff hangs out together,

and they often lunch together—on Wednesday, many of them showed up at nearby store/community space Generic Youth,

where the store upcycles donated clothing into stylized hoodies and flips burgers in the middle of each week at a donation event (your donation can be clothing).

Roadtrip has a beautiful new space for all the lovely people that work here with the green RVs that students drive across the country each year parked all around (and inside!)

It’s not unusual to find a staffer on top of an RV, like Ray—who works on the Outreach team—was one afternoon, prepping for a presentation to visitors.

I spent much of my time in Costa Mesa with Mariana, who leads online community for this company of neat people and big, huge ideas about how to lead and begin meaningful conversations about the direction of your life.

Working with someone who truly cares about how to begin and nurture everyone the Roadtrip television show, online content, and curriculum touches made the days fly by.

Look for new things from Roadtrip Nation as early as this Fall, and until I am in Costa Mesa again (missing those Banzai Açaí Bowls already), all my best to the Founders, staff, and roadies—

Last Friday night, I peered at the “oven heat indicator” gauge on this Wedgewood stove, patented in 1922, thinking about old technology and love of machines.

A few feet away, in this spacious kitchen somewhere in Happy Valley, California, guacamole preparation was beginning,

and then the food prep yielded to croquet with technologists, a medical doctor, and a farmer on the manicured lawn,

and then strenuous swinging,

that continued until my friend Margaret and I found the secret entrance that led to a treehouse (rather than a rabbit hole),

with a burbling creek below and lights inside, the tiny elevated cottage was practically perfect, down to its emergency slide exit—

and as Margaret and I left a little later, we wondered if the house and its inhabitants were actually real as we drove into the perfect dusk toward Santa Cruz…

Saturday morning, I wasn’t looking for cakes to make me big or liquids to make me small (though the edible lavender will make you sleepy); the market at San Francisco’s Ferry Building spun its usual magic with all sorts of edible blossoms including wild radish,

stinging nettles (that do! They are lovely wilted on pizza),

bouquets for gazing,

and Primavera’s citrus-marinated pibil and onions under avocado slices with a hard-boiled egg slice hidden on top of the crunchy tortilla.

This market is often one I wander alone, but this time, my friend and fellow serious cook Cary meandered market stalls with me before we left to taste a bewildering array of flavors at the Scream Sorbet Emeryville headquarters—and to meet in person my current favorite machine, the Pacojet (isn’t it beautiful?)

We learned the importance of the refractometer on the sugar calculations of local fruit incorporated into these signature frozen concoctions,

and Sorbet Master (“I’ve been obsessed with frozen desserts since I was five”) Noah started the tasting with chocolate-peanut butter after we visited the freezer full of citrus.

My favorite was the Thai Basil, with separated herbs on top,

until the Pacojet stirs the green leaves into the white base, that seems to me the perfect ending to a Thai meal.

Scream Sorbet’s Macadamia Vanilla is one to try for the depth of flavor and beautiful smoothness, even with an incredible amount of vanilla bean flecks.

and digging deep into the freezers (and explaining the importance of air flow and evils of temperature fluctuation that causes crystallization),

Noah decided we could handle it,

and offered spoonfuls of Parsnip-Horseradish (yes, Parsnip-Horseradish).

Cary’s favorite was the bright beet sorbet that he described as “earthy,” (that I would characterize as true to root vegetable’s unique sweetness),

and we looked at the packaging (this was quite a tour),

before a final sample of blood orange sorbet for the road (thank you again, Noah, for such a delightful series of colors and tastes).

Meeting up with my friend Tim and then my friend Kristina, we walked toward the sun in Dolores Park,

and in that certain San Francisco way, Cary, Kristina, and I met someone headed toward us named Joel,

who was dressed in a found bunny suit for his friend’s birthday. He assumed that we wanted a picture.

And as the sun disappeared, we watched dogs play catch in the park, toasted to summer plans at dinner, and I caught a late flight back to Brooklyn, thinking about how much I have missed visits to the Bay Area this year and how happy I am to have friends to laugh, cook, and adventure with there…

I had a few minutes this afternoon with the PopTech 2009 Social Innovation Fellows to follow up on Beth Kanter‘s session yesterday on social media strategy.

This is a group of younger social entrepreneurs, many of whom are quite savvy online, who use and will use social content to serve larger organizational purposes. Note: I’m sipping raw milk as I write this; we’ll be back to food in the next post.

CC image by 2009 PopTech Teaching Fellow Eric Hersman

A Few Things About Social Content

* Have a voice. An interesting, honest, human voice when you post anything online. As Ben and Jerry say, “If it’s not fun, why do it?”

* Be valuable in conversations. Include a link in that tweet.

* Collect (media) assets. Build an asset database (pro tip: blogs count) you can query for specific content verticals.

* Hone your ninja powers for cred. Prepare to combat anything by showing up online and following conversations.

* Curate. The current verb of choice in some (underemployed) circles; give art direction for social media when leading your organization.

Social media is neither beyond you nor beneath you.