Management: An office? What for???

More thought coming after an eventful week…

What would an office be good for in an online volunteer organisation?

Let's say:

screening applicant's project? Ah Ha! Project you say? Are we talking about projects here? Is it realistic to run full project with online volunteers only? Possibly. if one takes great defining what kind of project!

Managing resources? Hrm well.. Does someone manages Wikipedia? Yes, its users!

Bringing together volunteers and the community? Well, the community can self advertise and the volunteer know to read and can come forward!

Ensuring that projects are genuine? hard task, especially from afar, some trust is needed especially if money is not involved.

Fundraising? This is a very demanding administrative activity that few online organisation would engage in.

Overall there is very little use for an office and many organisations have started with minimal personal, often unpaid (see the article I referenced elsewhere) who remember the beginning of Avaaz?

[roger_jg]

Given the communication challenge, a simple link to mobile phones is essential. This can be achieved free of charge if we use http://www.twitter.com Now this may sound confusing, but this merges internet web pages with sms, mobile phone, instant messaging, gmail etc. By opening an account you get you're own Tweets page. Mine looks like this… http://twitter.com/VillageTalk. Here's some ideas on how you can use Twitter http://www.eu.socialtext.net/ocu2007/index.cgi?twitter_business_applications.

to see who's twittering there's this nifty Twittervison http://twittervision.com/ and ther's plenty of ways to create our own private twitter network, as the software is open source. The twitterblog is an interesting source of info on how a start up got started http://twitter.com/blog

a scenario….

Twitter and other constant-contact media create social proprioception. They give a group of people a sense of itself, making possible weird, fascinating feats of coordination.

For example, when I meet Misha for lunch after not having seen her for a month, I already know the wireframe outline of her life: She was nervous about last week's big presentation, got stuck in a rare spring snowstorm, and became addicted to salt bagels. With Dodgeball, I never actually race out to meet a friend when they report their nearby location; I just note it as something to talk about the next time we meet. http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/15-07/st_thompson#

Here's what folks have already created http://twitter.pbwiki.com/Mashups.

What this approach shows is that's it's not a fancy website that makes the difference, it's the ability of people to communicate irrespective their preference and available budget. Web site's are gradually becoming less relevant, it's how tools help shape your future that counts!. The merger between web and mobile phones opens up a totally different world
I am sure if we have a nerd looking at the interface he/she'lll be able to cook up a nice solution for Africa!

Cheers
Ben

Other remarkable sites from Wikidot