Significance Labs: Hack on Real Social Problems
significancelabs.org
significancelabs.org
Heres likely why:
You don't understand the problem
You don't empathize with the problem
You don't understand potential users from a radically different class or culture
You assume solution toolsets that users don't have access to, aren't familiar with or just are unrealistic
Sometimes I wish this money would go to funding engineers to join EXISTING organizations that have identified or are on their way to solving real problems, but simply aren't 'cool' enough to warrant google.org money.
I would love if someone could better link journalists and hackers together. There are hackathons and data projects but I feel these are too cursory to tackle real big problems.
edit: upon more searching it looks like http://www.datakind.org/ is doing that just with NGOs instead of journalists
Our fundamental premise is that we don't understand the problems. That's why we are focusing on providing our fellows and hackers with extensive immersion into the very communities we are trying to help, as well as organizing as many focus groups and user feedback testing sessions as we can so that we know that what we are building not only helps, but that it's something people will use. It's going to be a challenge, that's for sure, but if it works, I think that this could be a very powerful agent for change.
Lets take a personal example: For the last 4 years my brother has worked on reducing recidivism rates in LA's skid row and has created a program which has gotten it to near zero in a small sample sets -- while I work in Silicon Valley trying to make computers reduce unstructured knowledge into products to sell as ads.
Most days I think I'd rather be him, and he rather be me -- but we can't find ways to merge technology and street-problems in a meaningful manner with the restrictions we have in life (his family, my student loans etc).
I say all this to illustrate -- to get to solving problems on the streets, we may need to solve a problem with even getting the right people together. The right people are often working because they need the money and real do-gooders are often trapped in a poverty cycle that ends up draining their contributions to the community.
Essentially good work feels unsustainable to the average educated producer like ourselves -- and we give up. How do you think you can help?
As for the questions about the life restrictions, that's part of this program: these are going to be funded projects, and then at the end of the program, we're going to hopefully be handing them off to foundations, organizations, governmental organizations, or possibly even VCs for further support. Ideally, all of the products that come out of the labs will have a life of their own long after the summer is over and we're going to do everything in our power to ensure it. We want to figure out a process to bootstrap social enterprises from the ground up, and part of that is making it economically feasible for excellent people to take the jump.
All that said, we are totally open to remote Hackers In Residence. Our primary goal is building products that help. Our fellows are either in NYC or relocating, but for our engineering teams, remote work is fine.
I think there is value in understanding the problem and being immersed in it, but I've been to a few hackathons where the organizers try to play it up and create an "ideation" phase, which often just ends up frustrating many programmers who would prefer to focus on the technical problem.
we like to believe that for any problem there possible an app to solve it. How about an app which would make government to not reduce SNAP benefits - one of the most important tools for cognitive development of a lot of low-income children. Counting words heard by a hungry child - yep that will help ...
On the other side, though, the thousand cuts are real and maybe we can figure out some way to help solve a few of them. A great example of a simple tech solution that has hugely beneficial outcomes is text4baby https://www.text4baby.org/
When you go for your first pre-natal care visit, you signup with your baby's due date and it sends simple reminders at the right time about what you should be doing to ensure your baby is as healthy as it can be. Things like reminders for checkups, folic acid, diet, etc. Super simple app, huge results.
I think that there are other problems out there that technology can help address. Certainly not ALL the problems, and probably not the systemic socio-political problems, but some. Why not try?
See here: http://significancelabs.org/hackers/
We figure that we can only really teach one thing: immersion and empathy with the communities we are trying to help. We can't really teach people how to develop products that people will really use, so we are trying to optimize for fellows who already have that skill.
We haven't selected the fellows yet, however, our fellows applicants include successful tech entrepreneurs, senior product owners at large tech companies (usually with engineering backgrounds), etc.