I've reconfigured my ideas a bit and am still looking for a little feedback. I'm starting a nonprofit to help non-tech people realize Web 2.0 solutions to social problems. Why? I think of the latest generation of web applications as a new kind of applied technique for addressing social problems. They're pragmatic, data-intensive, and more able to help us record and understand complex human behavior patterns. They're the angle I've been looking for ever since I became disillusioned with academia. Anyway, while I'm a guy who thinks he has a bunch good social entreprenurial ideas and a decent understanding of web design/technology, I have had a hell of a time finding people to assist me with building the hard stuff in my sites' functionality. The demand for developers is huge right now and the cost reflects this demand. I tried outsourcing production to India, but because they work mostly as digital coolies for Silicon Valley, they aren't so well versed in the latest technology. Moreover, I think that the awareness and social problems and creative ways to address them through tech is much higher here.

So, I'm wagering that 1) there are a lot of people out there with issues similar to mine that could use a support system and 2) there are developers out there who would be willing to help if they knew it was non-profit and for a good cause. So, The Evasion Foundation will work to bring these parties together to make dreams reality. I'm trying to configure the sites to support this activity in the best possible ways Drupal currently provides. So, this brings us back to SocialCurrents, the eMagazine idea. I want to reconfigure it to support the conversations spawned by this activity and draw attention to the work. So instead of a magazine for the social sciences (which was about as broad an idea as my first dissertation proposal), it will attempt to blend a tech/startup/social science discussion. This is as far as I've gotten with the mission statement, “It exists to encourage public discussion of issues related to IT and social entrepreneurship.” So, now is about the time I start looking to generate some buzz and traffic about these projects. If anyone could offer any advice or point me towards individuals or groups that might be interested, it would be supremely helpful.

I am wondering about the most effective ways to market SocialCurrents and get it populated with content as quickly as possible. I want to compose invitation letters to be sent to social science graduate students and professors, but that only covers a small audience and there is no guarantee that they will be responsive to such an approach. I think the best way to get the word out is to use a good letter delivered by enthusiastic people embedded in local institutions. The hard part is finding such people in the first place. I will need to use my networking techniques to the fullest in order to get this done. Sure, I can drive around and visit a few colleges a week in my travels, but that will be much more effective for getting detailed feedback than actually generating mass interest.

Spamming these folks wouldn't be very helpful anyway because there are normally systems restricting mass emails to faculty and student departmental mailing lists. UF's departmental protocol is especially bad about this. I had a message congratulating an old colleague of mine on the birth of his son bounced (stealthed actually) because I didn't using my UF Sociology mailing account (which I never used). However, since I will initially be relying heavily on graduate students to submit some materials that they have laying around, this is a real stumbling block. It's time to start scouring those ugly web pages that are now mostly mandated by the hidden “professionalization” curriculum in grad school. They may not be easy to enroll in this project, but I think I'll at least find a bunch of interesting people I never knew existed along the way.

No matter what, I need to find these initial materials, because composing them myself would obviously run a great risk of sullying the nascent credibility of the site. While I am loathe to even take on any editorial positions in addition to being the site admin, I understand that I may be forced to do so during the very early stages of the project. I will have to decide what should go on the front page to really attract positive views and sell the idea as a whole. Let me take a shot at that spam letter... my plea for content and attention has to be good, so let me know if you think it will do the trick. Don't worry, I'll probably have to rewrite it a few times along the way.

Hello,

First off, sorry for the spam. Perhaps such an apology alone is unique enough in your experience to bely our good intentions, but if not, please continue reading anyway.

Have you ever thought that there isn't enough coverage of social science research in the mainstream media? Have you ever given an interview or written a story for a local newspaper only to have it chopped to bits and/or dumbed down beyond recognition? If so, (and even if not) there is a interesting new online magazine called SocialCurrents launching that attempts to do better. Its format is a mix between tried and true mediums like Slashdot and Slate, but if you've never heard of either of those, don't worry. The idea is as follows. There is a gap between what get published in academic journals and what is able to be parlayed into the mainstream media. The former is poorly written and thoroughly laced with jargon, making it mostly unintelligible to most people outside of university circles. The latter normally consists of trend spotting sensationalism that uses half truths and logically crippled analysis of research findings to make its claims. We need a “third place” that encourages the production of compelling materials that rise above these flaws. SocialCurrents aims to fill this gap with user-generated content coming in a number of multimedia flavors. There are no paid writers or editors, but there is a rigorous vetting process in place. We hope you'll take a look at what we have to offer in form and content (slim pickings as we are new), and if you like it, perhaps you'll even think about submitting some of your own materials that that you think would work well within this schema. We're equipped to accept all kinds of material, including essays, interviews, reviews, slide shows, cartoons, and much more. We hope the immense diversity allowed in this schema encourages you to start producing more media in different formats than ever before.

I had a lot of trouble getting this idea off the ground, both in the idea and design phases.

For some reason, I really like kiddie colors on my websites. I just think that color is one of the great ways to make content categorization more intuitive and fun. Looking back on my oldest site, you can easily see the tendency towards obsession with the primary colors. This site itself has very similar attributes, but is a bit more nuanced in its shading and navigation. I originally wanted SocialCurrents to have its content demarcated by colors as well. The front page was the biggest stumbling block because I wanted the three columns (navigation/articles/ads) for different content areas to line up neatly in rows. Not only is this likely hideous from a design perspective, but it is also very difficult to achieve in a standards compliant fluid layout. This means ensuring that perhaps 99% of all potential viewers could view the site in the way it is meant to be seen no matter which browser they are using on what screen resolution. My chosen design wouldn't have accomplished this for half or all potential viewers, even after we put in a bunch of ugly hacks in the html/css code to get it to that level. I can imagine how painful this was for the designers, but it was equally so for me, because I had to start rethinking the design again from scratch. The process of restarting has always been difficult for me.

The former has been mostly settled over the past month or so. I can't remember where this idea originally came from, but I remember wanting a version of Slate Magazine that only published articles related to social science ideas. Initially, this project was aimed at promoting a “community” space for social scientists to gather around topics that they perhaps could find common ground in exploring. The more I thought about it though, the more I came to two conclusions: One, these people can't be allowed another space on which to inflict their disciplinary and topical parochialism. Two, the matters they should be discussing are far too important for them to think that only their colleagues will be listening. If I want to build a place where issues that matter will be hashed out in a manner that is accessible to the general public, then I must emphasize their needs over the experts. Reaching these conclusions made me chop off a lot of tangential areas of the proposed site that would have focused on the academic life: jobs, university culture, teaching, service projects, etc. The public doesn't want to hear about all that. They want short, pithy arguments from smart people that might make them think differently about the social patterns in the world. It must differentiate itself from standard journalistic fare, trite PR messages spun on the behalf of vested interests, or the blurby abstracts of academic books or journals articles. While I have figured out a lot of the functionality of SocialCurrents, I have yet to satisfactorily solve the problem of how to ensure that it is material written in this kind of original format that we end up publishing.