I always have a hard time explaining what we do at The Open Planning Project. The front page of our website reads: "TOPP is a catalyst. We empower civil society through software, media, and smart urban policy." While this makes sense if you think about it for a while, when I first say it to people I'm usually met with blank stares. I don't mean to dig on TOPP -- a lot of effort went into writing that tagline, and believe me, earlier versions were more abstract and less punchy. Prior to this current version, we had a different tagline: "Virtual tools for real-world change." That's what our t-shirts still say on them, and I don't mind it. It has a skyline above it, implying a connection with cities, which I like. But still, I don't think we have a compelling enough elevator pitch -- a description that doesn't take five minutes and a walk-through of our org chart to explain. So recently, I've been trying out something new. I'm experimenting with the following explanation:
(standard disclaimer) "We're a non-profit software company; yeah, it's a bit strange, I know." "We build software that makes cities easier to use. You know, like, making it easier to get around, to interface with your government, and to connect with your neighbors."
This morning, I tried this on a friend at the gym, and I got an "Oh, cool! You mean like public transportation? My friend in Seattle was telling me about GPS on buses there -- how come we don't have that in NYC?" Bingo. So, I'm going to test this out a little more. Making cities easier to use. I like it. I just updated my twitter description with that; we'll see if anyone notices. To get a little more specific, here are some of the questions I think we're trying to answer that fall under this larger goal: How can we make it easier to...
get around? (ideally by foot, bike, or transit)
interface with government? (who reps me? who supports me? how can I help? how can I be heard?)
connect with neighbors? (who lives on my block? what do we have in common? how can we help each other?)
be involved in shaping the future? (combining the two above: connecting with neighbors and interfacing with gov)
Of course, there are plenty of other ways to make a city easier to use, that lots of creative projects (many of them NYC-based startups) are already addressing: How can we make it easier to...
connect with friends? (Foursquare)
help people & volunteer? (Ushahidi, The Extraordinaries)
connect in real-time (Twitter)
organize a team to make something happen, right now (Groundcrew)
find people who want to do things I want to do (Meetup)
and on and on...
Given all of these questions and more, it's highly likely that Making cities easier to use is still too broad; but there's no question that it's easier to explain, which is a start. And for those of you struggling with similar issues of tagline-choosing, see Seb's brand-spanking-new conjoint.py decision-making tool, which OpenGeo has been using recently during its own tagline discussion. // Photo of crumpled city map by Emanuele Pizzolorusso via MoCo loco
For an upcoming project at TOPP, we're talking about setting up an optional scope contract [PDF] -- where we specify the time, cost and quality, but leave the actual scope of work open. This approach has many advantages, which I'll just quote from Beck & Cleal's document:
Customers can change their minds
Suppliers aren’t encouraged to sacrifice quality as soon as something goes wrong
Customers’ and suppliers’ interests are contractually aligned
The knowledge that both parties gain during the project can influence the finished product.
In my experience so far, it has been much easier to set up agreements like this in the private + nonprofit sectors than in the public sector. Typically, public sector contracts must begin with detailed requirements (beginning with an RFP then a final scope of work), to ensure that the requesting agency doesn't get screwed over. The problem with this approach, of course, is that you don't always know what you need at the beginning of a project, or to rephrase, that's when you know exactly the least about what you'll be making. So my question for you, internet, is have you had experience making optional scope contracts work in the public sector? // thanks Nate for turning me on to this idea at last year's Nonprofit DevSummit
I always have a hard time explaining what we do at The Open Planning Project. The front page of our website reads: "TOPP is a catalyst. We empower civil society through software, media, and smart urban policy." While this makes sense if you think about it for a while, when I first say it to people I'm usually met with blank stares. I don't mean to dig on TOPP -- a lot of effort went into writing that tagline, and believe me, earlier versions were more abstract and less punchy. Prior to this current version, we had a different tagline: "Virtual tools for real-world change." That's what our t-shirts still say on them, and I don't mind it. It has a skyline above it, implying a connection with cities, which I like. But still, I don't think we have a compelling enough elevator pitch -- a description that doesn't take five minutes and a walk-through of our org chart to explain. So recently, I've been trying out something new. I'm experimenting with the following explanation:
(standard disclaimer) "We're a non-profit software company; yeah, it's a bit strange, I know." "We build software that makes cities easier to use. You know, like, making it easier to get around, to interface with your government, and to connect with your neighbors."
This morning, I tried this on a friend at the gym, and I got an "Oh, cool! You mean like public transportation? My friend in Seattle was telling me about GPS on buses there -- how come we don't have that in NYC?" Bingo. So, I'm going to test this out a little more. Making cities easier to use. I like it. I just updated my twitter description with that; we'll see if anyone notices. To get a little more specific, here are some of the questions I think we're trying to answer that fall under this larger goal: How can we make it easier to...
get around? (ideally by foot, bike, or transit)
interface with government? (who reps me? who supports me? how can I help? how can I be heard?)
connect with neighbors? (who lives on my block? what do we have in common? how can we help each other?)
be involved in shaping the future? (combining the two above: connecting with neighbors and interfacing with gov)
Of course, there are plenty of other ways to make a city easier to use, that lots of creative projects (many of them NYC-based startups) are already addressing: How can we make it easier to...
connect with friends? (Foursquare)
help people & volunteer? (Ushahidi, The Extraordinaries)
connect in real-time (Twitter)
organize a team to make something happen, right now (Groundcrew)
find people who want to do things I want to do (Meetup)
and on and on...
Given all of these questions and more, it's highly likely that Making cities easier to use is still too broad; but there's no question that it's easier to explain, which is a start. And for those of you struggling with similar issues of tagline-choosing, see Seb's brand-spanking-new conjoint.py decision-making tool, which OpenGeo has been using recently during its own tagline discussion. // Photo of crumpled city map by Emanuele Pizzolorusso via MoCo loco
For an upcoming project at TOPP, we're talking about setting up an optional scope contract [PDF] -- where we specify the time, cost and quality, but leave the actual scope of work open. This approach has many advantages, which I'll just quote from Beck & Cleal's document:
Customers can change their minds
Suppliers aren’t encouraged to sacrifice quality as soon as something goes wrong
Customers’ and suppliers’ interests are contractually aligned
The knowledge that both parties gain during the project can influence the finished product.
In my experience so far, it has been much easier to set up agreements like this in the private + nonprofit sectors than in the public sector. Typically, public sector contracts must begin with detailed requirements (beginning with an RFP then a final scope of work), to ensure that the requesting agency doesn't get screwed over. The problem with this approach, of course, is that you don't always know what you need at the beginning of a project, or to rephrase, that's when you know exactly the least about what you'll be making. So my question for you, internet, is have you had experience making optional scope contracts work in the public sector? // thanks Nate for turning me on to this idea at last year's Nonprofit DevSummit
One of the toughest things I've encountered, as I attend meetings, speak on panels, do interviews, and go to conferences, is that you never quite know what the tone of the room will be like until you get there. In other words, there are always a ton of different approaches you can take to a conversation, in terms of what you talk about and how you say it. And I never seem to really know what the right one is until after it's already happened. I'm thinking about it today because this afternoon I did a short interview with Rick Karr (from PBS's Blueprint for America, among other things) about open transit data and real-time bus & train information in NYC, for an upcoming episode of the Engadget Show. Of course, now that the interview's over, I'm thinking of all the witty things I could have said but didn't. But more importantly, thinking back, I wish I had thought harder about the audience and intention of the interview a bit more before going on air. (Hat tip to Nick for suggesting exactly this a few days ago, but apparently it wasn't quite enough.) We talk a lot about open data, and open transit data in particular. By and large, our audience consists of transit geeks, policy wonks, or bureaucrats (I mean all of those as terms of endearment); in each case, we dive into the policy and technical details of opening transit data. That's the mode I've been in: white papers, RFIs, formal letters, panel talks, etc. Today's interview was really for the consumer electronics crowd, and probably deserved a more gadgety/fun tone and emphasis than what I lead with. Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out, and meanwhile I'll continue on my quest to suss out the tone of the room before I get there... // image courtesy of Best Online Stuff. No relevance to this post, except that it was on the first page of google image results for "tone of the room".
One of the toughest things I've encountered, as I attend meetings, speak on panels, do interviews, and go to conferences, is that you never quite know what the tone of the room will be like until you get there. In other words, there are always a ton of different approaches you can take to a conversation, in terms of what you talk about and how you say it. And I never seem to really know what the right one is until after it's already happened. I'm thinking about it today because this afternoon I did a short interview with Rick Karr (from PBS's Blueprint for America, among other things) about open transit data and real-time bus & train information in NYC, for an upcoming episode of the Engadget Show. Of course, now that the interview's over, I'm thinking of all the witty things I could have said but didn't. But more importantly, thinking back, I wish I had thought harder about the audience and intention of the interview a bit more before going on air. (Hat tip to Nick for suggesting exactly this a few days ago, but apparently it wasn't quite enough.) We talk a lot about open data, and open transit data in particular. By and large, our audience consists of transit geeks, policy wonks, or bureaucrats (I mean all of those as terms of endearment); in each case, we dive into the policy and technical details of opening transit data. That's the mode I've been in: white papers, RFIs, formal letters, panel talks, etc. Today's interview was really for the consumer electronics crowd, and probably deserved a more gadgety/fun tone and emphasis than what I lead with. Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out, and meanwhile I'll continue on my quest to suss out the tone of the room before I get there... // image courtesy of Best Online Stuff. No relevance to this post, except that it was on the first page of google image results for "tone of the room".
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