Social Ch@nge

I just discovered the coolest widget on the New York Times website, and it’s making me think about new ways to represent community opinion.

The New York Times asked 200 people in an unofficial poll what their hopes were for the Obama administration. But it’s how they represented that information that’s really fun: they combined cloud tags, ‘liking’, podcasting and their original poll into ‘I hope so too.’ To use it, click on any of the speech bubbles (tags) hanging over the group – you’ll hear the voices of the people who responded to the poll. If you agree with them, you can click ‘I hope so too’. You can also regroup the speech bubble tags by using the tabs to get an idea of which are the most popular.

This is a really appealing and pretty way to combine several types of media into a tool that makes you want to linger. It made me wonder what would happen if a platform was kicking around to make this kind of feedback or participation ubiquitous. What if your organization could poll its community about the issues it works on or the mission it’s working on, and receive multilayered feedback? Hope something like this is out there? I hope so too.

Meanwhile, I’m interacting with Obama in a slightly different way this week: I’m headed to the New Media Conference in Warsaw this week, hosted by the US Embassy in Poland. Joe Rospar (the director of New Media for Obama’s campaign) is going to be speaking there, and I want to hear from you before this Friday about any questions you have for him – I’ll try to ask him for you!

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