Greenest City Conversations :: 2010-2011 Mobile Channel Plan

GCCP MOBILE CHANNEL PLAN

OVERVIEW

The GCCP Mobile Channel will be fulfilled in partnership with the Mobile Muse Network, which is undertaking a 4th phase of innovation (MUSE4) related to youth-driven sustainability and accountable engagement.

MUSE4 RESEARCH BASIS

MUSE4 is inspired by the concept of a mobile experience marketplace, which can be imagined as participative mobile experiences published like web or smartphone apps, but tuned to you and your location, and staged over time and space.  Networks will make such experiences "accountable" (micro-transactions automating cash flow and/or tracking accomplishment), creating exciting new consumer-facing markets in education/training, tourism, health, environment, community services, etc.

The innovation vectors for MUSE4 are "participative sensing" and "accountable engagement", both of which are significant to urban sustainability, and hence the compelling rationale for a GCCP partnership.

MUSE4 apps will be integrated in an open platform, calibrated against real data, and transacted by e-commerce.  It will create a ‘marketplace’ where youth complete tasks to earn points, school credit, goods, services, and even income.  In web terms, MUSE4 will ‘community-source’ accountable experiences that ‘crowd-source’ sustainability, making youth effective ‘humans in the loop’ of their city’s future.

THE GCCP MOBILE CHANNEL

The simplest way to understand MUSE4 in a GCCP context is that we will engage people with sustainable things that they can "do" in their communities using their mobile phones.  We will also make it easy for community organizations to publish meaningful things that people can "do" as mobile apps.  

Our hypothesis is that choosing to participate - to do something - is a highest-value form of expressing an opinion.  In our case it is literally "voting with your feet"; actions speaking louder than words.  We additionally hypothesize that the intimate personal and social contexts of mobile phones will enhance the "ownership" of ideas related to participation in sustainability experiences.  

The GCCP Mobile Channel will pursue these hypotheses in relation to the engagement metrics and affordances of the other GCCP channels.  As the MUSE4 platform is defined and built, we expect to be launching increasingly meaningful and participative (more deeply engaged) applications in order to understand the design parameters of mobile experience.

CITY OF VANCOUVER INTEGRATION

GCCP/MUSE4 is already active with the City in terms of applying existing MUSE3 platform technologies to initial public engagements.  There are two complementary thrusts to this collaboration:

1. Polling:  The implementation of a unique telephone number to serve as a mobile engagement point, specifically to be published on communications collateral WRT to the Talk Green To Us campaign for the purpose of driving people to the campaign website to participate in the ideas percolating there.  People calling the number will be able to vote and/or hear the Mayor speaking about the impact of one or more ideas, along with a call-to-action to go to the website.
2. Conversation Registration: People using the phone number will be able to "opt in" to a program of messages and participation opportunities to be communicated to them via the phone number they were calling from.  The intent here is to start building an audience for a deeper, continuing conversation on sustainability.

MUSE4 is additionally building a partnership with the Vancouver School Board, a direct partner of the City in the Greenest City 2020 initiative.

GENERAL GCCP INTEGRATION

While the MUSE4 target market is "youth", the GCCP Mobile Channel has the potential and intent to provide service and support to other demographics and channels.  For example, the unique telephone number described above can become a polling and communications hub for events, workshops and other public engagements within GCCP going forward.

FALL 2010 PLAN

During the fall of 2010 the Mobile Channel will work as closely as possible with the City and other GCCP channels to provide a common engagement point and set of services based on the MUSE3 platform.  This will include acquisition of research and planning data regarding participation rates and polling responses.  The objective will be deliver reliable service provision while anticipating the mobile requirements for the GCCP as it becomes better defined.  WRT to MUSE4, the fall period will be critical for face-to-face consultations with community groups and sustainability stakeholders regarding their anticipated platform requirements for a broader program of experience-based applications.  It is expected that these consultations will provide significant crossover value for the definition and realization of GCCP generally.

RESOURCE REQUIREMENTS

In advance of MUSE4 funding confirmation in early fall, the requirements for the activating the Mobile Channel will be satisfied by the nominal GCCP channel allocation of a single graduate student stipend.