Use AJAX to Raise Global Warming IQ

I live in a town megalopolis (i.e. Washington D.C.) where a lot of people make a lot of money working for non-profit organizations. Sounds pretty disingenous, but I won't even venture into that deabate. Anyway, this crowd tends to be a group quite antiquated in their use of the internet. However Dean has shook a lot of preconceived notions about the internet, such that in 2004 over $3 billion was raised by non-profit firms online.

So where there's a lot of money to be made, there certainly should be a lot of software companies selling their "arms". The three largest vendors in this space are GetActive, Convio and Kintera. These firms primary focus is in campaign management. Think of them as CRM applications, that is, these apps tend to manage the touch points between the organization and their supporters.

However, what if you wanted to move beyond "managing touch points" and into enriching the "touch points" themselves? That is if you engage your supporters in richer forms of interaction such that you turn them into your salespeople.

I'm drawn by a friend Kira Marchenese (Director of Internet Strategy for Urban Environmental Defense, my wife's cousin and my son's favorite aunt) to a website that her team created on "fighting global warming". It's got an interesting javascript based "carbon calculator" that allows visitor to assess how their every day activities contribute to global warming. It's interesting that the question do tend to change based on the question one previously answers. It's a step in the right direction.

However what if you wanted to do more? What if you added AJAX like features in the test and created an experience that allowed you to more easily experiment with "what-if" scenarios. I was completely surprised when I realized that my own air-travel consisted of nearly half of my contribution of CO2. Was there a viable scenario for me to reduce that aspect?

Xcelsius has an interactive dashboard product that gives an idea of the value of a richer kind of interaction. The whole point however is to give the users the opportunity to immerse himself in the process working out various what-if scenarios. It's one thing to inform someone that he's a gass guzzler, but it's yet another thing to show him alternative scenarios on how to become a tree hugger.

I stumbled upon Tickle via Guy Kawasaki's "Entrepreneurial IQ Test". What I found interesting was that you could post out your results on your own website. Something like a badge of honor, or a certificate of completion. Unfortunately, my score was pretty bad that I dare not display it on my site. Anyway, what if you could take the "carbon calculator" or "What do you know about Global Warming?" and allow people to proudly display their results?

Not only have you engaged your supporter in a much richer experience, but you've made your supporter also a promoter. If one thinks about it, non-profits are about supporting a view of the world. Blogs are about people's identities. And people's identities are about expressing their view of the world.

In summary, it's about creating richer forms of interaction and creating mechanisms for users to participate (i.e. "Architecture of Participation"). This also reminds me of "A Recipe for Recombinant Growth". So, expect to see, in the near future, AJAX employed to clean up the environment (pun intended).