On Day One: Can Ideas Alone Change America's Image?
BY Joshua Levy | Wednesday, January 23 2008
What do you think should happen on the day the new American president is sworn in? On Day One, a new site that launched today, is inviting folks from around the world to post their ideas.
The ideas are like status updates on Facebook -- a box on the left side of the site asks you to "set the agenda" by submitting your "ideas for a better world."
You can also upload videos and images of your suggestions.
The most popular ideas are listed on the front page, and visitors to the site can then read and rate the ideas, which end up in a kind of feed that can be searched by issue, rating, date, format, or at random.
The site was created by the Better World Campaign, a sister organization of the United Nations Foundation that's focused on direct communication and lobbying on Capitol Hill. Michael Bassik, Vice President of Interactive Marketing at MSHC Partners, which developed the site, said the Better World Campaign wants to inject some foreign policy into the presidential race. "We're not envisioning only Americans participating," he said. "We expect a little bit of foreign participation; they sometimes have a better sense of our problems than us." (Bassik is also a contributor to techPresident.)
When users post their own idea, they'll have the chance to place it in one of nine categories like Iraq, Poverty, Peacekeeping, or Climate and Energy. Starting around the time of the Republican and Democratic conventions, the producers will whittle down the entries to the most popular in each category. They will then be presented to the newly-elected president when he or she is sworn in.
Like many similar sites, On Day One will need a critical mass of participation to make it work. Time will only tell if they get it, though they do have the UN Foundation and high-profile contacts on their side.
For example, the first suggestion ("End the cowboy diplomacy") shown on the site is from Joe Wilson -- yes, that Joe Wilson -- which obviously didn't come from him stumbling on the site. Nobel Prize-winner Mohammed Yunis also has an idea ("A date for ending poverty and being nuclear weapons free ") and I'm guessing he didn't find the site through StumbleUpon. But now comes the hard part: getting people to come and play along.
Once we sound off, or post our ideas for how to make the world better, what then? Bassik says the site will gradually be adding more features and ways to organize. "The first goal is getting people to participate on the site," he says. "Once we have that we'll start whiddling down, doing events, petitions, and calls to the candidates."
It's nice to see a site involving the international community on some level -- though not so much that it feels like they're butting in. After all, America is still the world's superpower, and like his or her predecessors whoever we elect as the next president will have a profound influence on world events. So if you have an idea for what the new president should do when they get in office, get going and add it to the site.