Paying it Forward 2.0 comes to life

The idea is to create a social media solution that tells stories of paying it forward. You've seen the movie. One person helps three people, these three people help three other people each, who help three other people each. Turning it into Paying it Forward 2.0 allows for people to be inspired by another person's story to begin paying it forward.

We started by paying it forward to our three Hyper Island friends. Help us with your ideas and input and we'll be inspired to help someone else.

An information site needs to include:
- I helped and I was helped stories
- possibility to share favorite stories
- simple posting
- simple instructions and idea
- maximum length
- celebrities posting good deeds that were done to them

Financing? Revenue possibilities?
- publish book with sample stories
- make documentary
- good will donations from celebrities/ companies
- advertising
- lectures about paying it forward
- sign up to receive a text message or email per day with a good deed
- companies pay for application to have good deed pop up on their website

User generated or user enhanced?
- user generated

High level of interactivity secured by doing:
- create tags to gather readers around one theme
- organize non-conferences - virtual meetings
- create widget for blogs so people can link to their website or blogs
- daily text message or email to inspire reader to write more
- expose good deeds in public spaces
- create Facebook application or similar application where good deed pops up on desktop
- animated billboard where good deeds pop up on subway, bus, etc.
- readers' poll that leads to hall of fame - top 20 stories
- choose your favorite story, write why it's your favorite, create a link to your own website

Censorship avoided by:
- we don't censor stories, create function where users can protest and start a discussion
- focus on cheesy, positive feelings so that governments are unlikely to censor


Target audience:
Pay It Forward 2.0 proposes a global solution within the immediate local context. The major target audience is everyone in this world living in the 21st century and uses different interactive interfaces.
The smaller target group is people between (9 - 60) who mainly use the internet and come from different areas of this world. These will include the MENA region, Europe and the rest of the world.
Target audience psychography
Young (of different sociopolitical backgrounds/ low, middle or upper), adult, married or single male/female. Human conscious. He / she are up to date on what's going on in the world through exposure to satellite and internet that keep them in touch with any development in any sector of life, they live and interact within their immediate context. He/she are individuality seekers, are passionate about different issues in life and don’t forget to have fun.
Decision makers:
Our decision makers in this case are the users- the singular drive i.e. the ‘I’.

Tone and Style:
Young, dynamic, versatile and accessible.


SWOT analysis
Strength the need to being part of something effective and positive in a world that lacks enthusiasm about a better future
Weaknesses lack of hope and trust in the system
Threat people loosing interest and then it doesn't become sustainable
Opportunities making the best out of the current multi cultural network among the group to promote for the website and for the initiative.

How would you promote intercultural dialogue and exchange?
By urging people to take charge and instigate positive changes in a small manner in their own societies we spread positivism and we promote the idea of unity in the world. We show that people, no matter where they live, strive for positivity and that a positive action in Syria can inspire a positive action in Sweden.

What are your strategies to include perspectives such as gender, disability, environment, etc?
By allowing people to tag what sort of good deeds they are doing we can have different categories of good deeds, and in this way include perspectives such as gender, sexuality, ethnicity, etc.

How will your solution engage young leaders and opinion maker?
By showing how one good action can inspire other good actions we engage leaders and option makers.

An Incomplete Manifesto for Mind Space Change

In 2008, we reaffirm and refuse to complete the Incomplete Manifesto first written by Bruce Mau. Mind space has made some linguistic adaptations to better fit our group. Mind space also took the liberty of removing some points that were overly abstract. Collectively, these points are how we approach this project.

1. Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

2. Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. As long as you stick to good you'll never have real growth.

3. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

5. Go deep. The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.

6. Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

7. Study. A team project is a chance to study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

8. Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

9. Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

10. Everyone is a leader. Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.

11. Slow down. Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.

12. Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

13. Ask stupid questions. Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

14. Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

15. ____________________. Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.

16. Stay up late. Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you're separated from the rest of the world.

17. Work the metaphor. Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.

18. Be careful to take risks. Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.

19. Repeat yourself. If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.

20. Make your own tools. Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.

21. Stand on someone’s shoulders. You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.

22. Don’t clean your desk. You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.

23. Don’t compete. Just don’t. It’s not good for you.

24. Read only left-hand pages. Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our "noodle." So trust your own interpretations.

25. Make new words. Expand the lexicon, yani. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.

26. Think with your mind. Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.

27. Organization = Liberty. Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between "creatives" and "suits" is what Leonard Cohen calls a 'charming artifact of the past.' Use the limitations at hand to come up with creative solutions.

28. Don’t borrow money. Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.

29. Listen carefully. Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.

30. Take field trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.

31. Make mistakes faster.

32. Imitate. Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You'll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.

33. Scat. When you forget the words, yell out “such shite through a big pipe” out loud with an Irish accent, then do what Ella did: make up something else ... but not words.

34. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.

35. Explore the other edge. Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.

36. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms. Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces -- what Dr. Seuss calls "the waiting place." Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference -- the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.

37. Avoid fields. Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.

38. Laugh. We laugh a lot, and out loud when everyone else is silent. Use laughter as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.

39. Remember. Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for change itself.

40. Power to the people. Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can't be free agents if we’re not free.

Khallas.

Mind space group ROCKS :)