Alan, Dana, Colin, Gregor, James, Julianna, Liam, Michelle

Budgets

• Have got numbers
• Jutta is going to talk to Oak about them and we'll move forward as soon as we can
• The contract with Colombia will be signed in September, but they can backdate the period it was signed for (this is happening for TIG)
• Is there anything anyone else can do to support that aspect?
  • Mainly in IDRC's hands
    
    

Design crit

• Looked at the wireframes
• Had a very good discussion about story prompts
  • How do we prompt
  • How much structure do we provide
  • Who are the targets of the tool
• 1: youth with learning differences
• 2: youth organizations, advocacy groups, people who want to make sure change is effected. Tool will be used for evidence-based advocacy to influence service providers and policy makers and influence debate about these subjects
• 3: leaders, politicians, community leaders, school board members, etc. People who can influence a change in the lives of these young people.

Relating stories to other stories

i.e. impact and follow-up stories —> after this story happened, then this happened - or after I read this story, then I did this —> how to connect them?

Use something more sophisticated than just tagging to connect them?

Liam:

• • could machines help to draw some of those connections?
  • or perhaps an internal CMS based linkage?
  • what kinds of connections or associations do we think we wanna make?
  • are we thinking about meta data - or the content within the story itself?
  • like stories from authors from a particular country, or of a particular age or with a particular disability might provide interesting linkages
  • similarly stories about similiar themes (on the content side) - may also draw some interesting (but different) connections
  • even just relational data - wherby someone was inspired (to write their own story)
  • inspired by VS in contrast to is also kinda interesting
  • well one would be to have a prompt after reading a story (inspired to contribute your own experience?)
  • another way would be once you have added a story, the machines could draw linkages w the content and say : we found similiar themes across these other stories, would you like to connect them?
  • this story inspired me/upset me/fired me up
  • current events related to stories —> how influenced? how related to another story written last week, last month etc

• it brings in more people to share because they see that it has impact
• you might have a list of relationships - this story was inspired by this story
• it can grow out of control but does allow a simple relationship structure that gives you a lot of freedom in terms of what you implement - enter your own relationship 
• stories stand in a web of relationships - how to show this in UI - (see privacy mapping web DA)
• Because we have different users of this platform, the tagging system might be used by some users and not others.
• The stories don't just stand by themselves, they stand in relationship with other stories and other contexts
  • well one would be to have a prompt after reading a story (inspired to contribute your own experience?)
  • another way would be once you have added a story, the machines could draw linkages w the content and say : we found similar themes across these other stories, would you like to connect them?
  • "This story made me feel..."
• How do we capture this in a design?
• What would the data modeling of this look like?
• Perhaps organized around the date
  • Related to the zeitgeist
  • Some sort of news event, stories related to that
  • We can store the date
• what things could we prompt a user to include? date automatically ok, but otherwise need to ask user’s consent - things we think we could tag/apply to the story - location (how specific?), device? 
• What can we detect from browser settings (with consent)?
  
  • Could add an additional dimension of interesting metadata

• even just "word clouding" the content could show some interesting patterns

• capturing metadata - don’t want to capture too much if we don’t know what we’ll do with it

"Our Story" vs. "My Story", the Collective Story

• Juli - what about a common story - “Our Story” - does it have to be individual?
  • we definitely want to be able to include and encourage common stories / groups
• there is a kind of cultural chauvinism - we are designing in English - “my” story, I am the author/owner/emphasis on individual - even if we don’t require author id
• what about “our voices”, “my voice” … ? "view", "opinion"
• or a phrase like "storytelling" or "narrative" in another language
• “voice” in Swahili
• account, chronicle, history, description, record, report,
• also do we want to emphasize the ability to add your story or to engage with stories or both?
• This is Story - Thistory - We-story
• Tale is also an interesting phrase and the connection w Tails (which communicate how species are feeling about something)
• do we want the 'brand' to indicate the SJRK element? we are looking at international audiences right?
• Justice Just Storyjust, Social Justory 
• story-cache - has this kinda catching element too
• "story" usually means narrative which has more structure than we may want
• an acronym may also be useful in this process
• Collective authoring:
  • Google Docs - collaboration angle
  • What if we could have 10~20 people working on the same story at the same time (colocated or distributed geographically)
  • Too broad a scope?
  • That way they could create the "story of us"
  • Alan and Gregor explored Rich Text Editors, some of which support collaborative editing
  • Challenging to implement, but interesting to try!
• ways of shifting from individual pronouns and collective pronouns
• collective authorship and community authorship
• working with communities - the voice of “we” - things that we built together
• how could we provide an authoring tool that could be collective? a way for multiple, co-located people working on a story at the same time
• Liam - part of me also thinks an "empty signifier' which recalls and connects to elements of voice, storytelling etc might be useful here
• then it doesnt mean anything in particular but illicits feelings collective, collaborative, narrative etc
• otherwise the brand may be prescriptive and set a box that directs people towards one way of engaging
• something vague (more vague than “justice” or “peace”) “experience” “voice” maybe privileges those who can speak?
• something more abstract or taken from other languages, e.g. like “covo” for collective voice
• rich text editors that allow for collaborative editing between different systems.
• a first-order, multi-collaborative tool
• similar to google docs
• - create a word map that we can develop over time - spend some time in this branding space

• Think about whether there are things, other dimensions that are outside of the storytelling too
  • What if we had to 180 out of this direction, what other directions could we go in?
    
    

DEEP and SJRK Face to Face Meetings

• what should we do to prepare for DEEP and the SJRK meeting??
• solicit partners’ thoughts on what we want to discuss/do? design , co-design
• talk about inclusive design ? an overview? how does it fit into what we’re doing…

• • Have half a day, maybe 2hr seminar on inclusive design, the framework in which we are working, try to understand the aspects of inclusive design and give people a background
    • How does inclusive design fit into this project
    • It's implicit for those who work in the IDRC but others would benefit from this
    • Jess often delivers talks about inclusive design, maybe she could do it for this
    • Alan will talk to Jutta and Jess about this

• next partner meeting we could discuss what the Toronto meeting day can look like - co-design the session! Dana will send out an email beforehand.
• we need to make sure that we have remote access so others can join us for parts of it if they want.