Revolution

Voor groepen om opportunistische, spontane protesten uit te kunnen voeren.

This app provides any advocacy group with a communication network that permits members to carry out opportunistic, spontaneous protests under the guidance of the group leaders.

The advocacy group can host and control the network for themselves if they wish and rename and reconfigure the app as it suits them.

Advocacy groups have a number of major drawbacks which this app addresses:

1. Have you ever tried to contact any of the administrators of one? With many groups it is near impossible.

2. Communication is generally one-way, command and control, from them to us.

3. Most make very poor use of their members' time, abilities, innovations and ideas and do not take any advantage of the fact that, through their members, they have a very large number of eyes and ears on the ground.

4. Many are little empires that rarely cooperate with each other.

5. They are always telling us they are winning battles but are very obviously losing the war. Badly. Very soon it will be all over and not in a good way.

6. They generally have abysmal IT skills and do not have experienced qualified IT people at the upper administration and decision making levels. But then again there are many big talking cowboys in IT so you can't really blame them.

I am, or have been, a financial and/or active member of many of these and similar groups over the past forty years. I have contacted a number of these groups about increasing their effectiveness through the use of IT and have gone to many of their meetings to talk to them about it. However, the leading people within these groups are probably the least computer literate I have ever met! Most of them use fairly basic web-based membership, events and emailing systems but that's about it. It is absolutely horrifying!

I've therefore written this app so that:

a) Each of their members can communicate with the twenty closest members to them to pass on information about what is happening close by. They can also arrange to meet with each other and discuss topics of interest. These messages can be forwarded on by each recipient to the next closest twenty people so very important messages could end up going to all members.

b) Messages can be text, photos, images from the phone, video streams and locations.

c) Their members, if they see an opportunity to express their views to one of our leading soulless leaders (SLs)who happen to be nearby, eg about inhuman aged care facilities or about the homeless, refugees, climate change, etc, etc, they can quickly organise other members close by to join them to discuss this problem with those SLs. Other members can forward the request in order to get as many members involved as possible, as quickly as possible.

d) The app also allows people to create their own subgroup and then communicate privately with the invited members of that group. This will allow any budding Dr Ernesto "Che" Guevara to create their own group and instigate change using information technology rather than ballistic technology - today's pen rather than today's sword.

e) All those installing and using the app can remain anonymous and not disclose their location. They can also elect to show their exact address when sending a message (particularly during an emergency or a sighting of an SL ).

f) Although people can remain anonymous, if anybody is annoying they can be blocked. If anybody is an obvious antagonist they can be reported and their phones immediately and permanently removed from the system.

g) All conversations and their locations can be monitored by the advocacy group and advice and direction given where needed.

In this way the advocacy group can change from command and control to advise and monitor. If you have read the book "New Power", by Jeremy Heimans, and Henry Tims, you will see that this app will take your advocacy organisation from an old power structure to a new power one.

Or, dammit, just use the app to create your own fluid, responsive, empowered and mobilised advocacy group.