[Hank]

So, just some quick updates. Completed development of Phase 0.2 and launched in July.

First, weaved in a few more iterations along the way. Among them:

• Decided to deploy a surveybot to conduct the data gathering. Two advantages:
  1. Bots can’t judge, nor argue back. It may be this will reduce the likelihood people will be confrontational or defensive in their communications.
  2. Bots scale. I needed a way to reach out and gather lots of data without me being a bottleneck, because I don’t scale.
  3. Bots can execute logic. For instance, if I want to vary later subsequent questions based upon initial answers, a bot can execute that logic. A straight-up poll cannot.
• As there are a bunch of new/moving parts to this system now, decided to first test it out on a small, less controversial, more manageable issue and region first, then expand to more challenging steps.
• As I was building this document that memorializes the viewpoints the obvious realization emerged that, if it helps me map out and better understand others’ views, it likely would help others to do the same. So I modified the nature of the Viewpoint Map to be a tool usable by anyone to better understand the opposing issues surrounding a topic.

For the first, manageable topic, chose the issue in my local neighborhood of whether, after the closures implemented due to COVID, the city’s iconic Ocean Dr. should be reopened to vehicle traffic. This is actually a pretty contentious issue here and I knew people had a lot of passionate opinions on it.

I researched people’s discussions on Facebook community groups and built an outline of competing views on the topic. This became what I now call a “Viewpoint Map.” I then reached out to individuals posting in these groups for quotes to seed the Viewpoint Map (note for future: this was excessively labor-intensive/does not scale. Need a scalable approach here for next iteration). Once sufficiently seeded, I launched a surveybot to poll (a) people’s degree of support for each of the views in the Viewpoint Map and (b) gather more quotes for the Map. I then rolled it out sequentially on many different Miami-focused online discussion forums. Began gathering responses and populating them into the Viewpoint Map.

Immediately engagement was much better than it was in Phase 0.1. PROGRESS, baby! This approach has legs.

You can see the Viewpoint Map here.

• This topic was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by Hank.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by Hank.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by Hank.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by Hank.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by Hank.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by Hank.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by Hank.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by Hank.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by Hank.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by Hank.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by Hank.

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