In November 2009, the Children’s Hospital Oakland Pediatric HIV/AIDS Program faced tough economic times. In an attempt to respond, the program changed the focus of their annual holiday event to giving cash or gift card donations to families in the progam (instead of toys, as they had done in past years). With just a few weeks until the event, the program had received just one gift card and four movie tickets (a far cry from the $5,000 they were hoping to raise for the 100 families in the program).

To help the Pediatric AIDS/HIV Program, the Haku Wale team worked with the Children’s Hospital Oakland Foundation to set up a program-specific site that gave information about the holiday situation and enabled supporters to donate online and share the story via Facebook and Twitter. Combined with the personal outreach efforts of program supporters, the site helped raise over $20,000 for Pediatric AIDS/HIV Program.

Support the Children’s Hospital Oakland Pediatric HIV/AIDS Program Here.

“The Haku Wale Team’s expertise and guidance enabled Glide to quickly implement a web-based holiday strategy, including a redesigned home page and Facebook and Twitter implementations, that drove a successful response from visitors to Glide’s website. We are so pleased with our partnership with Haku Wale.” – Willa Seldon, Glide CEO

Glide, a pillar of the San Francisco non-profit community, is an organization that “offers comprehensive support services to San Francisco’s poor and marginalized populations to overcome the barriers of poverty, violence, addiction, dependency and low self-worth update their online presence.”

The Glide team came to Haku Wale for help with their web and social media presence. We worked with the Glide team to roll out more dynamic homepage content that improved key metrics on their site, started Glide on a path towards building their community on Facebook and Twitter, and established a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign that raised over $23,000 during the holiday season.

Glide on Facebook | Glide on Twitter | Glide Peer to Peer Giving

“Open and transparent government, when it’s more than a political platitude, goes far beyond getting building permits online. The next phase of the Web could be the ultimate manifestation of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, but without a messy civil war. San Francisco’s DataSF.Org takes a few giant leaps, and has already turned its citizens into active city participants.”

Check out San Francisco Goes Open, Transparent at InformationWeek.com.

When the Haku Wale team heard about the situation, we thought that we might be able to help. We’ve created a website for the program to help spread the word.

There are three things that you can do on the site, and I hope you’ll do at least one, if not all of them:

1) Donate online (any amount helps).
2) Spread the word via Facebook and Twitter (click the buttons for one click sharing with pre-written text provided)
3) Send an email to your friends

The website link: http://www.hakuwale.com.php5-6.dfw1-2.websitetestlink.com/childrenshospital/

We know that during these challenging times there are many people in need, and pleas for help are numerous. The program needs only $5,000 to brighten the holiday season for these children, which seems like a modest sum in these times. We hope you’ll join us in supporting this group of local families, with the knowledge that the program team will ensure that your contribution has a direct impact on the lives of the families in the program.

To deliver this project under tight budget requirements, we leveraged open source content management software, original photography, and pre-existing written content.

Site available at: http://www.washingtonsquarebarandgrill.com/

]]> http://www.hakuwale.com/2009/09/07/washington-square-bar-and-grill/feed/ 1 http://www.hakuwale.com/2009/09/07/ecofinder-for-iphone-2/ http://www.hakuwale.com/2009/09/07/ecofinder-for-iphone-2/#comments Mon, 07 Sep 2009 17:09:35 +0000 Alan http://www.hakuwale.com.php5-6.dfw1-2.websitetestlink.com/?p=90

EcoFinder for iPhone is a joint Haku Wale/City of San Francisco project. The Haku Wale team proposed the project to SF Environment (the City’s environment department), designed the application, managed the development process, and produced the promotional media for the app. The EcoFinder for iPhone app uses data provided by SF Environment and presents it in an easy-to-use, location-aware iPhone application for anytime-anywhere access.

Check out the EcoFinder for iPhone social media case study.

Find the app and more information at: http://www.ecofinderapp.com

EcoFinder for iPhone in the news:

• San Francisco goes green (Fortune Magazine)
• Recycling In San Francisco Made Easy With The iPhone (CleanTechnica)
• Eco-Finder app lets you dump responsible (San Francisco Chronicle)
• Who Can Possibly Govern California? (New York Times – EcoFinder mentioned on page 5)
• Government 2.0: San Francisco Releases EcoFinder iPhone App (FastCompany)
• San Francisco Launches iPhone Recycling App to Help Citizens Avoid Fines (TreeHugger)
• iPhone Green App – EcoFinder and Haku Wale Help You Recycle (EcoTechDaily)
• Waste disposal for the cool kids (SF Gate: The Thin Green Line)
• Hmm, how do I recycle? (SF Examiner: Under the Dome Blog)
• Gavin Rolls Out iPhone Recycling App (CBS News Local Blogs)
• San Francisco Rolls Out EcoFinder iPhone App to Help Residents Recycle (GreenBiz.com)
• San Francisco Promotes Recycling With Green iPhone Application (GovernmentTechnology)
• San Fran Tightens Up on Recycling, Composting (Earth911.com)
• San Francisco Creates iPhone App for Recycling (PublicCEO.com)
• EcoFinder iPhone App Helps You Recycle! (TakePart.com Blog)

The San Francisco chapter of the Industrial Designers Society of America wanted to improve email communications with its members. Haku Wale designed a reusable email template that allowed IDSA San Francisco to reduce time spent creating email communications while improving the overall visual branding of its campaigns. Haku Wale also helped IDSA San Francisco improve their web and Twitter presence.

Haku Wale founder Alan Wells talks with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom about DataSF and EcoFinder for iPhone.

On Wednesday, August 19th, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced the launch of DataSF.org. DataSF, a resource for developers, provides links to and information about San Francisco city data streams. Some of these feeds were available before the launch of DataSF, but this marks the first time all San Francisco data streams have been made available in one centralized, easy to use website.

The Haku Wale team participated in the launch event because our EcoFinder for iPhone application is one of the first apps to make use of a city datastream. Although Haku Wale designed and produced the application, it would not have been possible without the use of the SF Environment EcoFinder XML feed, which is listed on the new DataSF site. Several other developers were also present at the event, including Stamen Design, creators of the excellent tool San Francisco Crimespotting.

The launch event began with comments from Chris Vein (San Francisco’s CIO), Matt Mullenweg (founder of Wordpress and Automattic), Tim O’Reilly (founder of O’Reilly Media), and Mayor Gavin Newsom. Following the comments, the four speakers led an open conversation about DataSF and what it means for city government, local developers, and San Francisco citizens.

The DataSF Conversation

Mayor Newsom asked Haku Wale founder Alan Wells about the story behind the EcoFinder for iPhone application. As Alan explained, the Haku Wale team saw an opportunity to make the EcoFinder data available on an anytime, anywhere platform that would make it more convenient for citizens to access.

Challenges with Open Data

Alan also brought up one of the issues that is bound to appear as the trends of open data and Government 2.0 continue to gain traction – the challenge of data in various formats. Since we launched the EcoFinder for iPhone application, the Haku Wale team has been contacted by citizens of many other cities, asking about bringing the EcoFinder to their city. There is no technical reason this can’t be done – except that the app was built specifically for San Francisco’s EcoFinder XML feed. To create the EcoFinder for iPhone application for another city, that city would have to match San Francisco’s XML formatting, or the app would have to be rebuilt to match the new data set. As more government agencies open their data, this issue of standards and interchangeability will need to be addressed.

Standardized data formats are critical for developers because data issues can constrain two critical parts of our business – cost of development, and total market size for our products. For example, Haku Wale would love to develop a recycling application that could be used all over the nation (if you’re looking for an app like this, check out iRecycle). However, many cities don’t have the data set required to power the EcoFinder application, and those that do format it differently than San Francisco. In this situation, we are forced to choose between the extremely high cost of translating data sources into a consistent format, or releasing an application that works only in a specific area.

The production of the EcoFinder for iPhone application was possible because all parties involved donated their time and resources to help build it. We’re extremely happy with the success of the application, and are proud to help the City of San Francisco and it’s citizens. However, if we had to make a business case for building the application, it would be difficult because of the small size of the market it serves. In a world where web applications often need tens of millions of users to reach profitability, the small market for local data poses a problem. It will be interesting to see if developers can build sustainable businesses out of these local datasets.

DataSF and EcoFinder in the Media:

• San Francisco Opens The City’s Data (TechCrunch)
• City data Web site premieres (SF Chronicle)
• DataSF: Mayor Officialy Kicks Off the Data Mining Gold Rush of Aught-Nine (SF Appeal)
• The new tech start-up – US government (BBC News)

Two weeks ago, Haku Wale launched the EcoFinder for iPhone application in partnership with the City of San Francisco. We’ve been pleased with the positive response from the San Francisco community, and thought we might share some information from the last two weeks.

EcoFinder for iPhone Stats:

Although the numbers below are small relative to some of the hit iPhone apps out there, the EcoFinder app is highly local, so smaller numbers were expected. We’re excited that our app is helping over 2,000 3,000 people to recycle and dispose of their waste properly.

• App Downloads: 2,182 3,351 [updated 7/21/09]
• Views of EcoFinder Video: 440
• Tweets about EcoFinder: 100+

The Launch Strategy

To support the launch of the app, we worked with SF Environment to organize a PR effort that included a blog post from San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, coverage on major sustainability and green tech blogs, as well as local San Francisco media outlets. In addition to a traditional press release, we used Facebook and Twitter to help get the word out. The Haku Wale team also created a video about the EcoFinder app, which was included in many of the articles.

Media Coverage:

• Recycling In San Francisco Made Easy With The iPhone (CleanTechnica)
• Eco-Finder app lets you dump responsible (San Francisco Chronicle)
• Who Can Possibly Govern California? (New York Times – EcoFinder mentioned on page 5)
• Government 2.0: San Francisco Releases EcoFinder iPhone App (FastCompany)
• San Francisco Launches iPhone Recycling App to Help Citizens Avoid Fines (TreeHugger)
• iPhone Green App – EcoFinder and Haku Wale Help You Recycle (EcoTechDaily)
• Waste disposal for the cool kids (SF Gate: The Thin Green Line)
• Hmm, how do I recycle? (SF Examiner: Under the Dome Blog)
• Gavin Rolls Out iPhone Recycling App (CBS News Local Blogs)
• San Francisco Rolls Out EcoFinder iPhone App to Help Residents Recycle (GreenBiz.com)
• San Francisco Promotes Recycling With Green iPhone Application (GovernmentTechnology)
• San Fran Tightens Up on Recycling, Composting (Earth911.com)
• San Francisco Creates iPhone App for Recycling (PublicCEO.com)
• EcoFinder iPhone App Helps You Recycle! (TakePart.com Blog)

Traffic Sources for Ecofinderapp.com:

A look at the referring traffic sources for www.ecofinderapp.com gives some insight into the power of the media channels used for this launch. Facebook was the dominant traffic source, followed closely by CleanTechnica (where Mayor Newsom’s post made its debut). The traffic data helps to explain why the Haku Wale team believes in the importance of social media – even though the EcoFinder app was covered in some fairly high profile publications (FastCompany, SF Gate, TreeHugger) – the most dominant traffic sources were from the social platforms. Facebook, Twitter, and Vimeo (the host for the EcoFinder video) combined to generate about one third of all traffic to ecofinderapp.com.

The traffic data also validates another phenomenon commonly mentioned in online media – the Long Tail. The other two thirds of traffic to ecofinderapp.com came from over 60 different sources. Except for Facebook and CleanTechnica, no one source contributed more than 7% of traffic, with most sources contributing 1-2% of traffic.

Lessons Learned:

• Traffic generated by social media tools can dwarf traffic from websites of traditional media outlets.
• Broad distribution is good – make your story easy for others to talk about with easy access to media
• Video can get you more eyeballs – the text of your press release may not make it onto other sites, but a video often will.

Interested in a social media campaign for your project? Contact the Haku Wale team.