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[poderopedia]

PBS Idea Lab: Poderopedia Launches Public Beta with Crowdsourced Data Journalism

We are pleased to invite you to Poderopedia, a project backed by Knight Foundation through its News Challenge 2011. We believe that Poderopedia will save reporters time in their reporting and will help citizens understand the relationships between people, companies and organizations that influence our daily lives.

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[poderopedia]

At SXSW: Poderopedia, Others Spotlight Civic Media in Latin America

(Originally posted at PBSIdeaLab, march 9, 2012) Citizen heroes who are recognized by their fellow citizens in Juárez City; how people from Panama fight corruption and denounce violence and crime; what we're building in Chile to show you who's who among the elite and their possible conflicts of interest -- all of these are part of the Latin American experience you'll be able to see and hear about at the Civic Media Projects in Latin America panel at SXSW. 

The panel takes place Monday at 3:30 pm in Room 5ABC at the Austin Convention Center.

In this panel, you'll hear from Yesica Guerra, director and research affiliate ofCrónicas de Héroes (Hero Reports), Lu Ortiz, director of Nova Digital Mexico, Jorge Luis Sierra (Fellow International Center for Journalists Knight International Journalism), the creator of Mi Panamá Transparente, and yours truly fromPoderopedia.com.

We'll be speaking about how we developed, designed, implemented and applied projects that use social media and digital technologies to attempt social change. 

As mentioned in the panel's explanation: 

It is fundamental to evaluate the projects from the point of view of the strategic choices their creators made in order to generate analytic common basis and accumulate knowledge. It is also important to hear from the actors themselves on what has worked in their particular contexts and what has not. Latin America is still a space where technological innovation is put to the test by implementation, budget restraints, and connectivity limitations. The adaptation of technologies, the language constraints and the cultural challenges will be discussed in respect to the ways in which social change is motivated by technology. 

Come and join us. We'll be happy to answer all your questions and talk after the panel ends.

If you cannot make it or want to see more, how about coming to the Knight Foundation & Mozilla Media Innovation Fair? 

There will be demos and work on: 

Data journalism (Panda)

Disruptive grassroots hacking (Public Laboratory)

And many tools that can make your life easier when 

Working on tons of data  (Overview)

Scraping (Scraperwiki)

Using video tools for citizen documentary storytelling (Zeega)

And much more.

See you at SXSW!

[poderopedia]

Cómo los usuarios futuros de Poderopedia nos dicen qué construir

Por Miguel Paz (Originalmente publicado en PBS Idea Lab el 9 de febrero de 2012)

El último mes y medio ha sido de muchísimo trabajo en Poderopedia. Nos instalamos a comienzos de diciembre en una amplia oficina de un piso en Ariztía Lab, un espacio de trabajo, discusión y promoción de la renovación urbana del centro de Santiago, junto a nuestros amigos de Urbz Chile. Contratamos a Rodrigo Guaiquil y Mónica Ventura, dos excelentes y experimentados periodistas que desde 1996 han trabajado en proyectos digitales de noticias y bases de datos. Además definimos los hitos y hoja de ruta para el lanzamiento en modo alpha de Poderopedia, un proyecto que busca promover una mayor transparencia en Chile por medio de la creación de una base de datos editorial y de contenido generado por usuario que visualice las relaciones y vínculos entre los líderes cívicos, políticos y empresariales de la elite del país.

Una reunión del equipo de Poderopedia y miembros de nuestro consejo asesor.

Dicho lo anterior, queremos compartir lo que hemos aprendido de los resultados de nuestra Encuesta de Usuarios Futuros (una gran idea que robamos descaradamente de nuestros amigos del proyecto PANDA):

Resultados de nuestra encuesta de usuarios futuros 

Ver más presentaciones de Poderopedia.com.

CONTENIDO vs FORMA

La encuesta fue realizada entre Noviembre y Diciembre de 2011 y fue distribuida online a través de Twitter y nuestra página de Facebook. Además fue enviada a periodistas chilenos y a las 904 personas que a esa fecha se encontraban suscritas a nuestro newsletter esporádico. En total, 463 personas respondieron el cuestionario de preguntas cerradas y abiertas.  Un sumario de los perfiles e intereses de los encuestados mostró dos tipos de usuarios muy claros: a) periodistas interesados en el contenido y b) desarrolladores y diseñadores a los cuales les interesa sobremanera la visualización de datos y la tecnología con la cual se construirá el sitio web y base de datos. 

En el primer grupo de usuarios alineados con el contenido, descubrimos que sólo un 26% trabaja en medios y desarrollo de contenidos. Mientras que un 43% trabaja en agencias de comunicación estratégica y agencias de relaciones públicas, contratadas por empresas privadas para las cuales, en muchos casos, realizan lobby y monitoreo de trabajo legislativo y regulación gubernamental. Esto, de buenas a primeras, podría traducirse en que: 1. Les interesa ver qué se publica en Poderopedia sobre sus clientes. 2. Leer y revisar lo que se publica sobre los competidores de sus clientes. 3. Conocer qué información se publica de las agencias mismas o de sus competidoras. 4. Chequear información de funcionarios públicos y autoridades elegidas. 5. Una combinación de todas las anteriores. (Esto va a estar entretenido).

TIPOS DE USUARIOS 

Como se puede ver en la presentación superior:

90% de los usuarios vive en Chile.

80% de ellos es de sexo masculino y el 20% es de sexo femenino. Provienen de dos grandes segmentos etarios: 54% tiene entre 30 y 44 años, y un 38% entre 18 y 29. 

La mayoría trabaja (83%) y tiene estudios superiores. El 41% tiene estudios universitarios completos; 20% posee posgrado; 14% tiene grado de magíster; y un 5% es doctorado.

La mayoría trabaja en el área de Comunicaciones (24%), seguido por Tecnología (14%), y Consultoría y servicios de asesoría (14%), Educación y capacitación (12%), y Gobierno (6%).

Si se desmenuza el área de Comunicaciones, un 43% del total trabaja en Relaciones Públicas y Comunicaciones Corporativas y sólo un 26% trabaja en medios y desarrollo de contenidos.

CÓMO ENCUENTRAN DATOS DE PERSONAS, ORGANIZACIONES Y EMPRESAS   

Casi todos usan Google (99%), seguido de Wikipedia (80%), Facebook (69%), y LinkedIn (58%). Destaca el hecho de que apenas la mitad usa archivos digitales de sitios de noticias (50%), y menos de un tercio accede a bases de datos. En el caso de bases de datos globales, sólo un 22%, bases de datos del gobierno chileno, sólo un 20%; bases de datos privadas, apenas un 10%.

Del total de personas que aseguran obtener información de bases de datos gubernamentales, un 37% dice que usa "Gobierno Transparente", la sección de información publicada en todos los sitios web del gobierno sobre funcionarios, salarios, contratos, honorarios y compras efectuadas por cada repartición publica.

BÚSQUEDAS, PERFILES Y REDES, MUCHAS REDES

Nuestra encuesta de usuarios futuros nos permitió también descubrir que la mayoría de los usuarios consultados aseguran que todas las características propuestas por Poderopedia son importantes para ellos: el 97% quiere un servicio de búsquedas facetadas y filtros avanzados; 97% aprueba la idea de que el perfil sea la unidad básica de Poderopedia; un 96% desea visualizar relaciones entre personas, empresas y organizaciones; un 70% dice querer colaborar con contenidos para Poderopedia así como desea mayor transparencia y poder entender las redes sociales y posibles conflictos de interes de las personas, empresas y organizaciones que se incluyan en Poderopedia; un 63% quiere una API (interfaz de programación de aplicaciones) para desarrolladores. Y aquí hay una linda sorpresa: el 88% quiere que Poderopedia publique investigaciones periodísticas especiales. 

LA EDUCACIÓN ES TODO

Consultados sobre qué tipo de datos serían los más importantes para incluirlos en los perfiles de personas de Poderopedia, la mayoría de los usuarios dijo que todos. Sin embargo, dónde estudió una persona se eleva como el dato clave para los usuarios (81%), seguido de ingresos económicos y familia (67%), amigos (65%) y compañeros de curso (54%).

Dónde estudió una persona es en sumo relevante debido a su impacto en la geografía y destino personal. De acuerdo a un estudio de 2008, publicado por La Tercera, el 50% de los directores, ejecutivos y gerentes generales top de Chile estudiaron en cinco colegios privados: Verbo Divino, Sagrados Corazones, Saint George, San Ignacio y Tabancura. Tres de las 15 familias chilenas más ricas, incluidas en el ranking Forbes de ese mismo años, estudiaron en el colegio Verbo Divino (donde estudiaron a su vez el presidente Sebastián Piñera y varios miembros de su gabinete). En total, las cinco instituciones educativas privadas mencionadas en el estudio de 2008, representaban a esa fecha el 18,5% del PIB nacional, mientras equivalían apenas al 0,04% del total de colegios privados, particulares subvencionados y escuelas públicas de la nación.

Los vínculos sociales, de negocios, religiosos y políticos de los perfilados en Poderopedia, también son de altísima relevancia para nuestros usuarios: el 94% de ellos quiere saber los nexos de los perfilados con el gobierno y ONG`s; a un 92% le interesan los datos de socios de empresas y propiedad de compañías; un 81% quiere conocer vínculos con clubes sociales privados; y un 80% quiere estar al tanto de las relaciones con think tanks.

Todo esto refleja algo que vemos a diario en países como Chile y otros de la región: las cortapisas para la movilidad social y la meritocracia se entremezclan con el hecho concreto de que dónde naciste, cuál es tu apellido y dónde estudiaste y con quien, define buenamente tus oportunidades socioeconómicas, lo cual se ve reflejado en quien se convierte en parte del 0.1% de la población que domina Chile.

ARQUETIPOS DE PERSONAS

Las respuestas de los usuarios además nos permitieron elaborar los primeros arquetipos de "personas" de Poderopedia y conducir varias observaciones en terreno para contrastar los datos con la encuesta (como se puede ver en la imagen de una de nuestras caóticas pizarras) para comenzar a hacer prototipos en papel.

En todo este proceso, el uso de buenas metodologías de trabajo ha sido crucial: especialmente aquellas de diseño centrado en el usuario de nuestro colega ganador del Knight News Challenge Jesse James Garret, y el taller de desarrollo-ágil-sin-reuniones-ni-correos que tomamos con los genios de Menlo Innovations, gracias a la Knight Foundation. Posdata: 

En marzo de este año estaremos en SXSW, Austin, Texas. Si estás allí y quieres conversar con nosotros, ven a vernos! Te invitaremos la primera cerveza. Aquí está el horario de nuestra presentación sobre medios cívicos en América Latina (hashtag #sxswlatino). Tendremos algunas sorpresas. Si quieres más información o deseas colaborar o relacionarte con Poderopedia, por favor escríbenos a info (at) poderopedia.com o síguenos en Twitter o Facebook.

[poderopedia]

How Poderopedia's Future Users Are Telling It What to Build

by Miguel Paz (Originally posted on PBS Idea Lab, on february 9, 2012)

The past month and a half has been very busy for us at Poderopedia. We settled into a large office space in Ariztía Lab, a building with a cultural heritage in the heart of the immigrant area in downtown Santiago, with our friends from Urbz Chile. We hired Rodrigo Guaiquil and Mónica Ventura, two great and experienced journalists who have been hooked on the Internet since 1996, working on news and data-based projects. And we've outlined the milestones and road map to the first alpha release of Poderopedia, a project that aims to promote greater transparency in Chile by creating an editorial and crowdsourced database that visualizes the relationships among the country's political, civic and business leaders.

A Poderopedia meeting.

With all that said, I'd like to share what we've learned from the results of our Future Users Survey (a great idea we shamelessly stole from our friends from PANDA):

Future Users Survey Results (en español)

View more presentations from Poderopedia.com.

CONTENT VS. FORM

The survey was conducted November through December and distributed online via Twitter and our Facebook page, and was sent to Chilean journalists and the 904 people who were subscribed to our newsletter at the time; 463 people answered the questionnaire.

A summary of profiles and likes and dislikes showed two type of users very clearly: a) journalists interested in the content and b) developers and designers who are in it for the data visualization and how the site will be built.

In the first group of users who are on-board for the content, we discovered that only 26% work in media and content development. Meanwhile, 43% work on strategic communications agencies and PR agencies that are hired by private companies and do lobbying and monitoring of legislative work and government regulation. This could mean that they want to: 1. See what we publish about their clients. 2. Read what we publish about their clients' competition. 3. Find what information we publish about their agency or their agencies competitor. 4. Check information about elected government officials. 5. All of those combined. (That's gonna be fun).

TYPES OF USERS

As you can see in the slides above (in Spanish):

90% of our users are from Chile.

80% of them are men; 20% are women. They come from two big user segments: 54% are between 30 and 44 years of age, and 38% are between 18 and 29.

Most are working (83%) and educated: 41% have completed university studies; 20% have a master's degree; 14% have enrolled in graduate studies; and 5% have a Ph.D.

Most work in communications (24%), followed by technology (14%), consulting and advisory services (14%), education and training (12%), and government (6%).

If you break it down in the communications sector, 43% work in communications & PR,and only 26% work in media and content development.

HOW THEY FIND DATA ABOUT PEOPLE, ORGANIZATIONS

Most use Google (99%), followed by Wikipedia (80%), Facebook (69%), and LinkedIn (58%). This is followed by digital archives of news websites (50%), global databases (22%), government databases (20%), and private databases (10%).

Of those who claim to obtain information from government databases, 37% said they use "Gobierno Transparente," a section in each one of the Chilean government websites which list the names of public officials and their salaries and purchases made by each agency.

THEY WANT IT ALL

We learned that for most users, all of the features proposed by Poderopedia are important: 97% want faceted search and advanced filters; 97% approve of the idea of having profiles; 96% want to view relationships; 70% say they want to collaborate with crowdsourcing, want more transparency, and to understand social networks and possible conflicts of interest; 63% want an API (application programming interface) for developers. And, here is a nice surprise: 88% want Poderopedia to publish journalistic special investigations.

SCHOOL DATA

Asked about which kind of data would be the most important to include in a Poderopedia profile of a person, most of the users said everything. But where a person studied was the most important thing for them (81%), followed by income (67%), family (67%), friends (65%) and classmates (54%).

Schools are relevant because they impact everything else. According to a 2008 study byLa Tercera, 50% of Chile's top CEOs and executives come from five private schools: Verbo Divino, Sagrados Corazones, Saint George, San Ignacio and Tabancura. Three of the 15 richest families in the Forbes ranking studied in Verbo Divino, where Chilean President Sebastián Piñera and many members of his cabinet studied. In total, those five schools represent Chile's 18.5% GNP (gross national product) and 0.04% of total country's schools.

Social, business, religious and political membership data is also key to our users: 94% want to know about a person's links to public offices and NGOs (non-governmental organizations); 92% are interested in the data of business partners and companies; 81% about social private clubs; and 80% about think tank relations.

All this reflects something that we see every day in countries like Chile and many others in the region: Where you're born, your last name, and where you went to school and with whom, very much define your chances in life and reflect on who becomes part of the 0.1% who call the shots in Chile.

PERSONAS

The user answers also allowed us to create Poderopedia's first "personas" and to conduct several user observations for more insight (as you can see from our messy white board pictured below) in order to start paper prototyping.

In this whole process, good work methodologies have been crucial, especially those involving user-centered design by fellow Knight News Challenger winner Jesse James Garret, and the agile-development-no-meetings-zero-email workshop we took with the guys at Menlo Innovations, thanks to the Knight Foundation.

We'll be at SXSW this year, so if you're there, come see us. Here's the schedule of our presentation on civic media in Latin America (hashtag #sxswlatino). We'll have a few surprises. If you want more information or you're interested in getting involved with Poderopedia, please contact us at info (at) poderopedia.com or follow us on Twitter orFacebook.

[poderopedia]

Meet the 1% Who Call the Shots in Chile

Miguel Paz, December 16, 2011. Written for PBS Idealab

  Marco Kremerman, an investigator from SOL, a Chilean foundation that conducts research about the labor market, recently published a column in which he stated that4,000 families run Chile.

Kremerman's post was highly controversial among Chile's elite, an endogamous group of power players, little accustomed to public scrutiny and not fond of being forced out in the open. It also caused some deep rumblings among the middle class, during a time when issues such as inequality and the extreme gap between the rich and poor have become a matter of national and international public interest around the world.

One of the things we loved about Kremerman's work is that he came to his conclusions using public data from the latest National Socioeconomic Characterization Survey(CASEN in Spanish), one of the public data sets we're using in Poderopedia to establish a database of who's who in business and politics (based on the fact that in countries like ours, where you are born, your last name, and which school you attended very much define who you are in the scale of power).

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE PART OF THE 0.1%

Four thousand families might seem like a lot, but that 0.1 percent of the richest households (in a country of 17,094,270 people) is part of the 10 percent that runs practically everything in Chile.

According to the 2009 CASEN data extracted by Kremerman for his post: "4,459 families have a monthly average income of $19 million pesos ($37,300). This is 0.1 percent of the richest households, who generally tend to under-report their income in such surveys."

Being part of the 0.1 percent means that you might be our president or in theannual Forbes billionaires list, and that you either own one of the top 100 Business Groups or work for one of them, according to the Superintendency of Securities and Insurance (our SEC).

It also means, as Kremerman put it, that you probably own banks, insurance companies, retail stores, pharmacies, private pension funds, private health insurance companies, mining companies (the heart of Chile's economy), soccer clubs, forestry companies, fishing companies, or big media.

So what if we go deeper and see what being part of the 0.1 percent means to the rest of Chilean citizens? How do the 0.1 percent decisions affect people's everyday life?

Kremerman did the exercise. Here goes -- Chile's 0.1 percent decide:

The interest rate you end up paying with a bank for consumer credit.

The excessive charges on electricity, water, telephone or gas bills.

The supermarket account you pay each month.

The return of your pension fund (during the first half of August 2011 the Pension Funds had lost more than $8,000 billion pesos, or $15.4 billion, equivalent to more than 6 percent of the total funds).

The value of your private health care insurance plan.

The credit card interest charged by retail stores when you have to buy clothes or any appliance.

The harsh conditions for small businesses that operate as a supplier, contractor or part of the business chain of large companies (sometimes waiting 120 days or more to receive pay).

Bus fare and plane ticket costs.

The percentage of fish available for artisanal fishermen.

The shows and news you see and hear on TV and most radio stations.

The editorial line of the biggest media companies.

The fee you pay in a private school or university.

The players that are hired by your favorite soccer team.

And, of course, the possibility of not having universal quality public education and health because they don't want to pay more taxes (one Warren Buffett idea they failed to like).

The 0.1 percent make up the core of Poderopedia's who's who database. But in our research, we're discovering that the power map of civic, business and political leaders, as well as companies and organizations, covers the top 20 percent of the country with links in each one of the sectors mentioned above, similar to the well-known Pareto principle.

UNDERSTANDING OCCUPY CHILE

The Chilean economy is often applauded by the media and think tanks. But you don't read as much about the gap between the richest 10 percent and the poorest 10 percent. 

In a recent book, however, economist Cristóbal Huneeus and Andrés Velasco, formerHarvard teacher and ex-minister of Finance, demonstrate that the income of the richest 10 percent is 78.5 times greater than that of the poorest 10 percent today.

If you break down the numbers, like Kremerman did, it means that "Chile has an average per capita GDP of  $32 million pesos ($16,000) a year for a household of four people, but over 80 percent of Chileans live in a household with an annual income not exceeding $10 million pesos ($19,000)."  It also means that "the richest 5 percent of the population generates income 830 times more than the poorest 5 percent," Kremerman wrote. And, according to the 2009 CASEN,the poorest 10 percent live with 1.5 percent of the country's total revenues, and the richest 10 percent represent 39.2 percent of revenues. 

In addition, Chileans on average owe 7.5 times more money than what they make each month, so many are afraid of losing their jobs or becoming ill. That makes it easy to understand why long before Occupy Wall Street began, we had thousands of students and citizens protesting for free quality public education, with nine out of 10 Chileans supporting their protests.

But on the other side of the food chain, many business associations, lobbyists and large funders of political campaigns continue to reject a tax increase on the rich and oppose structural changes that would break the asymmetry of power between the major economic groups and ordinary citizens.