This is my favorite feature yet: leveling up animations! As users express their opinions via Quick Rate and other Do Good Quick areas of bilumi.org, Munin drops pebbles into a water bottle. Contributors can watch the water level rise with every pebble until they reach the next level… and Munin takes a drink!

It’s a neat story to be part of while contribution, plus the animation looks stellar. Clay did a great job incorporating a Chinese brush painting style with part-cartoon, part-realistic Photoshopping.

New and veteran users can start working immediately, while still preserving the accountability of contributed information. Everyone wins!

The code behind the scenes is pretty neat, too, and has made it easy to add some fun features into the system. More on that in my next post!

Buy It Like You Mean It is seeking talented students and recent graduates in the following internship areas: Researcher, Web Developer, Community Organizer, Business Developer, Designer/Tester, Artist. Be part of something big! Get the individual attention and support you need to make a difference.

To apply (or ask questions) email GetInvolved@bilumi.org proposing a realistic project in one or more of the following internship areas. Include dates and any other logistics involved. Successful applicants will have made themselves familiar with bilumi.org. Let us know what your personal goals for an internship are as well. Preference to early applicants.

Researcher - Seeking talented researcher for internship exposing the realities of industrial practices. Bilumi.org provides free customized access to a complete supply chain model of corporate responsibility. Every review is categorized by consumer interests (such as human rights or ecological sustainability.) We are currently finishing a research focus on the chocolate industry and moving to a horizontal investigation of multinational companies. A pragmatic investigation will have real systemic impact.

Web Developer - Seeking talented programmer for internship in open source programming. We will be prototyping and testing a number of widgets and mobile applications to allow people to access and share socially responsible product information at any point of sale. Applicants familiar with iterative programming, django, javascript, firefox extensions, scraping and designing for the iphone, facebook, and twitter especially encouraged. Team players only.

Community Organizer - Seeking talented social networker to get the word on the street (and the web) about a system for empowering individual consumers to create real systemic change. Bilumi.org is already an established crowdsourced tool. We wish to expand our community exposure through in-person events, affiliation with educators, and online communities such as facebook, youtube, change.org, instructibles, and curriki.org. Intern will help others get involved.

Business Developer - Seeking talented business person to develop socially responsible market research reports and work with company executives to promote the sale of such reports. We have been making progress on this project slowly over several semesters; starting with community surveys and culminating with in a survey of industry. You can take the next step.

Designer/Tester - Seeking talented analyst equally comfortable with software design principles and user experience studies. We are in the midst of a user centered design process to create new tools to assist people in using their own personal values to change their brand loyalties for the better. Intern will be conduct online and in person surveys, analyze data, create iterative paper software mockups and design tools for implementation.

Artist (comic, puppet, flash) - Seeking talented artist for internship creating off beat visual propoganda. Bilumi.org is a non-profit community sharing socially responsible product information. Intern will choose two of three tasks for the semester: 1. Create a flash animation for our website. 2. Reimagine, ink, and layout our partially completed second issue of our comic book. 3. Create a life sized puppet of a raven character for use in parades and street performances. The myth behind our service is that we are founded by two raven characters from norse mytholody. Give it life.

Is this surprising?

What does this mean for Buy It Like You Mean It’s mission of educating consumers about how their values are reflected in their spending?

Their most recent article focused on Buy It Like You Mean It and several other excellent projects. Check it out!

New features include:

• Sort companies by ratings (under “Browse Options” on the browse page)
• Manage your personal interest portfolio (under “My Stuff”–>”My Portfolio”)
• Quick rate and quick evaluate
• Get acknowledged for playing quickrate and… level up! As you increase your level the kinds of tasks you can do increases, too.
• Use data from CoopAmerica that Quick Review automatically finds for you when you have reached second level.
• More backend engineering goodness. Less bugs.

Rahala Alam begins her internship with bilumi.org today. She is investigating how companies value the concerns of their customers. That means calling executives on the phone (sometimes having to call back four or five times) and asking questions about how they view their socially responsible reputation. The subtext of these questions will be whether the information we are providing for free to the general public can be repackaged as market research and provided for a premium to industry.

Rahala is a senior studying finance at Simmons College in Boston. She has had some experience doing business research of this kind in the past and I very happy to welcome her to the team. She’ll be producing a set of financial reports by the end of the semester describing industry’s openness to consumer attitudes and Buy It Like You Mean It’s ability to bring in revenue through this model.

Says Rahala: “I am excited and looking forward to be working with you.”

As a tech non-profit we haven’t been able to attract big foundation support as of yet. But the mom and pop donations and volunteering that we are getting seem to be sticking around through the economic downturn. So being efficient and flexible and keeping expenses and paperwork to a minimum has really helped out.

When we received Matt’s email Lucy laughed at me as I (literally) jumped up and down. Our dog, Bear, got into the excitement too. He can jump higher than I can, but I’m taller. Ever notice how focused a dog can be? Sometimes for inspiration we give him a bone and watch how he well he works it. He starts at one end, softening and gnawing, and slowly works his way down to the other end until there’s nothing left but a job well done.

Buy It Like You Mean It is all about providing people like yourself with trusted socially responsible product information. So it would help to know what types of sources you trust.

I would set up a poll for this but I’m a bit busy sending out holiday newsletters and year end donation reminders just now. But I’ll be happy to create a poll if that’s what ya’ll want!

—-
Data from Forrester Research Technographics® surveys, 2008. For further details on the Social Technographics profile, see groundswell.forrester.com.

I did a quick google search to see if “My Green Choices” was more than just a newsish and chatty email to convince me to purchase greenwashed christmas tree stands. They’re no where to be found. Who knows; maybe just by writing this post I’m increasing their page rank. Jerks.

I was going to end the post there. But “Jerks” is not too optimistic. Sure, it’s jerkish to be so slick about pretending your business is doing good things when lots of truly green businesses are struggling to communicate their green message. So let me take this time to remind myself that those jerks are only making money because as the public we need a little technological help knowing who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.

Buy It Like You Mean It can help. So I’ll get back to oh so glamorous end of year non-profit paperwork now. Thanks for listening.

The project has aspirations to assist in record keeping, litigation and other forms of activism addressing the gas extraction industry’s practices.

Good work guys!

Are you interested in launching a grassroots information sharing tool? Check out bilumi’s shared code base to see if it could help you get started!

The problem is now fixed. We treat our website’s security seriously. This is an inclusive community that believes in the power of people. But it will not be the last time that we have to think about security. Pranks like yesterday’s are no big deal. But our users may eventually offend larger corporate marketing interests who might have other, more clever, ways of changing the information presented in our system. User involvement will continue to be the most important tool in our security tool box. So email us at GetInvolved@bilumi.org if you see something odd or have a suggestion.

Did you notice the curious text of the blog post about our 1,000th commit? Oddly enough, Lucy’s celebrated commit number 1,000 was the fix for the a bug in our system that allowed hackers to change the text of company descriptions without logging in or making a record of their activity.

Lucy Mendel has committed the landmark 1,000th change to Buy It Like You Mean It’s repository of open source technology! Click the sound file to hear her speech on the subject (gotcha, Lucy.)To the right is the commit message that was emailed to members of our dev-flock by the bilumi version control system.

What does this mean? It means that we’ve made a lot of changes! Actually, the significance beyond that is a bit mysterious: but one thousand is a really big number!

• Maybe there is a shop within walking distance that one didn’t realize rated so highly.
• Maybe it is OK to go a little further out of one’s way to find a shop that supports local farmers or fair trade.

AccountAbility is a hopeful collaboration with the Bank of America through the Media Lab’s Center For Future Banking. What with growing consumer concerns over social responsibility and the economy, now is a great time to offer consumers more, such as tracking the social responsibility of purchases and rewarding consumers and companies for doing good.

I don’t expect this capability to be embed in bank statements overnight, especially with the challenges of data collection still present. The demo makes use of Bilumi’s API to get ratings and display a google map. If you’ve made a lot of chocolate purchases then you’ll get good results. Otherwise, the demo displays fake data !! That’s not so good, in fact my heart hangs heavy for it, but it is just a demo. The demo’s purpose right now is to look pretty and inspire more effort.

The bank statement domain has its own data challenges. First, only merchants are shown, not purchases. Purchases do support merchants, especially brand merchants, but we are left with a mystery over who manufactured the products and how far they were transported.

Furthermore, we don’t know much about the merchants. Where are merchants located? How can we find out what they sell so that we can lookup other merchants nearby that might have better scores AND sell similar products?

Nonetheless, it is exciting to build something outgoing and useful on top of our core technology. I imagine rolling out a Firefox extension that inserts social responsibility information into e-commerce sites like Amazon.com so that customers can better judge what they are buying. The extension could also record online purchases so that users can see whether having socially responsible information handy is making a difference. The extension could insert ratings next to web advertisements, or even append or replace advertisements for one brand with a related but higher rated brand.

Well, enough dreaming. Nothing will happen unless we do something.

What Is a BILUMI Workshop?

A bilumi workshop is when a bunch of folks get together in the same room and add their opinions and research to the knowledge of our whole community. The workshop goal is decided by the host. There’s no shortage of options!

Why Host a Workshop?

Workshops are a terrific way to get folks motivated and involved in our community. It’s amazing how much you can accomplish when you have people all in the same place working on the same thing. Plus, it’s fun!

Let us Know!

If you’re interested in hosting, please email getinvolved@bilumi.org. Let us know how we can help you.

Here are some tips for planning a workshop (you can also wing it.)

Decide on a Location and Time

It’s a good idea to host the workshop someplace that has plenty of comfortable seating, like a living room, or a computer classroom. If you happen to have access to a projector, that’s also helpful. You should choose a date and time that are convenient for you and the people you plan to invite. If your friends work 9-5, you might want to select a time in the evening so they can join in. If you’re a student or teacher then consider an activity or class period.

Are you in the Boston area? Our raven puppets might be available to come by for a visit. Send us an email!

Decide on a Goal

A goal is nice. Helpful workshop goals could include rating reviews, writing reviews, adding companies and products to our database, or simply setting up everyone’s portfolio of interests. It’s easy to teach people how to use our system, but it’s helpful to focus on a single goal. We would also be happy to give you more suggestions via email.

Advertise

Advertising is key! Email an invitation to friends or make a flier to post on your favorite bulletin board. We can also send it out on the BILUMI mailing list, and advertise it on our web site if you give us some notice. Remember to include the date, time and ask people to bring their own laptops.

Pick up some snacks

Before the workshop, consider picking up a few munchies. Since our current focus is the chocolate industry, we like to have chocolate around, but you could also go with veggies and dip, potato chips, or whatever else suits your fancy. Maybe not so much the McDonalds.

At the Workshop:

Introduce Bilumi

It’s time! Once everybody has arrived and gotten settled, introduce BILUMI. Probably most people will already be familiar with our concept, but just in case, it’s a good idea to start off by talking about what bilumi is and the purpose of this project.

“Hi guys. Thanks for coming. Buy It Like You Mean It is a new kind of participatory non-profit that makes it easy to find out which brands meet all of our own individual socially responsible concerns. The data we’ll be entering into the system today will be used to help people shop according to their own unique values. So thanks again! I’m going to show you how to create an account and what we’ll be doing…”

Introduce the Goal

Next, introduce the workshop goal, whether it is to rate 100 reviews or to research and write 3 new reviews. Explain how to accomplish the goal. It’s nice to have a demonstration prepared so you can walk through it easily.

If you’re doing research, you may want to refer to bilumi’s research guide.

Dive in!

Take questions, and then dive in!

- Remember to take photos so we can all bask in glory afterwards. It’s great to send them to us, so that we can put them up on BILUMI!

Afterwards:

Congratulations on having successfully hosted your BILUMI workshop! Send us email so that we can write a blog post about what you did, and so we can include things you’ve learned in this document.

Stuff that would be helpful for us to know:

- What worked?
- What can we improve?
- What did we accomplish?
- Any other comments?
- Stories? Anything goofy happen?

Thanks for being part of BILUMI!

Aaron K. Chatterji and Michael W. Toffel of Harvard Business School are taking a closer look at how environmental practices change when companies are publicly rated for their performance.

Here’s what I took from their paper: (You can download their working draft here: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/08-025.pdf)

Businesses that understand that their profit motive is threatened by the perception that they are not environmentally friendly will respond noticeably to public pressure. Businesses with easy improvements to make and bad reputations are particularly likely to respond to such pressure. Businesses that already have sustainable practices are less likely to respond to public pressure because they are already the public’s best alternative. Please leave comments so we can get to the bottom of this!

I’m happy to see scholarship that is investigating the link between rating companies on socially responsible issues and seeing improvements in their practices. Understanding that connection will be critical as we move forward.

Wondering what happened with the results of the poll where you helped us think about what kinds of revenue we should pursue? The short answer is: Courtney is on it.

Courtney Tyler is interning with bilumi this semester and will be preparing the first stage of a comprehensive financial plan. She is starting with the various revenue models that you commented on in this summer’s survey. We’re really lucky to have her on the team!

Says Courtney: “I am really excited to be able to have the opportunity to work for a progressive company such as Buy It Like You Mean It. I believe strongly in consumer awareness and the resulting empowerment. I am excited to speak with other companies that would be interested in gaining market insight through our user interface. I look forward to assisting the company in moving forward in expanding their own marketing tactics and further developing their revenue-generating ideas. In order to make positive change one needs revenue!”

Dara O’Rourke’s U. Berkeley based research guide has been the whispered about “elephant in the room” in the socially responsible rating guide circles for a while now. This week they launched GoodGuide.com to Wired fanfair. I’m not sure why they have rated so many of the micro-reviews for products as 10/10 (is that the default when no information is present?), but overall it’s an impressively detailed presentation of mashed up research about the cosmetics industry. Good work!

The really good news is that Dara has suggested that his platform will eventually include an open API so that all of the information presented will be able to be used by our own system as well. (We just released our open API last week!)

So with all of these seemingly redundant services… what does bilumi have to offer that is truly unique? Believe it or not we’re the only service in the dozens that I have found that is seeking to provide consumers with customized ratings based on a realistic model of a product’s supply chain. Part of being customized is presenting the opinions and research of people like you. But it’s too much to ask hundreds of volunteers to do hefty research. It’s much easier to add to our system by looking through other review sites and quoting what you find there. That’s why our Research Guide lists how long it will take to perform different kinds of volunteer tasks. When it comes down to it, all of these other services really do help us get closer to our vision!

And… a peek at what’s to come for bilumi… we’ve been casually collaborating on making technology with Consumer Gadget - the European solution to structured supply chain data. More on this soon!