When Technology Doesn’t Work
Credit: Jen R.
If you follow the Gov 2.0 and Open Data circles with any regularity, you’ve probably noticed that hardly a month goes by without some new and exciting new media project or application being announced – one whose founders hope will provide a powerful new way for people to communicate or interact with government or each other.
Certainly learning about a new worthwhile web tool or project is exciting – especially when it offers lessons for how to do or replicate something similar elsewhere. Yet, for each new app or initiative that gets launched, I’d venture to guess there are probably dozens of projects that failed (or plans that never got off the ground in the first place). And these failures offer just as much (if not more) potential for learning about how to and not to do something.
However, these types of failures don’t get much attention – and are often deliberately hidden or played down. After all, these can be potential embarrassing, especially for governments and elected officials or non-profit organizations that have to answer to donors. To combat this phenomenon, MobileActive, a non-profit organization that helps anti-poverty and international development groups use technology effectively, has pioneered a useful model for bringing these failures out into the open.
Dubbed ‘FailFaires’, the events bring people together in a casual and relaxed setting over drinks and nibbles after work. There are no name tags or structured agendas. Rather, a series of presenters give short, informal, story-like presentations – discussing a project, its outcome and the reasons for its failure. Hosted in New York and Washington, D.C. thus far, MobileActive hopes that the idea will expand to other cities and fields.
Beyond this ‘offline’ model, one could also envision a wiki or discussion forum that was dedicated to sharing mistakes and failures regarding the use of information and communication technology in government and civic organizations – just as resources dedicated to disseminating best practices and case studies function to disseminate success stories.
Given that many new media enthusiasts are eager to increase transparency and openness about what goes on in government, it seems that frank discussion about initiatives and apps that aren’t so successful would only be fitting.
Christian Madera writes the Open Cities column for Next American City. He is a former managing editor of Planetizen, and has spent the last decade working in the fields of urban planning policy and web technology.
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LamS in Fairfax CA on Fri, Sep 10, 2010 at 12:31pm
The same is true in many scientific disciplines - only the successes get published. Years of work can go into a project that never gets published because the results are inconclusive or do not fit the accepted dogma. And yet there is often valuable data in that “failure”, which could lead some one else in the right direction. The problem is sorting out the wheat from the chaff - some of the failures are due to poorly executed experiments which produced data that only confuses the picture.
y.srinivas in hyderabad.india on Sat, Sep 11, 2010 at 11:18pm
FAILURE IS JUST A MATTER OF OPINION, BY OTHERS NOT BY THE PERSON WHO WANTED TO DO SOMETHING WORTHWHILE, WE, HUMANS ALWAYS ESTIMATE A WORTH OF A PERSON, BY THE WORK OR MONEY OR BEAUTY , HE OR SHE MAKING OR HAVING AND YET TO LEARN TO TREAT EACH PERSON UNIQUE IN THIS WORLD. JUST LIKE NO TWO SNOW FLAKES ARE THE SAME, THOUGH THEY LOOK THE SAME IN COLOR,
SUCCESS IS NEVER FINAL , FAILURE IS NEVER FATAL .
Ramanand Kowta in Mumbai, India on Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 8:58am
Right / Wrong, Success / Failure are the dualities/opposites that spring up ONLY on HINDSIGHT after an act /event has happened. The INTENTION of the DOER is to achieve goodness for all that will be affected by his ’ experiment ‘. We can only ’ cast the dice ’ i.e do our best - we cannot/ predict the outcome ! There are no failures / mistakes ! Everything is an EXPERIENCE ! Just as ’ one creature’s waste is another’s food ’ in the cyclic Life processes, so is ’ one’s failure the success of another ’ Further, there is nothing called ’ waste ’ in Nature - it’s a human construct. Likewise, there is no FAILURE !
EVERYTHING JUST ’ IS ’ ! !
NEVILLE OTUKI in NAIROBI KENYA on Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 7:33am
Failure is the launching pad for successive success stories to follow;for it is by falling that we learn to rise,failing that we know the beauty of success.