1. Shadow Election
finding the best candidates and solutions
Richard von Kaufmann // iHub Nairobi presentation 10.01.2012

2. Who is Richard von Kaufmann?
Best Early-Stage Startup
Barcelona 4 July 2008
co-founded 2007
Only Nordic startup
selected
Filmmaker, 1995-2001 Intention Broadcasting
presenter Graz, Austria
September 2009
Creative Director
Cactus Marketing & Advertising Media Lab Helsinki, 2006
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia joined 2010 Election Machine
2001-2003

3. “Traditional” Candidate Matcher

4. Shadow Election

5. The wisdom of crowds
Slides in this section courtesy of Zipipop, the Finnish social media agency

6. The Wisdom of Crowds
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds

7. The Wisdom of Crowds
Francis Galton, 1906
Butchered weight:
Average of crowd guess: 1,197 pounds
Actual weight: 1,198

8. Jelly Bean Jar
Average of 56 students=871
Actual amount=850
Only one student guessed better
http://www.amazon.com/Never-Pat-Bear-About-Signs/dp/B0006XX08K

9. Wisdom of the crowds at work

10. Hive Mind
image from bizzybusybees.co.uk

11. Crowd-wisdom on the Web
420m unique monthly visitors 60% of web-servers run Linux 40 million monthly visitors
20 million articles
300 languages

12. How Google uses crowd-wisdom
link = vote

13. Four conditions of a smart crowd:
• Diversity of opinion
• Independence
• Decentralization
• Aggregation
*Conditions outlined in The Wisdom of the Crowds by James Surowiecki

14. Diversity of Opinion
• private information

15. Independence
• not influenced by others

16. Decentralization
• specialist, local knowledge

17. Aggregate • mechanism for turning private
judgements into collective decisions

18. Scale it up
• more input produces better results

19. information + error
crowd error probability averaged = ~0
(i.e -10+50-60+20=0)
“information” with reduced error

20. Crowdsourcing Solutions

21. The power of intuition
are
New findings in cognitive science
)
showing that intuition (gut feeling
ensed
can be thought of as “cond
any
experience” and in m ve
circumstance s can be more effecti
y.
than in depth analytical stud

22. Rating parameters (intuition)
User’s comparison to the
wisdom of the crowd

23. Shadow Election
finding the best candidates and solutions

24. salesforce.com, 2011

25. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Democracia_real_YA_Madrid.jpg

26. Sustained peace

27. Current social media limitations
How to make the message of the “crowd”
understandable?

28. Our solution
• Propose questions
• Give answers
• Rate other people’s answers
• See the people with the best-rated solutions
move up the “live” chart
• Show support by indicating your vote for one of
the candidates

29. Initial trial
Shadow Election was first trialled as Vaali.fi
in the 2011 Finnish Parliamentary Elections.

30. Media content

31. Advocacy tool
Organizations can use it as an advocacy
tool by requesting that politicians answer
their specific questions.

32. The essence of the Shadow Election tool is to use intuition and crowd
wisdom to promote the best candidates and find the best solutions.

33. Why’s it so important?

34. 'The human beans is making rules to suit
themselves,' the BFG went on. 'But the rules
they is making do not suit the little piggy-
wiggies. Am I right or left?'
'Right,' Sophie said.
'Giants is also making rules. Their rules is not
suiting the human beans. Everybody is making
his own rules to suit himself.”

35. Amnesty’s main weapons
when it started in 1961 was
writing letters and news
paper articles.

36. Transparency International
Finland is consistently in the top
5 least corrupt countries

38. There is a strong
correlation between GDP
per capita and
Transparency
International’s Corruption
Perception Index (CPI).
Despite relatively low
natural resources Finland
has a high GDP per capita.
Gapminder.org

39. http://blog.transparency.org/2011/12/07/what-makes-new-zealand-denmark-finland-sweden-and-others-%E2%80%9Ccleaner%E2%80%9D-than-most-countries/

40. Good laws are not enough
“The capacity to facilitate commercial transactions
through a system of laws fairly enforced is critical to
the development of the private sector.”

41. Engaging politicians in more open discussions
=
Better solution finding and more accountability
=
Fairer laws, and the fairer enforcement of the
law, so that everyone benefits

42. Thanks!
Richard von Kaufmann
Creative Director // Chairman
Tel. 045 11 222 73
Email: richard@realitycreatingmedia.com
www.realitycreatingmedia.com