More than just bits and bytes, this digital infrastructure consists of the institutions, practices, and protocols that together organize and deliver the increasing power of digital technology to business and society.*
Ultimately, I
want to evaluate how well these two orgs. are utilizing the world's digital infrastructure to deliver on their high-level promises – beginning with a basic accounting (below) of what I call their “digital
deliverables”: those offerings o' theirs that I as a user or visitor can access
with my laptop.
Two notes: I don’t have a particular framework for doing this accounting. No
cool tools, in other words, to bring to the party. Nor do I have any insider
knowledge whatsoever.
Red Treehouse
Short
and sweet: There’s the web site. There’s a separate Facebook page (that, for some unknown reason, isn't linked to or from the main site).
I‘m tempted to add press releases to the mix, but will hold off. All I really
want to do now is say a couple of words about the first.
The web site brings together “three sources for
information and support”. It’s structured so that users can search for and find
the following:
- RESOURCES, guides and tool-kits.
- Names, contacts and helpful information about community ORGANIZATIONS.
- Calendar of EVENTS, trainings and
activities happening locally.
Ohio families, young adults, professionals, and
organizations make up the user universe. Those who register receive monthly
heads-ups regarding new content that’s been added to the site.
UCP
UCP's web site is bigger and more sprawled out than Red
Treehouse’s. I’m just starting to get a grip on the structure and logic
behind it.
One of the largest health
non-profits in the country, UCP differs from Red Treehouse in that it operates a large affiliate network and also advocates for public policies “that ensure fair and
full citizenship for people with a spectrum of disabilities.” A sizable chunk
of the real estate at www.ucp.org is dedicated to those two functions. What's left of it (the real estate, that is) is tied mainly to UCP's Public Education & Outreach (PEO) efforts. It's those efforts that lead me to want to compare the two organizations in the first place.
PEO combines two primary
components. First, there’s Public Education Resources. UCP’s online offerings in this category
remind me very much of Red Treehouse’s offerings in their entirety. Included therein are in-depth online Resources, and State Resource
Guides: contact information for state and local disability related services and
organizations. “Never scour the Web again for bits and pieces of disability
information and resources from disparate sources!”
Public
Education Campaigns is the second PEO component. Subsumed under this heading are four (4) issue-specific campaigns, each of which has, or will have, its own web site. The four are: My Child Without Limits, Brave Kids, My Life
Without Limits (to come),
and Siblings Initiative (to come, as well).
About PEO online, I'll just say generally that newer digital tools are richly in evidence. Here you'll find blogs, tools for helping people with reading disabilities, online communities, live stream webcasts, and more. Social media use looks to be lively, especially as it relates to the issue-specific campaigns.
UCP has been experimenting with trying to harness the power of the Net for some time. Much of the experimenting has stemmed from the Life Without Limits initiative begun in
’04. Peruse the site's pages and you still see references to older LWL campaigns (Don't Block My Vote and Who Will Care?), social media experiments, a crowd-sourced immersive scenario game (Ruby’s
Bequest)...
Aggressive, if not progressive, use of digital technologies has been and still seems to be a UCP preference. I hope to dig deeper into it going forward.
*from The Power of Pull (2010) by John Seely Brown, John Hagel III, and Lang Davison
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