The Jewish People's Hospitality Stream
>>Tue Mar 2, 2010
What does membership in the "Jewish Community" mean in the practical sense?
I just got back from traveling around Europe for the ROI-Paideia Eurogathering.[It was a great conference, check out the coverage here.] To keep up with my work during travels, we activated a travel data plan for my Israeli Blackberry. At each country I went to, exactly at the moment my plane landed and my phone switched onto the local network, I received an SMS from Pelephone (PT's Israeli cell phone carrier) welcoming me to that country and offering a free of charge phone number that I could call with any questions or concerns. All members of the Pelephone customer pool, (or rather, the Pelephone user community), receive this notification when they go abroad.
This service got me to thinking about the potential of a Jewish People wide platform that worked on the same principle. It goes like this:
1) Each Jewish community around the world would sign up for a google voice number, which would be switchboarded around through a shift system between local volunteers who spend a few hours a month serving as the community's concierge. This would be achieved through community partners like Federations or local community centers.
2) Anyone around the world can sign up to the Jewish People's stream or feed, hosted centrally at a Jewish People Net website. Upon landing in a city, the registered user automatically receives an SMS/email from the geo-aware system with the phone number of that community's concierge. This would provide the opportunity to call and speak to someone friendly who can help open doors and guide a person to the community's support system and social network. The community could control, to a limited degree, what appeared "under the line" on the SMS. One feature could be asking visitors to the city to text a micro-donation to support one of that community's key needs, or to invest in a new community initiative. The city could also include a link to interesting communal or cultural events taking place that night, or include emails of some people in different age demographics and social groups. The system could even be financed by letting people buy tickets or get coupons off the SMS.
Locally oriented services like these are succeeding left and right these days, and something like this could be a big Peoplehood unifier. As it is a social network aimed at helping by relying on a trust group (membership in the Jewish Community, even if imagined, does the trick here), it makes sense for this to happen within a separate platform rather than on something universal. There are lots of gaming tie-ins here ala Foursquare and Gowalla, if one wanted to explore those directions (ie, competing and earning points for doing "mitzvas" in cities around the world). We could set up a way to track how people are moving, and encourage connections.
From what I understand, Birthright NEXT now texts people a Hebrew word each day. It seems like something like this could add a lot of value to their network. Same thing for the new Jewish Peoplehood Hub think tank. This would be a big thought-action step towards the Feeling of Peoplehood!
So, if any geo-hackers out there want to take a crack at this, PresenTense is happy to help with the process. If a Jewish org wants to have a go, well, it could be powerful. Let's do it! Be in touch.