OpenWorld

The Idea

I see so many problems in the world. I wanted to give people a chance to make it better.

OpenWorld is an overlay over the world where everyone can propose ideas to improve the infrastructure of our world. Like the concept of git and GitHub, but for the physical world. The pothole that keeps coming back. The intersection that needs a smart stop sign. The empty lot that should be a park. The trail someone is quietly maintaining and doesn't get credit for.

Pin a place. Say what you see. Link to the people who can do something about it. Then everybody else who walks past can see it too.

Four Kinds of Pin

$ ls -lah ~/openworld/pins/
idea    · a proposed improvement
issue   · something broken, needs attention
kudos   · something working, worth recognition
timer   · a time-bounded event (cleanup, town hall, march)

Most civic platforms are problem-engines: broken thing → report. OpenWorld treats Kudos as a first-class pin type because the world is more than its broken parts. The volunteer-run library on the corner. The trail someone maintains. The contractor who actually fixed the intersection well. Naming what works changes the emotional gravity of the whole platform, from "here's what's broken" to "here's what we have, here's what's broken, and here's what we want."

Timer pins exist because civic action is often a moment, not a state. A beach cleanup at 9 AM Saturday. A town hall on the 14th. A march. After the moment passes, the pin retires.

Proposals and Blueprints

Every pin supports full markdown, descriptions, headings, bullets, links, and diagrams. That's the proposal layer.

On top of proposals sits a second primitive: Blueprints. A blueprint is a reusable design, a smart stop sign, a parklet, a modular bus shelter, that anyone can reference from their own pin. One person designs the blueprint once; a thousand pins in a thousand cities can apply it. That's the open-source-the-world part. It's the same relationship as a git repository to an issue: a proposal is specific and located; a blueprint is generalizable and portable.

How a Pin Becomes Real

OpenWorld is the coordination layer, not the implementation layer. The rails for action already exist:

• GoFundMe and other funding platforms for the money
• Government and representative contact pages for the political path
• Petition platforms for collective signal
• Sign-up sheets and event pages for volunteers
• Existing community organizations for the on-the-ground work

Rebuilding any of those would be a worse use of energy than letting OpenWorld link out to them. So a Timer pin for a Saturday cleanup links to the sign-up sheet. An Idea pin for a smart stop sign links to a GoFundMe, or to your council member's office. A Kudos pin can link to the contractor's site so other neighborhoods can hire them.

The bridge from proposal to reality is humans taking action. OpenWorld doesn't replace that bridge, it makes it shorter.

Discovery

When you open the app you see pins near your location scattered on a map.

• Filter by pin type: Idea, Issue, Kudos, Timer, or all.
• List view for the same nearby pins, when scrolling a map isn't what you need.
• Global feed for everything, not just nearby: accessible from the nearby list and from the bottom navbar.
• Sort by newest or most voted.
• Search by tag or by location: so a politician can watch their patch, an organizer can follow a topic, and a citizen moving to a new city can see what people there are working on.

Where It Is Today

$ openworld status
marketing site:  https://www.openworld.run         live
web app:         https://app.openworld.run         early access
ios:             App Store                         live
android:         Google Play Console               closed testing

The full experience is mobile, because pinning is a physical-place act, you do it standing in front of the thing. The web app exists for viewing and admin work; the phone is where you actually use OpenWorld.

iOS is now live, download OpenWorld: Pin & Improve on the App Store. Android is still in closed Play Console testing while we wait on Google's review; drop me a line to be added to the testing group, or watch this page for the public release.

The Next Six Months

Six months from now I want:

• iOS and Android publicly in the stores.
• Hundreds of users on the platform.
• Creative use I didn't anticipate: the surest sign that the primitive is right.
• Real action taken because of an OpenWorld pin: a politician who responded, a cleanup that happened with strangers, a blueprint reused in a city I've never been to.
• Donations and sponsorships that make the project sustainable without forcing ads or selling user data.
• An active community recommending features and ideas.
• Personal growth as a leader of the platform: continuing to mature alongside it.
• Starting to make waves.

Origin

The idea came when I was in community college at West LA. I don't have an exact memory of the moment, but I remember the vision, an overlay over the world where everyone could propose ideas to improve the infrastructure around us.

Then there was a specific scene: I was walking through an intersection and imagined a smart stop sign, one that turns its face green when it detects no pedestrians or cars, so you can drive through without stopping. Slightly silly, and exactly the right kind of silly: small enough to picture, big enough to imply a whole platform behind it. A thing one citizen could design as a blueprint, and a thousand cities could install.

OpenWorld is what that intersection-walk turned into.

Why This Project, of All Things

I've always been the one in my family to try to make things better. To heal relationships. To give people the benefit of the doubt. I've done good and bad. Truthfully, I just want to help make the world a better place.

I had this idea before I had children. They're here now, and they're entering a world that might be very different than the world I grew up in. I want a platform where people can actually have their ideas heard and we can act on them.

I'm not a super environmental type. I don't like the idea that humans are the cause of all the issues, we might be, but if everyone can fix the little things, make tiny changes and improvements to the world, that compounds. And maybe it's not so bad that we drive gas-powered cars, if the rest of the time we're continuously improving the world together.

That's the dream. People are good. Action compounds. Agency over guilt. A future where we are all continuously improving the world together. I hope it inspires others.

Get Involved

• Download iOS: OpenWorld: Pin & Improve on the App Store.
• Visit www.openworld.run for the marketing page.
• Try the web app at app.openworld.run. It's intentionally minimal; the phone is the real experience.
• Email me to join Android closed testing.
• If you're a politician, organizer, journalist, or community leader: I'd especially love to hear what you'd want from the platform. Whatever I'm building probably needs your eyes.
• Read the launch post if you want the longer story.