Yahoo groups and polling

My high school classmates and I are celebrating our Silver Anniversary (25th). We graduated from Xavier School in 1978. Twenty-five years ago, a group of scrappy, bright and brilliant boys, the future leaders of the nation… so we were told. Twenty-five years later, they are a group of middle-aged men, some still bright, some still brilliant, some still have hair, some a little heavier, some leaders but most definitely a majority still scrappy.

Let me digress… Something happened along the way, though it took a few years, some of these men have now become "men for others" (a very Jesuit tradition that was instilled in most Xavier boys). They are now contributing to community service (Vince Perez, Batch 75), scholarship funds and charities, sharing their blessings with the rest of us less fortunate. Most notable is the Xavier Educational Trust where deserving kids are sponsored for 13 years from kindergarten through high school through the school’s grant-in-aid program. (For other Xavier alums or even non-Xavier alums, you can contact the Xavier alumni office at 726-4855 or 727-3329 to get more info.)

Now back to work… With more than 140 members, I volunteered to set up an e-mail group as a temporary moderator (but my friends cannot seem to read the temporary part of the title). The objective was to give our batchmates a simple e-mail address to communicate and share some of our adventures, thoughts and of course, coordinate the logistics of our upcoming reunion (Aug. 2, Saturday, 5 p.m., at the school grounds) and homecoming. I thought we could use this same forum to share some R-rated or racy content, but I soon learned quickly that some of the e-mails used are shared with minors and more importantly their bosses (in layman terms, wives). Nonetheless, this has not stopped us from the more legitimate uses of the e-group.

A cute trick I learned while tinkering around our e-group homepage is the ability to do polling. Anyone in the group can generate a quick issue and give the e-group up to five choices and automatically summarize the total and the breakdown.

There are two big implications of polling. One is market research and two, elections. Imagine for the moment, you have a Yahoo group (or any e-group for that matter) that have a defined niche of teens from 13 to 18 (hmm… our turf??) and the membership of this group reached a critical mass of say 20,000 and then let’s say we spread this throughout the ASEAN countries. How much do you think companies like Loreal and Sony would pay to run quick issue questions by this group?

The country is about to spend or is spending millions of dollars to computerize national elections. Can you imagine if we could use the Yahoo groups to do elections? Free. Free. Free. Of course, there are a few hurdles. One, how do you make sure people are voting once? Two, how do you make sure people are voting once? Three, how do you make sure people are voting once? Oh! Did I say that already? If that hurdle was addressed, think of the possibility of having elections where time is not wasted but a simple access to the Internet is all that is required. Public school teachers would no longer need to watch the polls. Poll watchers would be obsolete. Poll counting would be done automatically. Of course, you can still buy the votes before they get their retina scanned but the results are completed instantly as the polls closed. Maybe, in a few years we could use cheap retina scanners or biometric scanners to verify the voting. This is definitely a much cheaper option to manual polling. Maybe we can test it small-scale with a small town and then scale up.

My Two Cents: Our country needs help! Everyone needs to pull together and give back and share your skills and blessings! (Sorry, this has nothing to do with the content above, just really feel frustrated right now!)

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Dickson Co is CFO (C is for Cheap) for both Dfnn and HatchAsia.com. For comments and suggestions, e-mail [email protected].