# Proposal for Lightning Polls

## TL;DR
**The proposed lightning polls are meant to:**
- **create impact** by modelling organizational behaviour based on the way we want the world to be (placing underrepresented groups front-and-centre)
- **generate content** for in-bound leads to Dalia's blog and grow brand awareness (as a bold purpose-driven company)
- **showcase the Dalia platform** by giving people a bite-sized sample of what we do
- **build an outreach & campaign foundation** by offering this service, once established, to NGOs and causes of our choice
- **demonstrate our company culture** through how we use our own product about the places and causes we care about

## How does it work?
1. We offer ask each woman in the company to ask a question about their home country (or another country they care about), preferably for a social/environmental issue.
2. We go down the list prioritizing non-English, emerging economies, that are less represented in American and Western European media.
3. They create a lightning poll.
4. We release the results along with a blog post and do media outreach where possible.
5. One poll is conducted per 2 weeks.
6. We open this to the whole company once all the women have completed a survey.
7. We can also make this offer to NGOs and academic institutions, with the understanding that results are released publicly and used for a concrete campaign or project.

## Project Roadmap

### Schedule

### Process

| Stage | Content Support | Colleague Contribution |
| -------- | -------- | -------- |
| Planning | Provide framework, suggestions | Provide question and why it's important |
| Polling | Setup polling | Set up polling |
| Creating Content | Go over results, propose angle | Give draft notes / summary ideas, translations would help! |
| Promotion | Blog post / press release | Outreach to any local country outlets |

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## Longer Explanation

In 2013, Dalia was founded on the insight that the future was mobile. Mobile was the most direct way to reach people and learn about how they think and feel.

Dalia's insight is not necessarily cutting edge technology. But it revolutionise how goverments, policy makers, think tanks, and corporations approach engaging with people.

Dalia has built a platform that enables anyone who wants to know what people think to reach them. To do that, Dalia has, over the years, built an end-to-end real-time opinion polling platform. This platform allows:

- researchers with surveys to reach over a billion mobile users
- the creation of customized surveys down to target demographics (country, age group, gender, profession)
- the representation of that data in a dashboard, either template or entirely customized
- the extraction of the RAW data and integration into a company's existing infrastructure via APIs

But technology is agnostic and the platform we have built is also not inherently a good. Its inherent impact is that it makes people more effective at what they want to do -- namely, that researchers have a better way of reaching the types of people they want to reach, to ask the questions they want to ask. The assumption is that with this supercharged tool, people get better data and make more informed decisions.

But more informed decisions for whom and to what end? Yes, it would be good if survey results show that consumers now care about sustainability, and therefore that tips senior management in global consumer brands to create more sustainable products or become more transparent about their supply chain. But that type of impact leaves Dalia dependent on the agenda of clients, the interests of consumers, and the results of the data.

To be sure, data quality is paramount. But what more can we do with this powerful technology to create positive impact?

Dalia's platform can be used to perpetuate the inequalities of the world today, by only providing access to the people who can pay. But we can use this platform into shaping the future we want to live in. We don't need to build anything for this. We just need to use our platform in an intentional way.

------

Dalia's platform is entirely customizable. This means that we can do monolithic surveys and micro surveys.

**Dalia has been doing "Lightning Polls", quick 1-4 question surveys with 500-1000 respondents to get immediate sentiments on issues that matter *now*.**

But Dalia has attracted talented people from all over the world who care about impact. Impact is brought up, kicked around, and scrutinized. If we are people who care, then let's use our platform as a way to care.

**Dalia's platform provides an incredible opportunity for us to ask any question to people around the world, and actually get an answer.** It enables us to learn, to discover, and to uncover knowledge in a way few people have access to -- we get to find out what people think.

So for this, I am proposing: a regular Lightning Poll:

1. Use our product: bi-weekly lightning poll
2. Address systemic inequality
3. Illuminate

We use the platform to find out about a country that one of our team members comes from, beginning with our female team members and in emerging economies. This is a regular exercise that extends to the whole company.

**Using our product**

People who stand by their product use their product. A product's value begins with the people who build it valuing what they help people, and themselves, do.

**Embody the change**

As a company, we can can provide the platform for people who we recognise may not has much privilege or are from under-represented groups. To start, it can be women (gender), from emerging economies (less global information available). The company is addressing systemic issues by actively creating a new system.

**Illuminate**

By starting with less covered countries, we are using the Dalia platform to redistribute knowledge and awareness across the globe.

To begin, we have amongst the women of the company:

- Romania
- Iran
- Bosnia Herzegovina
- Russia
- The Philippines
- South Africa
- Slovakia
- Slovenia
- Bulgaria
- India
- Jordan
- Georgia
- Belarus
- Turkey
- Hong Kong
- Ukraine
- Spain
- Netherlands
- Germany
- Ireland
- United Kingdom
- Canada
- USA

Remaining countries amongst the men:

- Nepal
- Egypt
- Tunisia
- India
- Hungary
- Brazil
- Poland
- Lithuania
- Mexico
- Greece
- Russia
- France
- Ireland
- Italy
- Spain
- Germany
- Australia
- South Africa
- Israel
- Canada
- Austria
- New Zealand
- UK
- USA