Coding for Good: Achieving social change with an app

An app built in one week sent 15,000 emails to lawmakers, helping legalize same-sex marriage in the UK.

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Developers can create incremental social change

Most social change is achieved through small, combined efforts over time, not by a single disruptive genius.

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The political fight for same-sex marriage in the UK

The UK's Same-Sex Marriage Bill faced intense opposition and a critical, high-stakes vote in the unelected House of Lords.

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Building a simple app to lobby politicians

A basic lobbying tool was rapidly built using a hacked-together WordPress, PHP, and MySQL stack on cheap hosting.

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Scaling a viral app under unexpected load

After a tweet from Stephen Fry caused the site to crash, an email queue was implemented to handle the sudden viral traffic.

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An overwhelming victory for the marriage equality bill

The lobbying effort contributed to the bill's overwhelming success in the House of Lords, leading to its passage into law.

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Key factors for the lobbying app's success

The app succeeded due to its simplicity, a compelling David vs Goliath narrative, empowering users, and prioritizing function over perfection.

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A recipe for building an effective activist tool

To create change, identify a problem, craft a personal message, define a simple action, and minimize user effort to maximize participation.

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Technology's dual capacity for good and evil

Despite tech's negative impacts, its capacity for harm implies an equal and powerful potential for good, as seen in social movements and community safety.

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Your power to unite people and create change

The most effective activism brings people together, and developers have the unique ability to build the platforms that unite voices and create impact.