Good friend Rebecca Saltman turned me on to this piece in the Journal of Philanthropy (ironically, a paid subscription site). It looks at how Steve Case leveraged both Parade Magazine and Facebook to build a socially-focused initiative that funds smaller non-profits.
The competitions, financed by the foundation created by Steve Case, founder of AOL, and his wife, Jean, promised $50,000 grand prizes to nonprofit groups with the greatest number of donors to their cause, not the largest amount raised. In all, the Case Foundation handed out $750,000 in awards. Continue reading
Just finished lunch with Dr. Majid Saalan, who is a professor in Computer Science from the University of Baghdad. He got his masters in speech recognition from the University of Baghdad and Ph.D in biometrics from the Iraqi Commission for Computers and Infomatics. He has been teaching at the University since 2000.
After the war started, he moved his family to Amman, Jordan, and continued to teach in Baghdad, because, he said, “the students couldn’t do anything constructive other than go to school.” As a professor, he was held in the highest regard by the community, but as an independent thinker who would not join a militia, he found it increasingly difficult to stay alive. Continue reading
It has taken me the better part of a decade, but I finally think the Economist might understand a thing or two about the business of digital media. Throughout the 90′s and into this century, it seemed they were late to the table, with obvious observations that hit the newsstands six months after they hit the digital zeitgeist. Living outside the echo chamber, they provide good triangulation and outsiders’ detachment, as demonstrated by this week’s piece on the business of social networks.
As fits their milieu, they cover the battle of the titans with some accuracy, but miss the nuance of how social networks create value in a more distributed way.
Shift Happens is a YouTube video highlighting the changes in the world, with a focus on the speed of the impact of globalization and digitization. Shift Happens has been viewed 4.5 million times on YouTube.
Watch Did You Know 2.0 (embedded here), is a refined version with some slightly different facts and emphasis. It’s only got 1.5 million YouTube views. The project was begun right here in Colorado, as part of a review of curriculum for 21st Century students.
There is a big gulf in America, and too few of us appreciate the speed and impact of these trends. The US graduates 1.3 million college students this year, while India graduates 3.1 million, all of whom speak English. China is poised to become the largest English-speaking nation in the world, and if we exported ALL of our jobs to China, they would still have an idle labor force.
If we think that the rules from 10 years ago, 5 years ago, even two years ago fully apply to our world today, then we are going to miss some critical changes that have a much more profound impact than the US election or Wall Street crash. But mainstream media still covers trivial, incremental changes in our culture. Who is telling you about the IT explosion in India? Who is documenting the carbon savings strategies in China? Not the Wall St. Journal or CNN.
Watch the video. Think about how the ‘exponential age’ is going to change your life, your business, your children. And then take two pills and call me on Monday.
It’s off my beat, but we need to keep the pressure on. Truthout is doing a better job covering than I ever will. (edited to add: by the luck of fate, the Economist had a reporter in Lhasa during the riots. that report is here, and is entirely non-partisan, as we expect from them.)
There’s lots you can do, as demonstrated here and here:
I’ve become a fast fan of Pandora, a service that learns about my musical preferences, and plays a stream of music that I can “tune” to my particular tastes.
Their email to me (see right) is a great example of organic (not viral) marketing, as they focus on providing value to me, not leveraging me to reach my network.
So, to demonstrate the value of this approach, I’m now writing to tell you all how cool they actually are, rather than spamming you with something that’s a waste of your time. If you’re a math- or music-geek, do dig into their backend – the Music Genome Project (thanks for another great tip from Jim Ruberto).
I’m left now to wonder which will simply play more music I like — Pandora, or my iPod’s zen-like “shuffle songs”. In either case, the only radio I’m listening to these days is NPR.
Inventing a new market category to go with your new business is exhausting and time consuming. This I have learned from experience. Painful experience.
So, when I sit down to talk through messaging and the slow pace of marketplace adoption with John Corbett of AWhere, he can end up a bit exacerbated, which I understand — it’s tough to be able to see a revolutionary shift incredibly clearly while others nod their head and continue along their previous path. (insert more painful experience here)
McKinsey, along with the rest of the top-dollar business analysts recognize that the fastest way to create business value is the management of information. Visualization of information not only speeds analysis, but also provides comprehension of trends that escapes even the most rabid Excel geeks.
Location provides a meaningful signal amidst the noise of business analysis. Customers (and the rest of us, as well) exist in the context of location — your competitors’ location, proximity to transportation, places where it rains, snows and gets very hot. Do these things affect their purchasing? Only all of the time.
AWhere tunes business analysts (and the rest of us, as well) into the signal of location and how it affects their business. Meanwhile, businesses spend millions of dollars generating new information, without adopting some simple tools (in this case, $250 software) that provides them with a clear multiplier of the value of existing data.
Why is it hard for people to see things in a new way? Continue reading
Yossi Vardi is one of Israel’s most influential tech investors, a role he earned after selling global instant messaging platform ICQ to AOL. Vardi is well known on the elite global conference circuit for his wiry hair, wit and wisdom. He has become a strong proponent of using technology — and the financial dividends it can create — to help solve other social problems, as highlighted in this piece in the Economist (registration required, and well worth it).
Rather than focusing on high-tech, “the time has come to change proportions and invest the government’s R&D budgets into traditional industry to create more jobs,” he says.
Israeli tech business people live in even more rarefied air than those in Silicon Valley, and most remain solely focused on developing more tech, intentionally ignorant of politics and social issues, according to Vardi’s interpretation.
Things are unlikely to change quickly in any case, not least because the high-tech elite is wary of getting involved in social reform other than through philanthropy. Israeli entrepreneurs dislike and avoid politics even more than their Silicon Valley counterparts do. Yet, Mr Vardi believes, they could be missing a chance to set an example for the world. For it is not just Israel’s high-tech industry around Tel Aviv that floats like an island of wealth in a sea of poverty. In places such as Bangalore in India the situation is even worse.
The Omidyar Network (O/Net) was an early phase community collaboration site for progressive global activists, founded when Pierre Omidyar (founder of eBay and leading social venture financier) led the pack and switched his charitable giving from a .org to a .net (and for-profit) to allow the fund to invest in for-profits as well as non-profits, which was a major turning point in the evolution of social entrepreneurism. And I felt at the time that the network had an equally serious role. Continue reading
