Check out #SoCapCO on twitter to track the discussion of all things related to social enterprise in Colorado. The hashtag’s origin starts at the SoCap conference, but also implies lots of aspects we like about the social enterprise movement, with the multiple meanings for social capital, and the “co” representing Colorado, collaboration, collective and lots of other things we do together.
When The Wall St. Journal Online covers the growing complementary currency movement in the same week that The Economist talks about triple-bottom-line values encroaching on traditional investing, it appears that maybe, just maybe, the consciousness around money is finally changing.
In the most recent installment, WSJ’s video report covers a wide range of popular currency initiatives, including reputation- and attention-based incentives. Our long-time partners at the Metacurrency Project and The New Currency Frontier blog were featured in the piece, even though their ground-breaking work does not suit a 101 crowd.
As we wrote in an in-depth review of online and social network currencies this summer, there is a fair bit of refinement needed in many of the systems. Continue reading
It’s arrogant to think that anyone can tell the story of Walter Cronkite better than his closest friends, who are now the elder statesmen of the rapidly fading era of solid, professional journalism. Cronkite was a pillar of our democracy in a way that may never be replicated. This is more than just sad — it’s a substantive issue for American democracy. Seeing as the news business has been swallowed nearly whole by the entertainment business, one can only hope that the citizen activism that has been made possible via the internet can replace the Cronkritic impact on our collective consciousness.
His story is being told every 15 minutes right now — JFK and MLK assassinations, man on the moon, and Cronkite’s famous “mired in Vietnam” report. But the episode that best exemplified his impact on our world was the brokered peace talks between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachim Begin. Leveraging the power of his post as the nation’s — and at that moment, the world’s — editor-in-chief, Cronkite put both Sadat and Begin on the spot on national TV, pointedly asking them what was in the way of peace talks, and catalyzing the magical moment in Middle East relations which resulted in a peace agreement between two of the giants of that volatile region. To be certain, much work had been done via political channels, and it’s silly to oversell the point, but without Cronkite’s critical role, we might well have an even more tense environment in “southwest Asia,” as the US Army calls it these days.
Cronkite was a giant, personifying the absolute best not just in journalism, but in US citizenship. The role of the fourth estate is critical to the American democracy, and Cronkite embodied a level of professionalism and concern that has gone unmatched. May Walter Cronkite rest in peace, and inspire some young person to once again take a unique, principled leadership role in responsible journalism.
Two weeks ago, we reported from the front line of the of sustainable business investing world, reviewing how trends in local, slow, and open money were converging with angel- and VC- fueled tech innovation, and how those two communities are not as far apart as each camp might think.
Similarly, concepts around virtual, complementary and community currencies that were once reserved for the then-fringy universe including BALLE and LOHAS, as well as the then-fringy world of hardcore online gamers, are now (finally) being discussed within the world of the disturbingly mainstream Facebook.
Geekdom has reacted somewhat cautiously to the widely leaked rumor and related sightings of Facebook’s toe dip into the complex world of virtual currencies, which is revealed in the connection between Facebook’s credits and internal transactions. Continue reading
In a move that could end up having a massive impact on US entrepreneurism, Kiva.org has introduced their peer-to-peer lending service to the US. Kiva was originally built to alleviate poverty by creating a new capital market for global social entrepreneurs — to the US.
In their report on today’s announcement, TechCrunch reports,
For those of us interested in alternative economics, it was a very interesting week on the Front Range of Colorado. There was significant activity among and between many groups who are innovating better ways to flow capital (financial capital, sure, and also social, human, intellectual and natural capital) through our economy and society.
Slow Money, a movement that evolved from Investor’s Circle, is a new network of investors focused on making long-view investments which accept below-market rates in addition to social and natural captial returns related to localized, organic food systems. Fast Money metaphorically defines the success of Boulder’s TechStars web 2.0 startups, which are moving at speeds reminiscent of Silicon Valley circa 1998. Local money was at the hub of the Business Association for Local Living Economies (BALLE) annual conference. And sustainable money reared its head in the form of a new bank that has been founded from the ground up on sustainable principles.
This project has been a long time in the making. For the 15 months, I’ve been advising and collaborating with the Business Catapult team, who have a unique vision on how to build and support a rich network of entrepreneurial business ecologies.
My passion in this arena is in helping progressive organizations increase their ability to change social and business processes in pursuit a sustainable society. Some people call these folks social entrepreneurs, while others think about triple-bottom-line economics. The next generation of these concepts provide more relevant guidance; check out important work at Blended Value and B Corporation, which each provide frameworks that provide some combination of organizing principles, community and shared values for this new breed of entrepreneur.
This week, we are taking the wraps off a new survey for Business Catapult that applies sustainable business principles to the process of founding and early-stage investing in sustainable companies. Starting this Thursday (May 21) and running for about eight weeks, we have a series of working review sessions with several different groups, including sustainability metrics experts, social entrepreneurs, traditional entrepreneurs, progressive investors, traditional angel investors and others interested in the space.
These sessions will be conducted in small, in-person groups in Boulder and Denver. If you want to get involved, please contact me directly, either via email (address is found on my ‘about‘ page), LinkedIn, or Twitter (@nuance_intel). Do contact me even if you are not living or working in Colorado; many of our advisors live around the world, and we can setup conference calls and other ways to connect.
I wrote this yesterday at the AWhere Blog: Geo-Analytics Transforms CA Politics. It’s a story told in ever-increasing zoom about how the Proposition 8 opponents Google Mapped the pro-Prop8 donors. An interesting and intense demonstration of how location intelligence and mapping creates actionable insight.
Final Screen Shot: Street View, Anyone?
Apologies for the deafening silence over here. Busy on a research project, a web-development project (that’s almost done) and firming up my retainer clients for 2009. Living the “Be The Change” movement of Obama and beyond, and will have a lot to talk about in another few weeks, so expect this space to heat back up.
In the meantime, I am keeping up with my Twittering (tweeting — still mildly repulsed by the whole lexicon in there. i mean “tweeple”? seriously?) and Deliciousing (sadly, it, too, will probably be a word soon enough), so if you want some “in between the lines” hints on things I’m working on, they are two good places to look.
In addition, here are some good blog posts I written elsewhere this month which are more specific to individual projects, but should be interesting to you nonetheless:
AWhere
Business Catapult
More to come, soon. Thanks for reading.
Who reads TIME and Newsweek anymore? Not many people I know — except my mom, who brought about three issues of the latter with her for Thanksgiving. During the perceived junk-out — err, semi-annual research into mainstream media coverage trends — I was pretty surprised to find an article about complementary currencies titled “Small Town Currencies,” in the Crisis Watch section.
Dozens of such systems arose during the Great Depression. In the 1990s, they resurfaced as a way to fight globalization and keep wealth in local hands. Now the idea of homespun cash is back because it keeps people liquid even if they are short on traditional dollars.
The rest of the two-paragraph front-of-the-book micro-mention missed many of the core values and benefits that drive the currency movement, which is to be expected. Imagine m surprise when I read The Transitioner’s tweet that TIME magazine had covered much the same story.
“Alternative Currencies Grow In Popularity” is a better piece of journalism, covering the history and background of the movement, and highlighting the activities of some of the more well-known systems.
Alternative means of trade often surface during tough economic times. “When money gets dried up and there are still needs to be met in society, people come up with creative ways to meet those needs,” says Peter North, a senior lecturer in geography at the University of Liverpool, author of two books on the subject. He refers to the “scrips” issued in the U.S. and Europe during the Great Depression that kept money flowing, and the massive barter exchanges involving millions of people that emerged amidst runaway inflation in Argentina in 2000.
The article does a good job of explaining the 101 of currencies, tax implications and highlights many leaders in the space, including our friends and co-conspirators Jean-Francois Noubel and Bernard Lietaer, two European thought leaders on the issue.
In recent years, the impetus for alternative currencies in established economies has stemmed in part from localization movements. Periodically ditching the dollar (or the pound, or the yen) in favor of homegrown currency doesn’t merely fortify the local economy, it also builds community: people have a stake in their neighbor’s well-being because that neighbor represents both market and supply chain. Some argue that such transactions are more secure than others because knowing the person you’re dealing with (and his family and friends) serves as a kind of social collateral.
It seems that the author has actually begun to understand the deeper impact of currency, which is where we think the general appreciation has lagged.
What’s the nuance?