Happy to team up with Ian Harris and Twilo to talk about do’s and don’ts of setting up internal social networks. Here are five mistakes you should – and can – avoid making.
connect everyone...
This was the year that social entrepreneurship crossed into the IT geek consciousness of South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi), with the advent of Good Capitalist party (info, report). Good Capitalist, attended by nearly 2000 people, by some reports, was created by social media / social entrepreneur crossover star-child Martin Montero, aka the ubiquitous @montero in the #socent world on Twitter. The party was celebrated with gusto by the social entrepreneurship community, heralding their acceptance by “the cool kids.”
Triple Pundit reported on a different angle of this intersection at SXSWi, and called it the “Big Green Disconnect” between tech and sustainability communities, saying “the few green related panels were under attended and often rudimentary,” suggesting that each community is talking a different language. Our friend and advisor Bill Shutkin had a similar, less politic rant over dinner a few weeks back, along the lines of “do we really need another Twitter app while our energy and financial systems are in crisis?.” Both comparisons were predated by Silicon Valley tech guru Tim O’Reilly’s call in 2008 to “work on something that matters,” where he beat a drum of “create more value than you extract.”
So, now the meme has been released, and some cool kids in technology (largely a comfortable-if-not-affluent crowd from a global perspective) think social entrepreneurship is the next big thing. Mostly, this is good. Right? Continue reading
Our great friends, the inspiring change agents at the Unreasonable Institute have been doing some excellent interviews with social entrepreneurs and impact investors on the SoCap blog ever since the event ended last August.
During what any humble, reflexively sarcastic entrepreneur would think of as a week with no other good interview candidates, we got an email from Teju Ravilochan, co-founder of Unreasonable, asking if we’d be game for the experience.
The results turn out pretty well, it seems (you might need to turn the volume up, or else the onboard speakers on this aging computer are loosing their umpf).
Would love your feedback.
With the advent of the new Denver section, word came around (big tip o’ the hat to @BrettGreene) that HuffPo needed bloggers on the local scene. Now, a couple weeks later, I’m a published HuffPo blogger. I’ll be focusing on what I focus on in general — sustainable enterprise, impact investing and transformative IT, with a deeper recognition of all that’s happening in the Front Range of Colorado.
First post is about the GSSE at CSU, an awesome program that I strongly endorse. If you’d be so kind, please head over and write a quick comment, to raise the profile of the sustainable enterprise in Colorado on their radar.
Our friends and collaborators Peter van Geldern and David Marks have re-launched their Shades of Green Network (SGN) this week. SGN is a network of advisors and investors who are focusing on building green businesses in the New York metro area. Their network has professionals of all disciplines (accountants, lawyers, grant writers, marketers and more), and engagement begins with a gap analysis that helps early-stage entrepreneurs figure out their next steps on the path to a sustainable enterprise. Once a business is ready, SGN has an investor network with venture capitalists, angel investors and other forms of private equity. Continue reading
Welcome to our report of what happened at the inaugural Sustainable Business Models Collective meetup in Boulder. Here’s what we set out to do:
PURPOSE
The purpose of this meetup is to provide a place to discuss the specifics of funding, creating and running a sustainable social enterprise. This emerging sector, which spans the for-profit and non-profit worlds, is still taking shape, and there is no silver bullet solution for people who want to create socially- and environmentally-impactful organizations that can thrive for generations. So we need to create the framework in which we operate.
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
Zoo York — home of huge banker bonuses (again, already) and esteem-crushing ad campaigns (not so much, these days) — would appear from a distance to be an unlikely home to an interesting sustainability network. A recent 24-hour layover revealed that the seeds of a green apple are germinating throughout the city. Continue reading
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