Catapult Design’s co-founder Heather Fleming videotapes a homemade wind turbine, with researcher Jesse Wodin’s help. In the first year of her firm’s operation, she frequently plays the manager, the designer, the grant writer, the graphic designer, the finance manager, and the videographer.
Social innovation. Social entrepreneurship. I had no idea what these terms meant until recently. But apparently, that’s what I do. A few months ago, I co-founded a non-profit, Catapult Design, focusing on design and technology development for developing world markets. I’ve been in this field for a few years, but never in the role I’m presently playing. And while I’m glad to know there’s a definition for my afflictions, here are three things I wish I’d known before I took on this job.
It’s isolating. People with this title are usually doing crazy things — they’re “change agents,” vanguards, people out in left field. This year I was selected as one of 16 Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellows. During a one-week training program, I met 15 other “crazies” pioneering new markets. For me, it was a week of solidarity — a support group I hadn’t realized I lacked, and more importantly, didn’t realize I needed. It was like AA for change agents. With my new peer network, I have others who are experiencing the same things I’m experiencing. During tough times, a resource like this can make all the difference.
90 percent of your job is in effective communication. Drafting a press release, writing that killer grant, delivering an effective presentation, generating images for marketing material, or even responding to emails – suddenly it’s all on the line. People who are passionate about what they do are surprisingly not always the best at communicating their passions. In this biz, you frequently get your one chance to leave an impression on that Foundation, on that donor, or with that client. Accepting that “communication skills” are vital is the first step; taking action to build those skills is the next.
Today marks World AIDS Day, a global day of AIDS action and awareness that was established 20 years ago by the World Health Organization. The disease remains a global pandemic of staggering proportions, despite the great strides in HIV treatment over the past 20 years. Last year, there were 2 million new HIV-related deaths and 2.7 million new HIV infections. Approximately 33 million people worldwide are estimated to be currently living with HIV.
A closer look at these statistics is more worrying still. Roughly two-thirds of the global population of people living with HIV reside in one geographic region of the planet — sub-Saharan Africa. (Out of the 2.7 million new HIV infections in 2007, nearly 2 million of them were in sub-Saharan Africa.) Over 15 percent of adults, age 15-49, in seven southern African countries — Botswana, Swaziland, Zambia, Namibia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Lesotho — are estimated to be currently living with HIV. Of these seven, Swaziland, Botswana, and Lesotho are the hardest-hit of all; approximately 25 percent of adults in these countries are estimated to be infected.
How to help? One such effort that’s currently underway is Project Masiluleke, recently introduced by the Pop!Tech Accelerator. Meaning “wise counsel” or “lend a helping hand” in Zulu, the project is the largest-ever effort to harness mobile phones for delivery of HIV/AIDS and TB information and care in South Africa and beyond, involving many organizations, including iTeach, the Praekelt Foundation, frog design, Nokia Siemens Networks and the National Geographic Society. The ambitious project has several components, including text-message alert systems to remind patients of scheduled clinic visits, virtual call centers, and at-home HIV testing with mobile support. If you’re interested in learning more, watch this Project Masiluleke presentation from Pop!Tech this year (you can also read our rundown of the talk):
It’s hard not to be smitten by someone who weaves giant flowers into her upswept hair, encourages strangers to make music with her and donates the proceeds to the greater good. For all the sleek, hipster coolness of her chosen musical genre, electronica artist Imogen Heap is utterly and charmingly accessible.
At last month’s Pop!Tech conference, Heap treated the audience to two performances: the above version of her song “Hide and Seek,” and a second song she wrote live on stage, built around a snippet of a melody sung to her by an audience member.
Creating a song with the Pop!Tech audience’s participation made a big impression on both the audience and on Heap herself. She talks about that experience and how it’s inspiring her to do more musical improv to help raise money for charity on her video blog.
Last month, I attended Pop!Tech as a fellow. There were fourteen of us who came from all different walks of life, under the banner of “Social Innovation Fellows” – a group of “visionary change agents who are incubating new approaches to the planet’s toughest social and environmental challenges.”
What is a social entrepreneur?
While there, I started thinking about what it really means to be a “social entrepreneur.” After all, I had never thought of this term, and wouldn’t have identified myself with it before this. This is typically defined as an individual who measures success not in profit, but in impact. It can be either a for-profit or a not-for-profit organization.
African entrepreneurs
Jane, a street-side lunch lady in Nairobi. Micro-entrepreneur and small business owner.
Herman Chinery-Hesse, from Ghana, one of the most well-known and successful tech entrepreneurs in Africa.
This “green gym” is one of the few in the world to harness the collective energy of its members to power itself — finally accomplishing what countless treadmill warriors have thought about as they logged their infinite miles to nowhere.
The Green Microgym, located in Portland, Oregon, has four rooms of cardio equipment, a free weight room, and yoga classes. It also has generators powered largely by the sweat of its members. The stationary bikes generate up to 350 watts of continuous power which, when combined with supplemental solar panels, accounts for about 40% of the gym’s total power consumption.
The gym is hoping to increase that number to 100%, a goal that their trying to achieve in part through their “Burn and Earn” program. For each hour a member spends working out on their Team Dynamo, spin bike, or treadmill, the gym gives you a dollar you can use toward fitness-related products. (getting paid to work out — could that be what finally gets me to the gym?)
My daughter Tatiana, 8, is about the same age as Barack Obama’s Sasha and Malia.As a family we reveled in the familiar bits of family life we read about as we rooted for his campaign: playing Uno en famille, piano and gymnastics, experiments in pancakes on weekends.
But I often wondered: why no videogames?Were they off-limits? Seen as too corrupting?
Obama has assembled a blockbuster leadership team, managed the finest presidential election campaign in history and showed himself a visionary in his use of the Internet.
We all want him to be equipped with the best tools in the toolbox as he tackles the world’s toughest problems - and to prepare the next generation to do the same.
So where are the videogames? They can be a big help.
First, let’s be clear. Videogames are as varied as film, if not more so, and violent games represent a small fraction of what’s out there.Games have been demonized in part because they are simply a young medium growing up. Note Voltaire: “The multitude of books is making us ignorant.”
And games do a lot more than entertain us. In fact games have extraordinary potential for learning and civic engagement across age, economic and other differences. A recent Pew Report showed that 97% of all teenagers are playing games, and that there is a noteworthy correlation between players’ civic activities in digital games and their civic engagement in the real world.And last week, a MacArthur-funded study suggested that online participation equips kids with the media literacy they’ll need to be successful adults.
This week’s issue of the esteemed journal Science features a lengthy review of Pop!Tech speaker Pamela Ronald’s recent book Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food. Ronald, chair of the Plant Genomics program at UC Davis, co-authored Tomorrow’s Table with her husband, the organic farmer Raoul Adamchak. Watch this video of Ronald’s talk at Pop!Tech 2008 to learn more about her provocative proposal to combine genetic engineering and organic farming as a means for sustainable food production. Science’s take on the book: “All proponents of organic agriculture, especially the noisier ones such as Prince Charles, should read Tomorrow’s Table. Ronald and Adamchak’s clear, rational approach is refreshing, and the balance they present is sorely needed in our increasingly polarized world.” Check out the full review here.
Now that Barack Obama has appointed YouTube as his “Secretary of Video,” as CNET commented, it raises the question: What does Generation O’s new transparency mean for businesses?
At first glance, it can mean trouble. The airlines British Airways and Virgin Atlantic experienced this firsthand. The Economist reported recently that several flight crew members were fired after making derogatory comments on the airlines’ Facebook forums about safety standards and passengers. The staff gushed about cockroaches on board the planes and shared other juicy details that, if true, were less than flattering for their employers. Public relations experts, such as Aedhmar Hynes from Text 100, were quick to point out in the article that online transparency can only be as radical as its regulation is regimented, and that employee empowerment needs to go hand in hand with employee education.
Yet Hymes’ recommendation sounds like radical transparency that is not quite so radical. Moderated radical transparency sounds as oxymoronic as, say, risk-averse hedge funds. Does this episode mark the beginning of the end of radical transparency? It’s all a matter of managing expectations. For starters, it’s worth acknowledging that radical transparency can have radical implications. In fact, collateral damage should almost always be assumed; it is part of the game. If you’re not willing to take that risk, don’t take it! But note that in most cases — unless you’re a military defense contractor, the CIA, or another organization that needs to respect strict legal requirements — your customers may then assume you have something to hide.
Airlines and other travel industry companies are especially vulnerable when it comes to bad PR because the perception of their service is so critical. Customer expectations are high, and every little interaction — and there are hundreds of thousands of these little interactions every day — is closely scrutinized. See Untied, the customer forum for rants about United. Airlines are also impacted by variables that are often beyond their control, at least partly. Remember JetBlue’s winter storm fiasco in 2007? The brouhaha around BA’s and Virgin Atlantic’s Facebook woes does not make for a case against radical transparency; it instead highlights an inconvenient truth. Airlines, as well as the majority of service brands, are radically transparent by the very nature of their business.
I’m dazzled by the website We Feel Fine, but a bit flummoxed at how best to describe it. The site states that it’s “an exploration of human emotion on a global scale,” but that doesn’t quite describe the uniqueness of the content, and the addictive nature of the interface.
Created by Brooklyn-based artist Jonathan Harris — who spoke at Pop!Tech in 2007 — and Stanford computational math professor and former Google employee Sep Kamvar, it’s a bit like a more interactive version of PostSecret.
Here’s more from their site:
Every few minutes, the system searches the world’s newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases “I feel” and “I am feeling.” When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the “feeling” expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.)
Because blogs are structured in largely standard ways, the age, gender, and geographical location of the author can often be extracted and saved along with the sentence, as can the local weather conditions at the time the sentence was written. The result is a database of several million human feelings, increasing by 15,000 - 20,000 new feelings per day.
The site then takes this data, separates it into six “movements,” and launches an applet that allows you to sort, display and play with the information. “Madness,” for instance, lets you click on colored dots that burst open to reveal someone’s thoughts (and sometimes an image); “Murmurs” allow the stated feelings to float up the screen as if in a dream; “Montage” contains feelings that have correlating images, which visitors can then sort to curate and share their own galleries. I could easily spend hours on the site, and I’m sure fellow data/design junkies will agree.
“We cannot meet 21st-century challenges with a 20th-century bureaucracy,” said Barack Obama in his speech in Denver to accept the Democratic nomination. Based on his campaign and his policies, Obama seems well in tune with new models with which to face our current challenges.
Peter Leyden, director of the New Politics Institute, is one of several commentators who have argued that Obama’s campaign represents a deep political paradigm shift. Beyond the nature of the campaign, Leyden views Obama’s election as a catalyzing force for “an explosive period of political and social innovation,” having the ability to mobilize new tools to take on 21st century challenges. Here’s Leyden giving a prescient analysis of the Obama campaign:
On the day after Election Day, I happened to finish reading a book called Leadership and the New Science, written in the early 1990s by Margaret Wheatley. In the book, she discusses how ideas from modern science — particularly quantum physics, molecular biology, and chaos theory — can offer us new models of how to organize and lead human endeavor.
The timing was such that I couldn’t help but apply her line of thinking to a recent shift in leadership, and the need for significant change in how our organizations operate.
What do Napster, a Josh Groban charity fansite, and online tech support forums have in common? A lot, according to Clay Shirky. At Pop!Tech this year, he spoke of how people get motivated to give large amounts of their time and expertise for free on the Web. Shirky is the author of the recent book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, part of a growing class of books — from Yochai Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks to James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds — that examine the power of groups.
In Shirky’s talk, he illustrated some examples of online generosity, such as cell phone users who donate their time to troubleshoot others’ phone problems on an obscure discussion board. He then offered some pointers for designing for generosity on the Web. There’s no exact recipe, Shirky says, but there are some basic guidelines that he has observed over the years.
The first rule is to design for intrinsic motivation. “Design an environment where people can feel good at what they’re doing,” he says. If you design an environment where they can be appreciated, they will flock to your venture. He is quick to distinguish between the dual motivators of love and fame. “Being appreciated by a small number of people who know you well is a different kind of emotion than being appreciated by a large group of people who don’t know you well,” Shirky says. “Everyone who says ‘Come here and participate and you’ll get famous’ may think they’re appealing to intrinsic motivations, but they actually aren’t.”
The second guideline he offers is to make a system that encourages autonomy. The third is to build a system that encourages openness. “Everyone understands that closing down a system, locking it down…will kill this kind of generosity,” he says. But what’s less well-understood, he argues, is the importance of making a system that has some basic constraints, too. There need to be some guidelines in place to ensure that a website doesn’t get taken over by trolls, for example. “Designing systems that have the right mix of freedom and constraints — very often constraints enforced on the users by one another — is really the art.” Wikipedia is one sterling example of this; it’s an encyclopedia that anyone can edit, but still has basic guidelines to abide by.
Finally, Shirky says that we should not treat users as simply idle generators of content, arguing that it’s important to view an online audience “not just as an aggregated bag of individual motivations, but thinking of us as participants in social systems,” emphasizing that these systems have their own unique and important logic that’s greater than the sum of its users. “Once you switch to that view of the world,” he says, “I think really incredible things can start happening.”
His presentation shares key themes with his upcoming book Outliers: The Story of Success, which will be released early next week. Gladwell examines why some people succeed and seem to reach their full potential, while so many others are mired in mediocrity.
Are intellect, athletic ability, and math aptitude products of nature or nurture? Watch this Pop!Cast to find out what one forward-thinking theorist has to say.
Check out this terrific little machinima music video for “I’m a Dragon,” by friend-of-Pop!Tech and beloved 2006 performer Ethan Lipton. (You can hear several of Ethan’s songs on his Myspace page.) Ethan’s quirky, sardonic and often hilarious songs each inhabit their own little universe, with twists and turns all their own. “I’m a Dragon” is a perfect example; it turns out this alpha lizard just wants to have coffee with you.
Yet Obama’s victory is not only a victory through marketing; it is also a victory for marketing, and for the profession as a whole. It not only restored America’s political capital, but also America’s reputation as the spiritual home of marketing. It proved all those wrong who asserted the end of American brands and branding in general, and it has given more support to marketers who passionately believe that smart marketing can indeed change the world. And so it goes that I was not only a happy American last week, but also a happy marketer.
Every history of marketing must also be a history of America –- see the TV series Mad Men –- and one might even posit that America’s history is a history of marketing. Seth Godin describes it this way: “The lesson that society should take away about all marketing is a simple one. When you buy a product, you’re also buying the marketing. Buy something from a phone telemarketer, you get more phone telemarketers, guaranteed. Buy a gas guzzler and they’ll build more. Marketers are simple people… they make what sells. Our culture has purchased (and voted) itself into the place we are today.” Arthur Miller put this more optimistically when he said, “America’s biggest asset is its promise.” The same can be said about marketing.
“Change we can believe in” is the motto of each and every transaction between a brand and its consumers
The Obama campaign leveraged its promise with maximum effect: “Change we can believe in” is the motto of each and every transaction between a brand and its consumers. Buying or buying in always implies the expectation of a positive change — a change in someone’s well-being, household, and financial situation or at any other levels of Maslow’s pyramid. But with “change” as the ultimate promise and “hope” as the ultimate motivation, the Obama campaign didn’t just generate leads; it created believers. The seven million names on its lists (email addresses, mobile phone numbers, Facebook and MySpace pages) represent a staggering 11 percent of the approximately 64 million votes the President-elect received. The loyalty of these supporters is of long-term value. Tomi T. Ahonen writes: “The Obama presidency can continue to engage with this active part of his core supporters, return to them at the re-election bid, and even use this support base to help in the elections of his successor in 2016 (assuming Obama is re-elected in 2012).” And in fact, Obama and team are not wasting any time and launched a new site, change.gov, right after the election to keep in touch with existing and new supporters during the transition.
What advice do you have for the incoming U.S. president? Pop!Tech recently teamed up with Reuters as part of its effort to compile thoughts from people worldwide. Readers from Sydney to Baghdad have chimed in with their video “postcards,” delivered via Youtube. The broadcasts thus far have been intriguing, to say the least; pictured above is the thought-provoking postcard from Nairobi. A reader from Beijing recommends that Obama should work to increase understanding about Chinese culture and issues among the American public. A denizen of Moscow hopes for more friendly relations between the U.S. and Russia. A British citizen offers his support, with the words, “Good luck, Mr. Obama. It’s a tough job ahead but the British people are behind you.” All in all, the messages reflect hopes for a more peaceful future. Click here to see the postcards. You can also submit your own.
You’ve probably seen the picture of Oprah Winfrey, overcome with emotion at Barack Obama’s acceptance speech, leaning on a person unknown to her whom she referred to later only as “Mr. Man.”
It turns out that Oprah’s pillar of support was none other than Sam Perry, the Obama campaign’s communications director in Silicon Valley and frequent Pop!Techer. Perry couldn’t join us in Camden this year because he was busy fundraising and helping out with the campaign.
From the Chicago Sun-Times, who originally identified Mr. Man:
Perry is apparently an Obama volunteer, listed as the communications director for Silicon Valley for Obama. Giselle Schmitz, regional field director for the Obama campaign, described Perry as “a great guy” and “tremendous asset to the organization. He’s a great, great supporter,” she said. “He did a ton of work on the campaign.”
Oprah will be interviewing Perry on her show today. I’m interested in hearing how he managed to look so serene while OPRAH WINFREY sobbed on his shoulder. I guess collective joy trumps celebrity.
You can watch a short video of Perry being interviewed at last year’s Pop!Tech, talking about transcendentalism, Thoreau, and taking action in the world. Looks like Oprah unknowingly chose someone with very broad shoulders indeed.
A robotic plant developed by Chonnam National University /Yonhap, photo from: Chosun Ilbo
I have a new addition to my ever-growing list of favorite robots, including those that play the violin, teach science and comfort the elderly — a robotic plant. Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper recently reported that the robot research laboratory at Chonnam National University developed a robotic plant that has humidifying, oxygen-producing, aroma-emitting, and kinetic functions. As someone who has been directly responsible for the slow (albeit involuntary) death of scores of houseplants over the years, this is music to my ears.
In fact, that’s part of the point. In addition to several real-plant characteristics (such as emitting oxygen, moisture and aroma), the four-foot-tall robotic plant also responds to external stimuli including people, music and light. Users could build a “robot garden” of several robots embedded with a ubiquitous networking system or use them for indoor interior decoration.
Finally, no more composting, weeding or watering. Come springtime, stop by my robot garden and smell the circuitry.
John Legend, musician, humanitarian and member of the Pop!Tech board of directors, recently released a new album, Evolver. The album, his third studio release, features guest vocals from Kanye West, Brandy and Andre 3000, and was produced by will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas.
Legend’s producer will.i.am is also the brains behind the “Yes We Can” video project, which set a Barack Obama speech from the 2008 primaries to music. This moving video quickly made its way around the Internet and has now been viewed over 12 million times. Legend is one of the many musicians who sang on this clip, spreading Obama’s message of hope and optimism for the future of the United States.
I recently saw Legend on the Bill Maher show, where he was on a panel talking politics. He closed the show with a performance of a song from Evolver called “If You Are Out There,” a song with lyrics that seem especially apt in light of yesterday’s election results:
If you hear this message, wherever you stand
I’m calling every woman, calling every man
We’re the generation
We can’t afford to wait
The future started yesterday and we’re already late
Legend’s tour to support his new album begins November 19th in Minneapolis, MN. You can catch Barack Obama worldwide for the next four to eight years. ☺
Regardless of where you sit on the political spectrum, you’d have a hard time arguing the counterpoint to this assertion: America has never been more politically and culturally divided. Bill Bishop, author of “The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-minded America is Tearing Us Apart,” presented this argument at Pop!Tech last week — illustrating how the divide is growing and what it means for the US.
As part of his talk, Bishop presents photos of neighborhoods from around the country that he says reveal the political leanings of the area: peace signs made of branches and funky yard art mean you’re probably in a Democratic neighborhood; well-manicured lawns and big flags indicate that your likely among Republicans. He also talks about differing education levels, economic situations and tech savvy reflecting and impacting on one’s political affiliation.
In a country that prides itself on diversity, it seems we as Americans — collectively — are increasingly uncomfortable living near people who don’t think like we do. Let’s hope the next President can help us better understand each other, no matter where and how we live.
Best of luck to the candidates today, and everyone, please make time to vote! The world may well be a better place for it.
Also, The New York Times‘ website has a great interactive infographic reflecting voters’ states of mind on this historic Election Day.
Matt Mason, journalist and author, is also one of the modern world’s most infamous pirates. In his recent presentation (video above) from this year’s Pop!Tech, he talks about seven things we can learn from pirates.
Although Mason began his life in piracy as a radio DJ, he now sees piracy and its related opportunities as having a broader reach — extending into television, film, even the pharmaceutical industry. Calling pirates innovators, he touches on topics from the impetus for iTunes to the art of storytelling in video games.
Mason is encouraged by the amount of content being generated by users of media, and how it has allowed everyday people to turn business and narrative models upside down as they create what he calls “networked storytelling.” So download this video, remix it, upload it to YouTube or Vimeo and send the link on to your friends. Matt will be proud.
