Back from a blogging hiatus

First off I must apologise for disappearing over the past week or so. What with starting a new role being spread very thin across a bunch of responsibilities, and watching my cousin lose a struggle with meningitis, I've been very distracted. Keep meaning to write something but external events have got in the way.

All under control now, so I'm back and here we go again :) Only a week and a half to go before Thailand. I've still got to figure out whether I need shots. My passport needs updating and I haven't yet planned what I'm doing in the two weeks around the summit. Brilliant organisation eh?? Help!

Anyway to all of you, I hope all's well wherever you are and life is treating you gently.

To my cousin Arif, thanks for being there when I needed you. It was an honour knowing you and you won't ever be forgotten. Rest in peace.

Arif Tayabali 1946 - 2008

The Big Green Challenge

Bit of a late heads up, but in case you're interested, the Big Green Challenge is a £1 million prize fund designed to encourage and reward people working together to develop and implement new approaches that will lead towards a 60% reduction of CO2 emissions in their community – which can be local, regional or more widely dispersed.

Anyway, a quick note to let you know that the deadline for the Big Green Challenge from NESTA has been extended to 11.59pm on Monday 3 March. That gives everyone an extra three days of thinking time!

You can find out everything you need to know about the Big Green Challenge and start your application at http://www.biggreenchallenge.org.uk/

More info from Joanna Tidball at http://www.joannatidball.com/

New Category - Social Collaboration Sites!

The Urban Survival Project or iVoluntr.org as I see it won't just be a social network, but a space for social collaboration too. Cyber volunteering in sense. An ability to do something useful online with or for other people.

 In light of that I've been looking for websites that have been specifically created to allow people to set up or do socially useful things. Again the idea being to see if they really do what we want to do, and how we're going to learn from them or differentiate.

Anyway, here's my list so far. Thanks to Jamie Thomas from the Red Foundation for highlighting some of the sites below

• Good2Gether
• Horsesmouth
• Junction49
• Support A Crazy Idea
• Unltdworld
• V2V - Global Volunteer Network
• Donorschoose.org
• Celsias

It's very hard to search for sites like these because there's no easy way to categorise or create search terms for them. So, the million dollar question... Do you know of any other useful social websites to help build this list?

Factors in comparing volunteering websites

In case you're wondering why it's taking so long for me to get this volunteering research sorted, here's a quick look at the comparison factors I'm looking at. I've essentially imagined a hypothetical generic social networking site for volunteers and then used the feature set it might contain to create a comparison grid. At the end of it we should be able to see how close existing services come to what we're thinking of. If I can find even one organisation or site that is a high match I'll accept that maybe there isn't really any gap to fill.

 Apart from the generic user experience, complexity and content review I'm looking at 4 specific areas for comparison. These are social networking, cyber-volunteering (ability to do useful things online), impact and technology.

Social Networking:

• Social graph recreation
• Invite friends using email contacts or export from social networks
• Facebook application / synchronisation
• Synchronisation with Other Social Networks
  
• Synchronisation with twitter, tumblr etc

• Aggregate content from other external profiles - plaxo pulse
• Personal profiles
• Skills profiles
• Auto-Create profile from social networks
• Organisation profiles / pages
• Post messages on profile

• Status updates
• Network feeds
• Network friend updates feed / stream
• Opportunity updates feed / stream
• Customise/filter volunteering opportunities
• Track & Manage volunteering opportunities

• Interpersonal communication - email within site, IM within site, message boards
• Post photos, notes, video, presentations, papers, research
• User blogs
• Share with friends
• Wiki based information sharing

Usefulness:

• Cyber Volunteering capability
• Question & Answer capability
• Collaboration capability
• Edit documents/content directly through site
• User credit / reward system
• Create and manage multi-user project pages
• Raise funds for causes

Impact:

• Memorability
• User-centric design
• Organisational Blog
• Tone of copy

Technology

• Faceted and saved search
• Notifications by email and RSS
• Rich Media - Streaming, Videocast, Audiocast
• Customise/filter volunteering opportunities
• Open APIs
• Developer applications
• Compatibility with open standards
• Mobile compatibility

Can you think of anything else a social networking site for volunteers should offer users? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Urban Survival Project on Web TV!

Breaking news! Nope not about Valentine's day, although hope yours went well wherever you are; and yes mine was way nicer than expected :)

Anyway, Smarta have just released a short videocast on their website about the Ogunte Women's Social Leadership Awards, which I went along to last week. What I also should've mentioned in my previous post on it is that I got interviewed on camera for the first time ever while I was there, and thanks to Meriem who did all the questions prep, organising interviewees, and editing etc, I managed to squeeze in a mention about the Urban Survival Project. Ok, have to admit I probably sound embarrassing and very rushed, but well it's all a bit new! Check it out below; about 4 minutes in...

Factors in comparing volunteering websites

In case you're wondering why it's taking so long for me to get this volunteering research sorted, here's a quick look at the comparison factors I'm looking at. I've essentially imagined a hypothetical generic social networking site for volunteers and then used the feature set it might contain to create a comparison grid. At the end of it we should be able to see how close existing services come to what we're thinking of. If I can find even one organisation or site that is a high match I'll accept that maybe there isn't really any gap to fill.

Apart from the generic user experience, complexity and content review I'm looking at 4 specific areas for comparison. These are social networking, cyber-volunteering (ability to do useful things online), impact and technology.

Social Networking:

• Social graph recreation
• Invite friends using email contacts or export from social networks
• Facebook application / synchronisation
• Synchronisation with Other Social Networks
  
• Synchronisation with twitter, tumblr etc

• Aggregate content from other external profiles - plaxo pulse
• Personal profiles
• Skills profiles
• Auto-Create profile from social networks
• Organisation profiles / pages
• Post messages on profile

• Status updates
• Network feeds
• Network friend updates feed / stream
• Opportunity updates feed / stream
• Customise/filter volunteering opportunities
• Track & Manage volunteering opportunities

• Interpersonal communication - email within site, IM within site, message boards
• Post photos, notes, video, presentations, papers, research
• User blogs
• Share with friends
• Wiki based information sharing

Usefulness:

• Cyber Volunteering capability
• Question & Answer capability
• Collaboration capability
• Edit documents/content directly through site
• User credit / reward system
• Create and manage multi-user project pages
• Raise funds for causes

Impact:

• Memorability
• User-centric design
• Organisational Blog
• Tone of copy

Technology

• Faceted and saved search
• Notifications by email and RSS
• Rich Media - Streaming, Videocast, Audiocast
• Customise/filter volunteering opportunities
• Open APIs
• Developer applications
• Compatibility with open standards
• Mobile compatibility

Can you think of anything else a social networking site for volunteers should offer users? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

5 brilliant Google applications you really should be using

I don't know about you, but I'm a big Google fan. In case you hadn't noticed that Google isn't just a search engine any more, here's a heads-up on some of their other applications you really should know about for 5 simple reasons:

1. They are free
2. They are extremely useful
3. They are all very easy to use
4. They are accessible from anywhere over the internet
5. You just need one log-in to access them all

So here are my 5 top Google recommendations

1. Googlemail - Goodbye hotmail. Get a gmail account and all the other google applications are immediately available to you.
2. iGoogle - See everything you do on the web on the same page, including all your google applications, hotmail and facebook. Just click on 'add stuff' and search for the widget.
3. Google Notebook - Does what it says on the tin. Really easy to use and autosaves anything you type on the fly. Great for managing your thoughts, notes, browsing clips, blog posts etc.
4. Google Reader - This is the best RSS reader out there. Find any content you want to subscribe to and it allows you to categorise it, tag it, share it and reuse it.
5. Blogger - If you're thinking of blogging, then Blogger is definitely worth considering simply because of the variety of things you can do with it without any technical knowledge.

If you blog, other applications worth knowing about are Google Adwords, Google Adsense, Google Analytics, and Feedburner.

What's your favourite Google application? Is there another Google App you think should be in my top 5?

What is a Social Entrepreneur?

I think even social entrepreneurs aren't entirely sure whether they're community saviours or business entrepreneurs but here are the standard definitions

• Ashoka: Social entrepreneurs are individuals with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social problems.
• Skoll Foundation: The social entrepreneur aims for value in the form of transformational change that will benefit disadvantaged communities and ultimately society at large.
• Wikipedia: A social entrepreneur is someone who recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to make social change.

Personally I think these are all just exercises in the use of big and fancy words.

I see the social entrepreneur in a more simplistic light. I see it as anyone struggling with the conflict between making a social difference (connotation ethical) and making money from it (connotation unethical). If the money thing isn't a factor then you're essentially just social, and if the social aspect doesn't drive you then you're probably just an entrepeneur.

It's a weird dichotomy that I have to admit to facing myself. I'm not really interested in anything unless it has a positive human impact and the whole business of making and managing money gives me the willies, but at the same time I really don't think I could go back to being paid an average wage again. I wonder if I'll ever resolve this properly or if I'm destined to keep walking this slightly uncomfortable tightrope?

Are you a social entrepreneur? Tell us what you think!

Download the 'Medici Effect' for Free!

The 'Medici Effect' is a book about innovation. The basic premise is that innovation occurs at the intersection of different disciplines, but the book is interesting, useful and has a broad appeal - well if the fact that it has been translated into 17 languages means anything!

Anyway interestingly the author has decided to go 'DRM free' on the book, or to drop the analogy, he's made it available for free download on his website as an experiment to engage audiences and see how it affects sales. What I particularly like is that it doesn't come with any catch. You don't have to fill in any forms or hand over your email address for future marketing. You just have to spot the slightly indistinct free download banner and there you have it. A book you really should buy anyway, now free.

3 Social Enterprises to watch out for

Funnily enough in most conversations at events like last night's Ogunte Women's Leadership Awards, I notice there's stuff I know that could help the people I'm talking to. Conversely I notice that there's stuff I don't know that I suspect they could help me with, but I'm never quite sure how to approach that trade-off. Mostly I just end up offering to help unconditionally. Maybe I'll be lucky and learn something along the way!

Here are my three favourite enterprises from the event in no particular order - both in terms of person and idea, and consequently the ones I'd most like to help if they have use for me and if I can find the time.

Impetus Trust

The Impetus Trust is about 'Venture Philanthropy' and combines funding and expertise to improve the impact that charities are able to make.

BANG Edutainment

BANG is a social enterprise that specialises in training and youth development within the context of music and media, and community radio.

MyBnk

MyBnk is a social enterprise whose aim is to develop young people's financial and enterprise skills by giving them a hands-on experience of organising, running and using a real bank with real money. In terms of innovation, I'd say this is one is furthest out there.

Thoroughly recommend checking them all out. On a final note, just a quick plug for Smarta and Newspepper who covered the event from a news perspective.

Networking at the Ogunte Women's Social Leadership Awards

Oooo doesn't the title make me sound important?! Sadly my 'networking' really consisted of the usual random chats with whoever was nearest, although they were all illuminating in their own way. Meriem pointed the Ogunte Women's Social Leadership Awards event a while back and it seemed interesting so I signed up, went along, and turned out to be virtually the only non-female there - well certainly the only one not connected to a finalist in some way!

Anyway, I'm still not entirely sure what Ogunte does, but it was a nice event and great to see people getting recognition for the difference they make to other people's lives. Ogunte apparently is a social innovation and leadership development organisation focused on women. Unfortunately since 'innovation' is turning into a buzzword that is used in so many woolly contexts, you're no longer quite sure whether to take it seriously or not. Nevertheless Ogunte is about coaching and leadership, which can often be hugely valuable in effecting positive change. The winners consequently won support and mentoring.

3 things I learnt:

1. Successful leaders are those who have a passionate love affair with the endeavour they're leading
   
2. That 'networking' really isn't so bad when the people in question are fundamentally decent sorts - and social entrepreneurs almost by definition, are just that
   
3. You really can't get away from exchanging business cards, so best keep a few on you!

Dummies Guide to Startups: 5 Key Components of Branding

There are basically 5 key areas you need to know about and count for when creating your brand

1. Brand building and re-evaluation: The title is self-explanatory and the process essentially consists of a Situational Report, Positioning Statement, Growth Analysis and an Action Plan
2. Brand tracking: This is about going through a process to understand out what key customers think of your brand
3. Designing Value: What you need to know to ensure that your brand increases the value of your enterprise
4. Messaging: What do you want to say, with what, and to whom
5. E-Marketing: Marketing to your customers/subscribers/members online

We'll take these different aspects apart in more detail as we progress, starting with brand building next week. Meantime if you urgently need more information on this just drop me a line.

Insights into Facebook - FaberNovel Study

Meriem recently forwarded the following slideshow on to me. It is a deep insight study by faberNovel Consulting into the phenomenon that is Facebook. Lots of colour and pretty engaging. If you're interesting in social networking or are working with Facebook at all, this is definitely worth a scan. It was released in September, which probably already makes it mildly out of date given the speed of change online, but nevertheless. Worth a look.

View Upload your own

On the same note, check out the Slideshare website for more interesting presentations on all sorts of things. You can also download the actual pdf file from the site using this SlideShare Link

Big Thumbs Up for Disruptive Social Innovators

Ever heard the saying "A butterfly flaps it's wings in Brazil and there's a tsunami off the coast of Japan."?

Last night's event at The Hub in Islington was great. Disruptive innovation is about creating something that fundamentally shifts the way things are done. Using analogies from Systems Thinking, the whole world is a complex web of interactions that localise around tightly linked processes that are all loosely linked to other tightly linked to other localised processes. Disrupting the norm in one small area then, can have a follow on effect to the way the whole world works. This interesting aspect of Chaos Theory is also known as the Butterfly Effect.

It made me think about the social norms that I am looking to disrupt. By making it easy to volunteer and coming at it from a social networking perspective, essentially I'm looking to disrupt the social apathy of the Facebook generation. No big task then!!

Anyway here's 2 interesting things I learnt for Social Entrepreneurs

1. That it helps to map the entire localised system that your particular idea fits into. This will help you understand the causality of the social changes you are looking to effect
2. That banks are more forgiving than other funders when it comes to risky ideas, as long as you can be clear around how you can make it work

The great thing about this event was that the founders shared part of their toolkit. I found this very useful. Once you've heard someone talk about their enterprise a couple of times, you've really heard most of it, because it's all really the same thing after a while. You pick up a couple of interesting things, but given our busy lives, maybe not enough to justify the time spent. So this sharing of directly useful ways of doing things really made the evening worthwhile. That and I met some cool and interesting people that I hope to catch up with again.

This event will run every first Tuesday of the month. Definitely worth checking out if you're looking at creating a social enterprise.

Disruptive Social Innovators

I mentioned a little while ago that I attended a social meet set up by the School of Everything, and while I was there I met Heleana who invited me to an event being launched tonight. It's called Discruptive Social Innovators, is at The Hub in Islington and starts at 6pm and ends at 8pm. The idea seems to be to bring together disruptive innovators, investors, and thinkers committed to revolutionary social innovation. Hey, like Trump says... Think Big!!

If it takes your fancy, join the Facebook group for more info at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=7105373794. Costs are just £5... for drinks apparently. Can't argue with that :)

Sneak Preview of the USP Logo

First off, major kudos to Elissa Woodbridge for volunteering to help with the design. She's done an amazing job of taking a 4 line email description of our brand idea and turning it into a stunning visual. Here's a sneak preview of the first draft...

These will evolve as we develop the visuals, and any new ideas would us help a lot. So please email us or leave a comment below and tell us what you think...

Thanks Elissa, it's a great effort!

Sneak Preview of the USP Logo

First off, major kudos to Elissa Woodbridge for volunteering to help with the design. She's done an amazing job of taking a 4 line email description of our brand idea and turning it into a stunning visual. Here's a sneak preview of the first draft...

These will evolve as we develop the visuals, and any new ideas would us help a lot. So please email us or leave a comment below and tell us what you think...

Thanks Elissa, it's a great effort!

January News Update

Thailand here I come!

First and most exciting news... I've managed to get the time off work and sorted the tickets for the i-genius World Summit for Social Entrepreneurs! In case you're still thinking about it, tickets to Bangkok are currently about £500. Mine cost £489 from STA travel. It has some cancellation and change flexibility too. Trailfinders were about £30 more expensive on average. I'm flying on Sat 8th and getting back on the Sun 23rd March as planned. The plan is to get to Phuket via beaches and back the same way. I'm dreaming of sunshine already and the more the merrier if you feel like piling along!!

Meeting with the Red Foundation

This week I also met up with Jamie Thomas who set up the Red Foundation, which is a social action development agency that "aims to bring people together to do things that create a better place for us all to live and work in". The reason being that they have a government funded remit to modernise volunteering and are trying to do something very similar to us. They've also bought the i-volunteer.org domain name, which is along the same lines as the one I was looking at, which is iVoluntr.org.

Anyway, we had a very interesting conversation, the upshot of which was that we might look at ways of working together to do this in tandem. The key difference lies in our timeframes and set-up approach. Essentially I'm looking to get this off the ground a lot quicker, and without any dependency on either the non-profit sector or the government. As a first step though, we're looking into sharing research outputs, so more on this later.

Tech genius wanted

I'm also desperately looking for a tech genius type person that wants to experiment with future Open technologies and might be willing to take a risk on a startup. Any ideas?? Please let me know if there's anyone you think might be worth talking to.

A first look at the brand

Finally, and probably most exciting of all, is the news that we have first draft brand images for the Urban Survival Project!! A friend of Mel's, Elissa, has put together some very cool ideas and designs for us to start with. It would be great to get your views and comments on them. However, I really think they deserve their own post, so I'll put them up separately in a few hours!

Meantime here's hoping that Feb turns out to be a great month for all of you.

Dummies Guide to Startups: Brand, Design and Usability

Here's a really good Google presentation on "How To Design For Branding" that I thought was worth sharing as we talk more about creating a brand online.