Reference: Social Media for Business 101

About the Idea, Articles & Chapters, Collaboration Zones, IO Mapping, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, IO Technologies, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Threats, Topics (All Other)

The New York Times November 17, 2010

A Business Creator Sees Big Returns From Social Media

By DARREN DAHL

Asked to name the world’s wealthiest entrepreneurs, few people would think of Eric Lefkofsky, who is 40 and keeps a deliberately low profile in his hometown of Chicago. But Mr. Lefkofsky has an impressive entrepreneurial track record, one that recently led Forbes to estimate his wealth at $750 million.

The first business Mr. Lefkofsky started, StarBelly, made tools for building Web sites; he sold it in 2000 for $240 million. He then started two companies that have since gone public — InnerWorkings, which provides printing capabilities over the Web, and Echo Global Logistics, a transportation and logistics outsourcing business he founded with a law school friend, Brad Keywell. He also founded MediaBank, which helps companies buy advertising. In each case, Mr. Lefkofsky used the power of technology and the Internet to update an industry.

And then came Groupon, the social-coupon Web site that he bankrolled and started in 2008 with Andrew Mason — a venture that has been called the fastest-growing company ever. Groupon offers its followers a deal-of-the-day coupon, sponsored by a local business, that the followers are encouraged to share with their social networks. The local business gets customers, and Groupon takes a share of the coupon proceeds — a business model that has led to talk that Groupon, still privately owned, could be worth as much as $3 billion. More recently, Mr. Lefkofsky and Mr. Keywell started an investment fund with $100 million of their earnings. It’s called Lightbank, and it invests only in early-stage technology companies that are built around social media. The following is a condensed version of a recent conversation with Mr. Lefkofsky.

Read full article at The New York Times…

Continue reading “Reference: Social Media for Business 101”

2010/11/17

Journal: Twitter Money To Open Money

11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Gift Intelligence, Mobile, Real Time

HelpAttack!

by jonl on November 16, 2010

My friend Sarah Vela launched a new company called Help Attack! in August, and it’s proving to be a cool way for nonprofits to raise money, and a clever way for donors to commit money by pledging to give some amount of money for every tweet they post in a month. Sez Sarah, Sez Sarah, “This new way to donate is easy, fun and offers a layer of social responsibility to online activities. We invite all nonprofit organizations seeking new ways to collect funding through year-end campaigns to visit the site, add themselves if they’re not already listed, and share this new way of giving with their supporters.” In addition to the money they’re raising, the nonprofits get more social media visibility via the Twitter connection. Callie Langford, Communications Manager of CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates), says HelpAttack! raised awareness of her organization and provided “a no-fuss way for us to receive additional donations, engage with new and old donors, and share details about our upcoming events.” [Link to HelpAttack!]

Phi Beta Iota: This is interesting in part because it shows the further development of bottom-up fund-raising at a micro-level; and in part because once the platform is well-established, the way is open to adopt Open Money and cut the banks out entirely. Facebook is also on its way to becoming a financial exchange without the built-in legalized organized crime.

2010/11/162013/02/09

Reference: Our Choice–Changing the Game

About the Idea, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Ethics, IO Sense-Making, Officers Call, Policies, Real Time, Threats, Topics (All Other)

Today, with permission, I present Tom Atlee's newest vision, “Are We Ready to Change the Game Yet?,” and at the end, a link to his 2000 audio interview with Jim Rough, pioneer of Citizen Wisdom Councils and author of Society's Breakthrough.

ARE WE READY TO CHANGE THE GAME YET?

by Tom Atlee

Some people say Gandhi was about nonviolence. And he was.

But he is significant for something else that I believe is far more important:

He changed the game.

With no one's permission, he reconfigured the playing field of colonialism to a higher Game in which everything the British did in their smaller, narrower game backfired on them. Prisons, guns, threats and bureaucracies of control not only ceased to work like they used to, but actually generated more power for Gandhi's world-changing Game.

Gandhi's Game involved, in his words, “experiments in Truth” — a search for Truth, a bigger Truth, a common inclusive Truth, a win-win Truth in every situation. The British — and even many of Gandhi's compatriots — were not aligned to that Truth. They wanted victory, control, and righteousness. These things trapped them in their smaller game until, one by one, and sometimes wholesale, Gandhi's commitment to Truth won their hearts and minds — and Shift happened.

Unfortunately he failed to create adequate social institutions that embodied, sustained, and empowered the Search for Truth by the whole of society. He depended on individuals seeing the light and being transformed. The miracle of his work is that so many people did transform — and continue to transform even to this day — inspired by his words, his life, his work. But in the end, what he left was an inspiring possibility, not an India or a world that was united, peaceful, just and sustainable.

Today's world calls us, with increasing intensity, not just to carry on Gandhi's work, but to carry it further. It isn't a matter of doing nonviolence as he and Martin Luther King, Jr., did it. It is a matter of changing the game.

Which brings me to the current state of U.S. politics and governance. These games are desperately in need of changing. Several recent innovations offer us the possibility to actually accomplish that and the timing is ripe.

Continue reading “Reference: Our Choice–Changing the Game”

2010/11/152010/11/15

Reference: Earth System Science for Global Sustainability–Grand Challenges

Analysis, Augmented Reality, Budgets & Funding, Communities of Practice, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Geospatial, History, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), International Aid, IO Sense-Making, Key Players, Maps, Methods & Process, microfinancing, Mobile, Open Government, Policies, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Real Time, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Standards, Strategy, Technologies, Threats, Tools, Waste (materials, food, etc)

Earth Science Main Small — Main Document (24 Page PDF)

The International Council for Science (ICSU) is spearheading a consultative Visioning Process, in cooperation with the International Social Science Council (ISSC), to explore options and propose implementation steps for a holistic strategy on Earth system research. Five Grand Challenges were identified during step 1 of the process. If addressed in the next decade, these Grand Challenges will deliver knowledge to enable sustainable development, poverty eradication, and environmental protection in the face of global change.

The details of the Grand Challenges are contained in the document ‘Earth System Science for Global Sustainability: The Grand Challenges’, representing input from many individuals and institutions.

Earth Science Article Small — Science Article (2 Page PDF)

INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL FOR SCIENCE – PRESS RELEASE

Thursday 11 November 2010

Scientific Grand Challenges identified to address global sustainability

Paris, France—The international scientific community has identified five Grand Challenges that, if addressed in the next decade, will deliver knowledge to enable sustainable development, poverty eradication, and environmental protection in the face of global change. The Grand Challenges for Earth system science, published today, are the result of broad consultation as part of a visioning process spearheaded by the International Council for Science (ICSU) in cooperation with the International Social Science Council (ISSC).

The consultation highlighted the need for research that integrates our understanding of the functioning of the Earth system—and its critical thresholds—with global environmental change and socio-economic development.

The five Grand Challenges are:

Forecasting—Improve the usefulness of forecasts of future environmental conditions and their consequences for people.
Observing—Develop, enhance and integrate the observation systems needed to manage global and regional environmental change.
Confining—Determine how to anticipate, recognize, avoid and manage disruptive global environmental change.
Responding—Determine what institutional, economic and behavioural changes can enable effective steps toward global sustainability.
Innovating—Encourage innovation (coupled with sound mechanisms for evaluation) in developing technological, policy and social responses to achieve global sustainability.

Continue reading “Reference: Earth System Science for Global Sustainability–Grand Challenges”

2010/11/152010/11/15

Journal: The Future of the Internet

03 Economy, Analysis, Audio, Augmented Reality, Collective Intelligence, Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Computer/online security, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), IO Technologies, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Maps, Methods & Process, Mobile, Open Government, Real Time, Standards, Strategy, Technologies, Tools

Tim Wu and the future of the Internet

Tim Wu explains the rise and fall of information monopolies in a conversation with New York Times blogger Nick Bilton. Author of The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires (Borzoi Books), Wu is known for the concept of “net neutrality.” He’s been thinking about this stuff for several years, and has as much clarity as anyone (which is still not much) about the future of the Internet.

I think the natural tendency would be for the system to move toward a monopoly control, but everything that’s natural isn’t necessarily inevitable. For years everyone thought that every republic would eventually turn into a dictatorship. So I think if people want to, we can maintain a greater openness, but it’s unclear if Americans really want that…. The question is whether there is something about the Internet that is fundamentally different, or about these times that is intrinsically more dynamic, that we don’t repeat the past. I know the Internet was designed to resist integration, designed to resist centralized control, and that design defeated firms like AOL and Time Warner. But firms today, like Apple, make it unclear if the Internet is something lasting or just another cycle.

2010/11/122011/10/22

Reference: Changing the Game

About the Idea, Analysis, Augmented Reality, Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Ethics, Geospatial, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), Methods & Process, Mobile, Officers Call, Open Government, Policies, Policy, Real Time, Reform, Threats, Tools

ARE WE READY TO CHANGE THE GAME YET?

by Tom Atlee

Some people say Gandhi was about nonviolence. And he was.

But he is significant for something else that I believe is far more important:

He changed the game.

Continue reading “Reference: Changing the Game”

2010/11/122010/11/12

Reference: How Voters Can UNRIG the Two-Party Shell Game

11 Society, Analysis, Augmented Reality, Blog Wisdom, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), Mobile, Open Government, Real Time, Reform, Strategy

How Voters Can Unrig the 2012 Elections with Transpartisan Voting Blocs and Electoral Coalitions

Voters did not get what they said they wanted from the 2010 elections. In fact, they got the opposite because the two major parties rigged the elections.

The parties have been rigging elections for decades by gerrymandering election districts and passing campaign financing and election laws that prevent third party candidates from beating major party candidates.

These rigged elections give voters no choice but to vote for one of the two major parties. So voters do the only thing they can do, which is to routinely kick out the major party incumbents in the futile hope that the new major party candidates they elect will not flout their will to the same degree. But regardless of which party candidates they vote for, they get roughly the same policies. These typically sacrifice voters' interests to the special interests that fund lawmakers' electoral campaigns.

Unless voters are empowered to put an end to rigged elections before the 2012 elections, using mechanisms like the one proposed below, the middle class and working Americans will be ruined financially by the lawmakers and special interests that are enabling the business and financial sector to take more than their fair share of national income.

Continue reading “Reference: How Voters Can UNRIG the Two-Party Shell Game”