Social Theorem

Back in January of 1996, Hillary Clinton went on tour to promote her book “it takes a Village, and others lessons children teach us” The book was pivotal in drawing attention to the fact that individuals and groups outside the immediate family unit affect a child’s well being drawing attention to a child’s development needs.

I was recalling this quote as I was putting together text for the i6 challenge.  The i6 challenge is an innovation competition administered by the Economic Development Agency (EDA).  The goal is to fund ideas to drive technology commercialization and entrepreneurship in regions throughout the … Continue Reading

I just finished Jeanette Walls’ period piece Half Broken Horses (BTW I would highly recommend it, she’s a great writer).  In the book, this theme keeps coming up as central to the main characters personality.  I thought of this as I was watching and reading BP’s reaction to the horrible mess unfolding in the Gulf threatening to possible take down the company as well as a lot of shareholder wealth in the UK and throughout the world.  It became clear that when a company does not own their brand within social media channels, anyone can hijack it, especially spoofing it … Continue Reading

I listened to President Obama’s remarks during the press conference and his pledge to fix the situation in the Gulf and hold those that made this mess accountable.  I won’t comment on the administration efforts to this point; however, I will say that I did not hear what I was hoping to which was how are we going to deliver immediate and effective remediation should this happen again (lets hope it never does) and what the government and private industry will do to prevent catastrophic situations in the future.  I’m not talking about suspending permits and drilling but rather how … Continue Reading

So I was delaying this blog post for quite some time, just did not want to jump on the privacy advocate bandwagon so instead I’ll get out my soapbox…

In some ways, I applaud Zuckerberg for coming out and essentially saying Privacy is dead – get over it, however I am, like many, are not in favor of how they are treating the interests of their community.  I agree that if you want true privacy, well then lets face it you just need to get off the grid.  If you join an online community, read the user agreement its pretty telling … Continue Reading

It’s a good time to be in social media, not just because it’s a hot field but also because there are fundamental changes going on in terms of how organizations view innovation and community dynamics.  One of the things I find interesting is in the race to monetize interactions and content, communities are “morphing” from large uber-communities to specialized expert communities.  In the early days of social networks, we had  classmates.com and Friendster, which had a simple mission to connect folks for conversation.  Facebook became the place to not just connect but also place photos, links, … Continue Reading

I just finished an experimental class teaching social media analysis to some very enthusiastic and bright grad students at Carnegie Mellon.  I’m happy to say that they would like to continue the class and even expand it out for next year.  I had some time to reflect back on the class and think about what I learned as the professor…

1 – Just about anything can be socialized in name.  You can place social in front of something like social search, social commerce or you can put 2.0 on the back of anything like Finance 2.0, Health 2.0 but to really … Continue Reading

I’m happy to see the field of social entrepreneurship is growing in popularity and acceptance as a career choice.  Many of these smart, dedicated, and charismatic individuals are increasingly using social media to spread awareness, long tail dynamics to raise funds for causes, and are engaged in good old fashion social activism driving support for needed legislation.

I have to confess I initially thought social entrepreneurship was geared toward Web 2.0 entrepreneurs, not the folks working to affect social change.  Last year, I had an opportunity to meet with David Bornstein the author of “How to Change the World, Social Entrepreneurs … Continue Reading

I have heard these words uttered countless times by groups of folks looking for someone to send a stray ball back into play.  Recently, the outpouring of help to Haiti has got me thinking about how social media is lowering the barriers for providing assistance at a micro level (“a little help”).  It allows everyone to be a part of the solution, no matter the size/type of the contribution – crutches, blood, clothing, food, cash, etc.  Last week, my daughter asked me why people are still going to Haiti.  I gave her a typical canned response of how aid works … Continue Reading