I'm all in favor of the One Laptop Per Child initiative. However, when they join the dead celebrity bandwagon to promote themselves, I can only quiver in disbelief. I can only imagine that John Lennon is turning over in his urn over this ad. Beyond being tasteless, it’s just a very bad job. Bad lip sync and a bad impersonation makes the effort even more disrespectful.

 

Steve Thomas of Oneicity wrote an excellent report on the Twestival event that I helped organize in Seattle. A really great write up and thoughts on keeping the momentum going after the party is over. Below is the comment that I left in response. One thing to think about is how different are charitable and marketing campaigns? I think that both sides can learn much about relationship building and audience engagement. However, marketers are on the losing side of the equation when it comes to building authentic relationships.

This is a great analysis of the Seattle Twestival event from someone who is clearly knowledgeable and passionate about humanitarian causes and charitable giving. It would be the height of Web 2.0 cluelessness and hubris to assume that an event like Twestival can provide all of the answers for Charity 2.0(and I don’t think that’s the case). Twestival needs to look at the traditional world of philanthropy and build upon the tough lessons that have been learned over the last twelve decades of modern charity. I think the most important of those lessons is the need to build strong, authentic relationships between donors and causes. Something that’s tough to do with just three weeks of frenzied effort. I’m not part of the Twestival global management group, but I assume the current vision is to periodically spotlight a different, basic humanitarian need each time. The first events were for a British food pantry called Harvest. This initial global Twestival was for charity:water. I hope that both of those organizations will experience long-term upticks in giving, not just onetime bumps. I also hope that Twestival in the future picks groups that can cope with the additional attention while it’s happening, and continue with their great efforts once the spotlight moves on. Finally, I hope that Twestival looks to experienced folks like you and the community generated by these Twitter-centric, social media events to consider the best ways to turn one-time campaigns into sustainable streams of support. I think efforts like Twestival can be an excellent introduction to charitable giving for people aren’t normally into “causes”, but can we keep them drinking the Kool-Aid once we’ve taken them to the clean water?

Sirius is trying hard to convince me that it still loves me, and wants me back. But, I've been down that road before. I've been reading stories about their possible bankruptcy, probable loss of Howard Stern (I hope he got most of his $100 million up front) and possible acquisition by EchoStar (not a bad choice for a parent company). I'm just not sure that I should rekindle this relationship if they won't make it easy for me to give them my money. I've been a fool for love before (very recently), and I'm not sure that I'm ready give in quite yet.

Frogloop, the nonprofit blog, did an interesting post on the reasons nonprofits should embrace the Web2.0 world. She breaks it down to 5 key points that I think can work in any organization. Whether you produce software, make widgets or feed the poor, web 2.0 (or social media) needs to be woven into your company's fabric.

1. You need to be where your target audiences are. Consider it like an interactive 24-hour news cycle. It’s where people go to gather news, resources and discuss issues. 2. It’s a cheap and easy way to connect with your current supporters and engage new ones. 3. The Web 2.0 world is an active hub filled with influentials. If you engage influentials right, they can help your organization spread your message, introduce new people to your organization and blog about it. Also, major news networks and reporters are using online social networks to get interesting story ideas and generate new sources and leads. 4. Find out what people are saying about your organization. Too often, nonprofits don’t step out into the real world to learn how their supporters and the general public really feel about the organization’s mission and latest initiatives. 5. The Web 2.0 world is not going away anytime soon, so don’t fight it. Join it and take advantage of another avenue to reach your organization’s supporters.

Frogloop also has an interesting Social Network ROI Calculator that's worth checking out.

I was briefly at a meetup this week sponsored by the Seattle PI's Big Blog writer, Mónica Guzmán. It's clear that people are pretty shaken up by the probable closing of the PI by Hearst. Still no clear sense of what will happen next. Will the PI move online, become a weekly (Seattle doesn't really need another weekly) or be shuttered. If I had deep pockets and loads of technology and content resources, I stop the presses and use this as an opportunity to launch the next generation of news. Imagine Amazon buying the PI as its way of making its Kindle 2.0 platform ubiquitous. They could take the reporting and editorial aspects of the paper, add additional content assets (reporters shooting video?) and partner with citizen journalist help make the paper hyper local. Perhaps even personalize the front page based upon your interest. The deep pockets part also comes in handy by offering a subsidy to bring the cost of the next gen Kindle (or similar device if Microsoft bought the PI) down to a price that would be reasonable to most readers. If this worked in Seattle, the experience could be replicated in cities around the world. Ebooks and their ilk have lacked a really compelling use to justify their existence. News delivery might just be the answer. Medill professor Rich Gordon talks even more about this subject, and how Steven Spielberg's Minority Report is spot on when it comes to the future of news. Take a listen to his podcast.

This week I put together a short video for Twestival Seattle in which I ask people in the Seattle area what they would do without clean drinking water. I’ve always liked doing these types of spontaneous interview sessions where you pose a simple premise and ask for a quick response. I shot it with my Sony HDR-HC1 camera in High Definition in Bellevue and Seattle, and it came out pretty good. I was even able to upload it to Youtube in HD, and it looks really sharp. Also, every person I spoke to made interesting comments and was eerily insightful and articulate. I couldn’t have scripted it better. It’s rewarding to know that I can actually create something without the involvement of other people. That is, if you don’t count the people in front of the camera as people.

I haven’t written a post on this blog in quite a while, sorry (said mostly to myself). I was busy sharing my thoughts and ideas with people who were paying me. Sharing with others could have proved risky in potentially giving away my former employer’s, then brewing, special sauce. However, they are now saucing without me, so I’m free to say whatever I want. Yippee! My first topic will be Sirius XM. I was a subscriber of Sirius starting in January, 2006. The combination of a longer commute and Howard Stern’s (don’t judge me) exodus from terrestrial radio convinced me that I should join the satellite revolution. For most of my three year relationship with Sirius, things were fine. I listened in my car. I listened at home. I listened online, and I bought my dad a radio so he could listen to CNN and MSNBC in his car. However, last fall I noticed subtle changes. Nothing big at first, a dropped station here, a new (lamer) station there, it made me worry, but not enough to break things off. Then last November, things changed forever. I received a new ATM card from Bank of America. I’ve never actually chosen to be a BoA customer, but after the merger of BayBank with Bank of Boston and BankBoston with Fleet and Fleet’s absorption into Bank of America, I was, by default, a valued BoA customer. When I received the new card I went online to update my Sirius account. I entered the account number, expiration date and the magic number. the system wouldn’t take it. I tried again with another BoA card from another state, still nothing. I called customer support again and again, no dice. They were unable to process my payments. The best that they could do was to tell me to buy a Sirius gift card. This seemed insane to me but I gave it a shot. I figured I’d give them one chance to get their act together. I eventually tried to update the account in December and again in January and still no luck. At the end of January I gave up and let the account expire. It was a good thing while it lasted. In the end, they didn’t care about me enough to figure out how to take my money, and I didn’t care enough to jump through hoops to give it to them. Like a lot of breakups, it was just a bunch of little things that added up to a bigger thing. In this case Sirius didn’t care enough about me to stay in a committed relationship. It makes me sad, but my parents didn’t raise me to be a doormat. So now I end my Sirius relationship. I was good while it lasted.