Before Christmas, while working on the Save the Great Bear campaign, I had an idea for a Twitter-powered site that could, if successful, be an effective engine for spreading news and calls to action for social change causes. I talked with sundry people about it, including Rochelle and Geoff (they made Twemes), Joe, Boris, James and so forth. Everybody seemed to think it was a good idea. So I submitted it to this contest on Changemakers.net (please consider rating my idea on the site–no registration required). Even if nothing comes of that (and the odds are against me), I’m hoping to build it.
That’s it in a nutshell. After the jump I’ll excerpt some text from my Changemakers.net submission, which explains and expands in text what the video summarizes. Just to clarify, there’s nothing at 10000Tweets.com–the thing hasn’t been built yet.
I’m on the slow road to wellness (go away, neon phlegm, you’re needed elsewhere!). In the meantime, I wanted to mention a few good-cause projects that friends and colleagues are working on:
Kris has contributed some prints to the Art of Giving art exhibition and silent auction at the Orb gallery. It’s not a fundraising event per se (the event name seems a tad misleading), but 20% of the proceeds go to charity.
Joe has assembled a wiki that is “a collection of case studies/examples of nonprofits & social change makers using popular social networks for social change.” A very useful resource if you’re in that space. The wiki is part of Joe’s preparation for the talk he’s giving in Vancouver tomorrow night.
When I was in Toronto back in, er, September, I had lunch with my friend Sarah. Afterwards, she gave me a tour of the super-cool Centre for Social Innovation in downtown TO. Housed in a gorgeous heritage building, it’s home to seemingly dozens of small non-profits. Clustering them in one locations enables them to enjoy shared resources and economies of scale.
Sarah just blogged about the Centre having a new website (yes, powered by Drupal), created by our friends at Communicopia. It’s a great-looking site, and features plenty of photographs of the space. Here’s the official blurb on the home page:
The Centre for Social Innovation is a dynamic space in downtown Toronto, Canada. Our mission is to spark and support new ideas that are tackling the social, environmental, economic and cultural challenges we face today. We’re creating the spaces that social innovation needs to thrive and we’re contributing a few of our own ideas along the way!
Hmm…this blurb feels a little too written by the marketing committee, but you get the idea. I prefer language that says what it does on the box, so to speak. You have to dig a bit to get at what the Centre–at least what its physical space–is for.
Anyhow, it’s a remarkable place full of remarkable people. On top of all the social change activity, it has this super-cool living wall in the foyer, and one of Toronto’s only green roofs.
I see that one of the Centre’s tenants is Mammalian Diving Reflex, a theatre group doing some really interesting work around the globe. Er, they too could stand to simplify the text on their home page.
Depending on the topic and audience, I sometimes first write my talks as essays. It helps me clarify my ideas, and imagine the talk’s pacing and tone. I subsequently distill the essay down to some bullet points on index cards, and refer to them as needed during the speech.
There’s some video kicking around, and I’ll post that and the slides when it shows up online. I’ve embedded a few photos from the slides into this text where they’re pertinent.
One
A few years ago my grandmother passed away. I recently found this telegram among her possessions. It’s from her uncle to her father. If you can’t read it, it says “Dad died yesterday. Burial Tuesday, two o’clock, Aurora.”
That economy of language. You paid by the word, so condolences could wait until next Tuesday.
This was sent in 1954, and at the time it cost about $2.50 Canadian. That’s about $2.57 in US dollars. Yes, our currency was stronger until about 1960. I don’t know if you’ve looked at exchange rates lately, but we’re coming for you.
In 2007 dollars, $2.50 is worth $19.84 Canadian. Imagine if you had to pay nearly two dollars for every word you wrote in an email. What would spam look like?
Send $ to Nigeria. Thx.
If we think of it in some different ways, $19.84 in Canadian dollars is also…
$18.64 US dollars ¥2,214 Japanese Yen £5.84 in Maltese Lira (I’m living in Malta right now, so I like to convert to the local currency)
Do you hear that sound? That’s half the room hitting up Google Maps to find out where Malta is. It’s here, incidentally:
It also works out to…
L$4,986.62 Linden dollars 249 World of Warcraft Gold
The second number is black market, so rates may not be very stable.
My great-great grandfather dies. My great-grandfather sends a telegram to my great-great uncle. My grandmother keeps the telegram. She dies, and I get it.
It’s enough to make you think about your own mortality. Read more…
