Filed under: Inexpensive Ways to Give, Social Change, Technology, Twitter 4 Good | Tags: change, children, community, Earth Day, International Volunteering, service, take action
By Cheryl Mahoney
How much of your time do you spend on the internet? Obviously some–you’re here, after all! Personally, I’m on here eight hours a day for my job, and usually some time in the evening once I’m off of work too. For me, the internet’s where I go when I’m communicating with a friend, looking up a random fact, trying to remember a quote, puzzling over where I’d seen that actor before, looking for movie times, needing directions, checking to see if my library books are overdue, looking at my credit card bill, wanting to feed the hungry with one click…and on and on and on. I think we’re all a bit like that. And mostly, we don’t think about it–I don’t, anyway.
But some people do. The people over at One Web Day definitely do. One Web Day is all about celebrating the openness and interconnectedness created by the internet, and the power of the web to transform the world. An annual event on September 22, they consider themselves the Earth Day for the Internet. Earth Day is all about bringing environmental concerns in front of the world. One Web Day is intended to do the same for the internet. They had events in thirty-four cities across the world last year, and they’re gearing up for this year–less than a month away! The slogan is “One Web. For All” and the goal is to empower everyone to access the internet and to use it freely.
I admit, most of my examples up above of how I use the web are not really going to change the world. Not as individual actions. But it’s the cumulative that counts. It’s the spread of information, and the spread of connections. I can look up a random quote or a fact I’m curious about. Suppose a child in Africa could do the same. One fact won’t change her life, but the ability to access knowledge and information will. It’s about the freedom of information to spread. Twitter became an important spread of information during the aftermath of elections in Iran. Blogging has become an incredible tool for the freedom of communication. Sure, a lot of the internet is frivolous or unimportant, but not all of it–and sometimes the parts that seem frivolous are important after all. Besides, even if only 10% of what happens on the internet actually matters (I’m making this figure up), that’s all right. Because the internet opens up endless possibilities, and 10% of infinity is still infinity.
So if you use the internet (and clearly you do!) and want to celebrate the possibilities, visit One Web Day’s site. You can join their network and look for groups in your city, or read the blog for stories about supporters, and to learn how you can get involved too. If you’d like to help spread the internet and ensure one web for all, come visit UniversalGiving. You can sponsor one month of internet access for a classroom in rural China (just $15!), or help World Computer Exchange enhance internet connections in developing countries, or even volunteer in Ethiopia teaching children to use computers. Imagine the possibilities.
Filed under: Technology | Tags: Alexandra Samuel, Harvard Business blog, Social Media, Social Signal, Technology
by Anis Salvesen
If you go to the Harvard Business blog, you will see a great article by Alexandra Samuel called “Don’t Keep Up With Social Technology”. I encourage you to read the actual blog post, but basically she talks about how keeping up with all of the latest technology in social media is not the answer. She has this great example of going to Ikea with a friend and being reminded by this friend, “there’s no combination of boxes that’s going to turn you into an organized person.”
Below is a comment we posted to Alexandra’s article. We are extremely curious; what are your thoughts? And before I forget, thanks for reading this post. Bolded words allow you to skim.
What a great post. Just this morning I was talking with the founder of SHARED, Inc. about getting a Twitter account. I used to work in the corporate world, and there I never had to think about such choices; there was an entire tech department and a marketing department who stayed on top of the latest technologies for the rest of us. Now that I work at a non-profit (UniversalGiving), it’s much more of an “issue,” if you will.
Non-profits have fewer resources to dedicate to learning all about new technologies and to then actually implement them. Should you have a volunteer update your Twitter account, or should they spend their time keeping up your Facebook Page? Do you want to have your marketing team post to your organization’s blog, or is it better if they try to get your organization featured on a great site like TechCrunch?
The decision-making process is further hindered in smaller non-profits by the fact that the person who ultimately makes these decisions, or at least sets the framework by which to make these decisions, is an already over-worked CEO. This is especially true when the CEO is an entrepreneur. It’s true that these CEO’s have to trust their team, but at the end of the day, it’s their (the CEO’s) organization. It’s their sweat, their dreams that are on the line.
Another thing is that most of these entrepreneurial CEO’s, these social entrepreneurs, are aware of the fact that they have limited resources. They have a perhaps unspoken fear of lagging behind the corporate world. It’s too much of a stretch to say that these CEOs think that if they don’t keep up with the latest technology, people they are trying to help will pay the price. That is to say, that if they fail to move on a hot new trend, X-amount of children they could otherwise have saved will die. As I said, that would be an exaggeration.
But I do think there is the feeling that they somehow owe it to these people in need to keep up on all of the latest trends. Their work is their passion, their life, the embodiment of their values, and any failure to stay at the forefront of technology is a failure on their part to walk the talk.
The idea that quality not quantity is what matters, I think applies here. It’s exactly what you say in your post about “choosing technologies that support the goals and priorities that matter to you.”
Alexandra will be responding to these comments on her Social Signal site
