To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Five Social Media Must-Haves for Crisis | Social Media Today – "Organizations and businesses that don't plan for crisis will be left behind when the inevitable happens. Thorough crisis plans don't have to be 50 pages long, but you need to have one. Your organization's crisis plan should include a social piece in the communications section. Real-time is the fastest way to join the conversation, provide help and information, and direct the messages. Social helps you be your own media. So, how can social media play a positive role in crisis? Here are five social media must-haves in crisis."
• Online Competitions: Lessons from MIT’s Service Innovation Challenge  – Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – frogloop – "For the last three years we’ve worked at the MIT Public Service Center – in collaboration with the MIT Alumni Association, MIT150, and numerous stakeholders – to translate a campus-based innovation competition into an online platform that engages the worldwide MIT community. We’ve cracked the competition process open, leveraging a combination of workflows and social tools to produce a compelling experience of real participation in key activities. We’d like to share a few of our major aims and reflect a bit on some lessons learned that we hope will guide our approach in the future and prove helpful to others designing competitions, challenges, and prize giveaways online – in particular those focused on social benefit and public service. We are indebted to our partners at Idea Couture for their thoughtful, patient, imaginative, and generous work with us. "
• Azavea – Augmented Reality for Cultural Institutions – Augmented Reality by PhillyHistory.org – What do you do with 93,000+ historical photographs and the power of Augmented Reality on smart phones? Azavea explores this topic in a newly released whitepaper and documents how they built a prototype mobile app (for iPhone and Android) that overlays historical photos on the modern city streets of Philadelphia.
• Making Stories Work for Your Org: What the Data Says | NTEN – "Don't count on a personal story to transform your fundraising appeal. Instead, tell stories that explain your mission and your impact. Recognize that these stories aren't enough to compel someone to give. In the story that gets people to give, the donor — not the organization — is the hero."
• Twin Cities marketers queuing up with QR codes – TwinCities.com – A great example of an interesting way to use QR codes! "Visitors to Chino Latino restaurant in Minneapolis recently found something new sticking out of their drinks. The paper umbrellas were gone, replaced with a diminutive, square-shaped code made up of black and white rectangles. If this had happened two or three years ago, the visitors likely would have been baffled. But now, a rapidly increasing number of them know what to do: Whip out their smart phones, fire up an app that can decipher the code and discover where it leads. "

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Digital Media and Learning Competition: Applications now open! | NetSquared, an initiative of TechSoupGlobal.org – "The 3rd Digital Media and Learning Competition, from the MacArthur Foundation, is now accepting applications. In partnering with the White House, National Lab Day, and videogame makers Sony and EA, the Digital media and Learning Competitions has prizes up to $200,000 and is open to all kinds of innovative projects (including games) that make use of digital media for education and social change. Submissions close January 22, 2010."
• » Your Mobile Giving by State – Wendy Harman at the American Red Cross has posted a map and data about the funds donated via texting "Haiti" to 90999 to support the victims in the Haiti earthquake crisis. It's really interesting as far as mobile fundraising, but also just that the ARC are able to gather, analyze and share data like this in close to real time. Thanks for all that you are doing, ARC!
• 7 Things I learned From #Beth53 Fundraiser and PoST Class – Beth's Blog: How Nonprofit Organizations Can Use Social Media to Power Social Networks for Change – Beth shares some great lessons from the fundraising campaign she recently ran for her birthday. "This post harvests what I learned and what I still don't know about the birthday campaign strategy and measurement as well as guest teaching a graduate school class." My favorite lesson? 5.) Design for People To Self Organize!
• After Copenhagen: Turning Activism Into Impact – Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – frogloop – There's a great guest post up today from Michael Silberman on the Frogloop blog: "Going to the U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen (COP15) was the closest I've come to a good strong punch in the gut — the type that makes you question much of what you once believed to be true. But it was also one of the best wake-up calls I could have asked for.

  …That means setting aside our shiny online tools and tactics long enough to ensure that we're using them to deliver real impact."

• 1 vote can equal $1 million « Nonprofit Communications: Duck Call Blog – "Today is the first day people can vote in the final round of the Chase Community Giving contest on Facebook. Between now and January 22, people who add the application can vote up to five times for five individual charities. Much has been written criticizing the contest and the initial selection of 100 charities who already received $25,000 and are now vying for the grand prize of $1,000,000. But, despite the controversy in the first round of results, I think there are some positive lessons that can be learned for nonprofits of all sizes."

Social Innovation Camp: the story so far.  Started with an idea two years ago that the web is important because it helps people organize for themselves and impacts how we make things work; but in order to make that happen you have to bring people together who are interested in making it real.  We are all about moving ideas into something that might work and do so by running competitions and weekend-long prototyping events.  Think about 5 things: what’s the problem, what technology you’ll use, design sustainability, how will people come to use it and how will you distribute it.  Award a prize to those that show most potential.  Have run 3 competitions so far with over 300 ideas submitted.

Note: the “I” in the following is my capture of Anna speaking.

What We’ve Learnt

1. From cliques to talent scouts

A great idea is nothing unless you have people to get it off the ground, and those people may be anyone with certain attributes:

• people who can bring an insight
• practical optimists, can see things being different in the future (have to go find them)

We need to move away from “social entrepreneurs” and “socail innovation” towards “solve problems” and “make stuff” so that it’s more accessible.  It took us a while to learn this!  The first competition we had a slick website and everything else and had barely any submissions.  So, we went to talk people about it.  We brought people together around the same kind of idea and the buzz in the room was incredible, people realized they didn’t have to just complain about something but about making things the way you want.  So, we learned from that and now are conversation driven.  Our competitions are talent scouted: we go out and talk to as many people as possible, run workshops and trainings and get people to think about what they might solve and then submit.  I think we pay a lot of lip service to “user centered design” and so on, but sometimes we are talking about many different worlds colliding and a number of them are very problem focused and then solution focused groups.  So, when you have top-down definition of what you’re interested in and then bottom up creation it doesn’t work.  Create a “tentacle-based” approach.

2. From paperwork to relationships

That’s a lot of work. Is it worth it to go talk to all of those people and so on?  What we are doing when we talent scout isn’t just about creating a pool of projects but about starting relationships.  Normal application processes are very good for people who are good at writing or following a system.  But, are proposal based approaches good for finding people who are going to start new things?  Instead, you start to build relationships with individuals – find interesting people and working with them in incremental ways and build trust. And then find people to support and fund; particularly important when funding entirely new things.  It’s hard for those people to say what their impact will be when it’s something so new, so it’s hard as a support organization to believe in the project.  But, as a support organization that knows you are an interesting implementer of good stuff, it’s easier to make the decision to support them.  We do this through scouting and in the weekends as they are high pressure and fund and collaborative so you can really, really see how people work.  I think the world works like this anyway, we just don’t admit it.  What we should be doing is appreciating that and design systems that take into consideration the ways humans work.  This is how the investment world works: based on relationships and trust.

3. From advisors to connectors

What’s next?  What do you need other than money?  We asked our prototype projects what else they need. The answer was they need advice.  Organizations that are trying to support people to do new things know this.  What I’m suggesting is 2 things: first, giving all the advice yourself is not efficient or entirely valuable, so you should grow a community around the ideas where they connect; and second, the advice you need as a radically new group/project is very different as there aren’t models or examples, so the only way these projects will work is by changing behavior… How comfortable we are with meeting people offline we only know online, how we share personal data, etc.  These changes will have to happen in order for these projects to work.  Rather than having standard business advice but a place where they can experiment.  The way we move from advisors to connectors is that at the weekends where we get the great ideas, we go out and try to find people who can help them and bring them there.  Building an audience around the 6 ideas for the weekend.  If you come to a weekend, you come out with a training experience.

4. From grants to venturing

How do we change the different ways we distribute money?  Not about finding people to give it to or the decision process, but the different financial instruments we could use.  Early stage ideas need early stage risk capital and there’s a gap in providing that.  Something to show that a really good radical idea has a good chance.  We also have to find new sustainable ways to fund projects. Fundraise, grant, spend – it’s not efficient.  Finally, a lot of new ideas, the newness is the business model.  It needs a different way to be funded.  Need finance that’s responsive to business models that aren’t charities or companies.

What might that look like?

What if we ran a larger SICamp process that formed small teams around packaged ideas and take teams of 2-3 people and choose 10 groups and each a 15,000 stipend wherein they come and work in a shared space for 3 months.  Set targets and help to accelerate project development and build community.  At the end of the 3 months we have a demo day with possible funders and we we take a finders fee and also pay-back for the 15,000 starter grant.  Potentially creating a sustainable way of starting projects and recycling your capital.  It already exists in projects like Y Combinator.  We think it would be interesting to start a Y Combinator for social projects here in the UK.

I don’t think that’s the answer to everything.  You have to design your support process around the people you are working with.  What can we do with groups like Kiva?  What if we used that system to find projects to fund?  Or what about KickStarter’s model with pledging/small contributions/crowdsourcing?  What if we applied that to the NHS?  4ip is already doing some of this stuff, too, and it’s really interesting.

This talk was inspired by lots of conversations with people who are looking for support for an idea AND interesting people and organizations looking for projects to support.  There has to be an opportunity there!

(To dive into the conversations about Causes, visit my earlier post, or posts by Marshall Kirkpatrick, Ivan Boothe, Beth Kanter, and Joe Solomon.)

The most important parts of the conversation around Causes do not actually focus on Causes, specifically. The ideas and issues do focus, though, on the emphasis that nonprofits and individual supporting causes, campaigns and specific groups online have put on free, social media, 3rd party tools.  The Causes event makes many of the inherent risks in such emphasis or dependency on the tools very clear, like:

• No access to data – whether it’s email addresses of supporters, actions taken, or anything else
• Little influence in development – some tools and developers have put the users first in development decisions but most do not, so the features that could help your organization may never be created
• Unbalanced “strategies” – organizations have fallen victim to the “all eggs in the same basket” trap
• Unbalanced “diversity” – by focusing on just one platform, organizations limit the audiences they connect with

And then yesterday, another tool that’s been used by many changemakers and social innovation groups has dropped off: Ideablob:

Goodbye!  Due to the recent chapter 11 bankruptcy filing of our parent corporation, Advanta, we are unfortunately no longer continuing ideablob and bloblive. If you have any questions please contact hello@ideablob.com.

Like with the sudden shut-down of Causes, Ideablob did not alert registered users (as I’m one of them), and there’s nothing in the Twitter stream.  The only thing to come out is the above message that now redirects from any page you try to visit.

The Ideablob closure is different than Causes as the purpose of the platform, the utility and functaionality it offered, the relationship of users to the platform, etcc  And, Causes left MySpace (an application within a platform) to focus on only Facebook (another platform where it was an application within).  Ideablob was a platform aimed at innovators, entrepreneurs, and changemakers where competitions awarded cash awards and provided spaces for people or groups to showcase their ideas and projects.  Their description on the MySpace profile says:

ideablob.com^® is a website for entrepreneurs, small businesses, and idea people to congregate and submit business ideas with the chance of winning $10,000 towards growing their ideas*.

ideablob.com allows users to post business ideas. Whether these ideas are inventions, business concepts, or non-profit / social entrepreneurial, they are all welcome at ideablob.com. It doesn’t take much; no complicated business plans, just 700 characters to describe a compelling business concept… sort of like an elevator pitch.

Blobbers (as we call users of the site) browse, give advice, comment, and vote on each others’ ideas. The person with the most votes at the end of each month wins $10,000*. It’s pretty cool and it’s a fast growing community of really bright entrepreneurs. What’s more is that we have guest advisors, leading industry experts, come on the site and give professional advice to those who are interested.

If this sounds interesting to you, just come by ideablob.com

The message from Ideablob makes it clear that the shut-down has come from the bankruptcy of the parent organization.  But, the “why” is never as important in these conversations as the “what does this mean?”

So, what do you think this means? Have you participated in an Ideablob competition – were you alerted to this change?  How will it effect the work you’ve done so far?  How will it change your use of competition platforms or social media generally?

I would love to hear your ideas!

What’s SXSWi?

SXSW Interactive features five days of compelling presentations from the brightest minds in emerging technology, scores of exciting networking events hosted by industry leaders and an unbeatable line up of special programs showcasing the best new websites, video games and startup ideas the community has to offer.  Learn more at:  http://sxw.com/interactive

NPTech Panels Want Your Votes!

There are many exciting proposals available for your vote.  You can view all of the panels (from all categories) at http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/

I am part of 3 proposals and would love your support if you think any of them are interesting and worthy of some stage time at the 2010 SXSW event!

Can Social Media Change Global Consciousness?

Description: We know that social media has wired the globe for friend lists, business connections, and supporting social causes, but can it do more? Can social media create a permanent shift in global consciousness, one that will change the way we all think and live?

Read more from Mark Lovett (panel moderator) and John Haydon (fellow panelist).

Vote for this panel!

Crowdsourcing for Innovative Social Change

Description: Social media builds buzz and raises money, but what about real, on-the-ground change? The Social Change Challenge will crowdsource innovative ideas from nonprofits to change the world. We’ll share big ideas for using social media for nonprofit program delivery and some good tips for crowdsourcing for social change.

Read more from Beth Kanter (panel moderator).

Vote for this panel!

Competition > Innovation > Change: Examining Competitions For Social Change

Description: Organizations, foundations, even individuals are creating social innovation competitions, hoping to drive social change projects and solutions into the global marketplace.  What are these new competitions about—are they working? How do we—innovators, entrepreneurs—know what’s going to make real-world impact and where do we start? Let’s discuss: join us!

Read more from the 4Change blog.

Vote for this panel!

Beth Kanter has a terrific round up of nonprofit technology panels proposed for SXSW.  Check out the blog post and comments here for all the links you need!

You can see the recap of the chat here.

The main 3 questions for this chat were:

1. How can challenges/competitions be used to discover, support, and accelerate social change projects and solutions?
2. What are the different types of competitions and which work best in driving change?
3. How can challenges support collaboration btw projects?

We are pulling together some of the key takeaways and would love to hear from you if you watched or participated, or even if you didn’t (you can read the transcript from the chat and add your thoughts, too!).

Two key takeaways from Morgan and two from me include:

• the potential for future collaboration with other projects should be put into the judging criteria
• competitions can surface stories and causes that might not otherwise get any attention
• when creating a competition or challenge, it is incredibly important to be clear about the context (who is involved, who is targeted, what the ideas will be directed towards, etc.)
• there is a real interest in creating a compendium of competitions and their characteristics (I’ll be helping us wrangle this one and providing more details and opportunities for the community to start creating the compendium soon!)

Share your takeaways, read the transcript, and more!

Read more about #4Change, the Why, How and Who behind the monthly conversation series.

NetSquared currently has 3 open Challenges, calling for innovators and change makers around the world to submit ideas for Web and mobile-based technologies for social change.  I recently sat down with Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody, and asked what he thought about the impact of the social web on innovation.

Check out his answer (video) and Challenges you can dive into today!

UC Berkeley Human Rights Center Mobile Challenge

The Human Rights Center is sponsoring a challenge to encourage innovations for applying mobile technologies for human rights investigations and advocacy. Through a NetSquared Community vote, 10 finalists will be chosen. All 10 finalists will be invited to present their ideas at an international conference, “The Soul of the New Machine: Human Rights, Technology, and New Media,” at UC Berkeley, May 4 and 5, 2009. A panel of judges, selected by the Human Rights Center, will choose three winners, to be announced at the conference. Winners will receive cash awards of $15,000 (first place), $10,000 (second place), and $5,000 (third place) to implement their ideas.

• Learn more
• Submit your Project
• Visit the Project Gallery

N2Y4 Mobile Challenge

N2Y4’s Mobile Challenge calls for your world-changing ideas of how mobile applications can help citizens, groups and others create a better world for everybody.  NetSquared and our Challenge Sponsors invite submissions of innovations in mobile technologies for use by civil society.  Through a NetSquared Community vote, 14 Featured Projects will be selected to participate in this year’s NetSquared Conference.  Two representatives from each of the 14 Featured Projects will be invited to present their ideas in person at N2Y4, May 26-27, 2009 and compete for cash prizes.

• Learn more
• Submit your Project
• Visit the Project Gallery

Social Actions’ Change the Web

Social Actions’ Change the Web Challenge is about building innovative tools to help people find and share opportunities to take action on the Web sites, blogs, and social networks that we all visit everyday.  We want you to dream up a new tool to help people find and share actions. Any Web enabled device can become a place to connect with actions: your iPhone, news sites and blogs, Facebook & other social networks, or even in your own Web site! We’re excited to see what you come up with!  Did we mention that there’s also $10,000+ in prizes!

• Learn more
• Submit your Project
• Visit the Project Gallery

There’s a lot happening around the world right now with Web and mobile-based technologies and the opportunities for innovators to combine new tools with social benefit are rich.  These three challenges offer three more ways for you to showcase your ideas, find new collaborators, and even have a chance to win money for implementation.

Here’s to seeing you in the Project Gallery!

Going Postal

A tool to help people take control of junk mail: Going Postal aims both to stop junk reaching your letter box, as well as offering companies alternative ways to get their advertising out – which is good news for the trees that are used to produce the 550,000 tonnes of paper wasted on unsolicited mail in the UK each year.

Useful Visitors

What if travelers brought more than cash to the countries they visited? You could harness the skills, talent and knowledge of those visiting other countries – whether they’re on business, visiting relatives or simply tourists. Via the web, universities could find visiting professors, hospitals could find visiting nurses, feeding centres could meet five star chefs and Joe the plumber can fix the drains in an orphanage. It’s a new approach both to international volunteering, as well as tackling the brain drain many countries are suffering as they loose talent and skills to migration.

AccessCity

The rush hour’s bad enough for those who have only a bag and umbrella to carry around. But how do you negotiate a city’s transport system when you’re not able to keep up with the commuter scrum? AccessCity aims to develop a site to enable a user-generated view of London (in the first instance, but with the ability to be rolled out nationally and beyond) from an accessibility perspective: helping those who are less able to get around – due to physical disabilities or impairments, or if they need to take children with them – and highlighting what needs to be improved to make simple journeys less of a hassle.

Visualising Community Need

There’s been increasing emphasis on how you give users themselves greater control over the social care they receive in recent years – it’s a huge social and political issue. Visualising Community Need is a project to help people map their own care requirements and use this information to get care providers to better understand the needs of those they are supposed to be serving – turning the system of social care on its head.

Good Gym

People all over Britain run, jog and lift weights. The Good Gym aims to make it easy for people to channel this energy toward social good. The idea is to get fitness fanatics to incorporate visits to isolated older people or the delivery of useful items to dependent individuals into their exercise routines.

Vegsy

Etsy, but for vegetables. This idea uses an online market place to bring together people who grow food in their home, allotment, small holding or farm with people who want to buy locally produced, natural, wholesome foods – just like Etsy has done with handmade craft goods. So there’s less air miles in our food and we know exactly what we’re eating and where it’s coming from.

But there is even more! The judges couldn’t decide between four more ideas so you can help decide!  The voting ends at midnight Sunday night, so check them out and vote now!

Learn more about Social Innovation Camp and the weekend ‘conference’ on 5 – 7 December here.

What do you think about the ideas selected?  Do you have ways to help?