Starting at HopeLab

 

Over the last month my life has gone from ambling along to whizzing by, a wonderful blur of new thing: people, work, projects. During this time I have however found myself struggling to carve out time to write and so a catch-up is in order.

Two weeks ago I started work at HopeLab as Manager of Communications and Emerging Media, a nonprofit which harnesses the power and appeal of technology to improve the health and quality of life of young people. This also ensures that K and I will be staying in San Francisco for a bit longer, through 2011/12. I couldn't be more excited by the organization and position.

HopeLab had me from hello really. Reading the very first sentence of the position description got my mind buzzing and I knew I had found something I was interested in. It said "When you’re a small nonprofit like HopeLab, impact is sometimes measured by what you’re doing to promote the greater good, not just the number of customers you reach through products and programs". It went on to read “The insights we share about our work – lessons learned, risks taken that paid off (and the one’s that didn’t) – are valuable measures of impact as well.”

In other words, HopeLab’s purpose in using social media goes well beyond transactions, and unlike many nonprofits see it as more than a fundraising medium. This is really important to me. I believe social media has given us an extraordinary set of new tools which give rise to exciting new possibilities for community building, cultural formation, knowledge-sharing and storytelling. Doing these things well also creates great opportunities for organizations to build a supporter base which is prepared to help fund projects.

But if fundraising is the primary focus I believe many of the other opportunities can be lost or neglected. And as a communicator it’s also less satisfying. I’m driven to share stories that matter and create relationships that are real and two-way. This requires a focus not just on what your online supporters can do for you but what you can do for them. I find this broader view of impact, one focused on the human connections, transparency and the greater good, both exciting and inspiring. Creating this impact, sharing these insights, listening and learning as well as talking, is the kind of work I want to do. This is the work I am excited to take up at HopeLab: informing, inspiring and involving a diverse community of stakeholders in designing technologies that improve the health and quality of life of young people and workplaces that support human beings.

HopeLab have an incredible intentionality about the work, mission and organizational culture which I have never experienced before. And they have made me feel more welcome than any previous workplace. I’ll be working on a number of exciting campaigns this year including the launch of Zamzee and the Joy Campaign. I think this is going to be a very happy and productive home for me and I’m thrilled to be here.

For a great overview of HopeLab’s work and approach check out this talk our CEO Pat and my boss Richard gave at the Wisdom2.0 Summit recently.

I am also, with their blessing and support, still working on StartSomeGood, a new crowdfunding platform for social good. We actually launched yesterday, which naturally I’m psyched about but will commemorate with a proper stand-alone blog post, coming next.

I’ve also been maintaining two new shorter-form blogs, one of them shared with K and devoted to San Francisco street art. More on that soon also.

Over and out, for now.

Green Bay’s Superbowl Victory: A Win for "Socialism"

10 different teams have represented the NFC in the Superbowl over the last ten years. It has been 7 years since a team repeated as Superbowl champion. This competitive parity is loved by fans and the NFL has been prospering as a result, becoming America’s undisputed number 1 sport. This most recent Superbowl became the most-watched show in US television history, beating out last year’s Superbowl to set a new record of 111 million viewers.

Just like societies, the outcome you get in sports league is a result of the rules you put in place. You can design around the principal of equality, trying to give everyone an equal chance at success, or you can allow the advantages of geography and history to predominate.

Of all the professional sporting leagues in America the NFL has the most progressive structure, underpinned by a socialist split of TV revenue on an equal basis between all 32 teams regardless of the size of their local market. No one exemplifies the possibilities of this structure more than the Green Bay Packers.

The town of Green Bay, Wisconsin has a population of just over 102,000, or about 3,000 fewer than watched the Superbowl live at Cowboys Stadium on Sunday. It is amazing that it can sustain a professional team at all, let alone a champion. But with an equal split of the NFL’s billion-dollar TV deal and a salary cap which restricts all franchises to the same rough salary budget it is possible, and one of football’s original and most storied teams has continued to thrive into the present.

And it’s not just the Packers. The Pittsburgh Steelers may have been the losers of this past Superbowl but have won more Superbowls overall than any other team. Pittsburgh may be much bigger than Green Bay but is a very modest-sized city by sporting standards with a population of 311,000. Compare their success to their baseball brethren, the Pittsburgh Pirates.

The Pittsburgh Pirates last won a World Series in 1979. Unlike the NFL baseball is a world most Republicans would approve of. Teams in bigger markets reap disproportionately (or proportionately, depending on your viewpoint) the TV revenue associated with the sport, and are allowed to spend whatever they choose in the pursuit of success. This allows the New York Yankee’s to outspend the Pittsburgh Pirates by 5-to-1, over $200 million to about $40 million in 2010.

This does not necessarily condemn the smaller-market teams to perpetual disappointment – the San Francisco Giants won their first pennant in 2010 for instance, but after 54 years of trying. But almost everything has to go right for a small-market team to win while the powerhouses of New York, Philadelphia and Boston re-load year-after-year, expecting to win it all every time.

Many will argue ideologically that this is all well and good. That as in other sectors sports businesses should do what they must to maximize profits, that the Yankees should raise the revenue being in New York affords them and spend as much of it as they choose, overpaying for pitching as often as they like. But the end result is a less-valuable product than that created by the socialistic structure of Football. And this isn’t my opinion, this is dollars-and-sense and TV viewership.

Just as extreme inequality in a country eventually undermines the trust necessary to make capitalism function so too does extreme inequality in a sporting league eventually undermine the competition necessary to make the sport compelling.

And if all this wasn’t enough Green Bay’s actual ownership structure is more akin to Australian Rules Football teams than the businesses that surround them in the sporting landscape. They are in fact the only non-profit, community-owned major league professional sports team in the United States, which is what has allowed them to remain in Green Bay when so many other teams have been bought and moved.

So according to many on the right of American politics this makes not only America’s favorite sport but its current champion un-American. Awkward.

Got an Idea to Change the World? The Time is Now!

It’s amazing to me how different starting a social change initiative is now to what I went through starting Vibewire ten years ago. There now exists the most incredible infrastructure for anyone with an idea to communicate it and find others who share your interests, to build a team of contributors from anywhere on earth and inspire people with your vision and story. It's so easy to share your voice through blogs and microblogs. If writing is not your thing video is cheaper and more accessible than ever. Social networks make it so much easier to maintain and engage with your friends, contacts and acquaintances, to share your new idea and seek feedback and support. A growing diversity of options allows you to fundraise around your idea in a variety of ways: not only those options which have traditionally existed for registered charities but various online competitions and new crowdfunding options for all sorts of different projects.

If you’re a social entrepreneur StartSomeGood , of which I am a co-founder, exists to help you turn your ideas into action and impact. If you have a social change idea you’re ready to start working on, or you’ve done a pilot you and want to expand, or have a great idea for a new product or service, then we want to hear from you! StartSomeGood is now accepting applications to be featured on our platform when it goes live in late February.

StartSomeGood is a Kickstarter-like crowdfunding platform for social good projects. Campaigns can be run by pro-profit, nonprofit, associations and unincorporated groups. In other word, your legal status doesn’t matter; your vision and drive does.

To qualify to be featured on StartSomeGood your initiative must:

•    be social-impact focused;

•    be creating social impact through your actual operations (ie. We want to support implementers, not simply fundraising programs passing funds on);

•    have a specific project which will be funded by your StartSomeGood campaign (launching a business/organization counts as a project);

•    have a compelling pitch, watchable-video and decent marketing plan.

You can apply now at www.StartSomeGood.com/apply. StartSomeGood.com will go live before the end of the month and we would love to have you be part of it!

The world is full of entrenched problems that need new thinking, of causes that need new champions. Creating the change we need will take all of us, contributing in myriad ways. Some as the entrepreneurs; some as supporters and advocates and storytellers. There has never been a time with more ways to make a difference than the moment we live in. There has never been a better time to tell your story, share your idea and start some good.

What is the future you wish to create?

Customer service or customer service theater?

Yesterday afternoon I listened as K exhibited patience and tact beyond what I would have been able to muster while dealing with a customer service nightmare with Blue Shield of California, her health insurance agency. She has probably spent an hour+ on the phone with them three times in the past week, trying to get what seems like a simple issue resolved.

The problem seems to stem from the fact that when she originally signed up in mid-November she wanted her insurance to start December 1, as she had other coverage until then. When her card was initially issued it indicated a start date of mid-November. She called up to request that this be changed to December 1. Not a problem the guy said and sure enough, a few days later, a new card arrived with a December 1 coverage start date.

Now Blue Shield is insisting that her coverage actually started in mid-November, and that additional funds are therefore owed. The start date can't now be changed because a change needs to be requested within 30 days. When K explained (over and over again) that she did request that change well within 30 day deadline multiple customer service reps have just robtically repeated that their computer doesn't show this. What their computer does show is that a card was re-issued, a card that gives a new start date of December 1. They "don't know" why this was sent; the computer doesn't tell them. Might it be because K had requested it, just maybe? Sure, that might be the case, but without a record in the computer there's nothing they can do. And this isn't just talk, the customer service staff literally are not empowered to actually solve problems. Their job is entirely to deflect blame and get you off the phone.

At the end of the call the Blue Shield woman asked "is there anything else I can do to help?" and K replied "I just want to feel that I've been heard and I don't feel that." Long silence. K: "Hello?" Blue Shield Woman: "Sorry, what do you want? My mind went blank for a minute there." She literally couldn't retain focus to listen to the response to the question she asked! And precisely what that response asked for was being heard. Oh irony.

This all got me thinking: surely any service that involves this type of customer interaction is ready to be dominated by a company that empowers its staff to treat people like humans, like the valued customers they are, and actually solve their problems? Just as Zappos.com was seemingly just selling shoes but was really selling itself based on superior customer service, in any sector with relatively interchangeable products companies win with service. And, honestly, it's not so hard. Zappos allowed their people to act like real people, not script-reading automatons, and gave them the tools and permission to actually solve problems. Not only is this much more enjoyable for the customer it is also much more satisfying for the staff.

We should stop being so impressed with companies that exhibit these characteristics in the public domain such as social media but not in the private and more regular phone interactions. Comcast comes to mind. They are regularly cited for their great Twitter-enabled customer service through their @comcastcares, but have you dealt with their call center recently? It's the typical frustrating and dehumanizing experience. What does it mean when a company makes a show of great customer service publicly but fails to follow this philosophy in their call center? It means it's not real, it's customer service theater, a performance designed to disguise the fact that for many people there's no where else to turn but venting on Twitter.

Let's save our congratulations for companies who treat both their staff and their customers in a more humane way, empowering all their customer service staff to actually perform services for their customers, rather than just pretending to behave this way in public.

Photo by Michael B via flickr (Creative Commons license).

Words and intentions for 2011

I’m writing this around a fire in the Great Basin Redwoods State Park, a couple of hours south of San Francisco. (I become more like my father every year it seems, he would often take laptops camping, much to my mother’s dismay). Today was a day filled with the simple magic of the outdoors. Waking from a long sleep. Making a fire to warm up and cooking breakfast. Going for a hike down a gorgeous gully filled with extraordinary trees. More fire. More food. Good conversation and company. There’s something about spending time with trees, especially giant, ancient trees, to help put things in perspective, lend the appropriate scale to your stresses and anxieties. I always find time in nature focusing. I come back to the city more relaxed, calmer, ready to do the work that needs to be done.

The time around the new year is a great time for taking stock. I know the calendar ticking over doesn’t really mean anything, that time marches on regardless of the organizational structure we impose on it. But it matters, of course, because we choose to say it matters, and for me it is a chance to pause a moment, to look back at the year just past for meaning and look forward to the year I wish to create.

I’ve been doing a lot of that over the past couple of weeks. 2010 was a really hard year. Nothing seemed to quite go according to plan. Much of it was filled with movement and uncertainty. I went through the complexity of securing a new visa mid-year and moved to San Francisco only for the job I came here for to disappear only five weeks later. A series of contracts has allowed me to stick around but does not guarantee being here in the longer-term, my visa requires that I’m working near full-time without any break in employment. This lack of certainty makes it hard to settle down, to really feel like San Francisco is home, as much as I love it.

This will work itself out soon, one way or another. I’m involved in a number of conversations about exciting opportunities, both for full-time and longer-term consulting gigs, that I hope will lead to greater stability soon. I have a great deal of confidence that whatever happens will be what is meant to happen, and that this year will be all about laying new roots, having new experiences, and contributing to my community, wherever that may lead.

A big part of my positivity is my excitement over StartSomeGood, the social enterprise I am co-founding. I really believe in our idea and vision and think we can create a sustainable platform which helps grow the social entrepreneurship movement by connecting great ideas with people ready to support them to happen. (If you missed it please check out my announcement from last week. You can also follow us on Twitter.)

Soon after the new year K and I held a little ritual, standing on the top of a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean, designed to help us leave behind in 2010 some of the things we wanted to let go of and welcome new things to our lives in 2011. In preparing for this I was inspired by Beth Kanter (who was inspired by Chris Brogan) to identify three concepts which I hope will guide me this year. They are:

Learn – Stay open to new information and ways of doing things and constantly refine what I do based on what I learn. I want to learn more about myself, my practice and the world around me, develop new skills be really present to the people I meet and what they have to teach me.

Explore – Don’t fall into ruts, don't settle, keep seeking out new places and experiences. Spend more time outdoors in inaccessible places. Challenge myself. Connect with new people and participate in new communities and cultures.

Make a Difference – Find an organization I believe in and help them make amazing things happen. Help find and launch innovative new social good projects. Support my friends, family and partner.

If I focus on each of those things I’m pretty sure this will be a great year, however uncertain things may be right now. Onwards and upwards!

What are your intentions for this year?

Political violence and democracy in America

I was away camping in the Big Basin Redwood State Park over the weekend and was shocked when I returned to civilization to find out about the attempted assassination of Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords. Shocked, but not surprised. I have been afraid something like this would happen basically since I got to the US in June 2008, just as the rhetoric of the Presidential campaign was heating up.

It’s hard for me to put this into historical perspective, it feels different being here, but this seems more intense than previous boughts of violence-laced paranoia. It’s hard to describe to Australians how nutty it can be over here. There’s simply no analogues that are sufficient. I try to describe Glenn Beck to people and they say “so like Stan Zemanek ?”. Well, yeah, sort of, both right-wing radio hosts and all that, but also, no. Way, way beyond Stan Zemanek.

America can feel like a country coming apart at the seams. There have always been extremes in American politics, people who lived in their own bubble, convinced of their own truth. But it’s different now. The advent of social media and an ever more diverse and niche-focused media landscape has actually allowed this bubble to grow larger, more immersive, to become all-encompassing for many millions.

It’s said you’re entitled to your own opinion but not to your own facts but that simply isn’t true anymore. It’s hard to imagine a belief which can’t in some way be collaborated online. Within a wide window of beliefs you can construct a media diet consisting of TV, radio, print and online which corroborates and reinforces your beliefs. America’s most-watched news channel promotes wild conspiracy theories and declares that Obama is a socialist intent on taking over America and changing all that is good about it. And millions of Americans in their living rooms nod along, becoming ever more convinced that the America they love is somehow slipping away, that despite the clear prominence of their beliefs they are a persecuted and at-risk minority, that time is running out.

The rhetoric is regularly violent, the tone almost always urgent. Words like treasonous, socialist, Nazi and conspiracy are thrown around with an intensity and regularity I could not have imagined before moving here. It may be that political ideology did not specifically inspire Jared Loughner, the Arizona shooter, but it’s hard to imagine that a climate such as this would not increase the risk of crazy people doing crazy things. Combine this with the number of guns in America (and, shockingly, this event has only led to a spike in sales of the gun used) and it’s impossible not to worry about violence like this.

America seems to be a country that can no longer talk to itself. The gap between the factions is so large as to overwhelm attempts at dialogue, and when that happens democracy itself comes under threat. Democracy requires respecting your fellow citizens and accepting their choices even while working to change their minds but operating within their own factual universe the partisans of the American far-right, who increasingly control the Republican Party, will stand for no compromise and accept no facts that interfere with their beliefs. There’s no chance for the Presidency to unite the country when millions of Republicans do not even accept Obama’s right to be President.

I hope this assassin proves to be a “lone nut”. I hope nothing like this happens again. But unless something changes in America it’s all too easy to imagine this just being the beginning.

What are these changes that are needed? How do you bring a country back from the brink? How do you rebuild trust, reduce fear, reclaim a common identity that supersedes politics?

This is, I think, the most urgent work that needs doing in America today. A challenge that calls for both visionary social entrepreneurs and the everyday activism of people doing things differently, reaching out, connecting. As we search for exciting social change ideas for StartSomeGood I really hope we will see many taking on this vital challenge, building the bridging social capital that is needed to revitalize so many democracies.

Quora and the emerging interest graph

Quora is my newest favourite website. And it’s clear I’m not alone. After quietly building buzz through 2010 Quora has blow up, doubling in December and then doubling again in the first week of 2011.

I’m not surprised: Quora, a question-and-answer platform, is tapping into a really important trend, the rise of the interest graph alongside the social graph in online importance. Nathaniel Whittemore discussed this in a smart post a couple of months back:

If Facebook is the service with the internet’s most complete (visible) social graph, Twitter is the service with the internet’s most complete (visible) interest graph. “Following” a person — even one you don’t know — is an affirmation of your interest in their insights and recommendations. “Friending” someone is simply an act of acknowledging an existing relationship, that in many cases, has more to do with a previous shared experience (think: your freshman dorm) than with a really active shared interest.

At the time of Nathaniels post it did seem that Twitter offered the best example of the emerging interest graph. It’s non-reciprocal linking structure allows you to follow those that interest you, not just those you know, creating a blended social/interest graph. Hashtags further allowed you to follow specific conversations and connect with new people who share that interest.

Quora was built intentionally to capture the interest graph (Twitter was originally built to allow friends to keep track of each other) and so naturally takes this the next step, encouraging you to formally “follow” a variety of topics that interest you, from locations (“San Francisco”), industries (“media”, “tech”), companies (“Facebook”, “Twitter”), concepts (“crowdsourcing”), individuals (“Larry Lessig”, “Jack Dorsey”) and more (all examples are topics I follow). In addition you can follow specific questions, to get a notification each time there is a new response, and you can follow individuals, those you know or otherwise. Your feed is a blend of the topics, questions and people you follow.

This design influences your behavior on the site. There are people I follow on Twitter, because they are my friends and I’m interested in them, who I would not follow on Quora, simply because we do not share significant interest in common so their questions and answers are less likely to be relevant to me. While Quora is social I’m not there for a social experience per se, I’m interested in learning and, where possible, giving back in the form of answers.

The quality of the information being shared currently is phenomenal. It’s common to see founders of companies, even very large companies, responding to questions about that company. Steve Case responds to questions about early AOL decisions. Ashton Kutcher gives his opinion on how to get cast for a show. Evan Williams shares how Twitter managed to blow up at SxSW. Insiders share the thinking behind business deals or technology advances. It’s very skewered towards Silicon Valley/tech/startup but if it can maintain this quality across other topics it will become a vital site for many people.

For cause-focused organizations Quora also provides another powerful platform for sharing knowledge and stories, building authority and connecting with people who care about your issue. This has to be done respectfully, by passionate advocates of the organization, speaking as themselves. Credibility is built by thoughtfully providing answers and asking honest questions about things you seek to know. Admitting you don’t know everything is more likely to build support than pretending you do, and may even bring you unexpected answers and ideas.

It will be interesting to see how Quora evolves under the strain of growing users and the need to improve the user interface to encourage less tech-savvy participants. What I do know is that right now I’m leaning more useful, actionable information from Quora than anywhere else. For those that never likes the 140 character constraints of Twitter Quora might be the social network for you. Here's my response to a question on, where else?, Quora, Is Quora more interesting than Twitter right now? Why or why not?:

Absolutely. It's the best of twitter and blogging together in some ways (although I don't think it will replace or impact either). There is so much knowledge here, freely and cogently expressed, and this knowledge is vastly more searchable and accessible than that shared through Twitter. That said, I'm not sure Quora will be the relationship-building tool Twitter has been for me.

Are you using Quora? How are you finding it?

Announcing StartSomeGood

A few months ago a friend from DC, Alex Budak, called me about a social enterprise he was starting called StartSomeGood. The idea, simply put, was to create a crowdfunding (or peerfunding) platform for social change initiatives. He wanted to know if I wanted to be involved in an advisory capacity, helping him design the communications and outreach strategy for the company. I was happy to agree, both because I’m always up for helping a friend and because the idea itself was compelling. While the crowdfunding model has been proved by sites such as Kickstarter and FundBreak these sites are exclusively for creative projects. There is a clear opportunity and a need to provide this service to the social sector.

Over the past few months I’ve been working with Alex to refine the vision and product. Over this time I have felt myself get more and more drawn in, and more and more excited about the potential of the project. We have refined our model to make it more distinct and, we think, better adapted for the sector we seek to serve. We realized that success would require more than just advice; Alex needed a collaborator equally-committed to the success of the enterprise. And so I’m really excited to announce that I’m joining as a full co-founder with Alex, and that we should be launching our site next month.

Why launch StartSomeGood.com?

There are so many people with ideas for how they want to make a difference in the world, yet they lack the resources that they need to get started.  StartSomeGood connects budding social entrepreneurs with the financial and intellectual capital that they need -- all in a fun, engaging and community-driven way.  Our site taps into the power of the crowd, allowing social entrepreneurs to ask for small amounts of money from lots of different people - rather than hope for one lump sum.  This crowdfunding model is becoming increasingly well-established, especially in the arts, and we believe it is perfect for supporting the launch and development of social change organizations.

Over the past 10 years an incredible online fundraising infrastructure has been created for social change organizations. Organizations can fundraise through Facebook and Twitter, supporters can establish their own fundraisers on platforms like Razoo, Global Giving can help you support projects in the developing world from the comfort of home. But almost all the infrastructure that exists has been created exclusively for use by only one type of organization: tax-deductible nonprofits. And we all know that there are many ways to make a difference other than simply establishing a new charity.

In all the commentary about the Kickstarter the most overlooked aspect of their success is the fact that they allowed fundraising by unincorporated groups. The two sectors where a huge amount of value is created by unincorporated groups are the creative industries and the social change movement. StartSomeGood will allow any type of group, unincorporated, nonprofit and for profit to find supporters and raise funds for social good projects. Having been part of many grassroots initiatives I know how much good gets created by small teams, formed for discrete projects. We hope to help more people make a difference in their community.

Ultimately our goal is to contribute to creating a world where every person has access to the financial, intellectual and relational capital they need to become changemakers, where every person can create the future they wish to inhabit.

How is StartSomeGood different from other crowdfunding sites?

StartSomeGood has several critical differentiators from existing crowdfunding platforms:

• We focus on social change organizations. The biggest existing crowdfunding platforms, Kickstarter in the US and FundBreak in Australia, are exclusive to creative projects. We want to provide this same functionality to social entrepreneurs working to address poverty, crime, climate change and more.
• Blended-risk fundraising model. Kickstarter and FundBreak both use the all-or-nothing fundraising model. This makes perfect sense of creative projects, many of which have specific fundraising tipping points (enough money to print the book, finish the film, go on tour, etc). IndieGoGo allows you to keep whatever you raise, regardless of how you did against your stated goal. StartSomeGood will have a blended model, whereby an initial amount is all-or-nothing, depending on the specific tipping point of that project/organization, but there is also a best-case goal beyond that, which they can keep any funds raised towards. This allows the individual entrepreneur to set their own level of risk/reward, as it should be.
• StartSomeGood is based around both organizations and projects. Social change organizations can maintain permanent profiles fueled by dynamic feeds, aggregating and building their community of supporters across multiple fundraising campaigns.
• The StartSomeGood platform will allow for not only financial contributions but other forms of probono support needed by social entrepreneurs.

Get Involved:

Do you think this sounds exciting? Do you want to help? Great!

Support our fundraiser on IndieGoGo – we are currently fundraising on another crowdfunding platform, IndieGoGo, and would love your support. You get half of your contribution back in the form of a voucher to pay forward to a social good organization on our site when it goes live. So you'll not only be supporting the launch of our new social enterprise but another beyond that! The remaining funds will support our outreach and promotion around the launch (including competitions to give away more vouchers, most of it will ultimately flow directly to the enterprises launching on our site), hosting costs, etc. This modest amount of start-up funding is important to allowing us to launch effectively, and having pre-committed funds ready to support new enterprises is critical to building early momentum when we launch.  Please contribute.

Help us find great ventures – task 1 for us is to find inspiring initiatives to help launch. We have several really exciting groups lined up for the launch but are looking for more. If you know of a great social change initiative looking to launch in the next six months please put them in touch.

Become a StartSomeGood Mobilizer – we are recruiting a team of Mobilizers to help get the word out, people who are passionate about social change and innovation, enjoy meeting new people and talking up new things. I am so thrilled with the caliber of people who have agreed to get involved, thank you friends! But there are gaps in our network so if this sounds like you or someone you know I’d love to hear from you, especially if you are in Perth, Adelaide, Toronto, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, Chicago, Denver, Boston, Philadelphia, or Pittsburgh.

Stay in the loop – if you would like to be the first to know when the site goes live please sign up for our newsletter at www.StartSomeGood.com.

I'm very excited to be commencing on this journey. I think there's a real opportunity to create something sustainable of real value, and to learn a lot along the way. I look forward to your support and collaboration and to starting some good in 2011!

The best of everything 2010

It's fun, and a strong blogging tradition, to look back over year just gone and create "best-of" lists. So here's absolutely the definitive list of the best music, books and films from the year. Just kidding, it’s just a random list of my favourite stuff of the past year, conjured by my imperfect memory and no-doubt riddled with omissions, but filled with gems regardless, promise!

Best Music (I discovered this year):

Tijuana Cartel

A great band from Australia's Gold Coast introduced to me by a friend who stayed with us earlier in the year. alternative/electronic/hip hop/flamenco. Unique and awesome.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_vbMV5lOqc]

Jhameel

An incredibly-talented kid from Berkely whose first album "The Human Condition" will be released next month. We found him a couple of months ago via a friend and he's been on high-rotation ever since. His sound is... um... pop-orchestral soul?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CB64VV-gsw8&feature=related]

You can choose what you want to pay to download the album pre-release.

Jonsi

The ex-lead singer of Sigur Ros released his first solo album this year - "Go" - and it's wonderful. As ethereal and soaring and gorgeous as you would imagine.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5VgLOs0LwQ]

Shpongle

I adore Shpongle, so no surprise I think their latest album "Ineffable Mysteries from Shpongeland" is another classic.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L81do_jU9EI]

Ulrich Schnauss

This album isn't from 2010, or even close. A Strangely Isolated Place (which the track below is on) is from 2003, and Far Away Trains Passing By came out in 2001, but I only discovered them by chance this year and regret the years I was unaware of this gorgeous ambient music.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jW30NL275Q]

Best Books (I read this year):

The Tall Man - Death and Life on Palm Island - by Chloe Hooper

Absolutely my book of the year and genuinely one of the best things I've ever read, The Tall Man - Death and Life on Palm Island is the story of an Aboriginal death in police custody in 2004 and a searing portrait of white/indigenous relations. Should be required reading for all Australians.

Switch - How to Change Things When Change is Hard - by Dan Heath and Chip Heath

The follow up the Made To Stick, Chip and Dan Heath have done it again with Switch. It's both an inspiring call to action and a practical hand-book for creating change in your life, community or world. Switch is written with the journalistic flair and storytelling style of Malcolm Gladwell but rather than describing a phenomenon it extracts lessons and teaches you how to do it too.

The Eternal Frontier - An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples - By Tim Flannery

America is a very big, very diverse and very beautiful country. After we drove from DC-SF in June I wanted to know more about how it got to be the way it was, so read Flannery's riveting account of North America's evolution over the past 65 million years. Ever since I have been able to impress friends with insights on how the Sequoia's survived the asteroid impact, why most of the world's edible nuts are from North America and how horses evolved here. Americans - if you want to understand the continent you are standing on, read this book.

Cognitive Surplus - Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age - by Clay Shirky

[ted id=896]

Clay Shirky is the internet whisperer. He brings together diverse trends and disparate information and weaves them all together to reveal a deeper and more nuanced picture of the world social technologies are creating. Like his previous book Here Comes Everybody it is the most insightful thing I've read on the subject, aimed not at illuminating some business strategy or risk as so many books on the internet are but instead designed to reveal how these technologies are changing our cultures, societies and, ultimately, us.

Rand McNally Road Atlas

We set off from DC with two smartphones, an iPad and a GPS. They weren't nearly enough. With coverage in the middle of the country incredibly patchy and the GPS being useless for choosing long-distance routes on day 3 we bought a proper countrywide map, the kind you spread on your lap in the passenger seat (or "navigation station" is it became known) and get an overview of your next three days of driving and imagine alternative ways of getting there. So much more fun this way too.

Best Films (I saw this year):

Exit Through the Gift Shop

Banksy's first film and, like much of his art, it's edgy, unique and a lot of fun. It combines incredible footage of now-famous street artists like Space Invader and Shepard Fairey with a is-this-real-or-not portrayal of the arts industry they (and he) have created.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHJBdDSTbLw]

Milk

A wonderful and bitter-sweet biopic of the short-lived but groundbreaking political career of Harvey Milk. And we live just a few blocks from where it all happened!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufhZ2yUHj9Y]

Howl

One-third Alan Ginsberg biopic, one-third the courtroom drama of the Howl obscenity trial, and one-third a psychedelic animated reading of Howl, Ginsberg's most famous poem. 100% great.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ba9yazkl0UE]

Avatar 3D

A genuine technical triumph. Just a great cinema experience.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_mgDAeWGDc]

Best Websites (I used for the first time this year):

Posterous

I'm really enjoying keeping my alternative, shorter, "bits and bytes" blog over on Posterious. Check it out if you haven't yet.

Quora

A super-intelligent question-and-answer site. So much wisdom so freely shared.

About.me

I've been looking for a homepage like this for a while.

Best Software (I used for the first time this year):

Rapportive

Integrates social media with gmail, a really powerful tool for building business relationships.

Focused

What I'm using to draft this post. The opposite of Rapportive in a way - it blocks out all the noise on your screen (social media notifications, tabs, various programs), giving you just a plain black box to type in. It's helped me become much more productive when I write.

That's more than enough, I hope you either had or are about to have (depending on where you are in the world) a fun and fabulous New Years Eve and that 2011 has amazing things in store for you.

Transparency and Leaving No Trace

As I wrote recently, Burning Man is Festival 2.0. It is a user-generated community, built on the respect and responsibility of its citizens, a place where people are participants, not consumers.

The event and indeed the entire culture is based on ten principles, one of which is "leaving no trace". This practice of leaving no trace creates a radically different consciousness than you see at other festivals. There is little-to-no trash anywhere on the ground as the community takes responsibility not only for our own trash but for each-others, picking up any pieces of MOOP (Material Out Of Place) we see. Camps build evaporation ponds to deal with their gray water and ship out all their own food scraps and recycling. Successfully leaving no trace requires more than the right consciousness, it requires intent, in the form of pre-planning, and responsibility in the form of follow-through.

This responsibility is most apparent at the camp level. The Black Rock Organization recently published the MOOP Map of Burning Man 2010, seen above. I am pleased to report that our camp, More Carrot, was given a green grade, the best possible, indicating low to no impact trace. Not that this was exceptional: as you can see the vast majority of the city is green, with only scattered patches of orange (moderate impact trace) and red (high impact trace). This is what a community looks like: people taking responsibility for themselves and taking care for each other and their environment. It's one of the things that inspires me to participate in Burning Man.

Looking back over the past four MOOP maps it is clear that things are getting progressively better, with fewer and fewer camps leaving any noticable trace. As you can see this improvement was especially dramatic from the 2006 to 2007 event (click to see full size):

What changed between 2006 to 2007? The MOOP Map was published for the first time .

There's a really important lesson in this: accountability resting on transparency made the difference. Despite all the power of the Burning Man culture an unacceptable amount of MOOP remained. Then, suddenly, this culture was reinforced with publically-available information detailing how the different camps and neighourhoods of the city were performing against the Leave No Trace goal. And immediately this public accountability produced a huge leap forward in the trash situation as camps worked harder than ever to avoid an orange or red grade.

Transparency reinforced existing community norms both by making deviance from this norm visible and thus additionally unacceptable and signaling to those doing the right thing that their efforts were appreciated. It felt good to see our camp covered in Green when the map was released. It feels good to be part of something that inspires and aggregates individual contributions towards a community goal in this way.

The question is how can we create this level of personal responsibility and community consciousness in all our communities? What sort of transparency is required to support this?