And the final Idea Club topic is…

Open Science, with 41% of the total vote. It was close thought, with Pandemics and people, and Energy Wedges getting 29% each. So maybe we will include those next year.

Thanks to everyone who voted.

Technorati Tags: Non-Profit, Sustainability

Idea Club Topics

[Crossposted at Path to Sustainable]
There have been some requests for more information on the topics in the new Idea Club Topic Poll. So here are some thumbnail explanations:

• New Drugs – New Models – the current approachs for drug development cost a lot of money. Most companies are only interested in producing drugs that will be billion dollar sellers. How can we change the current process to permit important but less profitable drugs to be marketed?
• Getting Away From CAFOs – these are concentrated animal feeding operations – factory farms. There are many benefits from this approach but also many detrimental prospects. What are the alternatives?
• Trucking of Tomorrow – a substantial amount of fuel is used by the trucking industry but little has really been done to make the vehicles more fuel efficient. What are some possibilities?
• Algae for Fuel – photosynthesis is a great way to convert solar power into sources of energy. How can algae be adapted to provide the energy we need?
• Fixing the FDA – the FDA was created to deal with problems of the early 20th Century. How can it be changed to meet the problems of the 21st Century?
• Green Nanotech? - Is there such a thing? What is it and what can it do?
• Resilient Cultures - What was the guy who cut down the last tree on Easter Island thinking? How can a culture deal with huge social shocks and survive? What are some of the tools?
• Energy Wedges – the energy/climate problems can not be solved with a single solution. But modeling indicates that substantial effects can be achieved by a variety of approaches, each occupying a wedge of the pie. What are these approaches and what can we do to make them happen?
• Changing Higher Education - Post Secondary education is still based on a model originally developed in the middle of the 19th Century where finding information was difficult and required years of training by experts. Now finding information is easy. How can colleges be altered to take advantage of what we have learned over the last 150 years or so?
• Open Science – How does scientific research change when all aspects, including daily lab notes, are placed on the Web for all to see? Is this a viable model? How does Open access to published results alter scientific exploits?
• Pandemics and People – Can we prepare effectively for a pandemic? What will it look like? How can we prepare?
• What is a Green Job? - Is this just marketing or is there something fundamentally different about a green job than any other? Should it have different incentives or can a purely free market approach work?
• A Culture of Innovation – How does innovation happen? Is it simply random or can a formal process to support creativity be constructed? What would such a culture look like?
• Sustainable Urban Farms – Growing food in the city on privately owned land is becoming a much more viable possibility. What are some of the options and creative solutions that separate urban farming from traditional methods?
• Citizen Science – At the same time many research efforts are requiring multi-millions of dollars to pursue, with large research operations to support, the cost of many procedures has dropped to much that individual people can become involved in research projects. What are some of these projects and how can a distributed approach to research yield successful results?

Feel free to vote here or at the website. Voting ends July 1.

Technorati Tags: Social media, Sustainability, Web 2.0

And the winning Idea Club topic is…

by Kevin

Green Microfinancing (42%), with Getting Off the Grid a close second (at 32%).Thanks to everyone for voting and helping us choose a topic.

Since these were the two most popular topics by far, so we will not let all the votes go to waste. On April 27, the topic will be Green Microfinancing.

Because of the Memorial Day holiday, we will not have an Idea Club in May but will return again on June 22. The topic that night will be Getting Off the Grid. If anyone would like to volunteer to lead this discussion, please contact Sustainable Path Foundation at info @ sustainablepath.org.

Nora Burton has volunteered to lead the discussion on Green Microfinancing while I will help facilitate. It should be a very interesting discussion.

To help start things off, take a look at Green Microfinance, a non-profit organization whose mission is: “to address climate change and environmental justice by providing education and sharing knowledge on ‘microfinance and climate change’ and ‘clean energy for the poor.”

They have a great resource center and a blog worth reading. The most recent entry discusses a report from the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) on MIcrofinance and Climate Change. This report contains a tremendous amount of information regarding the effects of microfinancing on adaptation and mitigation of climate change.

This should be a great place to start learning about Green Microfinancing so we can have a strong discussion on April 27, not only about what it is but perhaps what sorts of actions we can take to help.

Technorati Tags: Environment, Sustainability

Idea Club March 23

I will be facilitating this this month’s Idea Club in Seattle. It will be this coming Monday at 5 PM.

We will continue our discussions of presentations from the AAAS meeting. We will have a talk about turning knowledge into actions, how boundary organizations (BORGs) can be used and how we can create a sustainable culture.

I do not expect we will find all the solutions but I expect it will be a fascinating discussion.

Idea Club is a monthly event hosted by the Sustainable Path Foundation. It is open to all and tries to provide a science-based view towards discussion of health, the environment and sitainability. Click the orange button to the left to RSVP for this free event.

See you then.

Technorati Tags: Non-Profit, Sustainability

New approaches to journalism

by mikebaird
Churnalism:
[Via Bench Marks]

As a quick follow-up to this posting, a colleague sent along a review of a new book called Flat Earth News by Nick Davies, which rightly points out that the “death of journalism” isn’t a murder, it’s a murder-suicide. Yes, readers are abandoning print newspapers and magazines, preferring to get their information online (with an assumption that such things are free). At the same time, this abandonment is being driven by a decline in quality of the old media, as the owners seek to cut costs and increase profits. From the review:

“The most basic function of journalism, in Davies’s view, is to check facts. Journalists don’t just pass on what they’re told without making an effort to check it first. At least, in theory they don’t. In practice, contemporary journalism has been corrupted by an endemic failure to verify facts and stories in a manner so fundamental that it almost defies belief. The consequences of that are pervasive and systemic…Journalists report much less than they used to, and much less than they should, as the papers have switched over to a reliance on columnists and opinion…Stories need to be cheap, meaning ‘quick to cover’, ‘safe to publish’; they need to ‘select safe facts’ preferably from official sources; they need to ‘avoid the electric fence’, sources of guaranteed trouble such as the libel laws and the Israel lobby; to be based on ‘safe ideas’ and contradict no loved prevailing wisdoms; to avoid complicated or context-rich problems; and always to ‘give both sides of the story’ (‘balance means never having to say you’re sorry – because you haven’t said anything’). And conversely, there are active pressures to pursue stories that tell people what they want to hear, to give them lots of celebrity and TV-based coverage, and to subscribe to every moral panic.”

I do strongly believe that people are still willing to pay for quality, but as this review points out, that’s not what’s being offered by most of our media outlets. The book looks interesting, definitely worth a read.

Few current newspapers are owned by families anymore. They are owned by large corporations where the search for greater profits often runs up against the cost of doing good reporting. Just as TV news has gone south after they were forced to become profit centers, so too with print media.

I would present the hypothesis that the problem with most companies today, in any industry, is that the people who actually control the company have very little experience in what the company does. The head of GM used to run Home Depot. There are countless examples.

People are turning away from most print media, even when it appears online, because it has become harder and harder to be informed. Most people read the paper for sports, comics and maybe a little business. I red the news online to really find out, usually relying on interested bloggers who I have come to trust to provide some perspective and to inform me on the subject.

The one thing a paper could do well, local news, is often given short-shrift because it costs money to have real people report.

The latest meme is the idea of non-profit newspapers as discussed in the New Yorker. The St. Petersburg Times is anexample, perhaps. Some small, young but strongly focussed newspapers that are not-for-profit are also starting to make some noise. They certainly check facts.

Could these be the beginnings of a new rise in objective, information-driven news reporting? They will if the big guys continue to lose focus on what their mission truly is. I think it is very likely that in 10 years a lot of companies that are currently for-profit will be in the non-profit sector.

Technorati Tags: Knowledge Creation, Non-Profit

Sustainable Path Foundation Idea Club

The Sustainable Path Foundation will host the next Idea Club on Monday, January 26th, from 5-7. The focus this month will be on Fresh Water. There are several links at the website to interesting readings about the subject.

Idea Club is a monthly forum for discussing topics dealing with sustainability, science and human health. It is relatively free-form with some light facilitating to drive the discussion. Everyone is invited to join in, no matter what your views. We welcome direct, fact-based discussions.

Hope to see you there.

Technorati Tags: Environment, Non-Profit, Sustainability

Collaborate to survive

Collaborative Paper: What to do in the nonprofit sector to offset the economic crash.:
[Via Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media]

Source: Foundation Center Focus on the Financial Crisis

The map image above is an interactive map that displays the distribution of the most recent support by U.S. foundations to aid those affected by the downturn. Drill down to see the details. It’s part of the Foundation Center’s aggregated page of articles, podcasts, data, and resources that Focus on the Financial Crisis. You can updates through RSS. Excellent example of aggregation strategy and really clear and good information design.

This is a nice example of an organization using Web 2.0 tools to help the community in ways that would have been difficult before. And not only can you access the data to study it, but you can get updates via a newsfeed so new information is brought to you.

Marty Kearns has set up a collaborative paper and discussion on a wiki. The paper is called Cascading Failure. Marty is convinced that the answer on how the nonprofit can understand and survive this meltdown is out there in network and has set up a space for us to kick it around.

At this stage, it is clear that nonprofit and advocacy groups are headed for extraordinarily difficult financial times. The cash crunch for the advocacy movement will be as bad as we can imagine and far worse than we can easily manage. We need a plan for how to remain effective. We should all begin to operate with new assumptions.

You can find the paper along with some draft prescriptions for organizations. One the recommendations is:

Invest in Social Capital. It will be the only growing market in 2009. Look at it as part of your organization: There have always been good reasons to build your social network, but now it is a matter of strategy and applying the techniques of network weaving. You need social capital to help in difficult times. I set up a page to brainstorm some practical tips, strategies, and resources.

There are also some draft recommendations for individuals working within advocacy movements.

So. not only is a draft paper available to all, but individuals and organizations can add their own value to these ideas with online discussions. Thus, novel ideas and innovations are able to rapidly traverse the networks that are created. The increase in the rate of diffusion of creative solutions may just be critical in finding a way out of this mess.

Technorati Tags: Open Access, Web 2.0

Clash of the business models

by Lenny Montana
PLoS stays afloat with bulk publishing : Nature News:
[Via Nature]
This is a very provocative article, especially since it starts this way:

Public Library of Science (PLoS), the poster child of the open-access publishing movement, is following an haute couture model of science publishing — relying on bulk, cheap publishing of lower quality papers to subsidize its handful of high-quality flagship journals.

It is a little unseemly for a for-profit publisher with a closed access approach to openly attack an open access competitor. Especially since many of the PLoS journals have very high impact factors and are widely read for their important articles.

The comments are a lot of fun to read and demonstrate where online conversations are taking us. An example:

Editor Clarke, Perhaps you could then elaborate on just what the intent with this piece? Clearly many of those reading it saw it as a naked and blatantly self-serving screed against open-access publishing. In short, an attempt to undercut the business of a competitor by the method of reputation-trashing. Can you confirm or deny that this was the intent? If you confirm that this was the intent, please let us know why it was ethically sound not to make a firm declaration of COI in the piece? If you deny this was the intent, by all means please let us know what the intent actually was…?
Posted by Drug Monkey

Drug Monkey has some more discussion at his own site, especially the lack of a conflict of interest statement (ironic since every scientist who publishes in every journal today, including Nature, must sign such a statement delineating all conflicts of interest.). Also he has some more links to other bloggers, including the Online Community Manager for the PLoS journals who is taking a “Don’t feed the trolls” approach.

Then there is this little bit of dead-on snark:

Apparently the “bulk, cheap … lower quality papers” published by PLoS aren’t beneath the notice of Nature. Three of the Research Highlights articles in this issue (p 5) report on articles published in PLoS journals (two from PLoS One! and one from PLoS Genetics). If it is not interesting enough to publish in Nature, at least it provides enough free copy to help round out an issue.
Posted by Scott Ramsey

So, Nature is perfectly happy to use the freely available information from the competitor it trashes, in order to make sure it has enough content for its own journal.

Finally, it is a little weird for a commercial company that makes a profit to criticize the business model for a non-profit organization. I mean, horrors, they get grant money. That is what a non-profit can do. Many do not set themselves up to be commercial in the sense of a company like Nature.

Here are the stated mission and goals of PLoS:

The Public Library of Science (PLoS) is a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world’s scientific and medical literature a public resource.

Our goals are to:

• Open the doors to the world’s library of scientific knowledge by giving any scientist, physician, patient, or student – anywhere in the world – unlimited access to the latest scientific research.
• Facilitate research, informed medical practice, and education by making it possible to freely search the full text of every published article to locate specific ideas, methods, experimental results, and observations.
• Enable scientists, librarians, publishers, and entrepreneurs to develop innovative ways to explore and use the world’s treasury of scientific ideas and discoveries.

Here are Nature’s:

First, to serve scientists through prompt publication of significant advances in any branch of science, and to provide a forum for the reporting and discussion of news and issues concerning science. Second, to ensure that the results of science are rapidly disseminated to the public throughout the world, in a fashion that conveys their significance for knowledge, culture and daily life.

Nature does really well at the first section but does it really ensure that the results are rapidly disseminated to the public throughout the world? Or does charging for access fulfill the ‘fashion that conveys their significance’? if you pay for something does that enhance its significance?

Interestingly, Nature did not make a profit of more than 30 years.

Despite the boom in periodical publishing in Victorian Britain in the 1860s, the fledgling Nature did not make a profit for more than 30 years and only survived because of the commitment and belief of its first publisher, Alexander Macmillan, co-founder of Macmillan Publishers, and the hard work of the first editor, Norman Lockyer.

Sounds like charity to me. Yet it is critical of PLoS after 6 years!

I guess there is one thing positive for Nature. While it might be a little unseemly for such a hit piece to come from Nature, they deserve kudos for sticking around for the conversation. even one that takes them to task.

Technorati Tags: Science, Social media, Web 2.0

Non-profits and social networking

by mysza831
How non-profits are using social networking to raise money and awareness — chicagotribune.com:
[Via Chicago Tribune]
This has some very nice insights. For example:

For non-profits, the power of social networks is engagement, not necessarily sheer dollar numbers.

“If you send out a direct-mail piece, you never know if people open it up or not, unless they mail a check back to you,” said Steve Byers, director of development and communications at Kansas-City based WaterPartners International, which promotes safe drinking water. “With the online community, we know which pages they’re clicking on. … They want to provide feedback and interact with the organization in ways that are very exciting and challenging.”

An online community is a conversation with a friend, not an ask by a charity. It fosters relationships that are both weaker and stronger than many normal connections with the community.

Some non-profits that have a presence on social networking sites have discovered a new relationship with users.

Carie Lewis, the Humane Society’s Internet marketing manager, said she finds herself responding to lots of mundane questions on pet care as a result of maintaining a presence on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Flickr. More important, Lewis said she’s discovered supporters outside the organization’s traditional demographic of women in their 50s.

These tools permit people to connect with a charity or foundation in new ways, permitting them a range of interactions that are often difficult in a purely analog world.

“Traditionally, I think non-profits focus on high-value donors, and what MySpace provides is an enormous network of people who are able to get involved through volunteering, offline events and donating in smaller amounts,” said Lee Brenner, who oversees activism-related content on MySpace.

The money raised at the moment is small but the overall effect is fairly potent and will only become more enhanced as time goes on.

Technorati Tags: Social media, Web 2.0

Getting people onboard

by procsilas
Parlez Vous Twitter? Evangelizing Social Media In Your Nonprofit Organization and Paving the Way for Adoption:
[Via Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media]

This slide show from Stephen Collins make me think about teachingInternet Skills Workshops for Nonprofits that I used teach over dozen or so years ago. During a discussion about the merits of email versus the fax machine (I’m not kidding), someone shared this insight, “I feel like a stranger in a foreign country and I don’t understand the language.”It has stuck with me.

The slide show is from a session he did at BarCamp Sydney called “All You Do Is Talk Talk Talk.” He talking about building shared language and understanding in order to successfully introduce a change (adoption of social media principles and tools) in an organization.He suggests that resistance will remain because people don’t understand, feel stupid, don’t speak the language, don’t have a compelling reason for change, or feel insecure. The advice is don’t speak social media geek, speak in simple English, be a bridge, establish trust, and become the understanding guru.

The slide show provide some useful insights into getting people on board, including their concerns and other barriers to adoption. Very nicely done and a great presentation.

It might take me more than 10 minutes

by Hamed Saber
NpTech Tag Summary: 10 Web 2.0 Things You Can Do In Ten Minutes!:
[Via Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media]

Beth’s Blog again has some very useful information. These are things that anyone examining Web 2.0 should investigate. She began her mashup by utilizing:

Stephen Downes points to Lisa Neal’s “Ten Things You Can Do In Ten Minutes To Be A More Successful E-Learning Professional.”   He uses the ten things in ten minutes meme and writes the Ten Web 2.0 Things You Can Do in Ten Minutes to Be a More Successful E-learning Professional.   So, I’m remixed this memo into Ten Web2.0 Things You Can Do in Ten Minutes to Be A Better Nonprofit Professional

Then she asked her commentors on the blog to suggest some. And they did.

1.  Set up a twitter account.  Go to the nonprofit twitter pack find and follow ten people who may learn something from.  Use your blog or twitter or whatever tool to solicit practical ideas on how to use social media to make connections.  (Lisa Neal)2.  Set up Google Alerts to follow what’s being said about your organization and cause online so that you can act on what’s being said, join the conversation and build your community. (Deborah Zanke) (Jason Shim)

3.  Set up a feed reader for other organizations in your “subject matter area” and comment on a few blog posts a week or the ten most influential blogs in your area. (Gregory Heller) (Sarah Marchetti) (Amy Sample Ward)

4.  Create an OPML of blogs your colleagues on staff might be interested in reading and import it into a reader for them, a starter pack. Or use nonprofit.alltop.com (Sue Waters)   (Allan Benamer)

5. Truly embrace social networking by encouraging your staff, your volunteers, your donors and your Board to join Facebook or Myspace and teach(!) them how to promote your cause. For many in the boomer
bracket, this is all new…but so important to integrate into traditional marketing and fundraising efforts. (Jane Arsenault and Anne Yurasek)

6.  Goto animoto.com and create a :30 video using photos of people, logos, and text related to your cause.  Post that video on your website, any major sharing sites, and social networks — then encourage people to share the videos far and wide!!  (Tyler Willis)

7. Convince your team members to set up individual bookmarking accounts, agree on a unique tag and start building a bookmarking collection for your organization.  Don’t forget to sign up the feeds on the agreed tag in your RSS reader and to add the del.icio.us application in your Facebook account. Collective bookmarking is an extremely powerful learning tool! (Johannes)

8. Want to know buzz? Use tools like Technorati, Bloglines, and Forum Tracker to monitor what people are
saying about your organization as well as to find new marketing leads to contact with your messages and stories of hope. (Jonathon Coleman)

9. Want inspiration? Search YouTube and Flickr for descriptive keywords that are part of your mission statement to see what your target audiences might find compelling and inspirational. (Jonathon Coleman)

10. Want to learn from the best of the best?  Visit SlideShare and read through great presentations on just about any topic. (Jonathon Coleman)

Bonus Tip
11.  Use new media before pitching new media sources (CarrieBethH)

She then ends with a request for others who subscribe to her blog:

Okay folks, can we run this up to 100 tips that you can do in ten minutes using Web 2.0 to be a better nonprofit professional?  Here’s how you can help:

-If you blog, ask your readers to contribute
-Leave a tip in the comments
-Twitter it at @kanter

As has been mentioned before, many non-profits have boomers on board and we generally have not been as open in embracing Web 2.0 technologies. This is something I am doing my best to educate. We will come around.

Technorati Tags: Knowledge Creation, Web 2.0, Social media