ext337: movement

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Jun 10, 10:54 pm: What's your favorite imaginary mashup?

In the run up to this year’s NetSquared, we asked ourselves what would happen if we got some terrific ideas that can’t happen because the data isn’t open and accessible?

Good, we said, to each. Great. It could be a way to advocate for a different kind of openness.

It seems according to this post, Where Are the APIs for Government Data, some other folks agree. Authors from Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy write:

Rather than struggling, as it currently does, to design sites that meet each end-user need, we argue that the executive branch should focus on creating a simple, reliable and publicly accessible infrastructure that exposes the underlying data. Private actors, either nonpror commercial, are better suited to deliver government information to citizens and can constantly create and reshape the tools individuals use to nd and leverage public data. The best way to ensure that the government allows private parties to compete on equal terms in the provision of government data is to require that federal websites themselves use the same open systems for accessing the underlying data as they make available to the public at large.

Which leads me to ask: what’s your favorite imaginary mashup? The data that you’d like see combined if only you get your mitts on the data?

Tags: net2, data, open, government, accessible, mashup

Marnie Webb net2|movement Comment

Mar 23, 10:59 pm: The most important thing you can do this year

Tags: change, congress, larrylessig

Marnie Webb movement| Comment

Mar 26, 09:55 pm: Have you seen the Technology Innovation Fund projects?

Over at the day job, we’ve been heads down in the second round of NetSquared. With the help of a lot of smart and generous folks, we’ve started the NetSquared Innovation Fund.

Check out the projects and weigh in. One of the things that I’m proud of here is that we are providing an opportunity for project supporters to chime in and influence their favorites before the vote starts. It’s our hope that this will result in better conversations and better projects.

And if you’ve been holding the project in your hip pocket: Get it out! The guidelines will help you decide if it’s right for you. But if you’re using social web 2.0 tools to make the world a better place, we want to know about it.

tagged: net2, nptech, web2.0, socialweb, tools, contest, fund, innovation

Marnie Webb movement|net2 Comment

Sep 26, 04:17 am: Unlikely bedfellows create change

This isn’t the first time I’ve said this: Change happens because people that don’t normally work together, or even like each other, act in concert (1, 2, and 3) and I’ve said that the business community needs the civic sector (1).

Want more evidence? If you got the paper edition of the NY Times this Sunday, or last, you may have noticed the full page ad from Target with a Red Cross logo on it. They’ve partnered to help increase awareness, and preparation, around disaster relief (1, 2). According to an article in DMNews, this is more than just bottom-line:

Cause-related marketing partnerships continue to rise, as shown by the American Red Cross and Target stores at the “Together We Prepare” session at the Direct Marketing Association of Washington’s annual Bridge Conference in Washington, DC.

Already in 2006 $1.36 billion has been spent by corporate sponsorships on nonprofit organizations, a 20 percent increase from 2005.

“It is not about meeting the bottom line anymore for corporations,” said Shelly EspiEspinosanager of community relations for Target, Minneapolis. “You need to be doing well and doing good.”

The organizations each cited quality, mission-related strategies, brand reputations and reaching a new market as key criteria in making the partnership.

Doing well by doing good. Corporations who want to be more than a check. Brand and an ability to open new markets.

So, does this mean that those of us in the civic sector have to be better at describing our brand, sharing it, and understanding the market to which we provide access? What does it mean when many of us, almost by definition, serve people who cannot afford services — or, presumably emergency kits — in the customary marketplace? Is this what’s really meant about civic organizations becoming “more business-like”?

Or do we have to understand how we are more than just a cause for marketing vehicles?

Surprise. I think it’s the second. You want people to use your emergency kit? Ask ‘em to help you build it. They can put the photos and how-to on flickr. They can make and share videos. I’m just saying. We don’t represent a demographic or a place for corporate employees to volunteer. We represent half of the conversation.

tagged: marketing, causemarketing, target, redcross, partnerships, change

Marnie Webb movement|outreach Comment [1]

Aug 25, 04:43 am: Ford and environmental activists: a place where change can happen

Maybe. Maybe not. But Ford Motor Company needs to step off a cliff and make a big change. People are asking them to.

This Detriot News article, Ford faces reality has a couple of money quotes. This bit:

At www.fordboldmoves.com, Ford is giving voice to its severest critics, effectively acknowledging the validity of charges it once rebuffed and allowing executives to confirm harsh realities normally denied.

There’s Brad Brownell, Ford car group marketing manager, making the (successful) case to fast-track the Shelby GT-H:

‘As you know, dealer profitability is at an all-time low. The morale is low. This is something we can announce saying, ‘Hey, we’re listening to you guys. This is a partnership. You asked for it, we delivered.’ ’

There’s Robert Shanks, vice president and controller of Ford’s Americas unit and a close associate of Mark Fields, the Americas president charged with engineering Ford’s turnaround in North America:

‘We’re in trouble because we kind of sat still while others plowed ahead and stayed in touch with consumers and provided better quality products and provided products that the consumer believed had more value.’

Powerful admissions, those, that would make headlines in more normal times. That they’re presented on a slick corporate site, available almost anywhere in the world, suggests that Bill Ford’s overdue cultural revolution is gaining traction and, second, that Ford’s troubled sclerosis runs deeper than many realize.

Corporate site. Cultural revolution. Confirm harsh realities. That’s powerful stuff. That’s standing at the edge of the cliff.
And there’s this:

In a segment titled “The Future of Fuel, the Future of Ford”—effectively presaging the truck-and-SUV implosion driving the draconian cuts—representatives of two environmental groups critical of Ford frame its current predicament with an eerie exactitude.

‘Ford has the worst fuel efficiency of any automaker in America,’ says Jennifer Krill of the Rainforest Action Network. ‘We don’t want Ford to go out of business. We don’t want Ford to stop being a symbol of American innovation. Quite the contrary, we want Ford to be as strong an auto company in the 21st century as it was in the 20th century.

Adds Richard Kassel of the Natural Resources Defense Council: ‘Ford has a business model that relies on selling gas guzzlers at a time when people don’t want gas guzzlers. Ford is operating in a regulatory climate that rewards companies that don’t invest in environmental technologies. And of course Ford has a legacy of costs and other challenges to overcome, and all three of those take us where we are today.’

Change requires people you probably don’t like or, anyway, people you think are wrong, wrongheaded, going in the wrong direction.

They’ve walked to the edge of the cliff. Now, they’ve got to be willing to step off.

tagged: ford, environment, activism, automobiles, change, industry

Marnie Webb movement|social-change Comment

Aug 24, 05:43 pm: Change requires people you probably don't like

That’s what keeps it from being preaching to the choir, right? Bringing the folks you don’t agree with—whether it’s a government or business or a community group—to the table so that you can come up with a solution. Because change is in the solutions.

And, in this country, those groups almost always have to include businesses. Check out: Levi’s was ahead of its time on domestic partner benefits. That’s where change happens.

In the nonprofit sector, we have to set up as many opportunities for groups to come together and create change as possible.

tagged: change, businss, levi, sector, nptech, socialchange

Marnie Webb movement|please Comment

Aug 23, 02:38 pm: A little PR for the nonprofit sector as a whole

Maybe we need a little PR for the nonprofit sector as a whole. I worry that people see us as a bunch of earnest do-gooders that are always after their extra change.

Which, you know, is fine and all but, if your really trying to engage a community, it might not bring a sense of fun and fullfillment. Is true? Does the image of the sector need to change? Maybe we should try a new name? Nonprofit organizations. Nongovernmental organizations. Describing us by what we aren’t. Now there’s a moving strategy.

Why don’t we start by describing us as what we are?