Net-Map Toolbox-Mapping together, Posted on March 18, 2008 by Eva Schiffer

(Quoting from above blog)
Below I have explored the idea of using Net-Map (through two computer applications called Visualyzer and GoToMeeting) in real time with groups all over the world online. While looking at ways how people can think together online, I came across this very instructive post about Online Graphic Organizers by Miguel Guhlin. He explores different free programs for drawing Mind Maps via the internet. Mind Maps are (mostly) not social networks (as in: actors connected by links) but rather networks of issues or ideas where a central idea is connected to branches of sub-ideas or sub-issues. I had a look at one application that he proposes called bubbl.us and it looks very useful.

Update: If you want to know it all, look at Vic Gee’s comment below and check out Vic’s comprehensive overview of tools for mind-mapping on-line and off-line.

Nike's Efforts to Empower Young Girls

While looking for inputs regarding action about alleviating poverty around the world, I came across the talk Social Innovation Conversations: Maria Eitel.

Beyond general interest, main lesson for me is that maturity is essential where there is the need for those who are involved in making things happen. She also emphasised that MONEY IS NOT THE PROBLEM, THE WILL IS THE PROBLEM!

Measuring now: Impact and Analysis with MIT Poverty Reduction Group! However, Google search has not yielded useful link about it, so I will have to continue looking.

Social Enterprise in UK - UnLtd site

An exciting and unexpected find UnLtd site - came via a two step hop from FT article "Make yourself happy to help" via following the link about Carmel McConnell about the charity she founded Magic Breakfast . Incidentally, and extended version of the article is available at on Ecademy together with a free and full length podcast interview with Carmel McConnell .

The excitement comes from the fact that there is a large repository of social action type undertakings with information on the Starpeople, winners of Millenium Commission awards. Moreover, there is a thriving UnLtd's ideas bank which "allows you to post, share and discuss UK- related social ideas."

Here is a list of some of the ideas obtained when I searched pages from UnLtd Ideas Bank for poverty:

UnLtd Ideas Bank: Idea - Fair Tax and Wage for Workers - The Alpha ...
The need to create incentives to work by reducing the poverty and hardship of minimum wage jobs within a sustainable economic model. ...
Fair Tax and Wage for Workers - 17k

UnLtd Ideas Bank: Idea - I'm An Investment Banker Get Me Out Of ...
Outside of the UK, business and trade is far more important to long as term poverty reduction than charity. I think there is scope for this idea and that there ...
I'm An Investment Banker Get Me Out- 15k

UnLtd Ideas Bank: Idea - Scheme to promote lifelong learning in ...
... for these resources to be shared, the technology that can be derived from areas such as space science can be used to end third world debt and poverty. ...
Scheme to promote lifelong learning - 13k - Cached - Similar pages

UnLtd Ideas Bank: Idea - One percent to change the world
The Problem. Poverty, cancer, child abuse, housing... The choice is yours. The Social Invention. What difference does 1% of your income make to you? ...
One percent to change the world - 13k - Cached - Similar pages

Charlie Leadbeater interview

In the light of the recent publication of his We-Think the book, I thought it worth revisiting the above interview I made with Charlie as part of the Assignment Zero crowdsourcing experiment. He said then:

"There is a huge growth in what we might call Pop Idol models: companies trying to draw on a wider talent base but to feed an essential unchanged corporate process. There is much potential for collective intelligence in education, health, politics, news and media, cultural production. We’ve only just begun."

In addition, he reflected on the lessons learnt from the process of writing a book with wider involvement of others on Wikia.
He is also interviewed in the Spectator Charlie does surf. Meet the new wizard of the web. :

‘This whole thing that the web is new actually gets it all the wrong way round,’ he says. ‘Actually, it can touch things that are really rather old and that’s when it works best.’

and

‘The web’s potential for good,’ he says, ‘stems from the open, collaborative and even communal culture it inherited from its birthplace in academia and from the counter-culture of the 1960s, combined with pre-industrial ingredients it has resurrected, folk culture and the commons as a shared basis for productive endeavour.’ It is, in other words, ‘a peculiar mixture of the academic, the hippie, the peasant and the geek’.

He introduces term 'Collaborative conservatism' referring to what Cameron and Osborne seem to be doing in UK.

Remains to be seen!

As for the We-Think book, enjoy the introductory video!


Finally, ten years ago Charlie Leadbeater wrote a monograph for Demos entitled The Rise of Social Enterpreneur. He reflects in the Observer on the developments and lessons learnt in Mainstreaming the Mavericks .

"The practice we should use daily is listening"

I could not resist this article:

Rebels with a cause | BP Magazine | bp.com

So unlikely from a large multinational I know so well to celebrate individuality and diversity. And then to use my nom de plum as well. Looks like I have left a lasting mark there after all!

But seriously, what is all this about?
" Seeing both sides. Four people describe life working on both sides of the oil and non-governmental organisation fence"

Could there be a link with 'social business' here too? Let me read the actual article and see. Here are some interesting quotes:

"It is society that gains, he says, by open dialogue and people seeking solutions."
(a former senior BP executive now heading WWF in Australia)

"She says the oil sector needs more practitioners who better understand the methodology of community development, while the development sector needs to come down from its moral high ground and accept that it will not be able to make the change it seeks without engaging with industry. “
(a global community relations coordinator at BP formerly a 'green economist' at WWF in Pakistan)


“I only found one important difference. For a social NGO, the immediate motivation is to create a better life for people, via education, housing etc. For the industry, the social model seeks to facilitate operations, make them viable and to leave a legacy."
“What really moved me was the possibility to raise the importance of social matters in the organisation, and to go from thinking to doing,” he continues. “Given BP’s evident leadership, it was possible to interact with community representatives to influence the structure and formulation of local and regional development plans. I found a denser field of action, where focua and permanent action leads to more palpable results."

He says communicating is fundamental in this field and to overall BP success, and corporations could do more of it.
“The practise we should use daily is listening,” he says. “At the same time,
NGOs have to get to know the corporate world better, how it works and its priorities, and could also make good use of corporate goal, measurement and risk assessment systems.”
Corporations like those systems and results, of course, but social development programmes are never ‘complete’.

“After more than 15 years, someone might say ‘it’s all done,’ and that would not be right,” he says. “Communities change, overcome the lack of one thing and feel the absence of another; children become adults with responsibilities and, since they are BP’s neighbours, they also adopt positions regarding what we do; politicians pressurise companies to get involved in their purposes. This all translates as history repeating itself, with new challenges and achievements, new actors and audiences.”
(a BP Columbian community affairs group member formerly at a leading NGO focusing on education, housing and disaster relief)

What, if any, links exist here with Muhammad Yunus? My immediate reaction is that quite a number of observations above bring out pointers for the direction of Yunus related work.

1. It is essential to engage both sides of the argument around 'for profit' and 'social business' in an open dialogue with people seeking solutions.

2. Recognise that systems and measurements in different spheres of business may have to be different yet discipline they impose is necessary in both.

3. Boundary-crossing activities and programs require people who have
successfully crossed those boundaries themselves.

4. At times of change nobody is always right. A healthy dose of humility coupled
with the daily practice of listening is essential.

5. People who work in large organisations are as likely to be committed to
creating a better world as any of us.

6. Find a former corporate senior executive to lead YunusUK and encourage the
practice of making it happen through operational delivery discipline.

7. Discover 'rebels with a cause' inside large companies and engage them as the
future Yunus ambassadors.

This should be a rich basis of a conversation with Tomorrow's Company team http://www.tomorrowscompany.com/.

Prof Mohammad Yunus lecture in London

I am involved in organising the lecture in St James Church on Piccadilly on Saturday 16th February. These are the photos taken on location of the posters and leaflets.

It all now looks totally real. The only thing is now making it happen with full house of 700 people.

Brad de Long on importance of economic history

What a great idea - instead of the morning blog, speak to your Mac, get Macspeech to transcribe it and hey presto - your favorite topic of the day is ready for viewing and reading.

Now, this particular topic has definitely got my attantion. I fully endorse the move to get students and practitioners of different disciplines to appreciate each others contribution to a chosen topic. This time he argued for closer collaboration and deeper links between historians and economists.

Of course, this is critically true for many other disciplines. It would be interesting to explore which other academic fields might be similarly enriched by cross-fertilisation.