Category Archives: Web/Tech

Friday round-up: Coca-Cola, Clay, Causes

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Another week passes, and for your Bank Holiday reading, we present… the Friday round-up:

– Some good recent posts from some of the Social Enterprise Ambassadors: Matt Stevenson-Dodd, Daniel Heery and Chris Allwood; all well worth a read

– I’ve banged on a lot about the need for blogs to be authentic and honest; Stephen Bubb’s blog, whilst he divides opinion, continues to deliver on both fronts: entertaining, name-drop-tastic, frank posts that feel like a conversation: how many ACEVO members will follow his lead, I wonder?

– This is a useful intro on using Social Media for Social Change

– And, as a nice foil to that, here’s a piece about how Facebook Causes don’t tackle root causes: or how social media is only useful if it impacts in the real offline world….

– Clay Shirky video that discusses where we find the time to watch TV, blog and the like…. [hat tip Beth]

– Interesting article on developments in Chinese philanthropy of late (post-earthquake)

–  Edge Upstarts Awards are happening on June 18th at Lindley Hall (near Pimlico); keynote speaker is Ed Balls….and the Enterprising Solutions Awards are also open for nominations / entries (till July 1st). Don’t be put off by our CEO Alastair being a judge for both!

– The 9 myths of fundraising diversification is quite interesting: for those who need to do it (in these times of credit crunches and the like) to ensure no over-reliance in any one area; it’s been a key part of SSE’s strategy over the last few years, and this is good on stuff to consider before you start

– Simon Berry, CEO of the mighty Ruralnet, has been pushing an idea about using Coca-Cola’s distribution system to help send out rehydration tablets in the developing world; support the campaign by joining the Facebook group or viewing the website here

Have a great weekend…..

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What is social enterprise? animation

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Just a brief animation to end the week, courtesy of SEC and Inside Job productions (itself a division of Media For Development, established and run by SSE Fellow James Greenshields). Enjoy:

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Wednesday round-up: OTS, Olympics, Obama

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In a radical break with tradition, here’s a Wednesday round-up for you of relevant news, views and opinion.

– First up, I’ve tried to capture a fair bit of Skoll, and post-Skoll coverage: that would be a links page on its own, though, so best viewed and checked out via our Del.icio.us bookmarks link at http://del.icio.us/SSE/Skoll which encompasses a pretty decent cross-section….

– A social enterprise business park as an Olympic legacy: sounds good. And most interestingly, put forward by someone who is a practitioner, not an umbrella org looking for funds; and we used Calverts for our last big printing job (highly recommended)

– When Muhammad met Liam (Yunus and Black): interesting conversation transcript

– A compare and contrast on social franchising (US- based) from Social Enterprise Reporter

– CSR as a business strategy

– Decent piece on (social) entrepreneurship / government policy in HBR; incidentally, there is a piece in the current Stanford Social Innovation Review which suggests what the new US president (come on Obama!) should do in this field. More on this soon…

– Also in SSIR is a piece about the relationship between producitivity and impact in the non-profit sector; it’s called "More Bang for the Buck" which gives you an indication of where it’s coming from. I think I took more from this case study

– Big welcome to the first 4 UK Ashoka Fellows, and congrats to Ben Metz for pulling off a good event the other evening. The Fellows are Camila Batmanghelidjh, Al Harris, Bob Paterson, and Faisel Rahman.

– OTS has released a piece of research from Rocket Science on Social Enterprise Networks. I found this useful and informative, but I’m not sure if that’s only because I’m approaching sector-geek status. What the report does do, alongside give a good overview of regional and sub-regional networks, is emphasise the need for more peer-to-peer learning / networks….and wisely pulls out SSE as a case study. :0)

More soon, when the frenzy of the last few weeks calms itself…..do buy some extra reading in the meantime :0)

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Is your website mainstream?

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Noted today how the School of Everything (who live upstairs from us) blogged about how they hoped to see more people browsing on their website using Internet Explorer rather than Firefox, on the basis that this would demonstrate they are going ‘mainstream’. They then compare this to the Wikipedia breakdown of the average percentages of browser use.

This seems to me an eminently successful exercise, and a useful ‘finger-in-the-air’ assessment for whether you are just reaching white 30 year-old men who like reading Clay Shirky, watching TED video podcasts and twittering or friendfeeding every waking moment. You know who you are (he said, looking in the mirror). Wonder what the breakdown would be for all web 2.0 sites?

Not really applicable in SSE’s case, as we’re hardly web 2.0 (this blog aside), but happy to report that Google’s Analytics tells me we’re pretty much bang on the Wikipedia average: 71% Explorer, 22% Firefox, 6% Safari, a bit of Opera (so to speak) and then the odds and sods. Must attract more geeks to the site…. :0)

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SavvyChavvy

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On a list of things I thought I’d never link to, a site with the name SavvyChavvy would probably feature. But it’s not a micktaking site or a spoof online joke: it’s a serious initiative to connect gypsy and traveller communities in the UK who are, by their very nature, often particularly isolated from each other. It allows young travellers in particular to connect to their peers, which is often as much about connecting East European Romany to their UK counterparts.

Does this section the community off in itself? Well, possibly, but providing them with a safe space to connect and communicate away from the excesses of Facebook groups and comments (there have already been ‘spoof’ profiles set up within the site, prompting new culturally-specific questions) seems like a sensible thing to do, especially when coupled with on-the-ground internet training. You can only join the community if you’re part of the traveller community at SavvyChavvy.com (it’s a social network built with Ning) but you can see some accompanying video clips here, and how the local South East TV news reported it.

Hopefully it might also go some way to reclaiming, or repositioning, the word ‘chav’, given that it is largely thought to come from the Romany word ‘chavi’ for a young person.

Congratulations to Jake Bowers and SSE Fellow Nathalie McDermott on a great initiative.

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