My January 2011 video clip of the month is a MSNBC news report about an unprecedented plan to use crowdsourcing to stop war and war crimes in their bloody tracks. The plan, the brainchild of American actor George Clooney, is using commercial satellite images and the Internet to monitor the border between northern and southern Sudan. Oil-rich South Sudan is set to vote Jan. 9 on a proposal to become independent from North Sudan, a move the former U.S. Director of … [Read more...]
Cookie Monster, Social Influence & Crowdsourcing
November 27, 2010 by
Tweets about watching a Cookie Monster audition video to help him land a gig hosting SNL started showing up in my Twitter stream this week. While I typically tweet about things like old and new media, public relations, and Montessori, I couldn't resist retweeting the plea. Yes, you read that right. A Montessori mom who doesn't let her 3-year-old watch television, including Sesame Street, was one of the people who helped Cookie Monster's video reach 1 million views … [Read more...]
Video Clip of the Month: Crowd Accelerated Innovation
October 1, 2010 by
My October 2009 video clip of the month features TED's Chris Anderson giving a fascinating talk on a new phenomenon he calls "Crowd Accelerated Innovation." Web video is driving the global phenomenon, a self-fueling cycle of innovation and learning that he says could be as significant as the invention of the printing press. By watching his video, Anderson says, "you're part of the crowd that may be about to launch the biggest learning cycle in human history, a cycle … [Read more...]
How Crowdsourcing Helped Iranians Beat the Censor
August 16, 2010 by
I read a fascinating article in Newsweek today about a 25-year-old computer programmer who created crowdsourcing software that broke the grip of Iran's censors after the disputed 2009 election. The programmer, Austin Heap of San Francisco, developed the software, called Haystack, to open up social networking sites the Iranian government was blocking, such as Twitter and Facebook, to allow people on the ground in Iran to organize inside the country and communicate … [Read more...]
30 Tweet Gems from Emergency Social Data Summit
August 13, 2010 by
You might remember one of the good news stories to come out of January's Haiti earthquake. A Canadian woman trapped in rubble sent a text message to Canadian foreign ministry officials thousands of kilometers away. The message was relayed back to Canadian authorities in Haiti who were able to find and rescue her. With people increasingly using text messages, Facebook, Twitter, and other new media tools to seek help in a disaster, the American Red Cross sponsored … [Read more...]
Exciting or Scary? Rise of Social Media Swarms
May 24, 2010 by
Today, we are on the verge of a massive shift in the way we communicate and inspire action. Social media is creating a new kind of communications fluidity, a fully immersive experience enabling conversations to be hijacked in ways unimaginable in decades past. Up until the 1980s, totalitarian governments, superpowers, media cartels, and leading brands had dominant control over national and even global dialogues because of superior resources and a monopoly … [Read more...]
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