(by Christopher Allen with Elyn Andersson and Shannon Appelcline) Two years ago, the Bainbridge Graduate Institute (www.BGI.edu) faculty gathered to radically reinvent their sustainable business curriculum for the next decade. Our goal was not only to update course content, but... Continue reading

These are the initial required readings for the first two weeks of my Using the Social Web for Social Change class (hashtag #SW4SX) that I teach in the MBA in Sustainable Systems program at Bainbridge Graduate Institute. The goal of... Continue reading

This fall with be the 4th year, and the 5th time that I've taught the class Using the Social Web for Social Change (hashtag #SW4SX) in the MBA in Sustainable Systems program at Bainbridge Graduate Institute (BGI.edu). The class itself... Continue reading

Over my lifetime I have encountered a number of “tools for ignition” — a phrase which I use to describe innovative products that have empowered people and created movements. On the 25th anniversary of Hypercard’s introduction, I want to take... Continue reading

Today is Blog Action Day, where each year a topic is chosen and bloggers and activists worldwide write about that topic in their blogs or post about it on Twitter and Facebook using the tags #FOOD and #BAD11. This year's topic is Food, and this year many of my students of my BGIedu class Using the Social Web for Social Change are using the day to help kick off their "Beat Blog" assignments. (Blog continues with a list of student blogs...) Continue reading

With Google+ almost two weeks into its test phase, conversation about this new social network service seems to be going in circles. Literally. That’s because Circles is the Google+ feature that users are generating the most buzz about. It’s Google’s answer to the problem of organizing your social graph online. If you’re not familiar with a social graph it’s a map of everyone you know and how they are related to you. Social graphs are tricky; as you try to define them you’ll inevitably run into some complications. [Post continues with more advice on managing Google+, your social graph, privacy, and time management tips.] Continue reading

One of the common practices in the independent movie industry is to share favors to keep production costs low. I loan you use of a camera and you later do some editing for me on the cheap. Of course, it is often actually less direct then that: I loan you the camera, the community knows that I am generous, and when I need some editing time on the cheap, my social capital in the film community makes the resource available to me. [post continues with quote from Joss Whedon and some commentary]... Continue reading

Late this evening while catching up on my feeds, I saw for the first time that this year's Blog Action Day is on the topic of Climate Change. This event is sponsored yearly by Change.org. I wish I had known... Continue reading

[intro skipped] One tool that I've used to manage these odd-sized groups in the past is what I call “The Braid”. It is derived from a group process called the Café Method, of which The World Café and Conversation Café are excellent examples. In The Café Method, people meet in smaller groups around tables, and then flow from table to table sharing ideas, but ideally keeping each table at 4-7 people. There is an excellent free PDF guide to the Café Method offered by The World Café called Cafe To Go. [rest of post continues with more details on The Braid...] Continue reading

Passwords are very important for maintaining your online identity, because they ensure that no one else can access your accounts and do things that you wouldn't do. As such, you should make sure that your online passwords are as strong... Continue reading

[brief summary of longer post] The average native English language speaker uses in the realm of 12,000 to 20,000 words, whereas a college graduate would use 20-25,000 words…Every time a new group of people meet together — whether in a team, in a marketplace, or in a community — one of the first activities they must do together is create a shared language…They do this in order to communicate more effectively together, to put a context on the words that they have in common, to construct a shared understanding in their minds based both on available information and their individual diversity of experience…Without a shared language there will be no clarity on mutual goals — whether it involves working together, transacting a trade, or creating something…However, some facilitators have learned that one of the best ways to help a group form a shared language is by having the group create together a shared artifact…It allows the individuals participating to ask the questions: "Is this what you mean when you are talking about this?..an important factor in shared artifacts — if the shared artifact is not constrained then it will be too large or complex for the group to reach some measure of completion…Often there are differences in status, purpose, or perspective that can get in the way of group formation, but a focus on a common task of the creation of a neutral shared artifact allows those issues to come later as the participants develop the trust and shared language required to talk about those tough issues.…The conjoined social networks in the blogosphere — via Facebook, Twitter, or the attendee-focused Unconference — cause new terminology and new language to form ever faster…Or is there just not enough space for it within the tightly constrained social artifacts of the internet?…These are questions that we as social software technologists need to address as the future of the internet increasingly becomes the present of our social groupings. Continue reading

Starting next week I will be teaching a course at the Bainbridge Graduate Institute on the topic of "Using the Social Web for Social Change". [post continues with details...] Continue reading

ast year I participated in a survey followed up by a focus group on the topic of Noncommercial Use, in particular around the context that about 2/3rds of the Creative Commons licenses extant use the NC attribute, such as in CC-BY-NC. (post continues with details and commentary...) Continue reading