Beth’s Blog

Campus Party H4SB — Hacking for Something Better Coming to US in 2012

Photos by Jamie Stobie and used with permission from the photographer

Note from Beth: My colleague, Daniel Ben-Horin, from TechSoup Global has been in the nonprofit technology for decades.   He has seen it all.   But when he gets excited about an activity that could benefit the nonprofit technology sector,  I listen.       What do you think of the Campus Party model?

Campus Party is the biggest technology phenomenon that almost nobody in the United States has ever heard of.   Imagine SxSW meets Burning Man meets Makers Faire meets Spring Break meets Bar Camps.   It is a huge success in the Spanish-speaking world and plans to debut in the States, in the S.F. Bay Area, in the summer of 2012.    It will be a gamechanger in the US, with 10,000 of the smartest, most motivated young hackers and other young technoids being exposed to the best of web development, artificial intelligence, robotics, social networking, gaming and social engagement.

Seven thousand young Mexican geeks attended the 3rd Mexican Campus party July 18-25 in Mexico.   Al Gore, Tim Berners-Lee  and Vinton Cerf appeared on a panel moderated immoderately by the ineffable and inexorable Cory Doctorow.   It was pretty damn great; those guys are all smart and Cory threw no softballs.

Campus Party is embraced by corporate sponsors.  The warmest hug is by the Spanish telecommunications giant, Telefonica, which is pervasive in LatAm under the brand Movistar.  Telefonica sees Campus Party as one stop shopping to reach the technology tastemakers and decision-makers of the near future. How does 11K gb connection speed sound to you? Every Campusero gets to hook up to the mother of all servers for a week. I think maybe a movie or game or two gets downloaded.

Like Burning Man, people camp. Not in the Nevada desert, but in huge indoor spaces in pup tents  (In Mexico, donated and branded by Movistar).

Like Maker’s Faires, people…create. There is major emphasis on what is possible when ingenuity, 11K gb internet connections and collaborative teams intersect.

Like Spring Break, it’s young, libidinous and fun.

And like Bar Camps, people hack. These are best of breed young hackers doing what comes naturally, incited and incented by blazing connections, motivated collaborators, cash reward challenges and future employers’ avid attention.

Campus Party is cheap. A week-long registration in Mexico cost $100 for non-campers and $114 for campers (who also got to keep their very nice pup tents). Food for a week cost another $80.

Futura is a private company but their model looks to barely break even on registrations and income from the Campuseros. The money is in sponsorship from companies that want to be favorably exposed in one fell swoop to a critical mass of the best and brightest of the young technoid class.  And that’s why it’s critical that all those young geeks have the best, geekiest time that ever they had because happy, fulfilled Campuseros translates into positive brand identification for Movistar, Microsoft, The Mexican  government, Ibm, HP, Asus, Nokia, Motorola, Nec, Opera, Noiselab, Volaris, Cisco, Oracle, Zte

Campus Party organizer Futura Networks also recognizes that a big driver for young techies is…social relevance. For more and more of the best young technical minds, it’s no longer enough to line up their talents behind selling toothpaste on the web. They want their brains to matter. They are engaged with the world on multiple levels, including the political. They inhabit a zeitgeist of commitment to saving our stupid old world from itself, of making things better.

Which is why Campus Party has pioneered H4SB — Hacking for Something Better. These folks bond indelibly in hack teams. They commit to each other individually as well as recruit from their individual networks to train and support their nonprofit partners in the year to come and beyond. In the States, nonprofits have generally concentrated on the relationship between the volunteer and the organization receiving services, with a spiffy volunteer interface in the middle. This works house-afire for a lot of volunteerism but it has often been a failure when it comes to high skilled, technology volunteerism at any kind of scale. What has been missed, and what Campus Party gets, is that working in groups is central to most technology efforts and that relating in groups is central to being young. Voila. Bingo.

“Young” is an important and nuanced word in understanding Campus Party’s achievements and potential.  It’s a student crowd, including grad students, and it’s a first job — of the “Is this all there is?” variety. They haven’t arrived yet. Some of them are a bit p.o.ed that their tech chops have landed them in the I.S. department of a bank, earning their stripes so they can … do what exactly? A lot of them have teamed to create (or at least contemplate) a start-up. But in the meantime, they work at the bank.

Computer Science departments are churning out geeks at a record rate. Where will they work? How creative will they be allowed to be? Who will be their community in the years to come? What will their lives be like?  I talked to a lot of Campuseros; those are their questions. Their answer were quite moving. They know they’re smart, they know their skills are in demand and they don’t want to settle for less than a life in which skills and values are aligned. Nonprofits and NGOs need to harness this talent for the common good.

Gore, Berners-Lee and Cerf are the co-chairs of the first Campus Party USA next year in Silicon Valley. Welcome to the U.S., Campus Party — we need you.

(For more information,  here’s the Campus Party Wikipedia Page and you can learn more from this BBC article.

Daniel Ben-Horin is the founder and co-CEO of TechSoup Global, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit technology product philanthropy service which connects 45 donating partners (including Microsoft, Cisco, Symantec, and Adobe) to nonprofits and NGOs in 36 countries, providing products and services valued at more than US$2.6 billion to date. The TechSoup Global Network, NetSquared, GuideStar International, and NGOsource projects facilitate philanthropic support, data transparency and shared innovation around the world. You can find him on Twitter here.

Vote and Comment for ALL these Awesome Nonprofit Panels at SXSW!

2008 SXSW Panel: Pimp Your Nonprofit Cause photo by Ed Schipul

The  SXSW Interactive Festival (scheduled March, 2012 in Austin, Texas) is a mega huge social media industry event.  The final program is selected through a combination of an open submission and voting process.   The process has opened – so you can browse and vote  for the nonprofit panels you think are worthy of being on the program until September 2, 2011.

And, if you’re thinking your organization can’t afford to send you to the conference,  there are scholarships available for nonprofits folks.   Check out the information and application process here.

There are over 3,000 panels available for voting and 149 in the nonprofit section.  For 2011,    I’ve submitted a panel titled “Making Social Media Measurement Sexy” with a dream team of colleagues Danielle Brigida, Frank Barry, Wendy Harman, Jon Dunn, and David Neff.   Hope you’ll consider a vote for our session.

For the past four years,  I’ve designed and facilitated panels on social media and nonprofit topics that were fun learning experiences and well documented.   In 2008, we wore funny hats to go with the theme of our panel. The following year, I organized an Nonprofit Social Media ROI Poetry Slam where panelists delivered their presentations as poems.    In 2010, did a crowdsourced session on crowdsourcing.  Last year was a global discussion about free agents with remote colleagues in the Middle East.

There is a fantastic list of nonprofit focused panels submitted by other colleagues in the sector.   Here’s a couple  I hope you’ll vote for those as well:

Turning Online Donors Into Change Investors
Geoff Livingston,  Peggy Duvette, Brian Fujito, Stacey Monk, Robert Wolf

Let’s Talk Video for Social Change
Mark Horvath, Invisible People TV

Hashtags and Non-Profit Community Development
Devon Smith

Under the Social Good Hood
Susan Gordon, Causes and Robert Rosenthal, VolunteerMatch

Social Media Boundaries: Personal/Personnel Policy
Amy Sample Ward, NTEN

Epic Fail! When Social Good Goes bad
Chad Norman, Blackbaud

Positively Inspired Change Campaigns
Stacey Monk and Tom Dawkins

Social Media for the Non-Sexy Cause
Peter Panepento, Chroncile

Be a Design Superhero: Vanquish the Wasted Pretty
Eve Simon, Lawrence Swiader, Traci Sym, Maria Giudice

Web ROI: It’s not dollars, it’s (common) sense
Lynn Labieniec & Marissa Goldsmith

101 Social Media Tactics for NonprofitsMelanie Mathos and Chad Norman, Blackbaud

No brochures: digital storytelling for nonprofits
Joe Lambert, Digital Storytelling

The Hills Are Alive With Social Data
Danielle Brigida

Smokey Bear TweetUP
Blogger OutReach Programs
YWCA Safety Siren
Seafood App and Yelp:  The Future of Social FoodMacho Man is My Community Manager

In addition see, Eve Simon’s list

Have you submitted a nonprofit panel to SXSW this year?   Share the link, title, and names in the comments.

Enchantment: Resisting Guy Kawasaki Is Futile

Yesterday, the Social Media for Nonprofit Conference series kicked off in San Francisco yesterday in War Memorial Green Room with support from Microsoft.   The conference shared practical tips and tools with expert speakers including, JD Lasica, Social Brite,  Susan Gordon of Causes.com, Jonah Sachs of Free Range Studios, Charles Porch of Facebook,  Susan Tenby of TechSoup Global and Kellie McElhaney, founding faculty director of the Center for Responsible Business at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.

The highlight was the morning keynote by Guy Kawasaki whose keynote shared ten principles about how to enchant people based on his new book, Enchantment.    What’s not to like about Guy?   He is an amazing speaker, great stories, beautiful visuals, funny, and a mix of solid principles and practical information.    One can always learn so much for watching a good speaker!

Each speaker had a plethora of practical tips and resources, that I decided to capture some of the best nuggits.  Here they are:

Guy Kawaski:

Facebook is picture economy, while Twitter is a link economy.  Makes me wonder what type of economy Google Plus will be once get beyond the early adopter beta stage?  The small circle economy?

He uses a Twitter monitoring tool called “Hibari” although it is just for Mac because it filters well.

“Always Be Cropping” – a very practical point for being enchanting with photos that stand out in social streams – and to mindful of good composition – which requires cropping.     Here’s some other suggestions and tips for enchanting photos.

Charles Porch, Facebook

Be strategic about cross linking and collaborating with other organizations on Facebook by using tagging, page favorites, and participating.   Here’s some more tips.

Susan Gordon, Causes

Bring the big donor experience to every donor – saying thank you, acknowledging them, engaging with them

If you use the new integrated Causes landing tab with your Facebook Page,  you also need a communications strategy to go along with it.  Here’s more.

Susan Tenby, TechSoup

Susan had the best line of the all event.

Hashtags can lead you to great communities and conversations – discover, search, monitor and participate in the ones that are relevant.

JD Lasica, SocialBrite

JD gave an amazing presentation packed full of practical and useful tips and tools.   Even better, as he said, it was Christmas in June – he created a page with all his handouts here.

I gave the end of the day “un keynote,” a chance to put into practice what I learned from Heather Gold.   As you can imagine, the conference blahs start to hit after a day of taking in some much fabulous information.    So, I started with an energizer by making everyone do the chicken dance.

(I also used a measurement – before we started moving, I asked how many people on scale were exhausted and ready for the after party or a nap?    I asked the same question after we did the energizer and the number of people who self-reported exhausted by a show of hands went down.   My point is that movement gets blood flood to brain and people wake up if they’re in an information overload coma)

I did a very brief  ignite style presentation on free agents to frame the discussion before wandering out to the audience with a wireless mic to discuss the questions.   Some of the points raised yesterday and in other discussions are summarized here.

The best part of the day for me was peer assist circles we did at the end.    We had an hour and worked in some groups where each person got to share, what they we’re working on and what they’d need help with.     I got to participate – and this small group, more intimate unstructured type of peer assist is one of my favorite ways to learn.

How To Get Fire in Your Organization’s Belly: Key Insight from the Millennial Donor Summit

Millennials – We know they are young, tech savvy and well-educated-but they are also some of the most active when it comes to donating and volunteering.   So what’s the secret to engaging Millennials in your  nonprofit organization’s work?   The Millennial Donor Summit explored this question and others while engaging participants in a virtual setting.     The MDS11 extended the concepts and ideas discovered in the annual Millennial Donors Survey conducted by JGA and Achieve by building knowledge around the topic of  millennial engagement.  Download the complete 2011 Millennial Donor Study findings and recommendations by visiting millennialdonors.com.

I was tapped to “live blog”  a plenary session called “Generational Divide”  with speakers Wendy Harman and Suzy DeFrancis, American Red Cross and David Smith and Michael Weiser, National Conference on Citizenship and moderated by Kari Dunn, Case Foundation.     The panel was focused on how “Next Gen Leaders” are influencing and changing nonprofits from the inside out and was designed tolook at ways to encourage sharing across generations within organizations.  

Unfortunately,  I had an epic FLASH failure which prevented me from hearing the live streamed program in real time.    Luckily, there was an incredible Twitter stream using the hashtag #mdc11 and some of my favorite nonprofit Millenials (and Babyboomers and Genxers) were sharing nuggets of insight.     Amy Sample Ward did this very thorough transcript of the session.      It is a good thing that virtual conferences and Twitter hashtags go together like milk and cookies!

Here are my big picture takeaways from participating in this networked, virtual cross-generational exchange that explored the lessons learned from generation to generation –while encouraging more organizations to look within their own institutions at how they must change in order to attract, retain and engage new donors, activists, champions, etc.

One big myth is that Millennials don’t trust nonprofit institutions and that isn’t true according to Wendy Harman from the Red Cross.   Millennials want to be hands on with nonprofits, get inside and effect change.    While Millennials may be perceived to be “selfish little babies” – they want nonprofits to be efficient, useful, and engaging.   Yet, both within and on the outside, Millennials with great ideas and passion are often met with coldwater statements from their managers like  “That is not the way we do things here.”

Millennials have the potential to bring a lot of value in leadership to nonprofits from within.  They get emerging media and are ready to teach.   They can bring their passion, their “fire in the belly” to the nonprofit and the nonprofit is better for it.   Finally, they have collaboration and networking skills that are in their DNA that they can bring to the nonprofit workplace.   But this takes a different kind of management approach, rather than organize them, nonprofits need to facilitate Millennials to organize themselves.  (Cat herding skills?)

If nonprofits want to understand Millennials, they need to talk to them, put them on their board.   Several Millennials, including colleague, Clay Lord, agreed that serving on a board is a good way to engage them.   Clay advised that it is important to clarify board roles,  be a good listener, and have diversity.    A board of all babyboomers or Millennials isn’t good either.

These threads reasonated because I had just come hearing a talk by Poonam Muttreje, CEO of the Population Foundation of India and part of the team that developed the Ashoka Fellows Program, who reflected on many years of experience on designing and implementing leadership programs.    She is passionate believer in the value of individual leadership for social change.    She talked about different selection criteria, but those who have “fire in the belly” are the ones that can ultimately lead and change the world.   

It struck me from the Tweets and reading the transcripts, that nonprofits have the opportunity to put fire in the bellies of their programs by engaging Millennials from the inside and out with their programs.   

Be sure to read these blog posts about other topics covered at the Millennial Donor Summit

7  Things I learned about Engagement from Mr. Youth by Katya Andresen
7 ways to Create Killer, Engaged Fundraising Campaigns by Nathan Hand
Micro Volunteering by Kivi Leroux Miller
Applying Strategic Storytelling and Fundraising by Geoff Livingston