Tags: net2, n2y2, innovatorz

Tags: n2y2, netsquared, rideshare, procrastination

Tags: foik, net2

One is the lead singer for The Cat Empire, and another is the lead singer for change.org.  Crazy, huh?

I’ve wanted to do this in part because I thought the Oscar winning hook would give Interplast and CC some publicity, but mainly because I wanted to convince other nonprofit organizations to examine the licenses they give their media. We’re certainly not the first organization to use CC licenses, but if we can give the idea a little more credibility, then we’ll have done a good thing.

The film used to have legitimate commercial value. It ran on PBS stations across the country and we sold copies through Amazon. But the PBS stations lost interest and our Amazon orders dwindled to a trickle.

Then we gave it away to folks at open houses, salon events, etc. Steve Rhodes, a guy I met at a geek party a while back and only re-met last week, suggested I slap a CC license on it and host in online somewhere for free. I thought it was a great idea. After all, we were giving it away for free in person, we couldn’t we do the same online? I pushed the idea through with the hope that a few people who would have otherwise never heard of us might become interested in Interplast and spread the word. Or donate. Or both, preferably.

When I met with one of the Creative Commons guys, I asked if he thought that this was a big deal. After all, we chose the most restrictive license on a film that had lost all commercial value. It’s not exactly The Godfather. He said he thought that because it was an Oscar winner, it was a big deal, and maybe in a few years such a story would be un-newsworthy. Maybe in some small way this event will contribute to making CC licenses more commonplace. Or maybe it’s just two nonprofit organizations collaborating through mutual self-interest with the only real payoff being a couple of links from a few blogs within our respective echo chambers.

Either way, CC and Interplast could both use some more publicity, and hopefully this will allow our work and missions to reach a wider audience. In a few weeks I’ll analyze the results, and see if we got any bump in donations or page views.

If any of you work at or with NGOs who are interested in the ins and outs of convincing the powers that be that CC licenses do not open the floodgates of hell, drop me a line.

I’m show-and-tell-ing the film at the CC salon at Shine in SF tonight (Wed 4/18) from 7-9pm. If you want to see the film on the big screen and/or lob softball questions at me, come on by.

tags: Interplast, Creative Commons, A Story of Healing, Academy Awards, Oscars

I feel pretty lucky to have a lot of friends and acquaintances who are doing neat and bootstrappy things. They’re all telling me to vote for their project. I haven’t decided who I’m going to vote for or how much time I’ll invest poring over the 120ish projects, but until I figure it out, please vote. Votes are only accepted through April 14.  There sure is lots of talk about changing the world through social tools, and it’s wonderful and rare when someone puts up actual US dollars to back an idea as chosen by a community.

The one thing I will say at this point regarding my vote is that I will not choose projects that already made it big, either in terms of financial sustainability or name recognition. This is an amazing opportunity for the little guys who have no other resources, and I sorta look negatively on the big boys on this list for whom the price of a ticket to the conference is negligible. Ahem.

tags: net2 vote

tags:  nten ntc07

Seeing Beyond Sight is a fascinating project by Tony Deifell. Basically, he gave cameras to blind teenagers and taught them about photography:

The students would ask questions about their surroundings, feel their subjects, and listen carefully to the hush and noise around them.

It was as if they were listening for “sound shadows.”

When I saw Leuwynda’s pictures of the sidewalk, I thought they were a mistake. Perhaps she had intended to capture a classmate or one of the large oak trees scattered across the campus. I was wrong. As soon as Leuwynda had her camera, she knew what she wanted to do – photograph the cracks in the sidewalk.

The pictures were proof of the damage, and she sent them along with a letter to the Superintendent. “Since you are sighted,” Leuwynda wrote, “you may not notice these cracks. They are a big problem since my white cane gets stuck.” Leuwynda asked for the cracks to be fixed – and they were.

The fact that I had not noticed the cracks in the sidewalks at Governor Morehead School has stayed with me for years. Leuwynda’s story is about more than cracks in a sidewalk; it is about all the cracks that go unnoticed.

I really don’t know many people in NYC, but if you do, spread the word about this little adventure this coming weekend. I’d go if it wasn’t 3000 miles away.

–cross-posted at NetSquared.

Tags: photography, blind, seeing beyond sight

To recap previous posts about GoodSearch and GoodTree (the comments are a great read and have lots of interesting perspectives, including a response from GoodTree’s founder), GoodSearch lets you pick a charity and search either in your browser’s searchbar or on their site. Your search donates one cent to your charity of choice and you get Yahoo search results. GoodTree gives you the same search functionality, except that your choice of charity is limited to 50 or so large NGOs and instead of Yahoo seach results you get that of Infospace, a public company with an ugly history that creates private label search engines. While those are big negatives, you can create your own personalized homepage, which you can’t with GoodSearch. Both are for-profit companies that donate 50% of their revenue to the charities specified.

SearchKindly is similar to the other two in that it allows you to direct someone else’s money to charities via searching. Unlike the others, however, SearchKindly is an all-volunteer nonprofit organization that says it donates 100% of its revenue to charity. Instead of Yahoo or Infospace results, you get Google search results, which I regard as top notch.

The catch is that their money comes from banner ads on the cluttered SearchKindly site. The charity of the month (picked by the founders from user suggestions) gets about 1/3 of a cent from each page view of the SearchKindly site, and nothing from the search results themselves. When you search through the downloadable SearchKindly browser searchbar and press enter, it takes you to the SearchKindly site, where you have to wait for the ads to load and press enter again to get to your search results.

They certainly have an interesting idea. Google search is the best, and the fact that GoodSearch and GoodTree didn’t have Google search powering their sites is a big downside for them. And you certainly can’t argue with 100% of revenues going to the charities, even if it seems a little too good to be true (who pays for hosting/bandwidth/coffee?).

I’m not terribly bothered by the theoretical annoyingness of the SearchKindly ads. The more advertisers they can draw there to give money to charities, the better.

But waiting for the Flash ads to load so I can press enter the second time to get to the results is surprisingly bothersome. It’s just a couple of seconds, but it seems much longer. I’ve gotten spoiled on instantaneous search, and by making me wait until the ads load, the site reminds me of The Hunger Site.

I like The Hunger Site, and I should go there every day, but I don’t. I like to feel that I’m helping the world by my actions, not by my patience, and while searching seems to be an active part of my life, visiting websites for the express purpose of being advertised to does not sound appealing.

I want SearchKindly to thrive. It has the best search results and zero overhead. I want them to keep striving and innovating. If their ads loaded as automatically as lower-paying text ads, I’d be a humongous SearchKindly supporter. As it stands now I’m pretty ambivalent about all three offerings. I have SearchKindly’s searchbar in my browser right now, and I’m going to give it a few weeks to see if I get used to the waiting and clicking twice. Although GoodTree and (especially) Goodsearch have built up name recognition by going live earlier, there is little barrier to changing search providers, so maybe SearchKindly will gain a footing.

From a business perspective, it will be interesting to see how SearchKindly does in comparison to GoodSearch and GoodTree. Per use, SearchKindly generates only 1/3 as much money to charity as the other two. So for it to become a major player in the charity search field, people have to find their service three times as useful as the others. And by “their service” I mean Google. So are Google search results worh three times as much to people as Yahoo’s or Infospace’s? Or do people even notice a difference? I do, and I’m going with SearchKindly, at least for now.

From a philosophical perspective, these are similar groups doing similar things. One is a nonprofit, the other two are for-profit, social entrepreneurial activities. Both have their pros and cons, and it will be interesting to see if one of the two revenue-distribution models gives a clear advantage to any party.

Tags: SearchKindly, GoodSearch, GoodTree, Search, nptech

Yet I’m staying at a Radisson, which is nicer than any hotel I would ever stay at on my own dime.  I eat three ginormous meals a day that are either buffets, catered or home-cooked.  Everytime I walk into the hotel I am saluted.  I drive in cars and vehicles chauffered by others.  I eat at the nicest restaraunts in town and am doted on quite frequently.

I’m supposed to be here helping people.  Or at least helping an organization that helps people.  But I can’t help feeling like I’m becoming one of those development imperialists who live like the rich while helping the poor. 

When I was in Laos a few years ago all the UN workers parked their badass 4-wheel drives outside the nicest restaraunt in town and lived in the old French colonial mansions.  I snottily looked down on them, but it looks like I’m turning into them.

I’m very uncomfortable with it.  I feel much more at home in rickshaws, eating at darbars, not being saluted by a doorman, not having a doorman, etc.  Hopefully I don’t get too used to this pampering.  It definitely doesn’t feel like I’m in a poor country.

Well, now I’m in India, eating Indian food cooked by or picked out by Punjabis at every meal.  Literally, every meal is better than the previous.  Can you imagine? Every bite is unbelievable.  I love India.

Our plane from London to Armritsar got rerouted to Delhi (too much fog), where we sat on the tarmac for hours before flying successfully to Armritsar.  We had a pool to see who could guess closest to our actual arrival time, which I lost.

I’ll try to update this when I can while I’m here, but no promises.

Tags: kiva, fast company, social capitalist awards

But I worry that my return might be hard on the kids. They’ve probably forgotten me or tried to, and it’s probably easier for them to just add me to relegate me to the recesses of their minds. Lots of volunteers like myself work there for a few months at a time and then leave. It’s probably hard for the kids to get so attached and then have to say goodbye. They made me promise I would come back, but what if doing so would awaken happily buried emotions? I could only stay for a day or two, and they (it they remembered me at all) would want me to stay for months.

Another wrinkle is that one of the kids has a horribly deformed hand. Rebels intentionally mangled his hand and what remains has been fashioned into two fingers and a thumb-like appendage. This is exactly the kind of thing Interplast can help, and we will be only five or six hours away by bus. Does the prospect of helping him justify my return? I have written the director of the orphanage who has not responded to my emails.

Thoughts?

Tags: dilemma, orphanage, child psychology

I like how the ad hits you in the face and confronts you. No subtlety, no hiding behind excuses, no bullshit. After reading about this on The Intelligent Giving blog (which you really should subscribe to), it really made me think.

Tags: charity, disabilities, philanthropy, donations, animals

Huh. Maybe some people went a little too crazy go nuts with the downward arrows. I hope the Powers That Be didn’t take my previous post about people gaming the system as a castigation of the system.

I’d be curious to see which nonprofits would have been down based on merit (or lack thereof) alone had there not been a benefit to voting a group up. I didn’t vote any organizations down, but I wonder if there was a limit as to how many groups you could dock. If there was, there’s a greater chance of the groups at the bottom earning their rank.

Oh well. It was a great idea to have those down arrows, and it’s a shame that the system got abused. I certainly learn more from bad examples than good ones. The lesson that curling irons are hot is a particularly memorable one.

Speaking of cleverness, it was really a great idea to pick the number 59. It’s so random, arbitrary and prime that it makes the site and all related commentary super findable.

Tags: 59, net2, squidoo, charities, nptech, get active

ChipIn is a flash widget that you can also put on any website that allows you to accept and track donations through others’ badges. Unlike the Network For Good badges, the ChipIn widget has a handy-dandy little thermometer that shows you how close you are to your goal, and the donations go through PayPal, which takes only 2.9%. The downside is that you can’t customize the buttons at all, and let’s face it, celebrities’ faces tend to be more attractive than the ChipIn logo.

I think ChipIn is clearly the better project, but Six Degrees has the Network For Good marketing muscle behind it. This is one of those unfortunate instances where the better marketed product is not as good as its lesser-known competitor. Bummer.

The difference in fees is something that really can’t be overstated. And ChipIn supports a clear trend in online philanthropy: the preference of people to support individual projects rather than organizations. You can give to a particular project within an organization, which might annoy many orgs but please the new breed of online donors who abhor overhead costs and worship at the altar of efficiency.

Plus, there are plenty of worthy causes that are not charities registered with the IRS that ChipIn can support. If your kid’s soccer team needs new uniforms or your neighborhood wants to buy the local homeless guy a sleeping bag, ChipIn is flexible enough to accomadate you, while Network For Good will only deal with nonprofits that have been blessed by the IRS.

I gotta admit, Six Degrees is clever and slick. Good site design, a brilliant jiu-jitsu style transformation of a drinking game into a charitable endeavor, and famous celebrities. Not the washed up, B grade ones, either.  It certainly has a bright future, and I hope they can steer the absurd cult of celebrity in this country to support worthy causes instead of fragrance lines and shampoo companies.

But I hope people don’t lose sight of ChipIn, a less glitzy but ultimately more solid offering.

Tags: Kevin Bacon, Six Degrees, Network For Good, ChipIn, nptech, philanthropy, donations

On a related note, I’m tired of integrating and moving data/tools/stuff from one platform to another, so I signed the Integration Proclamation. It seems sorta toothless, and I usually don’t think much of cheap pledges, but in light of today’s merger, maybe the toolmakers will finally see a demand for easy transfer of data as a good thing, not just a scary thing.

Tags: convio, get active, integration proclamation

One of the charities I dislike the most is PIRG, including all of its evil subsidiaries. They hire bright-eyed and bushy-tailed young people to hang out on busy street corners filled with yuppies and ask if you have a minute for the environment. Who doesn’t? Only jerks, and you’re not a jerk.  So you make eye contact and they launch into an oversimplified version of some environmental bill and ask you to sign a petition or give money to support it. You feel like an asshole for saying no, so you don’t. Once you’ve made eye contact and initiated conversation, you’re toast. And a lot of that money you donated went to paying for the salaries of the privileged college kid who stopped you in the first place, who will spend it on beer that night lamenting the fact that the “summer job to save the environment” seems a little sheisty.

Maybe if I play Chugger Chase more I can get better at avoiding them. I think I scored over 51,000 points.

While I shudder at the resources it took to create this mindless little game, it introduced me to Community Channel, I poked around their site a bit and challenged an easily-distracted friend of mine to beat my high score. So it definitely worked as an attention-getter.

Best of all, I like the big blue button in the right-hand corner that says “Boss Coming” that you can click to open up the legitimate, less-gamefied Community Channel website in a new tab/window, a nice touch to finish off a clever little time-waster.

Tags: chugger chase, community channel, pirg, game, fun

But wait a minute, can’t this system be gamed? Sure. All you need to do is get your friends/colleagues/mailing-list to sign up for a Squidoo account and PRESTO, your charity, as long as it startedsomewhere on the list, is now ranked above Donors Choose, winner of the 2005 Amazon Nonprofit Innovation Award, which at the time of writing was ranked #55 out of #59 with negative one point.

All groups started with (positive) one point. So either two individuals think Donors Choose is doing a bad job of utilizing the internet to affect social change. Or two folks voted them lower because it would improve their own group’s ranking.

I’m not aware of anyone thinking that Donors Choose is either a bad idea, badly executed, or not in a position to utilize the internet to bridge the web 2.0 and philanthropy worlds. So obviously, there is some manipulating going on here.

That’s interesting. Is it ethical? I don’t know.

There’s nothing at stake here except for pride, and there’s no rulebook that says “don’t get your fellow charity staff members to create Squidoo accounts just to vote up your charity and vote others lower”. In fact, some organizations (which are ranked quite highly) are quite obviously pandering to their community to vote for them, even by mistakenly implying that there is a financial benefit for the group to do so.

So that seems wrong to me. Obviously, each of the people in charge of marketing or communications at these orgs got a pat on the back when their bosses learned what happened, especially at small orgs (look, we’re better at communicating online than The One Campaign/Gates Foundation/Greenpeace/etc). But what else is there to be gained by cheating?

I know, there’s no rules, it’s not illegal, blahblahblah. But it feels wrong.

Is your group great? Sure. When I saw that Interplast made the list at #31, I signed up, voted, hit the ‘ole refresh button and watched us jump to #25. My coworker did the same and we were at #18. Pretty good for 15 seconds worth of marketing. It was fun, but it left me with no illusion that we do a better job of empowering people to change the world than Kiva or TakingITGlobal. We eventually jumped peaked at #10, and we never voted anyone else down. Were we unethical? I don’t think so. We honestly believe that we are doing a good job, and I’m sure that Squidoo is more than happy to let us vote in order to bag a couple of new subscribers. We didn’t spend much time on it, got a good chuckle and a warm fuzzy, and went back to work.

But we used to have five points, and now we have four, so again, even though there’s nothing at stake an I shouldn’t really care, someone’s screwing with the system.

It looks like someone who either works for or is a supporter of some group near the top is voting everyone else down. At the time of writing, 12 groups were at -1, which means that two people voted them down.

But here’s the problem with your plan, evil voter-downer-people. If any person familiar with nonprofits, technology, web 2.0, fundraising, marketing, etc sees a list with (all rankings current at time of writing):

• —Ferrets Unlimited as the #1 smartest org online
• —Groups like Donors Choose and New Orleans Voices for Peace, languishing near the bottom
• —The #8 charity not having a website that loads

Then they will simply dismiss it as an unreliable source and ignore it. If, on the other hand, they see a reasonable list where groups at the top seem to be really innovative, then the story might get picked up by bloggers, MSM journalists, and other chattery types who would catapault the list and all orgs on it onto their radarscreen and into their publications. Everyone wins.

Seth Godin, the founder of Squidoo, made a big hubhub a while back in the nonprofit blogosphere by questioning the way that many charities market themselves, especially the ones that didn’t have a Squidoo lens. That didn’t win him many friends in the NP blogosphere, but it sure garnered him lots of links, discussions and yummy stuff which he probably prefers.

I think Seth Godin is really smart, and although I don’t quite get Squidoo and why it presents a credible alternative to blogs and/or wikipedia, I think that this list is a smart move. Squidoo will garner new subscribers like me or folks who like ferrets, and people will talking about Seth Godin breathlessly as innovative and clever, which he certainly is. (see? It’s already working.)

I’m curious to see what the list looks like six months from now, and I predict that Donors Choose will slowly climb the ranks until it rivals Kiva. What do you think?

Tags: nptech, ngo, npo, seth godin, squidoo, net2, philanthropy, charity

• Principal Assistant
• El Principe de Computadore
• El Principe de Computadore y Cervezas
• Computadore Expert 
• PACU Nurse

Today I was walking back from the hospital after a comparatively long day. In Ecuador, we were never done before 7pm, and here, after only being here for two days I gather that 5:30pm is pretty late. So we were leaving at around 5:45pm today, and I waited awhile outside the changing room holding one of our sick nurses´ IV solution bag. Since the sickies were all taking a cab back I walked back to the hotel alone.

Two people about my age that I walked by motioned for me to come over. At first I thought they were trying to sell me something, but after giving them an uncharacteristic second look, I realized they were just curious folks.

As we walked back, we started talking. My Spanish sucks (a word I had to explain numerous times to them) as did they{re English, but we made do in the middle somehow. I needed to buy some batteries, so they taught me how to say that and took me to some places to find some. I bought them a beer for their kindness and we talked for at least 90 minutes. The girl, Gallito (I think), had this really cute sense of humor and would stick her tongue out whenever she thought anything was funny or interesting. David does security at the hospital and saw me walking in and out of the hospital on my gopher runs all day. He is more chill and understood more English, so he was often a go between.

It is really hard to learn another language. But its really gratifying to move this fast. I´ve mainly travelled in countries where the language has been extremely foreign and difficult, so to be in a place with an easy language is quite a pleasure. If I had been walking with the group or even one person, there´s no way they would have approached me.

But they did, and now I have two new friends. I need to be alone more often, in the US and abroad, to facilitate more such interactions.

I had a great time in Portoviejo, even though I worked too hard. 

Afterwards Jorge took us to this beach town called Salinas where we relaxed for 24 hrs before going back to Guayaquil.  We went sport fishing (Jorge said we were the buccaneers, but we didnt catch anything) and hung out.  We lived The Good Life, going to lunch at the yacht club, hanging out at his girlfriends beachfront condo, sleeping at his big-ass house, driving in his BMW. 

I am not saying he hasnt earned all of his wealth.  The amount of his time/money/energy that he gives to the poor surpasses that of any American that I know (myself regretfully included).  I frankly think it is arrogant for people to accept wealth in the US as morally neutral but to deride the the rich in other countries because they are somehow more responsible for global poverty. 

But I digress.  It was weird because I always have this idea of doing things on the cheap to save money for Interplast, so eating at yacht clubs a day after helping the uber poor was a bit of a change.  The patients we help are poor.  The folks who do the helping are not.  And truth be told, I was fucking exhausted, and the R&R really gave me new wind for another busy week of 20hr days. 

I had this image of Peru being lush and green or cold and mountainous, but the part the bus drove through was a bland desert.  Ecuador was beautiful with bananas and cacao growing everywhere and the lushness was ready to leap off the road.  That lushness turned to dust in Peru.  Luckily, the Ecuadorian customs dude didnt care that my embarkation card or whatever had also turned to dust. 

I will be here for a week, and might have more internet access, but who knows.

YouTube is big. Even before Google bought them, they somehow became a household word. At work, some of The Powers That Be asked that I get us on YouTube. Everyone wants to be the one in a million that becoms huge, and since YouTube snowballed ahead of Revver, Blip, Grouper, etc., they became known amongst the non-tech people as the place to be discovered. Sometimes these non-tech people like things done their way, and that applies soft pressure to join the bandwagon.

Blip seems a lot friendlier than YouTube. When I have a question, I write the main Blip email address and get a response back that sounds like it was written by a real human within 24 hrs. I met Mike, the co-founder at Vloggercon, and he was genuinely nice and helpful, even though I was the least technologocially knowledgeable person in the room.

They are also a lot faster. On the Interplast blog, I have been using both (Interplast on Blip es aqui y Interplast on YouTube es aqui) to upload videos of the visiting educator workshop that I am on right now here in Portoviejo, Ecuador. Tonight I had to upload four videos on my crappy internet connection, and I got halfway done with the fourth one on Blip before YouTube finished processing my first one. Score one for Blip.

I sorta view it as talking to the really nice girl who is sweet, kind, pretty and faithful or the hot chick everyone drools over but probably won’t have time for you.

I resisted using YouTube for so long but broke down before this trip, partly dreaming of Lonelygirl15 fame. But if I can’t load my videos in a timely fashion, then they’re not doing me much good. If the Interplast blog or my YouTube page starts getting oodles of hits/comments will I change my tune? Yup.

Does that make me a whore? Maybe. But I got a job to do, and my time is precious, especially on an Ecuadorian connection.

The nice girl wins, at least for now.

tags: blip youtube vlog Interplast Ecuador

Sleepy Seth, originally uploaded by interplast.

On the bus ride back from the hospital tonight I nodded off. This picture, one of 98316498746316546463 taken by the rest of the doctors and nurses who thought that me falling asleep was HILARIOUS, shows me in full nod. Days are long here but really gratifying. Since today was the first day we got off to a slow start and had to figure out which anesthesia machine to use, who would operate in which room, etc. But then we got our groove on.

I was interviewing a father of one of the patients who had scabs covering his entire body. He covered his mouth when he talked, and after a while (we were seated next to each other) he told me that he has this really intense disease that was contagious.

Awesome.

The translators and I went back to the medical theater where we asked some of the Ecuadorian docs what the guy had. One of them made a very grave face and said he had to leave the hospital grounds immediately. I asked if I should not go back in the OR due to my exposure and he cautioned me to stay away. I asked him what could be done (I dont speak Spanish, btw) and he simply made the sign of the cross. At this point he finally broke a smile, and I realized that he was just screwing with me. He said that he is only contagious if he was picking at the sores, which would allow the virus to escape. So for the rest of the day whenever I would walk by him he would make the sign of the cross and I would scratch intensely. It was funny, and its nice to play these little games that allow for communication without understanding a mutual language.

Me and My Friend, originally uploaded by interplast.

So, the photo is blurry, but I am in yellow on the left, and my new friend is sporting green on the right.

Allow me (us?) to change things up a little bit. For the next two weeks I will be blogging from Ecuador and Peru about my trip. I am here with Interplast collecting stories and such for communications materials, so if you want to see a more scrubby, Interplast-related version of what I am doing here, check out the Interplast blog.  Feel free to comment there and tell them/me how awesome I am.  This blog will be a more personal impression, and not necessarily having much to do with work.

We (a plastic surgeon, anesthesiologist and nurse practitioner) arrived in Guayaquil, Ecuador last night and spent half of today poking around the city, (where I met my new friend) and the other half driving to Portoviejo, a dumpy yet pleasant town a few hours away. We spent a few hrs at the hospital tonight evaluating patients for tomorrow, had dinner and went back to the hotel.

I am really kicking myself for not learning more Spanish before I came here, I feel like there is an anvil tied to my tongue and I hate not being able to communicate beyond the basics. One of the kids burst into tears at the sight of me, so my non-verbal communications skills are also lacking.

It feels weird that Interplast paid for my ticket and is paying me to be down here. I hope I can make myself useful and get enough yummy content for our newsletters/blogs/brochures/etc to justify the expense. The other team members have started introducing me as the Principal Assistant, a vague yet important sounding title designed to confuse and inspire. I think I can live up to that.

Ok, I am going to take my important self to bed. I will try to update this every day for the week I am here in Portoviejo, but no promises.

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And no, I haven’t seen the movie with cartoon penguins dancing around.

Bullshit Crotch
Originally uploaded by The Rappaz Horror Picture Show.

Last night I went to the Laughing Squid 11th anniversary, and after being there a full 20 minutes, I came away with some realizations that have been brewing for a while. For me, San Francisco and the web 2.0 scene feels very Hollywoodish:

*  People act excited to see you, and then you have to remind them what you’re name is.

*  Self-promotion is as subtle as a baseball bat to your balls.

*  Lots of parties aren’t really pure fun, but more of a mix of fun and work, conjuring up images of high school with people ostensibly having a good time while actually trying to demonstrate how cool/smart they are.

*  “We should really get together some time” has differing levels of immediacy depending on your Technorati rank or employer.

*  The line between work and play is fuzzy, so both always infect the other.

*  It’s cool to talk about social change, but that usually doesn’t mean more than buying fair trade coffee at Ritual Roasters or including a link to some tech-related cause.

*  Like the idle rich, there is interest in raising money at parties for important causes, but actually getting one’s hands dirty through volunteering is meekly avoided.

*  One’s presence is valued at events becuase they are judged by number of attendees.

*  The person you’re talking to is prepared to abruptly leave your convesation (or do that thing guys do when a hot girl walks by in the other direction with the head turn and the lost train of thought, I actually did that yesterday afternoon) whenever Someone Important walks by.

These are generalizations, I can think of plenty of folks who don’t meet these criteria, blah blah blah. But for a world that talks a good deal about democratization, there is a lot of bullshit to be sniffed through.

Tags: Web 2.0, Laughing Squid, San Francisco, Hollywood, Bullshit