George Weiner

Millennial Unemployment: The Cognitive Cliff

2012-12-07T15:36:00-05:00

When President Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness was tasked with handling the shortage of engineers in the U.S., they turned to interns. Using a tradition with its roots in the master-apprentice relationship, the Council is relying on industry to start earlier in training its next generation of workers. In August 2011, the White House announced commitments from top companies to create 6,000 new engineering internships in 2012.

In the big picture, 6,000 internships are a drop in the bucket as there are 4 million U.S. 16-24 unemployed, bringing the unemployment rate to 17.1 percent as of July, 2012. The U.S. is now facing a professional cognitive cliff, as current graduates are being deprived of crucial career building for the fourth year in a row since the 2008 recession. It is unclear how much this cognitive cliff will cost our country in the long run -- but it will be magnified the longer we fail to create quality early employment opportunities.

Several Pew Research Center studies found that a college degree doubles the lifetime earnings over a 40-year career ($1.42 million vs. $770,000 for those who did not finish college). This data shows how early career education has significant long-term impact, similar to the way compound interest works on a retirement account. What will this cognitive cliff cost our country in the long run? Could it be as costly as not sending people to college at all?

The internship
The way that a company runs an internship program can affect its ability to attract top talent, and can shape its brand and even its industry. Too many companies think of internships solely as an audition for the intern, often forgetting that they are simultaneously serving as a professional classroom. Moreover, that insignificant intern may be an undiscovered industry prodigy. In the late 1960s, both Universal Studios and Hewlett-Packard gave two such interns an opportunity.

Hewlett-Packard CEO Bill Hewlett received an interesting call from a 12-year-old in 1967 asking about computer parts for a project he was working on. Twenty minutes later, Hewlett offered Steve Jobs his first internship putting screws into frequency counters on an assembly line. "I remember my first day, expressing complete enthusiasm and bliss at being at Hewlett-Packard to my supervisor, a guy named Chris, telling him that my favorite thing in the whole world was electronics."

Like Jobs, at age 17 Steven Spielberg kicked off his career with an unpaid internship at Universal Studios after a family friend made the life-altering introduction. As an intern Spielberg wasn't officially allowed on set -- but, that didn't stop him from sneaking on regularly and networking his way into any meeting he could find. He made his first short film, Amblin (1969), and hustled to get Universal executives to watch it. Once the vice president of the television division saw the film, he offered Spielberg a seven-year contract. Six years later, Spielberg delivered the epic movie Jaws (1975) to Universal Studios and cemented the beginnings of his cinematic legacy... and made us all think twice before sticking our toe in the ocean.

Jobs and Spielberg had a lot in common -- an extraordinary work ethic, initiative, a sense of imagination, etc. Most importantly, though, both young men were given opportunities at great companies early in life that helped launch them into their future careers.

Internships as an education
The U.S. News and World Report, known for its annual rankings of universities and colleges, also releases a short list ranking schools based on the percent of undergraduates who have an internship during their time in college. The only Ivy in the top 10 for the 2011 report was Dartmouth College (72 percent), which came in third behind American University (85 percent) and Colorado School of Mines (81 percent).

In an interview with Monica Wilson, the acting co-director of the Dartmouth Undergraduate Career Services Department, Ms. Wilson noted that one thing that helped Dartmouth to have a successful intern program is the way they use the quarter system. Dartmouth encourages its students to take a quarter off to intern with an organization and gain real-world experience to supplement their education.

The undergraduate career services department is a member of the National Internship Consortium, which collectively houses several thousand opportunities. Ms. Wilson explained that students are encouraged to begin their search six months out.

Integrating internships into the educational process as much as Dartmouth has can be difficult in a down economy. "We definitely noticed a dip in available internships for students in 2008 due to the economy," Ms. Wilson noted. "Fortunately, 2011 really picked up with more internships because a lot of companies have realized it is a great way to identify talented entry-level hires early on, well in advance of graduation." Dartmouth College continues to grow its pool of available internships through a variety of means, including optimizing relationships with parents and alumni/ae.

Avoiding the cognitive cliff
Unfortunately the 17.1 percent unemployment rate doesn't tell the whole story for millennials. "The underemployment rate for young high school graduates is still extremely high, at 54.0 percent, as is the underemployment rate for young college graduates, at 19.1 percent. Thus, the Class of 2012 will be the fourth consecutive graduating class to face the severe short-term and long-term consequences of entering the labor market during a period of profound weakness." (Economic Policy Institute 2012).

On top of this four-year slide, the value of college degrees has also dropped as the market gets flooded while the cost of attaining a degree has risen each year. This has led to the average student leaving college with $26,500 in debt.

This election, my generation showed up in record numbers to re-elect Barack Obama. It's my hope that new job plans extend beyond manufacturing and service jobs and focus on increasing quality jobs for college graduates. However, to overcome this cognitive cliff it will also take the private and nonprofit sector to increase their internships and junior positions.

Imagine a world where HP and Universal Studios had no room for interns or young hires? We could potentially have been deprived of watching Jaws on our iPads. Right now, while you're reading this, the next Steve Jobs is hanging out with his buddy Spielberg playing "Call of Duty" instead of showing up at your company.

The nation's politicians are now focusing their attention on our impending fiscal cliff, but I believe there is a much more dangerous cliff -- one that is threatening to cripple an entire generation. So, my holiday wish this season: cut the company bonus and spend it on doubling your internship budget.

Are Vanity Metrics Making Your Organization Sick?

2012-03-05T15:56:46-05:00

As a rule, organizations work toward the goals they set. When these goals have numbers attached to them, the work focuses on what drives these numbers to improve. Unfortunately if these numbers are based on vanity metrics, an organization is bound to get sick. Vanity metrics, a term used by The Lean Startup author Eric Reis, are metrics that only look at the surface performance and don't relate to the actual health of an organization. The same is true for a person, as I learned the hard way.

I was recently diagnosed with an illness that came as a direct result of stress and lifestyle. After looking back and examining the "data," I now realize that all of the deep goals and measures I had set for myself were work related. All of them.

According to my vanity metrics, my graph was making a nice "up and to the right" trend. I looked healthy, ate well and worked out every week. But by ignoring the deeper measures that contribute to a healthy system, I was unknowingly wearing my engine down. (I have since added fitness, relationship, and vacation goals into my measures of personal success).

You're so vain, you probably think this metric is about you

The easiest way to understand a vanity metric is to remember that "metrics are people too." Every chart, trend or spreadsheet should be presented in the appropriate context to give us an aggregate understanding of how people are actually behaving. This means that statistics like number of page views, users, or Facebook fans aren't, on their own, telling you what people are doing and don't necessarily indicate the health of an organization.

For example, on an organization's Facebook fan page, total Likes is the easiest thing to measure and grow. But when we think of this metric from a "people perspective," it is clear that what we should care about and measure is not simply the number of Likes, but the people talking about the fan page (demonstrated through a combination of active Likes of posts, shares and comments). Consider two fan pages. One has 3.3 million likes and 3,300 people talking about it (Chase Community Giving). The other has 200,000 Likes and 5,000 talking about it (DoSomething.org). Which is healthier? Based on recent Facebook changes associated with the "timeline" format, the answer is the fan page with fewer total likes, but more active users, because moving forward a user that isn't talking about a page will rarely see the activity feed from it.

The same holds true for the number of page views or "hits" for a website. Though this is one of the first numbers Google Analytics serves up in a dashboard, it is the first one an organization should ignore. An organization that bases it's goal on total traffic is comparable to a store that only cares about how many times people walk in or how many things they look at when they do. A store that did this would be out of business very quickly because they aren't tracking whether or not people are actually buying things. Metrics like bounce rate (percent of people that leave immediately from a page), time on site, goal conversions and social shares of content come much closer to demonstrating what people actually like. Avinash Kaushik does a great job explaining how web analytics should focus on outcomes.

Total users is another classic vanity metric that can give a quick idea of the size of an organization but no sense of actual health. Like trying to drive a car by just looking at the odometer, this metric gives no insight into the rate that users are increasing, decreasing or becoming inactive. In the start-up world, the total users metric is a joke partially due to books like The Lean Startup and the fact that venture firms know that this metric doesn't put money in the bank. Silicon Valley start-ups live and die by acquisition rate, active users, referral rate (number of people referred per user), and churn (users leaving). Not-for-profits with online communities should be no different, even if the funders don't care about it.

In the same way that I made myself sick by focusing on a narrow band of vanity metrics, so too can an organization work itself into an illness. However, the solution is simple: put the people back in metrics and pay attention to the true health of a system if you want to make change. Vacations don't hurt either.

"Where's the Pony?" Occupy Wall Street Demands

2011-10-27T19:13:07-04:00

There is an old joke about an optimistic kid that is left in a room full to the brim with horse shit. The people who left him there return about an hour later, and to their surprise, they find the boy happily digging through the shit and ask "Hey Boy! What are you doing?," to which the boy responds: "With all this shit I figured there's got to be a pony in here somewhere."

I recently took a tour of the Occupy Wall Street demonstration in Zuccoti Park, trying to find the pony.

Walking into the demonstration was like peeling layers of an onion. There was an outer layer of police, followed by a layer of observers, next came sign holders, then campers, and intermixed between them were pods of organized committees (media, law, art, tech, etc.). I spoke to many people, trying to get an idea of the main goal and purpose (pony) they were working toward.

The pony I hoped to find would've come in the form of clear policy changes Occupy Wall Street wanted to see. For example, campaign finance reform, Wall Street compensation regulation or Congress term limits. There are still no 'official demands' from the collective, but there has been a lot of press around individuals claiming to make Occupy Wall Street demands. (See the first set of user-submitted demands the media ran with.)

I continued to make rounds inside the camp, and stayed for the 8 p.m. general assembly (which started at 8:30 p.m.). The human microphone system that used people repeating three words of a speech at a time was awesome to be a part of, but the topics -- like whether the group could purchase non eco-friendly storage bins -- were hard to get excited about. The assembly also became incredibly hard to hear, as a poorly timed sacred drum circle started 30 feet away.

It was at that moment it became clearer to me what was going on. This truly democratic group was trying to do things in a new way, trying to hear and act on everyone's voice in the 99 percent. Unfortunately the result of this can turn into a decentralized cacophony of noise, signs, and demands. Aligned but not organized, loud but not focused. (See the conversation tag cloud.)

At the simplest level Occupy Wall Street is the have-nots's response to the haves. Occupy Wall Street has become an open platform for talking and demonstrating about the negative externalities that come from having the "1 percent" guide the direction of the country. Despite some media covering fringe cases of protester demands, there have yet to be any concrete positions taken by Occupy Wall Street.

In 2009 another movement was created that focused on new political discourse and on-the-ground meet ups. In their first two months, the Tea Party garnered millions of impressions and occupied the country's media and political discourse, but this spike didn't last and neither will the Occupy Wall Street attention.

Occupy Wall Street Vs. Tea party
Google Trend Analysis

There are many differences between the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, including the fact that the Tea Party was willing to let politicians carry their torch as a formal political party. This has given them a few additional attention bumps after their initial month-long spike of attention in April 2009 due to the political cycle.

Occupy Wall Street has openly rejected any one person speaking for or representing the group -- which has helped it keep it populous and inclusive. Unfortunately a non-Occupy Wall Street affiliated group has purchased OccupyParty.org (and over 40 other Occupy[state] domains) and may end up causing even more confusion for Occupy Wall Street come election time.

The clock is now running for Occupy Wall Street since the 'media silence' was broken in early October, which means media buzz will be dying out by mid-November. Occupy Wall Street has spread across over 50 cities, gathered 500k Facebook fans across 40+ pages, and organized multiple marches.

Now that the silence has been broken, Occupy Wall Street has a limited window of attention and momentum, regardless of how long they intend to physically occupy. So with the clock counting down, I am holding out hope that Occupy Wall Street can find their pony in this room full of drum circles, media hype and message hijacking.

Where Is Your Front Door? Dealing with Front Door Disease

2011-09-27T12:32:40-04:00

It is 1995 and a clothing store owner is proudly placing a 'now open for business' sign by the front door to attract customers. The front of the store is adorned with the best-looking mannequins sporting the latest in hip 90's grunge. Customers file in the front door because they like what they see in the main windows and the store does pretty well.

10 years pass and it is clear that this internet thing isn't going away, so the store owner's daughter decides it is time for the store to get a website! A design process ensues and 6 months later a great-looking website is built, putting the latest fashion on the hottest models on the front page. The sub pages of the site are plain and basically list inventory -- like the store, the owner expects customers to be drawn in by the front window display and then look around the site.

The owner of the store has just made the common error of applying a well known business practice to the web.

Front Door Disease

Take a second and think about your site traffic -- what percentage of your monthly traffic enters through the front page? If you don't have a site, take a guess at what percentage of DoSomething.org's traffic entered through the front page in June. Go on, I'll wait... Maybe you think it is 50%, that would make sense -- half of the people find us by name or a front page link and the other half may go to a cause or campaign they care about. Or maybe it is closer to 30% -- you're a bit savvier about search engines and assume there are a lot of sub pages that bring people in through search.

In June, 15% of DoSomething.org's traffic entered through the front page. On average DoSomething.org ranges closer to 30% but the point still stands -- the front page of DoSomething.org is not the main entrance point.

In the story above, the clothing store invests heavily in the visual identity of the front page, the same way they invest in their store front window. Unlike the brick and mortar store, their site has hundreds of front doors. Every page on their site serves as an entry point that must convert a potential customer.

Front Door Disease is defined by an organization that focuses all of their design and conversion goals on the front page of their site -- ignoring sub pages. A conversion goal can be a donation, email sign-up, or a new user registration.

Sadly, Front Door Disease currently affects a majority of not-for-profit web sites because the site is approached as brochure or an annual report for the organization. Looks good on the outside and then breaks down to plain text on deeper pages.

5 Steps to Deal with Front Door Disease
If you are currently going through a web site redesign process, here are some things you can do.

Find your front door.

Use Google Analytics (or similar web analytic product) to find the top 10 entrance pages on the site. And identify types of content, like blog posts or fact pages, that when aggregated together represent a large entrance path.

Identify site goals.

What do you want people to do on your site? Donate, sign-up, contribute content? These goals should be clear to users on major entry points.

Stakeholder testing.

Show a small group of stakeholders that use your site (and some that don't) the new design options for all pages and ask them to talk through where their eye goes. (For more on usability: http://www.sensible.com).

Make the case.

Throwing all the data in the world at your team will not necessarily convince people. Instead ask the front door question to your team; make it fun by betting a dollar on whether they think it is over or under 50%. Continue the conversation with the points in this article.

Invest in sub page design.

Don't be cheap by only investing in a front page design. Especially now that you know that most people don't enter through it! Good design that drives a web site's goals and reinforces the brand on every page is worth every dollar.

So no matter how much you want to roll back to Windows 95 and relive the 90's, your web strategy has to live in the present.

Why the Iowa Straw Poll Is Like a High School Election

2011-08-29T13:55:48-04:00

"Have you heard? Susie Cooper is running for High School class president -- and she's giving out free cupcakes in the hall!". A winning strategy for any campaign in a closed community is to give away the most free stuff in order to curry votes and support. The classic popularity contest plays out and the High School gets a president.

Last weeks' Iowa straw poll seemed to play out disturbingly similar to this High School dynamic. There was a small, self-selected body assembled to vote, but instead of cupcakes it was Randy Travis being given to voters (Michelle Bachmann's tent featured the artist).

Straw Polls Are Useless
Straw polls were born from the practice of holding a straw in the air to see which way the wind was blowing. The analogy makes sense, but the practice fails. Here's how the Iowa straw poll works: get a non-representative group of about 17,000 people at a fair, let them visit candidate tents and then vote once they've bought tickets to a fundraising dinner. The winner of the poll gets to be seen as a front runner, gets extra press coverage by the over 300 reporters at the event, all of which gives them an edge on fundraising.

Unfortunately, in practice this type of straw poll simply shows which candidate is willing to spend more on pleasing straw poll voters than their stance on issues. Or to extend the analogy further, it is like holding up a straw and seeing who can buy a bigger fan.

From a data analysis perspective this is the worst way to design a random sampling model to determine public opinion. Any result derived from a system like this should be immediately thrown out given that it isn't random, candidates options aren't presented equally, and money is exchanging hands between candidates and voters. From a political system perspective, Robert's Rules of Order puts it best by stating these types of straw polls are "meaningless and dilatory" (Read the rules).

Straw Polls are Dangerous
The problem of a straw poll is that by default the winner is given a significant advantage due to press coverage. As well as the public opinion places some value in how people voted in Iowa since they don't know the details of how people were swayed at the actual event. Social proof is a powerful force, we look to our friends or influential groups to determine everything from what we should read (NY Times Best Seller) to political candidates.

What Winning the Straw Poll Does

Even though Michele Bachmann won by 1%, it was enough to position her as a 'front-runner'.

"Rep. Michele Bachmann won the Iowa Straw Poll Saturday, affirming her status as a top-tier candidate in the Republican race to challenge President Obama in 2012." - Fox News Headline.

Data
Iowa Straw Poll: 17,000 votes cast
Michele Bachmann 28%
Ron Paul 27%
Tim Pawlenty 13%
Rick Santorum 9%
Herman Cain 8%

Google Web Search
Based on millions of searches through Google.

Looking at web search data, Ron Paul beats Michelle Bachmann by 2 search points over the last 12 months, which translates into well over the 17,000 influenced voters that determined the Iowa straw poll results. It should be noted that Bachmann's search interest only spikes to a level equal to Ron Paul's after the straw poll results -- another benefit of the straw poll victory.

But even this data is misleading as we can't tell if these searches are being done by people who like or dislike the candidates.

The Safest Data
Candidates try to skew the numbers for their own benefit, straw polls, and search engine results, are not great measures of candidate's chances of winning. Lots of data will be thrown around in the months to come so it is important to remember that this is not a high school election. Be careful of what you see from every poll and pundit. Remember that the safest data is your own fact-based opinion.

What Bottle Rockets and Content Writers Have in Common

2011-07-05T13:15:25-04:00

Bottle rockets are a lot of fun. You set them up on the ground, propped inside of a bottle, light the fuse and run. The firework takes off, curving and spinning through the air, whistling until... POP! Repeat for the rest of the pack of 50 they came in and a good time is had by all, except maybe the neighbors (infographic on the most dangerous fireworks).

While watching fireworks over the 4th of July weekend, it got me thinking about web content. Creating content for a new website is exciting -- tons of ideas and nothing but potential. Once a content plan is created, the content writers are set off to task. What happens next depends on the web style guide.

Without a web style guide, content writers will act like bottle rockets and spin in their own directions, creating different standards for spacing, font weight, color, embedded media, pictures and linking (hopefully not blinking). After each content writer, volunteer or intern has done this about 50 times on the site -- you have a fireworks show! Suddenly there are hundreds of web pages on the site giving users an inconsistent brand experience. This problem is especially difficult for not-for-profits, since they usually manage multiple volunteers and interns that contribute site content.

Do not do this at home, or on your site.

Some webmasters think a web editor tool or WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) is enough to guard against the 'Bottle Rocket Problem.' These tools give content writers an interface that looks and behaves like Microsoft Word, but to carry this metaphor even farther -- these tools only serve as the bottle holding the rocket.

Three ways to stop the 'bottle rocket problem'

1. Have a style guide!
Start the site with a basic web style guide including, but not limited to:

Brand tone (i.e. fun, encouraging, informative, helpful)

Writing style (voice, MLA standards for structure, Inverted pyramid)

Linking guidelines

Guidelines for different types of content (blog, facts, background, etc.)

HTML and CSS classes and examples (Go to W3Schools.com)

Standard web colors/fonts

2. Allow for input
A web style guide is not static. It evolves with the needs of the staff, users and changing tech standards. This is owned by the content writers, and if the writers are handed this document, they are less likely to adopt it and .... POP! Consider using a Google doc that acts as a wiki if your org is brave enough to open up parts of the guide.

3. Training!
All content writers should spend time on W3Schools.com and do reading on web writing and the inverted pyramid. People browse the web, the important info needs to lead and the points need to be highlighted and bulleted in a consistent on-brand way.

It is likely that over 50 percent of your site's visitors are coming to a sub page of content on your site (only 40 percent of DoSomething.org's traffic comes to the home page). This means a user's first brand impression is not the carefully crafted homepage, but a sub page of relevant content they searched for. So, help your content writers own their web style guides and save the fireworks for the 4th of July.

How to Lose an Intern in 10 Days

2011-06-20T12:11:56-04:00

DoSomething.org loves interns. During the summer we have almost the same number of staff as interns running around the office (we have 20 college interns this summer!). Interns are our No. 1 source for recruiting full-time staff, and they bring an awesome energy into the office (we've hired 9 interns as staff in the last 4 years).

John Cassidy is an example of an awesome intern turned full time staff. John began as a graphic design intern at DoSomething.org in 2008, he immediately became an integral part of the team and his work quality and work ethic made us realize that we needed to create a full time position. We hired him after interning the next summer (we were hazing him) and over the next two years his skills as both a graphic designer and video editor grew at a staggering rate. He helped define the office culture and refused to let our team miss a deadline or turn out a subpar product.

Sadly, John is moving to Australia and is leaving DoSomething.org (he is looking for an awesome job if you know of any @JohnPCassidy), but he has reminded me of how important our internship program is for recruiting top talent to DoSomething.org. So, since the summer is the time for intern-fueled productivity binges, I thought it would be good to remind not-for-profit managers not lose their top talent -- by explaining some things not to do in your intern's first 10 days.

1. Choose poorly
Getting the right people on the bus is the most important step. Make sure before day one that you have gotten a strong group of applicants and had proper interviews with your intern. If you start with a bad fit, losing an intern in 10 days will be no problem.

2. Don't pay them
When you don't pay your interns, you attract less talented applicants and increase the chance that they'll leave you for a paying gig (within 10 days). Worst of all, by not paying interns you send a signal that their work isn't worth paying for to both you and to your organization.

3. Give them terrible equipment
Saddling your intern with Windows 95 or a computer that makes AOL dialup sounds when it connects to the internet is a sure-fire way to cripple an intern's productivity. As a manager, do a day's work on your intern's machine; if you don't feel like quitting, it's a good sign your intern will make it past day 3.

4. Treat them like 'interns'
When you treat interns like a separate caste and don't expect staff-level work -- you get what you'd expect. In the Middle Ages, interns were called apprentices and the goal was to teach them the trade so they could eventually take over.

5. Treat them like copy machines
Intern tasks are a right-of-passage, but if the only work an intern does is act as a copy jockey they will probably never consider your organization for future employment.

6. No long-term goals
Like any employee, interns need to have a larger goal that they are working toward. If tomorrow they feel like they could be replaced, they may call your bluff and move on. Create a goal with a measurable outcome such as doubling Facebook fans, creating 45 new media partner outlets, etc.

7. No growth goals
Ask your interns what they want to learn. John Cassidy grew every day because there was always something new he was learning, I am sure if this hadn't been the case we'd have lost him by day 10. Have your interns set growth goals of what they want to learn while at your org.

8. No kickball
Interns are coming from a social college or high school environment, so if your company doesn't have social events your organization is going to seem about as exciting as study hall. DoSomething.org makes a point of having a summer kickball team. (Tip: just challenge other orgs and show up at a field at the same time, no need to overpay for a league.) If you're in NYC drop us a challenge: kickball@dosomething.org.

9. Micromanage
Nothing frustrates a talented intern more than being told what they already know, or what they possibly know better than you. Give interns enough space to decide the best way to accomplish a task given the parameters you set. Hire talented people and get out of the way.

10. Create an unstable work environment
Here is a good example of a current listing I'd deem as unstable:

"Why should I do an internship with Congressman Weiner?
An internship with our office provides students with a unique opportunity to experience firsthand the American political system by working in either one of our district offices, or in our Congressional office in Washington, DC. The Anthony Weiner Congressional Internship Program is an exciting and educational experience that offers broad insight into the legislative policy-making process while allowing students the chance to apply classroom learning to real Congressional work. "

Dangers of SXSWi Thinking for Not-for-Profits

2011-03-28T14:01:47-04:00

One of the featured keynotes at South By South West Interactive (#SXSWi) was Seth Priebatsch, Chief Ninja of SCVNGR who announced that we have moved from the decade of the social layer to the decade of the game layer. As the conference continued, games, gamification, and gameful dynamics became the explanations of all online and offline actions.

So, amidst the most conceptually noisy conference in the country, I decided to create my own SXSWi game. Enjoy!

What's your startup again?
This is a great game if you've gone to SXSWi without a misspelled startup that leverages niche messaging and game dynamics.
Players: 3-5
Venue: Bar or party sponsored by venture capital firm
Goal: Be the first player to reach 11 points
Going first: The first person to check into the current venue with a location-based service app goes first.

Round 1
Player 1 begins by coming up with a random internet startup URL. Tip: try personalizing the first inanimate object or action you can think of, swapping some vowels, and turning it into an adverb, e.g. MyCouch.ly, iDrynk.ly.

Player 1 then asks the player to the right: "What's your startup again? Wasn't something like iDrynk.ly?" Using the startup name they just came up with in their head.

Player 2 must then immediately respond with a full business pitch of what the startup does, who it targets and how it will scale like Facebook, without laughing (if Player 2 laughs Player 1 gets a point). Once done, Player 2 comes up with a new startup URL and asks it as a question to Player 3.

Play continues until all players have pitched a startup. Then all members of the group give 0-3 points to each of the pitches based on creativity, scalability, hilarity, and whether they would invest as a venture capital firm.

Round 2
Player 1 describes a startup, what it does, who will use it, and how it will scale without giving the URL of the startup. The other players then makeup URLs for the described startup and Player 1 assigns points to each player from 0-3.

Play continues until each player has described a startup and assigned points to the guesses of other players.

Next Round
Rounds continue, switching between round 1 and round 2 format until a player gets 11 points.

Challenges
At anytime during the game, a player may challenge any URL another player creates if they think it is actually a real site. If the site exists, meaning it doesn't have a generic server not found or domain placeholder page, then the player that challenged gets 1 point and the player that was challenged loses 1 point. If the site does not exist, the accusing player loses 2 points and the game continues.

Two Dangers of SXSWi Thinking for Not-for-Profits

1. Redundancy
As this game is played many of the startup ideas that are created will end up being more unique than most of the startups showcasing at SXSWi. In general, their ideas rely on an already proven concept and then add a very slight twist to the platform with a sprinkling of game dynamics that they are convinced will make it "the next big thing."

Fortunately the redundancy that exists in the tech sector helps foster innovation and a climate that percolates the best ideas up. Unfortunately when this methodology is applied to the not-for-profit (NFP) sector it can result in redundancy that drains funding and resources from existing organizations that work.

SXSWi was ripe with tech that overlapped and probably should have been rolled into existing organizations. The NFP sector definitely needs fresh tech innovation, but it is not as simple as copying and pasting the Silicon Valley startup model. For example there is no startup that could displace the deep branding and community relationships of the Salvation Army, but I am sure that an agile group supported within the organization could incubate impact-driving innovation.

2. Games
Games are fun, which is good because they are about to be added to everything coming out of the tech sector and beyond. Whether it fits or not, pretty soon your toilet will be giving you a number 2 and letting you know how you did on the neighborhood leader board. There is tremendous potential to be released in Gameful design (gaming for social good) described by Jane Mcgonical, but it must be done intelligently.

The danger comes when our sector adds a game layer without considering the implications. Services that depend on game dynamics know that they have a fixed user lifespan as those dynamics wear off. This is one of the challenges facing location-based service apps (Gowalla and Foursquare), which made a splash at last year's SXSWi.

When unrelated game dynamics and incentives are added to social good actions, they can condition people to 'do good' for extrinsic rewards. Which begs the questions: What happens when we run out of larger rewards? And, what happens when the game dynamics wear off?

Blitzkrieg and Lessons From Egypt

2011-02-28T12:07:48-05:00

On May 10, 1940, Germany launched a blitzkrieg campaign against France. Less than five weeks later the French surrendered when the Maginot Line was outflanked by German Panzer tanks. The blitzkrieg, or lightning war tactics, relied on a fast moving tank army networked together with radios that provided real time communication with infantry. If this strategy were boiled down to an equation it would look something like this:
([Action]/[Time]) x [Communication]

Flash forward to Egypt -- Jan 25, 2011, the people of Egypt are ignited by the uprising in Tunisia and organize to take action in Tahrir square to remove Mubarak from power. Internet organizer and activist Wael Ghonim created a Facebook fanpage "We are all Khaled Said" to honor an activist that was killed by police and uses it to help organize the Jan 25 "Day of Rage" -- the largest protest in recent Egyptian history (Good Wael Ghonim Article). Wael and other protestors are able to communicate real time in the streets using the Twitter hashtag #Egypt and are only incensed further when the government cuts the internet and kidnaps Wael. Barely two weeks later, on February 10, President Mubarak steps down from power in response to overwhelming pressure from the Egyptian people (full timeline of events).

The Egyptian people took intense action over a short amount of time and communicated real time via Twitter, mobile phones and Facebook while protesting. The German blitzkrieg used intense action over a short time, using a radio network in tanks to overwhelm the French military. The results in both cases led to the toppling of a government within weeks.

Three Reasons to Go Hard Early

Promoting YouTube Videos

(stats from DoSomething.org's 1 in 3 dating abuse campaign video that went viral, notice the early spike of attention instead of a slow steady climb)

Crowd Fundraising Sites

indiegogo.com

music project that needs help

list of successful projects

support a music teacher's classroom

Twitter Trends

Twitter trending topics

Justin #Bieber tweet volume

Variables
A blitzkrieg strategy treats both action and time as variables that can be manipulated. All of the cases mentioned in this article leverage the benefits of strategically increasing action over a decreased amount of time to maximize impact.

Just setting a deadline or mobilizing a crowd is not enough. If Egyptian protesters distributed their action over a six month period the intensity would never have reached the boiling point that drew overwhelming international attention. If the Germans had engaged in trench warfare tactics from WWI, the occupation of France would have taken months if it were successful.

Social media is not the action, it is a communication variable that has the power to amplify -- if used correctly. When action, time and communication are used with a blitzkrieg approach -- greater impact can be achieved regardless of whether you're funding a classroom or overthrowing a government.

Using the Whole Whale: A Strategy For Nonprofits

2011-01-17T17:15:42-05:00

Alaska was a cold, harsh place for the Inuit people 7,000 years ago. When a whale was caught, the Inuit held a huge party to celebrate their hunt and would utilize every part of whale -- to waste anything was a religious taboo. In their resource constrained environment, the Inuit had identified a use for every part: blubber for oil, meat for food, bone for housing or sleds, skin for vitamins or covering -- they used everything. (See a full whale hunt documented by Jonathan Harris)

Fast-forward to the 1930's. The Industrial Revolution drove the need for whale oil -- an effective machine lubricant -- to 50,000 whales per year. And there was no party. For those hunting the whales it was the time of plenty, and whales were a commodity like any other. They had a specific and limited role; after the oil was extracted, carcasses were discarded and the Inuit people's extensive uses ignored and left behind.

The lesson here is that scarcity spurs creativity and efficiency. Scarcity also happens to be something that not-for-profits (NFPs) have in spades.

Using the whole whale is not about adding work to an over-taxed staff. It is about looking at every event, community, system or other existing resource in a different way -- the way Inuit looked at each part of a whale. It is about leveraging existing resources to say "What else can this do for us?" Here are two examples of nonprofits that changed their approach by leveraging existing assets to get more bang (impact) for their buck.

Connecting and Opening Your Data

Case 1: DoSomething.org -- DoSomething.org/Projects

DoSomething.org has over 28,500 creative youth-led projects (dosomething.org/projects) on the site publicly available to any teen at any time. The volume of projects was driven in large part by DoSomething.org grant applicants. DoSomething.org requires that all applicants post a public project as the first step of their application. After receiving a grant, grantees are required to provide a grant update which gets added to the project posting.

This process has helped create the most robust network of youth-led cause projects, which now helps inspire and inform even more projects. Had the grant application followed a traditional system of submitting private applications, DoSomething.org would have thousands of applications sitting on an internal server -- virtually unused. These projects are also now open through a Creative Commons license to the public through a projects API.

DoSomething.org Projects Graphic Visualization by Sarah Piper-Goldberg - Download file

Case 2: AtonementFriars.org -- Franciscan Friars of the Atonement (FFA) Ave Maria Hour

From 1935 to 1969, the FFA had a very popular religious radio broadcast called the Ave Maria Hour, which consisted of the stories of Friar Paul Wattson at Graymoor. When the radio show ended, due to high cost of broadcasting, the organization stored and saved the recordings.

In 1998, the Whitney Radio invested in reviving this show by digitizing the 2,500 broadcasts of the Ave Maria Hour. These recordings were still being saved in storage, until 2008 when the friars decided to use a free radio blogging tool at BlogTalkRadio.com to rebroadcast their sermons every Sunday. Now, 600 weekly listeners tune in to hear the stories of Friar Paul at Graymoor to enjoy the timeless lessons taught in the sermons (over 32,500 listens to date). Listeners have even been inspired to donate to the FFA who might have otherwise not known about their organization. In fact, in 2010, they had 400 new donors donate close to $10,000 that had never received any direct correspondence.

Whole Whale Strategy

Ironically, it was the needs of technology (machine lubricant) that first fueled the destruction of the whale population. Today, technology provides opportunities for NFPs to create systems that can lead to greater impact (like saving the whales).

There are ways that every NFP can use this strategy. For example, consider the current job application process at your NFP. What if part of the process of applying included friending and following your NFP on Twitter and Facebook? The result would probably be an extra 200+ relevant followers in your network for every job posted. Cost: free.

Over the past 7,000 years, whales didn't change, our approach to using them did. Find the whales at your organization and decide whether you're treating them like an Eskimo or a 1930's whaler. By using technology as a lens, NFPs can change their approach and use the whole whale to maximize their impact.

Crowdsourced Philanthropy: If You Ain't Cheatin', You Ain't Tryin'

2010-12-13T13:24:10-05:00

Al Davis, the owner of 1970s Raiders was willing to do anything and everything to win. He (allegedly) bugged the visiting team's locker room, watered the field to slow faster teams down, spied by helicopter, and used dirty pile tactics. The Raiders dirty reputation inspired Glenn Dickey to write Just Win, Baby, a book dedicated to Al Davis' approach to the game.

"If you ain't cheatin', then you ain't tryin' " still rings true in football today. Coaches still cover their mouths with their playbooks when talking for fear of lip readers on the other team and any player not on steroids is at a disadvantage. A little bendiness is apparently part of the unwritten rules of the game.

Different Rules: Crowdsourced Philanthropy Cheating

This article is not about football. Replace "football" with "crowdsourced philanthropy". Crowdsourced philanthropy is the buzzword for an online voting competition that determines the distribution of grant money to good causes. Currently these competitions only comprise about 1 percent of United States philanthropic dollars, but this number continues to grow as more companies, such as Pepsi, Kohls, American Express, Best Buy, and J.P. Morgan Chase, join the game.

Online voting competitions tax an organization's resources because, to have a shot, they require organizations to rally their fan base to vote in lieu of taking other potential actions ("Online Voting: The Organization Who Cried Wolf"). These competitions are like mini-democracies: a handful of candidates pleading with the electorate to vote. Winning depends on getting out the vote -- an organization pulling its fan base into the game.

Like football (and politics), there are ugly winning strategies. These dirty tactics manipulate the technical weaknesses of the voting systems and exploit grey areas of rules.

How to be like the 1970s Raiders

I am tired of great not-for-profits (NFPs) competing honorably against groups that compete using a different set of rules (you can guess how I feel about steroids). To level the playing field, here are the top four ways major crowdsourced philanthropy competitions can be gamed:

Proxy Voting: A proxy vote traditionally means that a voter transfers their right to vote to a third party. In crowd philanthropy competitions, it means that eligible voting accounts can be controlled by an organization (or individual). This becomes a problem when proxy voting accounts are aggregated over time in contests that keep the same sign on system.

These massive lists of proxy accounts can be managed by a single person simply logging in one by one and voting. Imagine if political staffers could collect permission to vote on behalf of voters in a district in perpetuity -- not really the will or action of a crowd, but highly effective.
Computer Macros: A macro is a program that you can setup on a computer that goes through a series of clicks and keyboard strokes on a timed interval. If a voting system doesn't require a captcha (include pic) or other human test -- a macro can be created to go through a voting cycle unabated. An example of a macro program can be found at the following address: http://www.macroexpress.com/download.htm.
Email Generators: For the least secure voting systems that don't have strict email confirmations there are ways to generate emails quickly. Any single Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo or normal domain email address can be made into thousands of emails by adding a "+" or "." after the name and before the "@" sign. For example, yourname@gmail.com can be changed to yourname+anyword@gmail.com and the email will still be delivered to your address. There are also sites that will generate emails for you on demand if a domain is blocked, such as http://mailinator.com.
Outsourced Voting: For a nominal amount of money, an organization can purchase votes or emails through 'Vote Brokers'. These groups will do your bidding in the same way they translate audio to text or do other simple outsource tasks for companies. Here is one marketplace: Elance.

Now what?

This was a risky article to write given that DoSomething.org (the company that I work for) has competed in many of these competitions and even won some of them. I am proud to say that we've never cheated.

I'm even more proud to say that when I showed these game weaknesses to our team, and proved how easy it would be for us to win big money, our staff unanimously voted to opt out of our participating in these competitions. DoSomething.org has taken the position that it will not be entering into any crowdsourced philanthropy competition that has not been responsibly built and undergone a third party security evaluation.

This post is an attempt to get crowd sourced philanthropy competitions to wake up and level the playing field between those organizations who have played by the rules and those who are using the backdoor tricks.

Hate the game, not the player

Recently a small school in Brooklyn was removed from the 'Kohls Cares' contest losing out on $500,000 due to its use of some of the above tactics. This was an honest school that saw the opportunity to bend/break the rules to help their school win a sum of money that could vastly improve its education system. While the NY Post article paints them as villains, some of the fault lies with the weak voting systems in place.

My request to all crowdsourced philanthropy contest designers is to adhere to a responsible architecture for these competitions. Flawed designs increase the probability of cheating. It puts organizations unfamiliar with or unwilling to use these tactics at a distinct disadvantage. Don't make organizations (and their supporters) decide whether the ends justify the means by making it so easy to cheat.

Unfortunately, these broken competitions won't be revamped tomorrow because companies are not incentivized the way Ticketmaster, Paypal and other online systems are to prevent fraud. Hopefully, if these tactics are shared enough, organizations will learn, as football coaches did, that they need to watch out for lip readers, or simply not play the game at all. And crowdsourced philanthropy creators will step up their game.

Is Your Data at a Middle School Dance?

2010-11-02T17:10:43-04:00

Over the last 10 years the web and our personal identifiable data has grown up. It has gone from an awkward middle school dance -- boys on one side girls the other. To a wedding crasher style dance party where friends, family and work all grind up on the dance floor.

There is a new landscape for not-for-profits (NFPs) to leverage. The opportunity to hyper personalize communication and accurately track our members and their impact is here. So what is holding us back?

Silos.

Photo by Valerie Everett

Silos suck... (except on farms -- then they're useful). A silo is a large cylinder designed to insulate its contents. Silos in NFP organizations keep departments insulated and reduce communication. These physical or conceptual silos hurt collaboration and can create redundancies in an organization.

Data silos can also create problems. When personal identifiable data (PID) is kept in different buckets it's harder to manage, difficult to analyze, and reduces the ability to target communications to users. A common example of this is when mailing addresses and emails are kept in separate systems. Going forward it will be more important to also connect your user's social addresses (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) with this information. Silos are what keep the boys and girls apart at the middle school dance party (school chaperones might contribute too).

NFPs are resourceful and are great at finding solutions given the available tools. We use CRMs, SQL databases, MS Access, Salesforce, Outlook, Excel, paper, post-its, that server gathering dust in the corner, etc... Not all of these solutions scale, and many don't lead to better relationships over time.

Solutions
The NFPs that prize PID and reduce the silos between tech and marketing stand to benefit the most. An org that owns its data and manages it correctly owns its distribution channels. If LIVESTRONG had been able to capture everyone who wore their bracelets they'd have the largest cancer supporter database in the world.

When you gain me as a fan on Facebook I receive periodic updates and my friends will see when I interact with your page. Joining your LinkedIn group adds your organization to my professional profile, and allows easier messaging. Collect my cell number and there is a 90 percent chance I open your text message. My email gives you 10 to 15 percent open rate. Grab my mailing address and you can send more locally focused messaging (or send me junk mail). Every piece of my data offers another avenue of communication and clues to what I care about.

Email is just the beginning of PID, it is the baseline. NFPs must raise the importance and priority of collecting and synching PID. Fortune 500 companies and political campaigns spend gazillions on capturing and synching your info because it leads to more profit.

Within 10 minutes of plugging it in, my Droid X had synched up my personal, work, social, and family networks. The tech to connect Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, cell, email, addresses and other PID is here and it improves by the day.

So, it's time to throw the tech dept some love. Love comes in many forms -- it can mean time, more employees, or more money for upgrading systems. Whichever form -- help make it a priority to get the right systems and workflows in place to collect and sync data.

Foundations also need to stop considering every tech hardware/software expense overhead or non-program related. If funding doesn't help incentivize this change our sector will be in a slow dance toward synchronization until it becomes a priority.

Malcolm Gladwell: 9,999 Hours Shy

2010-10-28T14:21:53-04:00

Like a bull through a china shop, Malcolm Gladwell's recent article, "Small Change: Why the Revolution will not be Tweeted" plows through social media enabled activism, dismissing its past and future potential as a tool for impact. Full disclosure, I am a huge fan of Malcolm's work and have read almost every page he has written, but I think he missed the mark here. He has a flare for using selective case studies to draw brilliant macro social behavioral theories and this article is no different.

Gladwell's frustration with the social media craze is apparent as he assembles and then reacts to a list of over-hyped quotes and accolades for the infant platforms. "Are people who log onto their Facebook page really the best hope for us all?" he asks after contrasting the casual commitment of many Facebook users to their causes with the indefatigable determination of civil rights protestors. His question is legitimate -- not every member of Facebook is the next best hope for social change -- but in Gladwell fashion it is dismissive of many counter-examples where social media have been integral to transformative events. Barack Obama utilized Facebook and broader online networks to deliver unprecedented access to his campaign and the political process, and was rewarded with immense grassroots support and fundraising success. So my answer to Gladwell's question is yes: Obama is on my shortlist for people that are the "best hope for us all."

A tool need not work in every instance to be valuable. The story is not "Social networks always work;" it is that they can work. My biggest fear of Gladwell's article, especially given his credibility and platform, is that it will serve as the rallying cry for old-school NFPs to keep their heads in the sand. I believe that social media is a must for not-for-profits seeking to increase their impact. If a NFP relies on people in any way then they must go where they are and where they communicate. The common thread that can be drawn between successful social media NFPs is the participation from the executive level. This is a world in which Malcolm has zero experience and that has to be considered before it becomes the gospel of NFP execs choosing to insulate themselves from change.

Those who believe in social networking as a tool for impact have responded with torrents of positive case studies and examples of online fundraising successes. Ironically, these responses are "Gladwelly" selective, overlooking the shortcomings inherent in loose-tie networks. There is a real danger in automatically equating a big social media list to big impact, because we lose sight of what real change is about. Many of these responses, I think, have missed the larger point.

What I love about the article was summarized in this line: "Where activists were once defined by their actions, they are now defined by their tools." I love it. It reminds me of our myopic obsession about the size of our lists over the depth of connection and real social impact. It screams 'let's not s**t ourselves' -- Twitter doesn't deserve a Nobel any more than a mobile phone, laptop, printing press, or other communication tools do. Give people more avenues to communicate meaningful ideas and good things will happen.

By the way, barring a fail whale, news about the #revolution will be tweeted.

Other interesting critiques:
The Atlantic
Wired
Beth's Blog
Socialbrite

Velvet Ropes: Why Google Wave Failed

2010-08-20T19:10:39-04:00

The bar at the W Hotel Hollywood has a line to get in starting at 6pm. It's not because the bar is full, in fact there is more than enough room for everyone at this point in the night, but they don't want just anyone.

Enter the velvet rope, a signal of value and exclusivity -- executed by a bouncer. The bouncer filters the crowd for young attractive women dressed for success (LA style).

The cultivation of a community is tricky, especially in the beginning, because the seeds or initial users dictate how the group will grow and what it will become. The W Hotel is counting on the initial group of ladies who they let in to tweet, Foursquare, Facebook, or text about their experience, encouraging other members of their community to come, attracting their target tribe. A velvet rope with a line signals value to people passing by because the place appears to be worth waiting for.

When flickr, a photo sharing site, began, it focused on the community. The velvet rope was the requirement to share photos encouraging a community of active members. Caterina Fake, an early flickr founder said their strategy was to "meet and greet the first 10,000 users" by providing positive encouragement through comments and posts, which fueled the community to bring their tribes.

Facebook began with just elite schools and expanded through colleges and high schools before opening to the general public (see Facebook timeline). I joined because it was a community of my peers. Had they started with their gates open, I wouldn't have joined because my mom and then high school sister would have also had access (no offense).

Google built Google Wave for everyone and released it with an open invitation system. There was no real velvet rope cultivating users to then evangelize the practical use cases. Instead it grew like a weed, never finding a home and quickly being pulled.

The temptation when launching an online community is to scale, scale, scale -- to grow as quickly as possible by opening the community to everyone instead of cultivating a tribe. The W Hotel loses a lot of early business at the bar with the velvet rope but they cultivate a trendy crowd and brand which pays off over time. All with a single rope.

What is your velvet rope?

Recruiting Talent Like an Idealist

2010-07-13T14:37:18-04:00

In high school I decided that I didn't want my career to be focused on making rich people richer or even to make myself rich, I wanted to focus on having a positive impact on the world in some way. I thought this was a simple enough goal to guide my career path, until Junior year in college. My friends started prepping for LSATs, talking to on-campus finance and consulting recruiters and I quickly noticed there were no not-for-profit (NFP) recruiters coming. In my mind working for a NFP meant that you were a volunteer or paid next to nothing because all of the money needed to go to the cause. I didn't realize there were real jobs to be had in the sector.

It wasn't until I came across Idealist.org that I realized there were real jobs and careers in the NFP sector. The very knowledge that there was a site with job postings from quality NFP's changed my career path and made it tangible. Idealist.org became my on-campus recruiter.

Why use Idealist.org?
A Google search for "job websites" yields 91.3 million results. There are huge players like Monster Jobs, Career Builder, Hot Jobs and Craigslist (to name a few). As an organization, the problem is that if you're looking for a quality hire it can be incredibly difficult to find them on these sites because of the amount of noise. There are auto reply job application systems, job recruiter spammers (these guys suck) and job shoppers (just looking -- not committing) that you have to weed through to find quality NFP applicants.

TheLadders.com is a job website "where $100k+ talent finds $100k+ jobs." The site focuses on the $100k job market and attracts a community with the qualifications for these types of jobs. Idealist.org does the same thing for passionate people interested in working for NFP's. The key difference is that job seekers know they can earn huge paychecks from law firms and investment banks -- they don't always know there is a way to work for a cause they care about.

Idealist.org is a unique job website in its ability to inspire a career thought-shift of this level. I know because it happened to me.

How to Land a NFP Job
Timing is key, the summer is the wrong time to vacation if you're looking for a job in the NFP sector. According to six years of Idealist.org's data, the peak season for postings is July and August.

At DoSomething.org, an entry-level Idealist.org job posting yields 200 plus resumes from younger applicants. We require resumes, cover letters, ways to improve our org, and some other funny questions. An applicant that doesn't include everything in an application is already sending a clear message to us -- I don't care enough.

We then have follow up emails with 25-40% of applicants, where we ask for something extra written. When an applicant responds quickly, with the right info, it is a great sign that they are hungry and can stay on top of their email. The top 5-10 people from this group are then interviewed by their future direct report.

Every interview includes this question: "Why did you choose to apply to DoSomething.org?" A guaranteed way to bomb this question is to answer, "I just wanted to work at a NFP and do good." There are 1.5 million NFPs in the U.S., covering just as many causes and a bland intention to work for the sector doesn't cut it for us.

The last phase is a series of group interviews with the staff to see how applicants mesh with the office culture. A good sense of humor, energy and passion play very well.

We post every open position on Idealist.org and have found people like Melanie who stood out with her energy and great work around New Orleans. She has now worked with us for 2 years and has been a huge asset to our business development team. She still says "Idealist.org changed the course of my life."

To the NFPs
Teach for America (TFA) has an acceptance rate that rivals Harvard Law School (11.8%). This year 46,000 college graduates applied to TFA and only 12% were accepted (TFA release).

Responsibility is like a drug to the newly graduated -- TFA offers the opportunity to change a classroom which is why it attracted 12% of all Ivy League graduates. NFPs have to use the allure of growth opportunity in job postings and Idealist.org to recruit top talent. By collectively using Idealist.org NFPs create a TFA atmosphere, where an abundance of talented graduates can find the jobs that will shape their careers.

Full disclosure: I've donated $50 to Idealist.org