Doing good is not that easy, and sustaining good on a grand scale is almost impossible. But once again it is being done at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) annual meeting, Sept 22 to 24. I like to say it’s a place where highly influential people go behind closed doors to do good.
Established in 2005 by President Bill Clinton, CGI convenes global leaders to create and implement innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges. CGI annual meetings have brought together more than 150 heads of state, 20 Nobel Prize laureates, hundreds of leading CEOs, heads of foundations and nongovernmental organizations, major philanthropists, and members of the media. To date CGI members have made more than 2100 commitments, which are already improving the lives of nearly 400 million people in more than 180 countries.
As part of our involvement in CGI, Cisco along with several nonprofit, NGO, and government partners, made a 4-year investment to support ICT-driven development strategies in five countries in sub-Saharan Africa — primarily through establishment of locally managed and self-sustaining community knowledge centers (CKCs).
Recently, I participated in a conversation with our LinkedIn community on GETideas.org. The crux of the discussion was labels--should there be a universal taxonomy for terms such as Global Education, and would trying to foster global adoption of such terms speed up the transformation of the societal challenges we face today? It got me thinking about all sorts of terms that pop into our language stream. One day you’re talking about the “inequalities of the distribution of wealth and the effects of taxation on global markets;” the next day you’re texting an associate and summing up your thought stream with the word “Occupy”.
In my preparation for a panel discussion called Why enterprise Social Media Loves Social Good?, I poked around online to see if there was any consistency in the meaning for the term “social good”. Almost all the discussions and posts I found connected “social good” directly to its use within the business community. While businesses vary in their approaches to social good, this definition seems to be a common one: “A good or service that benefits the largest number of people in the largest possible way. Some classic examples of social goods are clean air, clean water and literacy; in addition, many economic proponents include access to services such as healthcare in their definition of the social or “common good”. (Source: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/social_good.asp) Read More »
I love writing about people or initiatives that help advance society. That brings me to this blog post: Smart Business, Social Business, a new book by Michael Brito (@britopian), VP of Digital at Edelman. Although the book is not out yet, I’m already excited for 2 reasons:
1. The book focuses on the internal requirements of enabling a successful social business – a topic close to my heart and one that is often an “overlooked” or “after thought” area for many companies. It walks the reader through the internal transformation of organizations into a social business and describes the key factors to be considered in this evolution.
2. Michael will be donating the book royalties to Not for Sale, a non-profit organization on a quest to end human trafficking and slavery.
The book will be available on July 26 but you can pre-order now. What can be better than learning and helping at the same time? We sat down with Michael to learn more about his cause and of course, the book. Check out our interview with him and some exclusive lessons learned – you’ve heard them here first!
Lesson #1: Operationalize social media internally to have a more effective external voice.
Lesson #2: Pay close attention to the social customer, understand their behaviors and usage models, and build core relationships with them (usually through their social counterparts, the Community Managers and subject matter experts).
Lesson #3: In order for an organization to really change, there must be a fundamental shift in culture that starts at the top and filters down to the rest of the organization.
I went to the #social4good event last night at Stanford which featured guest speakers actor, Kevin Bacon and author of the book “The Dragonfly Effect”, Jennifer Aaker. I am always curious to learn about how other people and industries use social media so I was looking forward to hearing interesting tidbits on what else….social media for social good. Kevin Bacon took the stage (no pun intended!) to share his thoughts on the concept of six degrees of separation and how it triggered the birth of www.sixdegrees.org. Did you know he first thought the notion of six degrees Read More »
Collaboratively written by Charlie Treadwell and Sushant Sahani as a summary of the Social Media Club – Silicon Valley chapter’s inaugural event titled Social Media for Social Good.
With no shortage of events for marketing professionals to speak about social media, ROI, lead generation and corporate adoption, we thought it would be great to share our experience participating in an event from the opposite side of the spectrum. At PayPal last night, the inaugural meeting of the Social Media Club – Silicon Valley chapter focused on Social Media for Social good. The panel consisted of:
Louis Gray, vice president of marketing at My6Sense, and a well-known commentator on social media tools and trends, will moderate a top-notch panel including: Read More »
