Community Mobilization

Social Networks and Fundraising

Non Profit organizations are being drawn towards large social networking sites at a rapid pace, due in large part to the density of potential volunteers. One of the organizations looking to recruit new donors is the International Humanitarian Foundation. The group recently launched the $10/1000 campaign focusing on attracting 1000 new donors at $10. "Social networking has the power to effect change in our world. We can reach the people we know will be interested in our work in a viral manner," said IHF President Amish Parashar.

Part of the allure continues to be massive scope and size of these spaces, but no one has really tried to quantify the quality for specific actions. There have been no research studies that I have seen that help fund raisers better understand conversion rates in social networks, and ROI for each fund raised dollar. IHF suspects tha the overwhelming majority of new donors will be 1 to 3 degrees away from existing IHF volunteer, which speaks to the assumption that the web technology allows for stronger reach across weaker ties but we still do not know how strong or how far that reach can go.

Moving up in The Game: Status and Attention in Hip Hop Music

The Social Network of Hip Hop Dis songs Within hip hop there are directional relationships amongst dis songs and the flow of energy to and from rappers. There is a centrality  component in dis networks. The questions become what happens to the actors involved in the network and why are they dissing each others. In the late 1990s dis songs lost popularity in lieu of murders. The qualitative data included in a dis includes content as well as album sales. Furthermore there is a public perception attribute to dis. Affiliation with a high status person (positive or negative) has a positive impact on popularity or status. Methodology looked at may 1 2001 – January 1 2007. The sample included 203 rappers looking at sales and award data as well. What impact to the relationships have on performance in terms of sales. In degrees are disses in and out degree are disses out. Disses in have a positive sales impact. Status was determined by Gold record sales. Being dissed by a higher status improves your own status. However dissing upwards is more beneficial than dissing down. Reciprocity view over a one year period says that diss reciprocity is positive. Giving a response to a diss has an inconclusive impact on sales. Most importantly the Diss is mediated by the industry status structure.

More Crowd Sourcing real estate prices

Part of what impacts home prices are the outside forces such as interest rates, supply, demand, schools, and other business and neighborhood factors. Personal perception is a major factor in the market value of a home or neighborhood, and it is valuable information for any buy looking to get a fair deal, and any seller looking to market their property at a reasonable price. So here is Home Predict, website that is allowing people from all over predict the value of homes and neighborhoods. What is important is that market value is a function of the Wisdom of Crowds. If 90 of 100 people think that a neighborhood's average home is worth $200,000 it is good bet that as a buyer  you should be looking to pay about that much, and as a seller it would be wise to list it as such. In the market boom what we saw collectively was a skewing of the perception of value. We all thought homes were worth more, and therefore the price tags went up. Now as the market cools, and the economy slows we collectively are correcting our perception.  Potential buyer's value perception are the most important information to have, but a community wide poll would probably return similar results. I'd like to see a group of us getting on and helping to set the value of our homes and real estate here in Cincinnati.

Crowd Sourcing Real Estate Pricing

Cincinnati Living Online points to Red Oak Realty in San Francisco has developed a neat application that asks game players to assign perspective sale prices. What is exceptional is that this system actively polls the populace what they think market price (sale price) should be. This is an powerful tool because i provides the perceived starting point for sellers to create a fair market value (asking price). On the flip side is give buyers information on what other home buyers and agents think the house should sell for - preventing overpayment.

UVA Network Roundtable Roundup - 11/5-11/6

I tried to live-blog the UVA Network Round Table meeting earlier this week but the fact is that the information is so dense that it would have made for bad blogging. I did get one good post out live but after that it was downhill and I'm sorry about that. So here is the roundup:

Tom Davenport of Babson College and Joannie Reed of Herman Miller made back to back presentation on innovation and the role that space has to play in it. Tom renounced the the 30 yard rule (we never go more than 30 yards for anything) by showing data suggesting that we will go to the ends of the earth to get the mission critical data we need - space is not a barrier. HOWEVER he did show some slides suggesting that small talk circles are indeed within a 30 yard area and that is where innovation really takes place. Joannie responded by showing spoke of the new space and furniture developments HM is creating to accommodate that frame of though - very cool stuff!

John Katzenbach made a fantastic presentation as well focusing in on the importance of the informal networks. He showed a number of slides of how businesses that foster and support informal networks consistently adapt faster to business shifts and instill more pride in individual work. A key point he drove home was pride in work should always trump pride in employer He pointed to 5 management principals fostering informal networks:
Recognition and celebration
Individual initiative

Mission

, Value Collective pride
Process and metrics
Entrepreneurial spirit

Then there was the Innovation Presentation by Andrew Hargadon who I have had the pleasure to work with a few times. He always presents the same basic idea that innovation come from connecting existing technology in new ways. His presentation is always educational and interesting. From the Ipod, TIVo, to the light bulb, to Ford the examples when stacked up next to each other tell and amazing tale often overlooked.

Ross Dawson from  Advanced Human Technologies talked about his work with an international advertising firm and their overseas clients. His study looked more at place and space in terms of communication integration across company bounds. His findings were what we would expect with disparate offices but he took action and pro actively added density to his network resulting in better inter-office cooperation and eventual client service.

In A Charitable Competition Like This One, Everyone Is A Winner

My friend Dan Green, author of the Mortgage Reports Blog is in a duel with one of his partners regarding whose blog generates more actualized business. In short it is a 'my blog is better than your blog' competition and the winner is charity. Dan's beneficiary is Hospice of Cincinnati and I hope that anyone who happens to read this will go look at his blog and make an inquiry.

Marc Canter Reveals the Next Moenetzation Strategy

If Marc Canter were not so far away right now I would hug him. He gets the purpose of these massively huge social networking spaces. The real purpose is to create a marketplace for brands to engage thier customers and find ways to interact and project value.

I am slightly skeptical of these systems because I want to see if this is nothing more than hyper targeted advertisement or real genuine customer engagement, the later being so much harder to do than the earlier - which I am so happy to see (oddly). Facebook’s new ad system,  Google's Open Social, and Hivelive are all looking at how to do a better job of targeting adds to those who want / should see them.   

I had an interesting conversation with an advertising executive the other day and he and I really got to foundation of things - Advertising has alwas been a funnel - you throw a big wide scope out there in hopes of getting to the correct one consumer. But the Net has turned that upside down. You cast a very small targeted piece to the right people and they in turn spread it all around for you. I'll be interested to see how intrusive these systems are and if I can tweak my own profile to get certain products.  

American Willing to Pay for Community Action on Global Warming

A very interesting Yale Study sent to me this morning  that points to the fact that between 2/3 and 3/4 of Americans support, and are willing to pay a bit to make a reality, any one of a number of government run subsidies that will help their communities be more green. These programs range from $5.00 - $8.00 per month increases in their power bills to help others get more fuel efficient furnaces, or mandate that their power company generate 20% of their power from renewable resources. The point of the study is to show you never know how many people will go how far until you ask them. With tis new knowledge it would be irresponsible for local municipalities to not ask their constituents the same questions, and then creating programs in accordance with the desires of the community.
Some of the findings included:

• 71 percent would pay $5 a month more in property taxes in support of a local subsidy to encourage homeowners to replace old furnaces, water heaters, air conditioners, light bulbs and insulation.

 

• 69 percent would pay $8.50 more a month for local regulations requiring electric utilities to produce at least 20 percent of their electricity from wind, solar and other renewable energy sources.

 

• 68 percent would approve changing their city or town zoning rules to decrease suburban sprawl and concentrate new development near the town center.

 

• 65 percent would support changing their city or town zoning rules to require neighborhoods to have a mix of housing, offices, industry, schools and stores close together.

ARM Loan Distribution

Below is a chart showing the distribution of ARM (Adjustable Rate Morgtages) based on the type of buyer rating. It is a powerful graphic to help you understand who was getting what kind of loan. If you take time you get to see what kinds of borrowers got 'teaser introductory rates' that reset within a matter of months, and who were getting the 5 year ARM loans ideal for refinancing a home you intend to sell before the rates reset.

ARM loans are great tools for shorter term situations and there is little else I can add to the swirling conversation going on right now. However any futures systems thinker could have looked at this graphic with a quality legend and told you that this is bad news. A futurist could have looked at the indicators and drawn up only a select few scenarios in which this lending profile was sustainable. Hopefully organizations and institutions will implement a bit more foresight particularly when a potential end scenario is mass repossession and eviction of homeowner.

The Debate on Virtual World Economics Continues

In a recent Blog Post, Linden Lab, the owners and operators of Second Life set out their position on the economic maintenance of Lindex market as well as the economy of SL. In short - their goal is to maintain economic stability and currency valuation near L$270 : $1.00 as they can.This is a fair endeavor, but some residents are questioning the greater regulation banking practices in the wake of a Ginko Financial's folding. Even the Economist is waiting to see how this all works itself out.

The resident quandary is can Linden Lab pick and choose the regulatory issues it gets involved in? It is under pressure to remove all casinos from the space and residents are wondering at what point does Linden Lab become more of a governance structure than a simple purveyor of a digital platform. We wonder if government pressure - international government pressers - will force their hand to regulate banking on Second Life, or will it roll over and simply outlaw currency trading sending all transactions underground like other systems.