Saturday, January 31, 2009

The Power of... this Amazing Class

PoST 1/30/09: “The Power of… this class”

I remember the first day our class met – Professor Aaker jokingly stated that we had all taken a pretty big risk by enrolling in this class given that it had never been offered before and who knew if it would actually be a worthwhile elective. Well I think after today’s class people without a doubt know that we each made a good decision. We had the chance to get a short preview of each PODs endeavor to improve the lives of others via in-home ethnography presentations. What became clear very quickly is that the opportunities people are creating and pursuing in an effort to impact social change through this class are simply amazing.

The class began with Professor Aaker discussing how to cultivate social change by doing good with sincere warmth and shocking effectiveness. Pat Christensen, CEO of HopeLab (http://www.hopelab.org/) was then introduced and spoke to us about being effective listeners via the following:
- Be extremely humble
- Show high regard and respect for other people
- Suspend judgement
- Be cognizant of how much you are talking vs. listening

HopLab is remarkable organization – they are pioneers in combining rigorous research with innovative solutions to improve the health and lives of young people with chronic illnesses. What a treat to be able to hear from Pat!

Each POD then presented a short synopsis of the in-home ethnography study they conducted. Below is a short summary of a few of the different POD concepts. Before diving into the ethnographies, a few key take-aways the entire class gained from are as follows:
- The biggest surprises from an ethnography are often the best learnings.
- The key is to take those learnings and figure out how to create an impactful story and/or product that will rally people around your cause.
- Sticky stories, particularly about an underdog situation, resonate well.
- A key influential person can be key to your cause – while Barack Obama is probably not available, find a person that can make your cause “flammable” and empower others to light a match!

Privacy
- This POD wants to bring the benefits of social networking to those that are less comfortable sharing their private info with strangers. The surprise learning for this group has been that a desire for privacy does NOT always equal anti-social.

Middle School Girls
- The goal of this POD is to match young girls with organizations and individuals that help them find and develop their passion. The group showed a fantastic slide preso of the teenage girls they’ve met set to K.T. Tunstall’s hit song “Suddenly I See” – great story! We discussed the concept of a perfect moment and what that means in our quest to help the life of an individual.

College Football BCS Reform
- This group has learned very quickly that the BCS system is full of potential collusion and side deals that has created an under-current of disdain from fans and non-BCS schools. Feedback to this group centered around 1) Educate 2) Be enraged and 3) Present a solution.

Organ Donation
- Donors are Sexy” was the theme this POD has been promoting. They educated us on the fact that family decisions at the time of death determine whether or not your organs can be donated or not regardless of what is indicated on your driver’s license. As a result, only 45% of families permit organ donation of a deceased family member. Their goal is to put a more positive light on organ donation and address it via humor.

Helping Incarcerated Girls through the power of Yoga
-This POD is passionate about helping incarcerated girls through the power of Yoga.

Removing Barriers to Education
- This team is working to help students at an East Palo Alto Charter School achieve their dreams of going to college. The ethnography focused on telling the stories behind the school and the children that are students there. The power of their findings came through as they contrasted the dreary, run down exterior of the building with the bright yellow interior walls that are covered with college penants and banners.

It was enriching and moving to see everyone’s POD projects coming to life. We have 6 weeks to go, but as I started this post off saying, it is already quite clear that this class has the power to be the most memorable class any of us takes at the GSB as well as a remarkable conduit to effect social change.

Friday, January 30, 2009

Class 8: Pod Presentations and HopeLab

Hey guys! Here is a summary of today’s class. It’s pretty long, so feel free to only read the bolded key points :). Have a great weekend! - Anna
--

Two dimensions to course:
- Sincere, authentic and warm
- Shocking effectiveness (with limited time and resources)

Individual written-up assignments do not have to be related to final project / these can be more fun

Pat Christensen (Hopelab)
- Speaks on How To Listen
- How to take insights from in-home ethnographies and to apply them to a product
- Re-Mission game: emotion is key
- The power to ask the right questions is really important

Group Pod Presentations:

Privacy Pod
- Focus: is there a way to bring benefits of social networking technology to people who are concerned about privacy?
- Sensitivity to privacy and social activity are not perfectly correlated
-- Focus on one individual concerned with privacy.
--- Surprisingly, he has many friends on Facebook. He initially spent a lot of time configuring and limiting his privacy settings.
-- “We Live in Public” – suggested documentary
-- There is a slight correlation between privacy concerns with age and education
-- When asking questions make sure that audience understands what you are asking. There may be a tendency on the part of the listeners to want to contribute to a presentation and answer questions even while not certain of the questions asked.

Self Esteem Pod
- Video
-- Very good song, but in selecting the song we are putting our own interpretation and cover to this ethnography
-- Contemplate: asking the girls themselves – what song would you choose to represent this day?
- Girls define themselves by describing external relationships and actions (i.e. other people)
- Goal: match girls with organizations and individuals that help them find and develop their passions
- Why girls?
-- Females’ lives are affected more by the people they spend time with (friends, spouse, etc); males on average are affected by people they dislike as well as coworkers

College Football (BCS: Bowl Championship Series) Pod
- Began by speaking with fans
- Chris, UTexas (BCS-team) fan
-- Display photo – Texas shirt, Texas horns
-- Best moment of college career when UTexas beat USC in ’05
-- Very interested, didn’t know much about BCS
--- Expectation: mad at BCS, bitter about 2008 outcome, ready to fight
--- Reality: mad at team, busy GSB student, little knowledge of BCS governance
- Important to define and articulate what the BCS really is, it is hard to arouse the masses to something that is not clearly defined
- Influential person in this cause: Obama
- Most revealing insights are those that are surprising (donuts). Having a visual of a perfect moment is insightful. Knowing what the perfect moment to each individual gives insight into that person.
- Flammable topic. There are a couple of people who can make this issue blow up. The key is to find the right people.
3 parts:
1) What is the problem? (Will need to educate people on what BCS is)
2) Be enraged
3) Have a solution
- Go to xplane.com. XPLANE is a company that takes very complicated ideas and reduces them to more simple concepts (i.e. minute videos)

Donors are Sexy! Pod
- Interviewed physicians b/c there are a lot of people with whom these doctors have to interact (organ donors, patients in need of an organ as well as their families)
- Family has the last word (due to donor organizations desire to avoid negative publicity); to increase donations California organ transplant donor network makes family visits
- Significant differences between ethnicities, mostly driven by cultural background
- Prior education about the topic of donation helps a lot.
- Donor chain --> social network that can in theory increase donations

Yoga Pod
- Take a moment to reflect
- Take 15 seconds to write what comes to mind about the word “sex”
-- Presented words that 14 year old girls at the Santa Clara juvenile corrections facility wrote down
-- Presented girls’ artwork and pictures of another “art of yoga project” class
-- Girls are extremely passionate about the yoga and self-exploratory classes while at the facility; it is a bit hard to for the girls to apply this practice and involvement outside of the facility

Education Pod
- Phoenix Academy (East Palo Alto, CA)
- 9+ grades, parents bonded to create this school for students who came form K-8 charter school
- Emphasis on attending college
- Goal: assist low-income, underprivileged students in receiving the education needed to fulfill their dreams.
- Possibly consider having students visit actual college campuses
- Contrast between bland outside image of school and the colorful, hopeful inside decoration of the school

Key take-away from this class: “the power of the multiplier effect”
- Every pod project should have a systematic multiplier effect worked into it
i.e. Education group: this PoST class --> “Kiva Pod” --> Ariel (as focus of this Education pod) --> Other students in Ariel’s class --> could possibly visit our PoST class (note: circular effect)

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Fiat and Authenticity

Earlier this week I happened upon an interesting Wall Street Journal article* about a controversial Fiat ad that publicizes the plight of activist and 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner  Aung San Suu Kyi who is under house arrest in her country of Myanmar. 

In light of our related class discussion, I thought this was a good example of the importance of maintaining authenticity as we craft and share our compelling stories.



Footage for the Fiat commerical was shot at the Nine World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureats and features four winners of the Nobel Peace Prize as they arrive at the confernce in Fiat Lancia cars . In the final frames of the ad a Lancia arrives and the passenger door opens to reveal an empty seat - an image meant as a metaphor for Suu Kyi's imprisonment - followed by an image of Suu Kyi and the words: "Lancia [Fiat] supports Aung San Suu Kye. Free now." 

So at this point you might be thinking that's pretty powerful and wondering "what's the controversy?" Well, besides Fiat not gaining permission from Suu Kyi to include her in the ad (Fiat claims it was impossible given her imprisonment), some feel that because Fiat is not providing any direct help to Suu Kyi (despite reaping enormous returns due to its virility) they are exploiting her for their gain. The article explains: 

"Ethics experts are split over the propriety of the campaign. Michael Boylan, a philosphy professor at Marymount University in Virginia who co-wrote, "AdveritsingEthics," says the spot is "unethical and classless" because Fiat isn't offering direct help to Ms. Suu Kyi. Tony Pigott, a director of Ethos JWT, a division of WPP's JWT ad agency specializing in social-issue ads, says the add is well made and unobjectionable."

What do you think?

- Shal

*This links to an excerpt only. I'll bring a hardcopy to class.

Monday, January 26, 2009

10 Ways to Increase Your Twitter Followers

Came across this article from Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, and second most followed "Twitterer?" after President Obama... Thought it might be helpful:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/25/kevin-rose-10-ways-to-increase-your-twitter-followers/

Friday, January 23, 2009

Class 6: Kiva Case

Hi everyone! My name is Anna and I will be working Jennifer as well as other course advisors for the duration of the class. I will mostly attend the Monday classes. I will also take notes and in hope that they help, will post them on the blog.

This first post includes two main sections: I) Summary and II) High Level Insights. The second part is broken down into IIA) Overall Points IIB) Student Comments IIC) Jennifer’s Comments.

I am very open to feedback so please let me know what updates I can make to the notes format that would help.

****

"The numbers are really interesting but they are not what make my heart sing." – Jessica Flannery

SUMMARY:
As everyone walked into the room Monday afternoon, The WillIAm video regarding Obama played overhead.

Monday’s class focused on the Kiva case – a wonderful example of hot to get attention as well as how to engage others. Kiva is a micro lending website filled with pictures and stories of entrepreneurs in need of funding. Each post on Kiva tells its own story and in Monday’s class Jessica Flannery, co-founder of Kiva, told us hers.

The class began with a story-telling exercise. Jessica put up a picture in front of the class and asked the group to begin crafting a story. The stories shared were very different. Some focused on the clothes – noting that the group dressed-up for the occasion, was excited and posing for the shot. Others commented on a woman’s gestures in the middle of the frame – antsy, possibly unsatisfied and not enjoying her stance in front of the camera.

Next, Jessica projected a close-up shot of a woman, calling our attention to previous associations of such images with poverty as well as the ambiguity of the woman’s expression. Just as this picture began to elicit feelings of guilt and possibly pity, Jessica zoomed the picture out from the close-up of the woman. Now the woman sat in the middle of a market, surrounded by tremendous amounts of ripe produce. Suddenly, the new information conjured feelings of curiosity, respect, and intrigue. The take-away is that additional information and the presentation of your story are very influential to the meaning.

After this exercise, Jessica began story. Her own journey began when she traveled to Tahiti during her high-school years. The poverty she saw stayed with her. In college, Jessica studied philosophy because she wanted to study to ask the right questions, she studied political science to study rules and become familiar with those who made them, and she studied poetry because it helped her express herself. She traveled the world during Semester at Sea as well as on her on volition. Spending three months in Africa, she passed out grants to entrepreneurs in need (i.e. one grant allowed a man with three wives and many children to buy fishnets for his business).

Jessica sent out stories from her travels and noticed that her family and friends wanted to get involved in socially responsible investing (without caring for the jargon of ‘micro lending’. She noticed that upon hearing personalized stories of people in need, her family and friends 1) became engaged 2) began to act / donate and 3) see each other differently as a result.
With this realization, Kiva was born. Jessica co-founded Kiva with her husband Matt.

Kiva's mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty.

OVERALL POINTS:
Kiva: 1) empowers individuals on a human level / people view themselves differently as a result of their actions 2) people love and are passionate about Kiva 3) the brand is not copyrighted, which is in line with feelings of intimacy and empowerment the company is founded upon 3) people want to participate; there are lenders that go above and beyond just lending i.e. kivapedia 4) people are not always rational decision-makers / external characteristics matter (i.e. African women get targeted 10x more than Bulgarian men) 5) aesthetically pleasing and very simple layout of site.

CLASS COMMENTS:
A few interesting student comments focused on: 1) The power of detail in a story 2) The factors that contributed to the success of the Kiva site. Jessica attributes a lot of Kiva’s initial success to the fact that the entrepreneurs’ stories were very fun to read. The stories on Kiva were also very personal as opposed to the stories on MicroPlace (
https://www.microplace.com/). 3) A student inquired about using pictures versus video as the mediums through which content is shared on Kiva. Jessica explained that site plans to launch videos this summer. However, she did emphasize that too much information is bad. 4) Finally, class agreed that in this day and age, it is possible to fund a company through contests.

JENNIFER AAKER’S COMMENTS:
1) Goal of a Pod is to not make it a transactional experience but a changing experience 2) As think about your stories, keep thinking about the role of measurement. Keep an eye on any opportunity to measure the current state of your cause. It is very important to have a baseline. 3) Play with experimentation and make sure that you keep measuring not only reaction but impressions. 4) One way to view the purpose of this class is to reconnect you with stories that got you into GSB (think: your arsenal of personal stories) 5) One of the most important take-aways from this class is “small”. Everything that we should be doing is “granular.” 5) There is a lot in a name (i.e. .org [highly associated with warm, people do not want to work there, seen as needy] versus .com [competitive, efficient, cool] 6) Jennifer loves the idea of being in love; encourages us to keep thinking about the relationships that we are trying to cultivate.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Finding your own voice in the proud stories of entrepreneurs:

This class is becoming more than a learning experience for me. I am really enjoying the materials we are covering and the project I am working on, but most of all, I feel like I am reconnecting with my business school essays, and reminding myself why I came here and what I want to do in the future.

Listening to Jessica Flannery, Kiva’s founder, present to our Power of Social Technology class was an eye-opening experience in that regard. She is living proof that it is possible to translate what you are passionate about into a business. She is committed to a cause- solving poverty in the developing world- and she has dedicated her life to it. She spent years in the poorest countries, not because she feels guilty about her comfortable life here in the US or because she pities the people who don’t have the same comforts that she enjoys. Rather, she follows this pursuit because she is fascinated by the stories of the people she has met along the way and because she wants to contribute to a happy ending in those narratives. These people’s stories inspired her just as her story inspired me. These are “stories of hope and dignity” as Professor Muhammed Yunus says.

The power of story:

The presentation started with a photo of a woman. It was zoomed in so that only her face could be seen in the picture. It was similar to marketing materials you would see from any international NGO. I felt the following emotions: “She needs your help. Please donate.” You don’t establish a positive emotional connection with the individual in the picture or the cause NGO is trying to grab your attention to.

Jessica confirmed these feelings saying that this is how people tried to approach the problem so far. People tend not to focus on the negative feelings. The next slide was the same picture but zoomed out; the women in a marketplace with baskets of tomatoes that she was trying to sell. The faces of the students in the room changed immediately; instead of being tense and defensive, as they were initially, curiosity was evident in their eyes and they were smiling.

Then we saw the third slide, which is the same picture that’s on Kiva.org’s website. This slide had all of the information about the woman. She had a name, a nickname, a job. People got even more curious.

Jessica spoke about the woman with the tomatoes. I felt emotions that were invoked by looking at the photo. I was able to observe how people care about other peoples’ hopes and dreams. This is the powerful nature of being able to interconnect people. This is the power of the story and the thing that brings millions to Kiva to help.

I once wrote that “creativity” matters to me the most. I am really fond of the intellectual arsenal I am gaining at business school, but I think creativity also requires the involvement of inspiration through emotions. After listening to Jessica Flannery today, I felt inspired and I realized that my true essence—being creative—needs more attention and care.


Kaan

"Let's Write a Sawng"

Hey PoST class,

I was listening to NPR the other night and heard an interview with Rivers Cuomo, lead singer/songwriter for Weezer. He’s done some interesting solo work lately, and one project in particular caught my eye. The project is called “let’s write a sawng.” Cuomo released a series of youtube videos asking for viewers to collaborate with him to create a song…one person comes up with a title, one person writes the lyrics, one person lays the drum track, etc. Check out his youtube page to see more. http://www.youtube.com/user/RiversCuomoAlone

--Justin Wismer

Getting Personal with Kiva

Yesterday, Jessica Flannery – the founder of Kiva – came and shared her personal story with the class. As Diego has already captured her amazing story-telling capability, I will focus on 3 other aspects that really struck me during her speech.
1) Changing the way people view poverty
2) A clear focus on the individual
3) The analogy of “falling in love”

Changing the way people view poverty
Often, poverty is presented to the public with the message that YOU should feel bad. Jessica mentioned that when she would see images of women or children in poverty, it would make her feel sad and almost sick inside. After traveling through East Africa with the Village Enterprise Fund, she saw stories of dignity and hope, and began to think about people in poverty much differently. Part of her goal is to give a different view of poverty. As we saw with the Help Sameer campaign, portraying an issue in a more light-hearted nature can be extremely effective.

A clear focus on the individual
The best example of this is when Jessica mentioned that large corporations have offered to donate large amounts of money to Kiva. Kiva will only accept these donations if the money to individuals on the site, not as a large lump sum. This would take away from Kiva’s mission to connect people.

Falling in Love
Kiva has done ~$57M in loans and has over 360,000 lenders. Why do people keep re-lending their money and why does Kiva occasionally run out of people who need loans? Jessica said she can only use the analogy that people have fallen in love with Kiva and the individuals they lend money to, and people in love do not always act rationally. This can be seen by the creation of Kiva-pedia, and other Kiva initiatives that were not started by the staff.

For our own projects, we should strive for people to fall in love with the individual and portray stories of hope.

-Lisa Robinson

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Jessica Flannery and her great story

Today in class Jessica Flannery talked to us about the story behind the creation of Kiva. I was very captivated by the story and got really excited about Kiva. Those are indications to me of a great story and a great storyteller.

As I reflect about what made Jessica's story so good, and with the contributions of all in class, I got to the following characteristics:

1) Focuses on the main messages: Jessica said "too much information can be really bad..." and throughout her speach, she focused on her vision for Kiva (connecting people through stories) and glossed over all of the operational details behind the operation.

2) Uses emotions: Jessica was constantly telling us how she felt and what she was going through. Her emotions made it easy for us to relate to the story and feel more engaged.

3) Uses humor and a "down to earth" style: Jessica used humor and an informal speech that helped keep the audience engaged. As Micah put in class, it was not at all distancing as some of these success stories tend to be.

4) Uses many details in specific points to help create clear images: Even though Jessica was focused on her main message, she used great level of details in some parts of the story to help the audience create clear images in their minds. These concrete images help keep the audience engaged and increase the recall of the message (makes it sticky!).

5) Is passionate about the subject: Jessica is extremely passionate about the stories of the people in developing countries who are struggling to fight poverty and about how Kiva can help them. Her enthusiasm was contagious.

I am also taking Prof. Chip Heath's class on "How to make ideas stick" and Jessica's story pretty much covers all the aspects of the things that make ideas stick: SUCCESs - Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional and Stories. To know more visit www.madetostick.com.

Also, if you want to know more about how Kiva works, check this video out: http://vimeo.com/2769845

Hope this is helpful.

Best,
Diego

Monday, January 19, 2009

Class 4: Grabbing Attention

Today's class was all about figuring out how to grab attention using social technologies, specifically how to grab attention for the causes that we are all working on.

We began by talking generally about companies / causes that have grabbed our attention and trying to isolate what it was that enabled these campaigns to do so. We identified some key things that effective campaigns do to successfully grab attention, which included:
  • Be short - whether it is a video or a tagline - this keeps people's attention; Dove's Real Beauty campaign was based off of a brief video
  • Use viral networks and have people send it to their friends
  • Make it personal - add people's names to emails / promotions
  • Own a color or image - Breast Cancer owned the color pink; Apple owned White
We then discussed how to build a strong brand by diving into the key aspects of brand asset allocation, which are:
  • Differentiation - how distinct is the brand
  • Relevance - how meaningful is the brand
  • Esteem - how much do people respect the brand
  • Knowledge - how intimate do people feel with the brand
It is important to have more differentiation than relevance, and more esteem than knowledge.

We finished the class by breaking into our pods to discuss how we can best grab attention for our causes and projects. There were some great ideas leveraging Twitter, Facebook, status / away messages, and email signatures / headers. Now we're off to experiment to see which tactics work best!

Monday, January 12, 2009

PoST – Class 3: Being an Anthropologist

Today’s class was focused on “Ethnography” and how to study a situation or a person with the sense of “Vuja De” – with fresh eyes. We all had to watch an episode of Entourage and look for cultural practices – a manifestation of a culture or a sub culture. Interspersed with the insights from the show on the topics of sex and gender, social organization and loyalty, were comments from Sundeep Ahuja, giving us a real flavor to what the people in the show were really like.

One of the games that we played today, was to spend a couple of minutes discussing what the person sitting next to us did yesterday and extrapolate from that information, what breakfast they had today. This was fun, because this illustrated to us in a straight forward manner, how it feels to try and imagine being someone else. Post, that we discussed how and what kind of products we could potentially market to them – was it through a viral video, a party setting, internet etc.

Another topic we touched today was how Vinay’s campaign was so effective – from getting their life’s story out through moving pictures that captured different phases of his life and make him real to the audience, to punctuating every campaign with an action recommendation. It was beautiful to see how by putting yourself in the foot of your target audience, and then thinking about the barriers to action and then removing it could be an effective way using social marketing.

Professor Aaker, then told us the story of a 14-year old who was suffering from a mysterious disease that suddenly attacked her, and turning her from a healthy little girl to someone who is bed-ridden today with a few weeks of life predicted. And we noticed that the campaign that the Professor had launched similar to Vinay’s campaign to identify one other similar case, was a failure, because they could not define the goal, privacy issues and the complexity of the disease which made communication complex.

The class ended with tips on the power of brevity in communication, through stories in 6 words (Like Hemingways’: “For Sale: baby shoes, never worn”) and with tips on in-situ ethnography. The five insights were to be there, be present, be vulnerable be surprised and to be brave and honest. Three methods of getting another person to open up were through good opening questions, photos and quotes and keeping a “bug list or an idea wallet”.

All in all, it was a great class with a wide breadth of things covered around ethnography and social impact.

-Maalika

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Speed Storming

Speed and creativity defined our second class session. 

The task: 4 x 15 minute brainstorming sessions with our small teams focused on improving the life of your target individual, organization, cause and the metrics you'll use to evaluate your impact.

The rules: 
  • Defer judgment
  • Encourage wild ideas
  • Build on ideas of others
  • Go for volume
  • One conversation at a time
  • Headline - capture the essence and move on
The point: Quantity of ideas leads to quality of ideas.  It's great for team building too.

Our team enjoyed this kick-off exercise so much we created a "virtual whiteboard" with Google Docs as a place put ideas as they arise. (Have you ever noticed ideas seem to pop up when you least expect them? It's nice to have a place to put them.)

Ok, time to watch Entourage. It's our PoST assignment for tomorrow...honest! 


Wednesday, January 7, 2009

PoST Class 1 Summary & Insights

This class is going to be different. Different format, different atmosphere, different objective. With social technology as our vehicle, we have one simple goal: make someone's life better. With a bold promise to make the time we spend over the next eleven weeks meaningful enough to remember in 10 years time, Professor Aaker offered her friendship, her resources and her out-of-the-box approach to teaching within the first few minutes of class. Today's session covered the parameters of the course (no assigned readings‹eh-hem...only "recommended" readings, we're encouraged to fuel our creativity with food and diversion, and it's a safe place to show a little raw emotion) and one of Aaker's previous students set a high bar with an inspiring story of friendship, activism and loss (www.helpsameer.org).
From yoga to education to healthcare, the quick introductions of each student and their all-over-the-map project interest blurbs left hanging in the air a sense of she's not kidding...let's get down to it. At this point, I don't think anyone knows quite what to expect. But in our short time at the GSB, if there was ever a time to get comfortable with the unexpected, this is probably it.

-Bree McKeen

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Class 1: Introduction to the Power of Social Technology

Welcome to the Power of Social Technology or "PoST" as we will call it from now on. By now you've probably noticed that this course is different from your standard GSB fare: no reader, no text books, no assignments prior to day one...(and hopefully this discovery brightened the gloom of vacations' end). But the differences don't stop there: you, the students, own this course.

So now it's time to roll up your sleeves and get to the simple goal of this class: change someone's life (for the better).

Please feel free to change the life of more than one person if you wish -- but in order to pass this class, you will need to materially change at least one individual's life. To do so, we will form pods and experiment with different forms of social technologies (more advanced than this simple blog). From there, we will iterate, prototype, and create.

In the process, we will learn from experts about being an anthropologist, telling stories, and grabbing attention, engaging, and inspiring others to take action.

The goal of this blog is three-fold. First, this blog (simple and novice in its format but it will hopefully do the trick) will be a place to summarize the highlights of the class. Second, the blog aims to foster conversation--particularly among those may not always like to speak in class. Third, it will provide a single place for you to post links, videos, resources. I look forward forward to getting to know each of you, being inspired by your projects, and following your careers. Jennifer.