The Power of Social Technology

The Power Of Social Technology in El Salvador's elections

2009-03-16T08:24:00.000-07:00

I didn't think Social Technology was going to be as relevant for El Salvador elections as it was for the US elections. But during these past two days (Saturday and Sunday) I have been following all my friends' Facebook status updates and I'm very excited of what I have seen. To give you a little bit of context, El Salvador has two parties - Right party which has been governing for 20 years and Left party which came from the communist organizations of the civil war. Left party was most likely to win, according to the surveys.
Here's what happened in terms of Social Technology:
1. Openness: In the previous elections, everyone that supported the Left party was criticized and would be too open to let people know about their beliefs. Now, with FB status, everyone is being honest and yes, criticized, but still want to share what they believe. A huge development in our society.
2. Dialogue: The ones that criticize my status updates are my friends. Otherwise they wouldn't be in my FB network, of course. The ability to have a one on one conversation without generalizing and saying "all right/left party followers are wrong!" makes me believe that the dialogue is now real and we can talk about our differences and still be friends!
3. Pride: It makes me proud that this new generation is so committed to talk about these issues. It was about time that we owned the future of our country. And it makes everyone feel proud of being a Salvadorian, regardless of them winning or losing.

Great lessons of the Power of Social Technology. It's real! Even in such a small country

Falling in Love

2009-03-14T11:47:00.000-07:00

Though many of you have likely seen this video before, I thought it demonstrated so many of the principles and techniques we learned in this class over the last quarter, in particular falling in love. Thank you all for making this such a memorable experience. Cheers, Shal

PoST Wrap Up - The Last Class

2009-03-14T08:16:00.000-07:00

Considering the experiences we have each had during our time in Professor Aaker's Power of Social Technologies class, today will certainly be a day of mixed emotions and reflection. Here we go:

One sticky insight from the class:

Clarity of Ask/Storytelling
Give up Control

Putting it out there – iterate – user interaction
Think small
Share yourself – belong to the group
Learn from others through the process
Put yourself in someone else’ shoes – what did they have for breakfast?
The messenger matters
People are good (viral) People are lazy (busy – need a clear call to action) People are simple (reduce)
Find one clear emotion to tap into and to drive

As we went around the room sharing our stickiest takeaways, it was clear that while there were similarities in lessons learned, each person's experience was unique. I also enjoyed hearing the comments and knowing what that particular team had accomplished having seen their presentation a few days before. Moving quickly, we transitioned this wrap-up discussion into Professor Aaker's lecture on Happiness.

This lecture is data driven and provides a great opportunity for self-reflection. A couple of funny videos helped to articulate some of the challenges we face in our attempts to be happy:

From Conan O'Brien - this comedian helps us to remember why gratitude and recognizing how fortunate we are is a key to happiness. Louis CK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOtEQB-9tvk

From SNL - this clip help us to remember that the grass isn't always greener on the other side of the fence and something's gotta give when we pour the majority of our time and effort into a career. Kelly Ripa – Crack Cocaine: http://www.hulu.com/watch/2334/saturday-night-live-tressant-supreme

This lecture is posted online so I will spare the details, but I did want to share 2 tactical takeaways:

1. Carve out your areas of incompetence: There was some debate about the downside of such a principle (ie: young girls jumping quickly to say "I'm bad at math" when they might have a tremendous, although dormant, capacity for mathematics) but overall there are some apparent benefits to this practice. One tangible example was given of a consultant who joined some firm and, rather than follow suit with his colleagues and claim he could handle any of the potential tasks thrown his way, he chose to be very upfront, to carve out his areas of incompetence, and tell the people he worked with exactly what he wasn't good at. The story goes that he was promoted faster than any of his peers because of this practice.

2. Brand Family Traditions: we talked about the power in branding traditions to create powerful memories for our children. One example that will stick with me forever was of one family's "Linda Evangelista Spring Cleaning Fashion Show." The family would, each Spring, pull out all the clothes from the closet, have a fashion show, round up all of the old clothes, and before the end of the day drop them off at Goodwill and organize the closet. These clever parents were able to brand an activity, Spring cleaning, in such a way that it became the treasured memory of their 19 year old daughter when asked "What is your favorite family memory?" Pretty impressive.

The Last Class – Course Reflection and Discussion on Happiness

2009-03-14T01:02:00.000-07:00

Each class at the GSB concludes with the obligatory thank you from the professor, the extended applause as the professor exits the stage, and finally the awkward moment of silence as students pack their belongings. While the components of this three-step process rarely vary, the emotions invoked throughout the process are often the distinguishing characteristic of the class’s value. When I looked around the room during this process today, the value of the first-ever PoST class was validated by not only the wide range of emotions invoked, but also by the lack of one reaction in particular: apathy.

The passion that the PoST course instilled in our class was apparent in the last class session as we started by sharing our most valuable personal insights from the course. This collaborative reflection served as further proof that individuals exposed to the same message can have vastly different takeaways. Classmates touched on a variety of subjects (samples below) ranging from highly emotional to straightforward and tactical. We then transitioned to a discussion on happiness (highlights below) that served equal parts 1) tying together class frameworks and 2) tying together life frameworks.

Classmates’ Stickiest Insights:

-Grassroots movements are most effective when initiated by an “insider”

-Relinquishing control of your message can be a scary, but necessary, step in allowing it to spread

-Even experts cannot predict what will go viral and what will not

-Bias for action. Test, refine. Test, refine. Test, refine.

-People want to share, so give them something worth sharing

-The power of storytelling and multiple subplots

-Thank people so they feel like a rock star

-Don’t underestimate your audience. Tell your story and be brief.

Jennifer’s Insights:

-Grab Attention

-Own a color

-Fall in love

-different than being in love

-Choose words carefully

5:1 ratio, positive:negative

-Engage

-Photo of African woman at market

-Inspire

-Think small

-Be brief

-Call to action

-Butterfly framework from sameer and vinay

Happiness

-Happiness is poorly understood

-We’re not all talking about the same thing

-Happiness “setpoint” are hard to break

-State of happiness is often normalized within six months after winning the lottery, fighting cancer, etc.

-People are not good at recognizing what makes them happy

Disneyland – people remember it fondly even though it was not that great

-Difficult to predict what make you happy

-Stop chasing happiness, start chasing meaningfulness

-Work on projects you love

-Carve out areas of incompetence

Two small notes:

-Email Jen if you want to continue your project but need resources.

-Email Jen if you have suggestions on how to form groups effectively.

PoST final presentations – a great highlight in our Stanford experience

2009-03-12T18:47:00.000-07:00

And the day came. High expectations were set the first class when Jennifer told us about this event. And there we were, remembering once again Sameer and Vinay, who’s memory will live strongly through this course.

Family, friends, students, staff, VC’s, entrepreneurs, public school teachers, you name it. They were all there waiting to see what had gone on in PoST for the past 10 weeks and understand, to some extend, how social technology was changing the world in eight five minutes presentations.

• The College Reform Team came first and was able to explain what was the BCS team was and how they came up with their results to determine who wins and loses. It seemed ridiculous and felt that this guys just had to “pull the trigger”. If they aim right, great change could come along? Who are they going to use to champion it, NFL, “underdog universities”?http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qL4DjGe31Lk

• The Dance Project gave us a great insight: make sure you give ownership to the right people – in an unofficial way -, only then, social technology will do its part. Determining who “the right people” are is done 1 on 1.

• Team Jenny brought emotions to another peak. I thought the “white board” idea was brilliant. Although we didn’t really know who Jenny was and how could we help, it made us feel that she was talking directly to us.

What was also great was to realize how corporations get connected to social causes: by the individuals within and below, not necessarily from above. A Google executive was in the room and explain how she had got $15,000 from the company to help Jenny find the comparables she needs to cure her illness.

• Hunger affects all of us. There are 36 million people out there, with different stories from which we can’t just “tune out”. Families, children, seniors. Wendell is one of them. Cancer took everything away from him but he can’t complain because there are others “so much worse than him (me)”. What can we do? Simple: Click, call or care (www.thehungersite.com),

• Public education is failing big time. In East Palo Alto, 50% of the students are not graduating from high school. Just across 101, 15,000 students are getting the best college education in the world. How can this be? It matters less than what we can do about it: support the “front line heroes” throw educationdreamlab.org, a social network that is supporting oung guys like Mike Berman who are doing whatever it takes to make sure that at least some of this kids of East Palo Alto will make it through college. http://educationdreamlab.org/blog/

• Did you think that organ donors could be considered sexy? I didn’t, as well as 25,000 others who took the time to watch a simple video, with simple guys and a simple message. Amazing traction. Much higher that many more sophisticated ones that usually don’t go beyond 700 visits. Results? 88 of them are sexier now than before our class started.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuBQZhB7PhE

• You may not realize how exposed you are in the web until someone shows you a picture of someone that could have perfectly been you within the last month! Remember that there are millions of (video)cameras out there capturing too many images… This is just an advice from “privacyspaceonline.com”. After feeling that exposed, everyone should want, more sooner than later, to control his or her information and profiles, more even its advertising free - Orlando, it seems that you’re on to something big.

• Did you know that the word sex bring up the most beautiful thoughts for some and the most disgusting to others? Yes. Among the latter, the 70-90% of female delinquents that have been sexually abused in their life. Where do we start from there? Connecting them with themselves and their dignity. How? Through Yoga. Can Yoga help on tough people? Definitively. If you don’t think so, ask the 49ers! The Art of Yoga Project have got it right and its founders want to spread the word to meet similar needs around the world. http://www.insidebayarea.com/sanmateocountytimes/ci_11684323

10 weeks, 32 students, 1 teacher (and good friend), 8 breathtaking initiatives that change the world. Are you still skeptic about the Power of Social Technology? Get on board and feel the impact. Now.

(When I was young my goal was to change the world; I grew up and realized that this would be impossible and aspired to change those around me; time passed and I then only hoped to change myself; I changed, and the world begun to change around me – Mother Theresa.)

Social Media Trends from a Mintel Int'l Group Study (October 2008)

2009-03-11T22:17:00.000-07:00

I thought some of these statistics might be of interest - how lucky are we that we had the opportunity to take a class on this emerging wave of marketing / communication!

Study of 2,000 adults 18+ with Internet access in October 2008

Some 43% of adult respondents stated that they had created at least one social networking profile.

79% of 18-24-year-olds and 71% of 25-34s reported doing so.

Approximately 76% of those with a profile reported having created one for MySpace, while 71% had posted on YouTube and 61% on Facebook.

Picture and video-sharing are becoming much more popular and are activities at the heart of the social media trend. Some 39% of respondents reported uploading pictures or video, but 68% of 18-24s and 64% of 25-34s reported doing so.

45% of the individuals surveyed are now blogging online and 77% read blogs.

Some 34% of respondents reported clicking an advertisement on a social networking site in the week prior to taking the survey. However, the research suggests that blogs and product reviews have more influence on consumer behavior than ads on social networking sites.

Source: Social Media Trends by Mintel Int’l Group (October 2008)

Opportunity to use new PoST skills

2009-03-10T10:35:00.000-07:00

I was so impressed and inspired by all of the presentations yesterday.

Just wanted to share an opportunity some may be interested in- it could be a 390, an independent project, or potentially a SMIF:

Peninsula Open Space Trust is seeking ways to engage new groups and increasing numbers of potential supporters through different web-based social networking tools. We are working with someone now to design a Facebook page for POST, for example. What we're looking for is feedback from other environmental organizations on if/how they have engaged these emerging, and increasingly popular tools, and what the future might hold for how environmental NGOs and POST can communicate their work through these channels. How have others used them, with what success, what frustrations, how much time have they had to spend maintaining/updating them? etc. would be among the questions we're interested in.

Gordon C. Clark
Conservation Project Manager
Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST)
222 High Street
Palo Alto, CA 94301
Phone: 650 854-7696
Direct: 650 854-8384 x332
Fax: 650 854-7703
www.openspacetrust.org

My Favorite Presentation (No Offense)

2009-03-10T08:09:00.000-07:00

All,

All of the presentations were great in their own unique way and I enjoyed being both entertained and moved throughout yesterday's class. I just wanted to give a shout out to my favorite presentation of the day - Team Jenny. From Bree's dramatic writing in silence on the whiteboard "What if you could change a life with just one click?" to the innovative video that proved the power of the written word on enciting emotion and communicating information - I was truly moved. Here is their video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go9KaYniqjM

Here is the link to their website:

oneclickonelife.org/

This was inspiring - thanks Team Jenny.

The Ripple Effect

2009-03-09T22:58:00.000-07:00

Incredible class today. I was really touched to see Sameer's brother Prashant in class. I thought it was very fitting that he was able to be there and see a small part of the ripple effect that started with Sameer and Vinay. And now each of us is part of that ripple effect, and I don't think we'll comprehend the ultimate impact of our projects for a long time to come. A lot of incredible work was done. You never know how far-reaching an impact you might have. After seemingly banging our head against a wall for the first two months, it was only in the last week or two that our group suddenly started gaining real traction and seeing some real viral distribution of our message... And in the spirit of viral of course I'll provide a link to our video. :)

Thanks all - from Jennifer to the advisors to the guests to all the students - for an amazing class.

Using Humor as a Hook

2009-03-07T12:02:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, I found this YouTube clip that uses Humor as a Hook to sending a message for social good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHkWv1vHtHk

So far its gotten over half a million views in one month!

Thoughts on Virality

2009-03-05T23:51:00.001-08:00

A Wednesday morning visit with some of the leaders of a well known social media applications company (to remain nameless) produced some valuable insight into what has made the most popular Facebook applications viral. Some of these may strike you as counterintuitive:

1. Creative is not viral

2. User experience is not viral

3. Thinking is not viral

Question: Ok...so please illuminate me....what IS viral?

Answer: Process

Setting up an efficient A-B testing system that launches a series of SPAM (except it's not spam because it's from your friends).

A book that was recommended for us to read is "Don't make me think."

Facebook: How to make ideas spread

2009-03-04T14:44:00.000-08:00

I loved this class! It helped me a lot to test the ideas we had as a Pod about MySpace, as well as generate more ideas on how to use this media and the different type of users for MySpace and Facebook. Just to give you an idea on the users, 4 out of 17 11th graders in our class use Facebook, 15 use MySpace!

I don't want to repeat the things that Vanessa and Anna have already said, so I will just let you know my key takeaways from the class.

1. Facebook has stimulated people to share more about themselves by having privacy settings that make the user feel more comfortable. As Matt said, "the more you can control the information, the more you will be willing to share" I loved it when he compared Facebook to the NY Times or Us Weekly about your friends... hilarious, cause that's exactly how I use it.

2. Always keep in mind the impact of social pressure. How does this usually work in Facebook? "6 of your friends have joined the group..."

3. Julio 5 tips were great. But the one I found more impactful was the power of "getting people angry", not to the point where they hate, but far enough to stimulate people to take action about uncomfortable issues.

4. Finally, Facebook has become highly important in communication. 70% of Facebook users use Facebook more than email in order to share information. This is a reality and the challenge now is how to use it for the right purposes.

Speakers email addresses:
Matt: mattwyndowe@facebook.com Twitter: wync
Julio: julio@experienceproject.com

The Perfect Storm of Social Technology

2009-03-04T11:34:00.000-08:00

Hey Team PoST,

We (Alex and I - Donors Are Sexy Pod) are trying to follow a recommendation by Julio (Vasconcelos) to try to leverage the power of the different social tech tools to create what he called "The Perfect Storm" of social technology.

To do that, we created a new post on our Blog and included a Digg button as our first step. Our hope is that we get Dugg enough times to get some space on Digg's main page. Julio said you need as little as 200 Diggs to be there. If that works, then we hope we can get to be a featured video in YouTube, which could really boost our reach.

To get the blog read and Dugg we will try to use Facebook (our networks and the group page) and also reach out to two prominent Twitter-ers we learned about in class: Casey Wright and Sarah Milstein to see if they can help us spread our message.

So, if you want to check out our latest post to the blog, follow this link

Also, since you're going there, we would love if you Dugg it! If you still don't have a Digg account, I recommend it, specially now that they are working on a recommendation engine for news that's going to help us filter through the huge amount of content available today.

Cheers,

Donors Are Sexy! Team

Facebook Case

2009-03-03T20:33:00.000-08:00

Monday's class was amazing.

We not only had Matt Wyndowe and Julio Vasconcellos talking about Facebook, but we also had the students from the East Palo Alto Phoenix Academy contributing to the session.

The 3 main points explored during class were:

1) How ideas spread

2) Why ideas spread

3) What ideas spread

How ideas spread

While in the past we had limited tools to spread ideas (e.g. letter to a newspaper, message in a t-shirt etc), today we have several such as blog post, comment on the net, video post etc.

Why ideas spread on Facebook

Massive scale: 175M users (50% log in every single day)
Identity: users contribute with their real-world identity
Friends: users connect with real-world friends
Distribution: the best content is distributed - what matters to the user
Privacy settings are different from what we had before in the Internet. Before it was either everything private or everything public (e.g. email versus video post)
The "newsfeed" is a "magazine about your friends" passively shared
There is no cost to share information and it can be viral
Friends help you to find content. They "filter" the content for you

5 winning strategies to spread ideas on Facebook

1) Appeal to vanity - people want to look cool

2) Get people angry - they will join a group against x

3) Cuuuuuuuute sells - use cats, babies, dogs (I love the "cuuuuuute")

4) Social proof - again, people want to look cool. People want to be part of a group

5) Everyone can save the world - or at least everyone thinks they can save the world

Some moments during this session I wondered what the Privacy group was thinking about some points - specifically about the filter in each user's newsfeed. I would love to hear their thoughts.

2009-03-02T18:31:00.000-08:00

What we talked about:
- How ideas spread
- Why ideas spread on Facebook
- What ideas spread
- Example: captain Junkies

How ideas spread: a brief history
Cave drawings -> stone -> printing press -> telegraph -> phones -> tv -> fax machines -> mobile phones

1970s/1980s: easy to communicate one on one, but what if you wanted to communicate broadly to a group of people (one to many)?
Now: new tools that let you broadcast messages to the world really, really easily

“I would expect that next year, people will share twice as much information as they share this year, and next year, they will be sharing twice as much as they did the year before.” - call it Zuckerberg’s Law of Information Sharing

Why ideas spread on Facebook
3 things that make Facebook unique:
- 1. Identity - users connect with their real world identity.
- 2. Friends - users connect with real-world friends.
- 3. Distribution – the best content is distributed across the social graph.

Privacy control means more sharing: the higher the privacy settings, the more likely people are to share.

Main ways to distribute content on Facebook:
- newsfeed (this means that things can spread virally without a single dollar spent on marketing
- groups and applications can go form 2 members to millions of members within a matter of weeks: this is really unprecedented in social technology).

What ideas spread
Five winning strategies for the types of ideas that spread:
- Appeal to vanity (i.e. Facebook notes feature “25 random things”; hotness application)
- Get people angry (i.e. starving dog at art exhibit)
- Cuuuuute sells (i.e. fluff friends application)
- Social proof
- Everyone thinks they can save the world (showing that you care about cause; i.e. “causes” application)

Example
Captain Junkies (Logan presents application on Facebook)

Concluding comments:
- This Friday (03/06) is an off-site
- Jennifer will send out email with location of where Monday’s presentations will be held
- Please send all presentation materials to Jennifer so that things run smoothly next Monday
- Feedback evaluations are coming – watch your inboxes.

Thanks for Today

2009-03-02T18:18:00.000-08:00

Dear Class,

On behalf of the Kiva for Education team, I wanted to thank all of you for being so open and inviting to the students visiting from East Palo Alto Phoenix Academy. The students appeared to leave inspired and were incredibly engaged and excited after the session on facebook. After our class, we had lunch with them and invited some of our classmates from varying professional backgrounds to come speak with the students about their experiences - we had a doctor, a hedge fund investor, a buyer for Bloomingdale's, a lawyer, and a consultant. I think the words of the panelists really helped these kids realize that they can achieve anything they set their minds to, and that they don't have to have it all figured out right now. A special thanks to Micah for helping us out and speaking to the students.

I feel really good about today's experience and that, in some small way, we've already begun to make a difference.

2009-03-02T00:36:00.000-08:00

Hi Class,
A couple intriguing facts from the Generation Tomorrow Research PDF that professor Aaker sent out on 2/13/09. If the Barack Obama case class didn’t make us all feel old, this research study likely will. It truly speaks to the impact social media is having on Tweens (ages 10 – 12).

Generation Tomorrow Research
· Research Parameters
o By Martin Lindstrom
o The world’s largest study on kids and their relationship with brands.
o 600 researchers, psychologists and strategists
o Research conducted in 70 cities across 14 countries
· Tweens have become the primary decision makers in 80% of all cases
o 60% decide the car brand
o 58% decide the clothing brand
o 57% decide the mobile phone brand
· Kids are most likely to become just as influential decision makers in the households as their parents within 5 years. Why?
o ½ of the world’s population is divorced
o They are exposed to substantially more media and advertising through the web
· TV ads no longer work
o % Recall
§ 1965 = 34%
§ 1990 = 8%
§ 2005 = 5%
· Key Tween Statistics
o 44% of tweens prefer Internet to TV
o 87% of remember brand messages integrated into video games
o 15% of tweens prefer to text instead of talk if they’re sitting beside the person
o More than ½ of the worlds tween population is concerned about terrorism and say religion is important to them (substantially higher than previous generations)
§ Over 90% say safety is most important to them
§ Music has become today’s religion to tweens
o Close to 10% of all tweens have their own website – ½ of them want one

"The Facebook Era" and more demographics

2009-03-01T22:54:00.000-08:00

I wanted to share with you the website of the book "The Facebook Era," by Clara Shih, who Jennifer introduced to me few days ago. The book was not released yet, but it is already on sale.

http://www.thefacebookera.com

I am very interested in reading the book and I also found a good report in the website regarding common characteristics among social network users, which may be useful to our work.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/114720-social-networking-sites-grow-93-since-2006-poised-to-play-role-in-recession

ALARMING DEMOGRAPHICS ON FACEBOOK

2009-02-28T15:28:00.000-08:00

In preparation for Monday's class and discussion of Facebook - I thought whoever hadn't read this article about the latest statistics on growth and participating demographics on Facebook. Having witnessed my mother's "transformation" after joining Facebook last month, I have been increasingly interested in how this mode of communication will impact families for the better as they strive to stay in touch with one another's lives.

-Logan

Twitter on NPR

2009-02-28T09:39:00.000-08:00

As someone who is still a bit mystified by Twitter, I thought this NPR story with Dan Schorr was great! Link to the listen live button, NPR blog, and other info: http://tinyurl.com/cfc4po.

Marc Andreessen Interview with Charlie Rose

2009-02-26T22:46:00.000-08:00

Great interview with insights on current technology trends and important innovation on the web. Video below and full interview transcript here.

The Best Marketing Campaign in History

2009-02-25T18:12:00.001-08:00

Last Friday, we had 3 amazing speakers that discussed the roles that Google, CurrentTV, and Facebook played in the success of the Obama campaign.

Current TV, which is a social news network, took the conversation that people were having on twitter and pushed it through the TV. (For a taste of what the company does, check out current.com). So, as viewers watched the debates, they could see live commentary from twitter. The company was able to take a fragmented audience and bring them together. People felt involved in the political process. They felt heard.

Facebook helped to propel a grass roots movement. I’m still in awe over the power and reach of this social networking tool. (When Facebook placed a register to vote banner on its site, targeting adults in Iowa, participation within this demographic increased 3000%)! The company launched politician pages, teamed with news networks like CNN, and served as a platform for several applications that were used to attract donations.

I think Lexicon and Causes are applications that could be useful for our final class project. Lexicon tracks where people are talking about what. Currently, the topics that can be search is limited, but I believe this tool has some amazing potential. Causes is one of the most popular Facebook applications. For the Obama campaign, a user could do things such as donate his/her status update or airline miles.

Eligible voters who didn’t vote cited a lack of information as a primary reason for not casting a ballot. This is where Google stepped in. The company increased access to trusted information and made it easier for people to participate. They were involved in a variety of projects, from directing users to the appropriate voting locations to handing out video cameras at the Iowa caucus so that the individual experience could be documented. Throughout the campaign, it is estimated that 1800 videos were uploaded for 110mm views. This is equivalent to 46mm in paid advertising—clearly a smart use free of resources.

So, what innovation should we expect in the 2012 campaign? It seems mobile technology will play a larger role. However, I think the more interesting questions that stems from this presentation are: 1) how scalable are the methods that were used in the US election and 2) will traditional brands more willing to increase their use of social media following the success of the Obama campaign? The answer to these two questions is still to be determined. Moreover, I secretly wonder how effective all these methods will be once they are common practice for every marketing campaign. At that point, will we just be lost in a deluge of information, unable to process it all? I guess that is where innovation will have to step in once again.

Andii Davis

2009-02-25T16:29:00.000-08:00

In addition to what others have posted, my big insights from our meeting with Oren and Justine were:

Take the risk of creating drama for the audience. Oren suggested that we try to line up our narration around key points in our video. Although it would be tricky, he said that it would really hold his attention because he would be wondering throughout the presentation if we were going to be able to pull it off.
Don't ever let your auditory and visual components repeat each other. What we say in the presentation should complement and add to what's on the screen, not repeat it.

takeaway from storytelling workshop

2009-02-24T22:22:00.002-08:00

It was great to meet with Justine, Oren, and JD. My main takeaways were

you have to dive in and become the characters if the lights/power/comp go out, be ready for "what if" scenarios to still sell people on your idea
smart, creative people will have different views (see Oren and Justine), you can't please everyone with a single video or presentation and there are many ways a story can be interpreted

2009-02-24T22:22:00.001-08:00

testing

Takeaway from Oren and Justine

2009-02-24T22:08:00.000-08:00

Oren and Justine stressed the importance of making a clear call to action - and perhaps more importantly tailoring this to the audience. It may change with each presentation. In addition, JD added that it is important to keep the call to action brief, but offer more than one option.

Gavin Newsom Facebook Invitation

2009-02-24T19:20:00.000-08:00

Hey Class,

Here's another email I got from Gavin Newsom, Mayor of San Francisco. I found the opening line particularly relevant given the discussion we had as we debriefed following the Obama session...


	Why Facebook? With our state government in pieces, it's clear that the old guard can’t put California back together. But the problem is so deep that even the boldest new leader is going to need significant help to get California back on track. That’s why Gavin Newsom has spent so much time so early asking Californians to do much more than vote for change. He knows that a new direction for California is going to require a new kind of campaign for governor. And that means giving his supporters the tools to be heard and the ability to make an impact themselves. For Mayor Newsom – a new kind of campaign means bringing together Californians from every corner of our state who share a vision of progress on universal health care, on new green jobs, on investing in education from pre-kindergarten through college. That’s why his campaign is organizing in traditional ways – and in new places, like Facebook and Twitter. He’s shown what’s possible in San Francisco – he’s made his city the first in America on its way to universal health care; he is creating new green jobs with a smart economic strategy; and significant investment in public schools is helping to raise test scores and raise expectations for every student. If there are two things Gavin Newsom has learned in San Francisco they are that bold change is possible and real change comes from the bottom up, not the top down. He knows the old ways of campaigning might win an election, but they won’t change California. That’s going to take all of us. And that’s why we are spending time early asking Californians to join us on Facebook, sign up on our website and stay in touch on Twitter. These do more than allow Gavin to talk with us about his ideas. They allow us to talk together about what must be done at this moment in California history. If you want to become a part of Gavin’s exploratory campaign for governor, contribute ideas or money, or make your voice heard – please join us today. Sincerely, Eric Jaye Campaign Director Newsom for California Exploratory Committee P.S. To learn more, please visit www.GavinNewsom.com, and to stay in contact, please join him on Facebook . If you would no longer like to receive emails from Newsom for California, please click here to unsubscribe. Paid for by Newsom for California Exploratory Committee. FPPC #1308175 4104 24th Street, #766 San Francisco, CA 94114



Paid for by Newsom for California Exploratory Committee, FPPC #1308175

understanding twitter

2009-02-24T18:42:00.001-08:00

for those of you still trying to figure twitter out (and what people use it for) like I am, see the below article, written by a friend of mine, in HBS's weekly publication.

http://tinyurl.com/bfy3ty

Takeaways from Oren and Justine

2009-02-24T16:24:00.000-08:00

"Feel your pitch" - My biggest takeaway from our meeting arose from some technical difficulties we had with imovie. Due to an oversite on our part we were not able to play the clips we came to show. In pitching my idea to Oren and Justine I adopted a passive tone, trying to explain to them what the videos would have been like.

While they seemed to like our ideas, they said it would be much more effective if I took on an active role and actually "became my video". I explained a concept of a video where Fat Bastard from the Austin Powers movies sings the Baby Back Rib song (trust me this ties into our idea) and Oren sensed that the pitch would be far more effective if I acted his out. I believe his exact words to me were "you are fat bastard" - which is not as offensive as it sounds.

This is something I will take away with me in future interactions where I work to enage my audience.

Justine/Oren Takeaway

2009-02-24T00:05:00.000-08:00

My biggest takeaways from the storytelling lab with Justine and Oren were:

1. Importance of contrast - a story is oftentimes most intriguing when there are key points of contrast. In our case, this could be achieved by describing East Palo Alto and related statististics (% of EPA students that go to college, high school rankings, x% below the national poverty line, etc) and contrasting this with the Phoenix Academy and what the students there are trying to do (the school is a beacon of hope for these kids, they show up for school despite incredible commutes, they work hard to get good grades, the school is doing its job in preparing them academically, they are overcoming all odds in spite of the surrounding environment). This contrast shows these students as doing everything in their power to make a better life for themselves...and the only thing they are missing is the financial support they need to do so. This contrast creates a more compelling reason to donate.
2. Use of ticking clock- I had not previously thought about it, but Oren and Justine noted that we could really generate a compelling call to action by using the idea of firsts (this class is the first to graduate from EPAPA, these students are the first in their families to go to college, they went to their first prom this year, etc). The fact that these students are graduating from high school in 2010 creates a greater since of urgency for people to go ahead and get involved now. Oren and Justine did a great job of bringing this point out for us, something I think we had largely overlooked.

Today's coaching session (self-esteem group)

2009-02-23T23:45:00.001-08:00

To add to the takeaways that Adri already described bellow:

1) Having less text and more pictures, given the emotion pictures bring to the presentation.

2) Having an "unexpected" factor. In our presentation was a contrasting photo, but it could be something else with the intent to surprise and call the attention.

3) Include some data to support our cause (e. g. statistics related to self-esteem).

Don't Be Bashful in Your Call to Action

2009-02-23T23:30:00.000-08:00

What a great opportunity tonight to have another chance to share our stories with Oren, Justine and JD. The biggest insight I walked away with was to be clear and direct in your final call to action. That means you have to know what your communication goal is for that specific audience. This also means that it may and *should* change with different audiences.

So go ahead. Don't be shy. Call-to-action.

Story-Telling Lab

2009-02-23T23:25:00.000-08:00

Takeaways from tonight’s Story-Telling Lab:
[1] “The power of the eye”
- Faces are memorable to audiences, especially if the faces are visually distinguishable. Introduce differentiating facial characteristics that audience members can use to distinguish between main characters. Faces are important; they can be used instead of names. The most important part of a face are the eyes.
[2] “The power music”
- Using music can be legally complicated. Be careful to not distribute copyrighted works outside of this class. Music is powerful, but use it carefully; in that it can evoke many previous memories.
[3] “The power of stock pictures”
- “show, don’t tell” (w/ images)
- Jennifer will forward link to a site that has a good set of stock pictures once she receives it from Justine. A good one that I know of is www.gettyimages.com Once you register (the site is free), the images will no longer have the getty watercolor. If interested, play around with the key word searches - the site gives really good results.

A few other recommendations (note: may not apply to all Pods):
- “Use humor as a hook”
- “Ticking clock” gives sense of urgency.

Every Pod should be able to answer the following:
- Who is the intended audience?
- What do people leave with?
- What would people want to do?

Biggest Takeaway from Justin and Oren

2009-02-23T22:35:00.000-08:00

In the storytelling workshop conducted by Justin and Oren, we learned several ways to improve our appeal and drive traffic to our Facebook group site in order to increase hunger awareness.

Perhaps the single biggest take away is taking the contrast of overweight comedic characters and the 18 million people who suffer from hunger to a whole another level. We had originally planned to show a clip of "Fat Bastard" from the Austin Powers movies among two other clips, but we learned that having a collection of comedy clips from some of the most popular movies can drive more traffic than having multiple types of videos (serious/funny/emotional) attempting to cater to all demographics. In addition, we can communicate excessiveness by showing images which display gluttony and overindulgence to create a stronger contrast between the haves and the have-nots.

This creative way of showing exactly the opposite of what people expect to see in a hunger awareness "ad" has the potential to spark interest far greater than doing what is expected.

Coaching session w/ Oren and Justin

2009-02-23T22:05:00.000-08:00

When Oren and Justine first came to the class I was amazed by their different ways of evaluating stories. It was quite interesting to hear their feedback on Oren’s and Nicholas’ presentations. Knowing that, we were looking forward to hearing their take on our idea. It was such an eye-opening experience. They helped us see the story from the target audience's eye. Among everything they said, the one thing that struck all of us was the power of telling the story without narrating it. Oren literally showed us how difficult it is to convey a message just using images; but, once it could be done, it could be way more powerful.- Kaan

Final presentation: A few tips from Oren and Justine

2009-02-23T18:39:00.000-08:00

Our group (Self Esteem) met this afternoon with Oren and Justine... their feedback was so useful! They're amazing! Although I have to accept that Oren is such a fast speaker that it was very hard to get everything he said. Here are my main takeaways:
1. You can definitely use photos instead of videos for your presentation. But these have to be GOOD pictures. A great tip to take a powerful shot: Focus on the eyes, the eyes are the window to the soul
2. Contrasting stories (a girl enjoying a manicure version followed by a female wrestler) provide an interesting yuxtaposition for the audience, contrast make them feel curious about the link that exists between two significantly different realities

Mozilla: The power of invitation and the power of thank you for participating

2009-02-23T14:22:00.000-08:00

We started off today’s class discussing our sentiments about Friday’s class where we had guests from current.tv, google, and facebook.

Many students felt confused and uninspired by the current.tv’s promotional video. Jennifer noted two things about communication:
· Less is more (2 things max)
· Audience focus (how representative is a company’s presentation style representative of its own culture vs. targeted towards the particular audience?)

A lively discussion ensued about the effect of social technology on the way people are discussing issues as well as some speculation about the future of these technologies and how we will interact with social media down the line.

Jennifer then introduced our guests for today, including Asa Dotzler from Mozilla.

There are three principle causes that Mozilla publicly and passionately supports: Open Standards, Open Web, and Open Source. Asa spoke about joining the Mozilla team early on and how they went about establishing a set of rules and principles without stifling growth as they added programs to Mozilla.

They used a grassroots campaign with the goal of purely getting people to talk about Mozilla – Mozilla now has a community of 150,000 people who are participating every day to get news about Mozilla out there. Asa and the rest of the team initiated this grassroots effort by merely emailing friends, and the growth they saw from this was incredible. The team took out ad in NY Times shaped like the Mozilla logo containing the names of everyone who had contributed to campaign. The tagline they used was along the lines of: “Get your name in the NY Times and help our campaign” – As and team had to shut down the site in 10 days because raised $200,000 (as compared to an anticipated $150,000 over a month!). The NY Times ad generated more coverage from bloggers, articles, etc online than there were actual viewers of the ad in the Times.

Asa also spoke about a group of Oregon students that created a giant crop circle in the shape of the logo and, again, emphasized how Mozilla really strives to empower groups of people to participate in the way they want to participate by providing new opportunities for people to get involved and bring their expertise to the table. Asa said they try to portray the message that, “If you want to do something for us, go out and do it.” This reminded me very much of the Vinay and Sameer campaign where individuals were empowered to run with the cause in the way they see fit, organizing their own blood drives, etc.

Asa then introduced Seth who is in charge of the global localization program at Mozilla to translate the browser into as many languages as possible. Seth emphasized the importance of empowerment of individuals and leverage – everything they do is volunteer driven. They have over 200 million users worldwide with 20% market share yet have a budget that is only a miniscule fraction of that of other browsers. Mozilla currently exists in 64 languages and 85% of current users hear about Mozilla through word of mouth. This is an amazing statistic given they have essentially no marketing budget and is a true testament to the power of using social technology. Seth attributed part of their success with this type of marketing strategy to having a specific call to action that encourages people to get involved (and makes it simple for them to do so). Seth said his goal is to localize new elements of the product so people accessing the internet for the first time can have a more familiar experience. Seth then introduced Sunil, who works at Mozilla Labs group which also strives to decrease barriers for people to participate in product development. Sunil spoke about ways to involve people with less technical skillsets (artistic, marketing, etc) by developing new products outside of just browser (cloud computing, etc). Sunil noted that, at Mozilla, people take ownership of the message they produce, since it is their own spin on the message even if they weren’t involved in the early days.

We concluded class by discussing the power of an invitation and the power of thanking people for participating. How do you empower people to help? Mozilla’s participants are their customers. Motivation for people is that they want to be a part of this and they know they are a part of it when their voice is heard.

We spent the last 15 minutes of class with our groups discussing our projects while Asa, Seth, and Sunil informally spoke with some of the groups.

2/23 Firefox Case

2009-02-23T13:09:00.000-08:00

Key Points:
- Less is more (2 things max)
- Audience focus
- The power of quotes
- Become a voice.
- Power of an invitation. Power of thank you.

General comments on Friday’s “How to Think Small” presentation:
- Interesting: does corporate culture seep into presentation style?
- Use metrics to measure the amount of debate that is happening.(i.e. how many individuals from an opposing viewpoint communicate with one another)
- Social technology and change is moving very quickly. This is reality - we have a choice to stay with the status quo or to change.
- Standing out from the noise is important right now.
- Social technology increasing the number of people who participate in a conversation, even though it is not a direct replacement for a conversation.
- About social media: feel like a “kid with a gun who has not been trained to use it.”

Sticky points from Friday’s “How to Think Small” presentation:
- The power of quotes
- We may not remember specific details, but will remember the feelings i.e. thirst for metrics, feeling like a kid with a gun.
- How do you do justice to voice what you believe in, but you are also open and transparent to other opinions, views, etc.

Aza Dotzler (Mozilla)
- Why we did this?
-- Mozilla is a non-profit; it’s mission is to promote choice and innovation on the net and ensure that there is social opportunity for participation
-- Web browser is the mediator between you and the web. To use the browser you used to have to be a programmer. Mozilla’s ultimate success depended on increasing the scope of activities/ getting the product into the hands of users.
- How we’re doing this?
-- Compared to Wikipedia, open-source programming needs a few more regulations (because if you incorrectly code something, the program may not work). Challenging to find balance of imposing rules, but not having them be too stringent.
-- Mainstream marketing:
--- Initially worked to take out 1 page ad in NYT to help launch Mozilla. Needed to get 10,000 people to donate $10. Those who donated saw the web as an opportunity to preserve an educational, interactional space.
-- Grassroots marketing:
--- Crop circle in Oregon. 1 acre crop circle of giant Firefox logo. It raised awareness of the product and encouraged people to get involved.
-- Learned to have a process to handle things.

Localization (Firefox available in 64 languages, didn’t pay for any translations)
- Global effort to translate the browser into as many languages as possible
- Firefox gives individuals a call to action. “Here is a Mozilla browser, you can help by translating this into your language.”
- Anyone can start contributing: i.e. support, localizer, developer, marketing, testing, add-ons, marketing.
- 85% current users hear about Mozilla through word of mouth.
- Become a voice: hack on code, schedule events, join campus reps, support end-users, spread Firefox, take part in the Affiliates Program

Mozilla Labs Groups
- Get broader community involved
- i.e. if you are an artist à create art that can be integrated in the browser
- i.e. if you are in marketing à you can work to help promote the browser
- 2008 political campaign: 1992 older-school campaign with a handful of tightly controlled messages v. new school of loosening up multiple messages and letting them evolve [beauty behind the latter is that people take ownership, control, and pride in their message].
- Next question to ask: How do we support people who want to make a movement on-line?

Openness, Transparency and how to foster that in Mozilla?
- Engaged with people who were already saying good things about the product. Emailed those people thanking them and [action] asking them to put a button onto the front of their page.
-- A few people did not know how to do this, so built a self-service tool that could be downloaded.
-- Asked people to post soundbites of 1 sentence description of Firefox.
- Get more people to use it, and get them to tell their friends about it.
-- Don’t focus on how to market Firefox as a brand. Focus on what is needed by the customers. Every feature that Firefox has is there because it makes sense to the end-user.
- Power of an invitation. Power of thank you.
-- Individuals who do these very simple things well will have a lot of power.
- Different projects have different types of participants. Firefox’s participants are altruists.

Reminder from today's class...

2009-02-23T13:08:00.000-08:00

Never underestimate the power of an INVITATION and the power of a THANK YOU.

Barack Obama Case

2009-02-22T22:43:00.000-08:00

I was really impressed during the elections by the participation of Facebook. So, having someone who worked directly with it and also people from Google and Current in class to talk about how it happened was very interesting to me.

Mainly, I was positively impressed by how well the websites could contribute to the elections, motivating people to vote through tools such as the "counting" and the voter registration in Facebook, the video with CEOs, Google Maps showing where to vote etc.

On the other hand, the fact that the Internet still reaches a very restricted demographic and that fewer Republicans use Internet compared to Democrats made this entire work to be a lot more about Obama than elections. I also wonder if the effect could have been similar with another candidate. It seems to me that Obama's charisma and the "change" message contributed significantly to mobilize people also through Internet.

They mentioned the challenges to scale this work internationally, but I think even locally the effectiveness will depend a lot on the candidate and the moment.

Finding the signal in the noise

2009-02-22T21:49:00.000-08:00

During the class discussion on the Obama case, Chloe made the point that the new great skill set in this era is “finding the signal in the noise” – aggregating all the myriad tiny points of individual user data into the big picture. It echoed the goal behind Sep’s project, and until this week, I had only thought about using Facebook or Twitter to keep up with people I know, not to look at the overall trends of all Facebook or Twitter users. I played around with Facebook Lexicon a little bit (www.facebook.com/lexicon) -- you type in a word, and it graphs the number of times the word appeared on wall posts by date. It’s pretty interesting to see the trends – for example, if you track the word “super bowl”, it peaks every Monday, right after Sunday’s NFL games. “Hip hop,” on the other hand, peaks mid-week every week and drops significantly on Saturdays. I guess that’s related to when new albums come out?

I do think, though, that it’s dangerous to draw too many conclusions from this data. For one thing, I thought the guests in Friday’s class overestimated our generation’s use of social technology. When I’ve talked about this class to other friends at the GSB, many of them have never heard of Twitter, or if they had heard of it, they had never used it – and I think of the GSB student body as a tech-savvy group. I don’t know much about the demographics of Twitter, but it doesn’t seem to me to be a very representative population sample. Also, I had many conversations about the election last fall, but the vast majority of them occurred in person – not on tweets or Facebook wall posts. Maybe most of my conversations about the 2012 election will occur on Facebook or the next online platform, but I doubt it. I do agree that there is some important data to be mined from these sites, but it makes me nervous to think that it will be taken as reflective of what my generation thinks.

Overall, though, I thought the class was fantastic, particularly the statistics on how much voter registration increased (3,000% among young adults for the Iowa caucuses, according to Randi) and how effective Obama's use of YouTube (according to Brittany, his videos had 1,100 million views -- the equivalent of $46 million in paid TV advertising). Clearly, neither party can afford to ignore social media in the future.

Barack Obama and the responsibility of social media

2009-02-21T15:54:00.000-08:00

Traditional media outlets such as TV and Newspapers have developed over the years a "professional code of ethics", with truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, fairness and public accountability as some of the most commonly cited principles or core values.

As we saw in class the efforts of Google and Facebook around the election were highly motivated by the passion the speakers in class had for the subject and led by small teams. Even tough Britney and Randi seemed very well intentioned and discussed some concerns they had around trying to remain impartial, the level of their thinking around the implications of their actions and their responsibility now as a key media outlet seemed still very incipient and far behind their actual level of influence. As Alex commented on his post, these companies - especially Google, are becoming more like content providers and have to consider the responsibility associated with the role.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standards

Another interesting thing, IMHO, is looking at the type of content that was popular during the election and how much it really "help stimulate the debate". If you search for Obama on Current.com you'll find the story of the "Obama Girl", which was actually a character created by the site BarelyPolitical.com and was tremendously popular, with videos that had over 13 million views on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKsoXHYICqU&feature=channel

On an unrelated note, browsing through Current.com is fun and if you want to make an video advertisement for the G1 phone you can submit it and if selected to go on the air you can get $2500. User generated ads could be relevant in the near future, especially if the user-generated content continues to please the crowds, as Chloe mentioned they are currently preferred 9:1 on a study made by Current.com.

Cheers,
Diego

More people are talking, but are they debating?

2009-02-21T04:18:00.000-08:00

Another thought that I couldn't finish earlier and that I explored in a post-class discussion with Jon.

The question I'm asking is: What is the effect of social media of the structure and nature of the public debate?

And my hypothesis is: The more importance social media gains, the more people will stay isolated in their ideological silos. The public discourse will become more and more fragmented and more and more opinionated.

With public debate I mean the basic democratic process of the exchange of opinions, information and arguments that forms the fundament for every functioning civil society. Social media like facebook, twitter, etc. makes it very easy for very individual to only read blogs, to only see clips and to only interact with people that share and strengthen the own conviction. While classical media - due to its limitations and journalistic background - forced every consumer to get at least into superficial contact with contrarian viewpoints, social media makes it possible to live in a world without real debate.

Given these thoughts, I strongly disagree with the thesis presented in class by yesterday's guests that social media automatically makes the public debate richer, deeper and broader. The opposite could be the effect. More people are talking, but nobody is debating. I'm not saying this can not be prevented or overcome but so far the basic insight that noise is not equal to debate seems to be lacking.

Please don't interfere from my critical postings that I don't see the value and fascination of the social media revolution. Yet, as academics, we should put our focus also on the potential dangers, weaknesses and backslashes. See you all next week and have a great weekend.

On a lighter note

2009-02-21T02:20:00.000-08:00

An interesting article to express my feelings in the class today -

http://valleywag.gawker.com/5156552/how-many-web-gurus-did-it-take-to-elect-obama

Enthusiastic yet scared

2009-02-20T12:55:00.000-08:00

Today's class was really interesting. I found the work these individuals had done in their organizations fascinating and it is impressive how - without much support in the beginning - they brought their companies to get behind their ideas. However, the thought I wanna share is a more controversial one. While I share the fascination for the change social media and social technology is bringing to reporting and news coverage, I find it a little bit worried how overly enthusiastic, number-centric and how little reflective our guest were regarding their work. What they basically did, although they mind argue some nuances, is turn Google and facebook into a content provider or at least content filter machine in that case (Election). They might argue that this process was initiated, steered and controlled by the user base but I think there is some grey area where the companies have large impact on how news travels the social graph.

Traditional journalists at CNN, MSNBC, NYT or BG - one might think about their work what one wants - all share that they are very reflective and self-critical about their work, their influence, potential biases and impact. With today's individuals I was missing this selfcritical reflection and instead got a lot of pure enthusiasm.

I think it is worthwile debating what kind of (self)-regulation is necessary when internet service providers in the social space like google and facebook will become the most prominent power in content and news generation and coverage. As content coverage and generation shifts more and more to the internet, this will undoubtedly happen. Currently, these companies employ no journalists, have no guidelines for these kind of questions and are not regulated or closely absorbed regarding this criteria. I think this has to change.

also, I think that Google, facebook, twitter and others have to go a long way in filtering out meaningful content in a way that is convenient and informing. The social media revolution of news and reporting should be one of increased depth and added perspevctive and not just an explosion of noise.

Gavin Newsom for Governor

2009-02-20T07:52:00.000-08:00

Hey PoST class,

I got this email from Gavin Newsome, current Mayor of San Francisco. I found it incredibly relevant to the GET framework we've discussed in class. Check out the site. Very interesting way to use social technology to try to enable group thinking...

"Don't Do It Gavin" When I first started talking to friends and family about running for Governor, I was excited at how much enthusiasm there was for the idea.

It’s not a decision I’m going to take lightly – but of course it’s nice to hear friends say they support the concept.

That’s why I was a little taken aback when I asked my father what he thought. Without hesitation the man whose opinion I value most came out and said it:
“Don’t do it Gavin.”

I think my father must have seen my face – because he immediately said – “Of course I think you would do a great job – it’s just that nobody is going to be able to solve the state’s problems. I don’t want to see you fail in a job that's impossible to do right now.”

I hope all of you get a chance to meet my dad. He is the smartest, toughest and most caring person I know. He is at once a small town judge, an activist jurist and the product of a rough and tumble San Francisco political culture. He knows what he’s talking about.

I agree with him – changing California is going to be the toughest job imaginable. And my dad’s right – one person alone can’t do it. In struggles as big as we face today, we must all be activists if we are to succeed.

But what about 1,000 people? What about 30,000? What about 100,000 Californians who come together to make change?

I can’t do it. But we can do it.

And that’s why I’m asking you to join me on GavinNewsom.com or Facebook .

I’m putting together an exploratory campaign for Governor to see if we can take the hard-learned lessons from the many reforms we’ve made in San Francisco and apply them to the State of California. Making big changes wasn’t easy in San Francisco, and it won’t be easy in Sacramento. But together we can make the changes the state demands.

San Francisco is the only city in America that is making universal health care a reality. If one small city can do it, together we can do this for the entire state. Like California, San Francisco has weathered historic deficits, but we have learned we cannot build for the future with business as usual. We have made sustainable long-term budget reforms to successfully balance a multi-billion dollar budget and save for tomorrow in our "Rainy Day Fund." If San Francisco can, then California can. We have made our city a national model for recycling and greenhouse gas reduction and a center for high-wage green jobs. If we did it here, then together California can do all this and more.

But it's going to take tens of thousands of us coming together to make the big changes we need. As important as a strong grassroots and netroots army is going to be in order to win the campaign, it will be even more vital if we’re going to win these much-needed reforms once we get to Sacramento.

That’s why I hope you will join us. On Facebook . On GavinNewsom.com . And in person , as we travel around the state to make this vision for a better California a reality.

Sincerely,

Gavin Newsom
www.GavinNewsom.com
P.S. Take a moment to check out and sign up for our Facebook page and connect with thousands of other supporters.

If you would no longer like to receive emails from Newsom for California, please click here to unsubscribe .

Paid for by Newsom for California Exploratory Committee. FPPC #1308175.
4104 24th Street, #766 San Francisco, CA 94114

If all else fails, use puppies.

Hey Class,

One more thing I found interesting about the kinds of videos that grab attention online. In this case, it was more of an accident that turned into a phenomenon. These people wanted to check in on their puppy’s litter so they fixed a webcam so they could view the litter online. The link spread organically and over 4 million strangers tuned in to view the pups. I found this interesting because advertisers spend millions of dollars trying to create the next viral video, but a zero cost production like this spread through word-of-mouth and outperformed videos from some of the biggest brands today.

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/shiba-inu-puppy-cam

-Justin Wismer

Think Small

2009-02-19T09:21:00.000-08:00

I agree with the previous "PoST-ers" that Sep Kamvar's work is touching and engaging.

We began with 5 minutes to brainstorm how to think smaller for our POD projects- and contrasted this with our typical call to think bigger. Like Maalika, I found this a refreshing (and helpful!) exercise.

Kamvar began by telling us. "I am not going to walk through a How-To on how to think small. There is really not a whole lot to it. Just take whatever you are thinking about/doing and think a little smaller." Instead he told us stories about his work, and his own experiences "thinking small."

Within these stories he highlighted his four lessons:

1. Think small to think new
2. Think small to think deeply
3. Be small to think small
4. Often, the biggest rewards are the small ones

In these lessons, Kamvar reminded us to approach our work with humility. (Similar perhaps to Jessica Flannery's advice.) He reminded us that most people don’t care about your work when you think small. They tell you to think bigger-and don't pay attention until you do. It requires confidence and humbleness to stay small- but this offers its own rewards. When no one is paying attention to you, you can explore new ideas, even break some rules without notice. Through this flexibility and time to explore, you can potentially be more innovative. It also offers an opportunity to listen and learn more deeply. And, starting small (w/o a lot of operational expenses) provides its own flexibility to take risks, respond to opportunities, etc. Finally, he noted that appreciating the small rewards in life is perhaps most important.

Kamvar also offered tips on how to disseminate stories and ideas:

4 lessons
1. Tailor the medium to the mission
2. Be playful
3. Bring work to where people are
(Corollary 1: Make People feel is viscerally (feel it emotionally)
Corollary 2: Don’t be afraid to work outside the system)
4. Have a point

Especially when considering difficult social issues, it seems important to engage on all four of these. He showed us Banksy's street art as examples. Banksy effectively (and playfully) addresses serious, often depressing issues, with a humor and playfulness, that does not diminish the seriousness of the issues. It works.

Since the presentation, I have been thinking a bit about the power of information and story telling through aggregate data, combined with individual stories - and, the possibility to invite people who are often not invited to the table to tell their stories. Kamvar is working on a new, more accessible platform for storytelling for just this reason. I am very much looking forward to seeing his future work in this area.

PoST Blog - February 18, 2009: Think Small

2009-02-19T08:09:00.000-08:00

Today's class was incredibly interesting and engaging. Sep Kamvar began his talk by challenging the traditional assumptions in business that thinking bigger is always better. It is a message that is repeated over and over again in the business press and has powerful advocates such as Donald Trump telling us to "Think Big and Kick Ass in Business and in Life". Yet despite the prevalence of these messages, Sep suggested that doing just the opposite and thinking small frequently has far more potential. Sep started the class by telling us a story of his first startup, Kaltix. Interestingly enough, it didn't start as a story of his startup but rather as a story of his Ph.D. work reading through hundreds of academic papers in an attempt to settle on a thesis topic. While reading through a paper by one of the founders of Google, Sep became captivated by a single paragraph on search engine personalization.

I found it really interesting that it was that single paragraph that occupied his thoughts for the next two and a half years. Rather than trying to pull out the macro trends from all of the academic research he had consumed over the years, focusing on this one small thought eventually led to key insights that in turn, led to remarkable breakthroughs in the way Sep was able to focus on the small details – such as a user’s individual browsing patterns through billions of pages of content, while abstracting large macro trends that eventually led to something much, much bigger.

As an entrepreneur, I also appreciated hearing Sep recount his startup experiences and risks he and his partners took to make Kaltix successful. Despite being three months from his Ph.D., Sep dropped out of school and spent his life savings building machines that would allow him to test the cutting edge technology that he and his partners believed possible. He negotiated hard with Stanford’s Office of Technology Licensing and was able to beat out some of the Valley’s biggest companies for exclusive rights to the intellectual property and patents that he had created while working on his Ph.D. He turned down initial offers from venture capitalists, while building a working prototype of Kaltix that increased the company’s valuation 3x over the course of a few weeks. For the next four months, he dedicated his entire life to pursuing this one singular idea – spending so much time each day coding that he had to ice his wrists at night.

Ultimately, the story of Sep and Kaltix and its subsequent sale to Google, helped illustrate the key takeaways of Sep’s “think small” message:

Think small to think new: The idea for Kaltix emerged from Sep’s focus on a single paragraph in a thesis that was among hundreds that he had read while at Stanford. In order to be successful, one needs new ideas – and new ideas come out of thinking small.

Thing small to think deeply: Focusing on large ideas makes it difficult to dive down and explore in any detail or depth. By limiting our focus, and going after something small, we can begin to uncover key details and insights that may lead to something revolutionary.

Be small to think small: Venture capitalists and corporations are almost entirely focused on the “big” ideas and want to hear such ideas from the people they fund. To counteract the tendency to go after “big” ideas, Sep suggested that we try to be small – cutting out all of the expenses and overhead that tend to distract us.

The biggest rewards are often the small ones: Despite Sep’s success of having sold Kaltix to Google for millions, and despite having achieved what most people will never achieve very early in life, I was surprised and encouraged to hear Sep talk about his biggest reward – the five minutes he spent with his mother after selling the company. All of his effort to date had led him to participate in an extremely lucrative acquisition by Google, and despite the financial success, the knowledge in that moment that his mother was proud of him was far more important. This struck me as a fitting reminder to all of us that even though many of our small ideas will become big, successful ideas, the real, lasting rewards of our efforts are often intrinsic.

Sep continued his talk by painting a compelling picture about how the internet has changed our potential for collective storytelling. Now, more than ever before, we have an opportunity to get extremely granular in our stories and life experiences while also being able to show the macro scale of such stories at the same time. The Vietnam memorial in Washington DC is a great example of a story being told on two different scales at the same time – one sees the vastness of the sacrifice and tragedy of the conflict when stepping back and seeing the memorial as a whole. When we get closer, we see the thousands of individual names and stories that make up the larger whole.

Two fundamental changes have allowed us to accomplish the same kind of dual-scale storytelling online. The first change is a cultural one – more and more, people are sharing private stories, feelings and experiences in a public way. Blogs have become more and more popular – giving the public access to granular, personal stories. The second change is a technological one represented by the availability of better, faster visualization tools and techniques. These tools allow us to sift through the millions of individual stories in a search for collective meaning. To clarify the collective story, Sep suggested that we need to add detail, and the web allows us to do this on a massive scale.

Sep ended with an overview of some of the work he is doing with http://www.wefeelfine.org and http://www.iwantyoutowantme.org. Because other posters have talked about these projects in greater detail, I’ll just outline the key takeaways:

Tailor the medium to the message: It is important to meet people where they are and tailor one’s message appropriately. Sep shared some powerful images from an artist that chose to display art outside – as a way to engage people in their daily lives.

Be playful: Playful messages helping to engage people. For example, adding some images and a storyline of a cartoon fox to iGoogle was playful and increased engagement significantly on the site.

Bring the work to where people are: Sep encouraged us to work outside the system and make people feel your message viscerally. Images like the “one nation under CCTV” and children pledging allegiance to a Tesco flag create raw emotions in people where they work and live.

Have a point: Ultimately, we are all trying to convey a message and we need to be focused on what that message is. The clearer we focus on that point, the more impact we will have.

Sentiment analysis

2009-02-18T22:22:00.000-08:00

Think small - Understanding macro picture in a discipline often involves aggregation of micro-data. For example - GDP of a country is the sum of all income and output (not strict though), average happiness level is simple average of happiness index (let's just assume there exists one) among many other. Aggregation helps us "simplify" our observation. You can use sum(), average(), range () type functions to define the aggregation mechanism of a data. Since we often don't have technologies to use telescopic and microscopic view using the same device, the aggregate function (especially the average) leads to the conflict between intuition and reality.

Sep's work on sentiment analysis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentiment_analysis) is exciting because it provides a unique flexibility to decompose the data and to aggregate them at the same time. The difference between small and large has become smaller !! This is a very powerful application of technology. It's like the ability to observe a social phenomenon from both macro and micro perspective.

Imagine - If we could build a massive machine that will monitor all the "economic activity" of the world and help us get a microscopic view of the economic world. If we could Geo-track the outbreak of disease or other social disruptions to the detail. How about observing the effect of a new marketing campaign or promotional message ? Did today's in NYtimes create more positive feelings or negative feelings ?

Interestingly, there are some companies who offer sentiment analysis software (refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentiment_analysis). Sep has also offered some APIs for others to build applications on his work.

Think Small

2009-02-18T20:46:00.000-08:00

I thought this morning's class was fantastic. Sep seemed to use all the material that we have studied so far in one class, namely, start with a story to grab attention and engage us, and give many mini stories throughout to help us take away his 8 small yet powerful lessons and finally look at the potential of making a big impact by focusing on the small things. The best part was, he seemed to neither know nor particularly care about when and how this big impact was going to happen. His focus was entirely on the small things: pay attention to individual emotions and see what they can teach us.

That said, I just wanted to summarize the 8 lessons, 4 from his own personal story:
- Think small to think new
- Think small to think deeply
- Be small to think small (I thought this was humility)
- Biggest rewards are the small ones (the small ones also happen to be the intimate ones)

The next 4 lessons were from Banksy's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy) street art

- Tailor the medium to the mission (customer service?)
- Be Playful (Tea House iGoogle theme)
- Bring the work to the where the people are
- Have a point (this makes the work sticky, meaningful)

I was moved by today's talk and I am not even sure why, maybe because the power to think small is valued so little in the business school and yet it has the most potential to create action as it lowers the barrier to create impact: a small one will do.

Sharing Some Communication Planning Materials

2009-02-15T12:57:00.001-08:00

Hi all,

As everyone starts to shape their communications campaigns, I thought I'd share a planning framework that I think is simple, but really useful: the Spitfire Strategies Smart Chart. Spitfire Strategies is a group that helps non-profits on communications work. I'm not sure how to attached the pdf here, but you can download the full document and a one-page writable worksheet from their website: http://www.spitfirestrategies.com/recommends/21.

There are also some fun story-telling, ad, and presentation resources at http://www.agoodmanonline.com/publications/index.html. Andy Goodman's group also helps non-profits and others design communication campaigns. I re-read his "Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes" often : ).

Cheers,
Ashley

Experience Project Class Notes - February 13th

2009-02-15T12:43:00.000-08:00

We heard from Julio Vasconcellos from the Experience Project on Friday. Here are a few of the discussion topics that I found most interesting:

- As someone who doesn’t actually use social technology much beyond e-mail and Google, I was interested in hearing Julio’s short list of websites that can help create buzz. A key to creating tipping points here is the idea of “all or nothing” – either you get the votes and get to the top story on a site (via others voting on it), or you don’t . . . and if you don’t, your article really doesn’t take off. There is also a difference between being popular and becoming viral.

Viral Equation: (% people who pass on the story) x (% invitations accepted) x (average number of people invited)
If > 1, then goes viral

- Some of the sites Julio mentioned:

Digg
Reddit
Stumbleupon (this one seems to be a service that finds a relays sites that you might like)
Yahoo!Buzz
Twitter
Kirtsy (targeted toward women)

- As in traditional media, it is important to think about the match between your message/issue and the audience of the social technology you are targeting. You can look up demographic information and topic use (e.g. categories like news, animals, etc.) for most of the sites. Quantcast (free) and Comscore (paid service) are two places that do monitoring. You can also get to know audiences by tracking different bloggers, spending time on these different sites, etc. Bottom line: know your audience and target your message.

- There also some interesting ways to message-test. Julio used Facebook ads, which are relatively cheap, to test combinations of messages/headlines and pictures. You can set this up to monitor impressions and click through rates. There are some specific issues here with regards to tracking whether someone just saw an ad vs. acted upon that ad . . . CPMs vs CPCs (if you are interested in exploring this further, I would talk to Shal). Jennifer also sent an email with information on message testing techniques, and the Google analytics information is really helpful too. As someone who has worked on non-profit communication campaigns for many years, the idea of having so many ways to do cheap message testing (as opposed to more traditional focus group work) is very exciting.

PoST Blog 2/9/09

2009-02-13T10:08:00.000-08:00

Today’s class was about how to tell a story. It was really interesting to hear from professional filmmakers about how they tell stories and for a few groups to get feedback on their stories.
JD Schramm
• Find an hour with him and pod to hone final presentation, do this early on if possible, ideally 2 weeks before final prez, between Feb. 27 and March 9.
• Hone the final presentation (share the draft) OR Share the various pieces with him, ask for help in constructing final presentation
Jennifer
• All stories about brand should add up to one message
• SUCCESS framework from “Made to Stick” is useful but is not about HOW to tell a story
• Know when to shut up
• Pick specific roles for your story, articulate it through one word (“Defender” for Land Rover, “Queen” for Range Rover”), minimize cannibalization, nothing is fatty
• Practice distancing from your project, get some perspective
• Follow-on class in the spring will build on these ideas, Jennifer to maintain energy and build personal relationships with us
Guest: Oren
• Worked on Finding Nemo and A Bug’s Life
• STORY by Robert McKee spent 40 years of his life collecting info and telling stories, much of Oren’s comments will draw from this book
• A story is a thing and a cultural practice
• Story usually about an inciting incident, facing a point of choice, compelled to change some aspects of their lives
• Always introduce yourself when pitching
Casablanca review
• Rick’s life is changed when she walks back into the bar and thus back into his life, now he must face the demons left behind in Paris
• This happens late in the script in order to give more backstory about Rick and the war, at 35 minutes into the film, this is late by general movie standards
• Several other sub-plots add interest to story and add weight to main story line through resonance and dissonance
• PLOT- set of specific set of choices that occur in an order facing the main characters, must have an introduction, inciting incident, climax, and a resolution
• Subplots- often simplified, edited out details, characters must change in the end, collectively pile on weight upfront to the main story line between Rick and Isla
o Bulgarian couple: she was going to sleep with officer to get papers, Rick helps the guy win money through roulette to pay for papers, this follows the main storyline of the film in which Rich helps Isla and Laslo
o French vs. German citizenry: great singing scene, see tension between the two groups
o Refugees in general: They look longingly at airports departing, smiles & frowns come and go to reflect mood of the movement
o Yvonne: dodgy love interest, her loyalties quickly change from Rick to German officer to France
o Laslo: leader of opposition movement, trying to get to America, spent time in concentration camp
o Rick vs. Ferrari (owner of other bar): Ferrari starts off just being a buyer of people, doesn’t care about anyone, but in the end decides to help Laslo leave Morocco
• Rick changes, combatant before in two different wars, he begins the movie neutral and mad at universe, he treats his own people very fairly, he becomes very partisan by killing German officer and helping out Laslo and the cause
• Lots of music in this film, 12 songs, more songs than Cats or Chicgao true musicals
• Rick’s Café echoes the American stance of neutrality
• Pickpocket was there for comic relief, he never changes
• What is the role of sublots?
o Jennifer suggest writing down all subplots related to your cause which add to overall plot (resonance) or show a contrast (humor or differentiation), write down one-liners (“Here’s looking at you, kid.”)
• More specific characters can be more generalizable (Rick is America)
Guest: Justine
• Was an attorney, hated her job, makes less $ now making films but is happier
• When telling stories to their kids or making films, she simplifies things, edits out hours of footage
• Law school helped her practice the art of getting to the core story
• Pitched a story idea in front of 80 people at Sundance, received $500 to finish her film “Paper or Plastic”
• Trailers are another vehicle to tell a story within 2 minutes
• New project- commitment, passion, and food, about 3 people who want to change the world through chocolate
o Frederick, the heart of the story, want to create factory at the source and sell it locally
o Diego, cow farmer in Brazil, sustainable farming, he is the earth
o Chloe, she is the mind and educator, highest paid chocolate connoisseur, only takes 4 chocolates a day, Robert Parker of the chocolate world, show consumers how to buy good chocolate
• Want to tell a larger story about food production, consumer
• Mental exercise of separating yourself from the project, was able to cut 30 minutes out of old film gave perspective and made it less personal
Guest: Oren
• Oren says to entertain yourself first and foremost is the priority, understand that audience comment cards are not everything, it is better to watch the audience watch the film, see when they laugh and when they are distracted, they lie afterwards on cards, don’t change whole structure but can tweak small things
• If something doesn’t work or a joke falls flat, go back and fix the core issue before the problem, why did you get that reaction?
• Notes from informed audience is helpful and dangerous, maybe they know too much
• Need to have a core vision and stick with it
Group Pitches & Feedback
1. Hunger group (Oren and Andii)
a. Got Wendel point, setting and character is heavy (homelessness, joblessness, health problems, hunger)
b. Powerful and dangerous to silence a room, held group
c. Don’t know what will happen to him next- he seems screwed (cancer and no $), add hints
d. Is this a redemptive story? (only goes up) Or a punishing one? (go further down)
e. Simple opening (“we went to a soup kitchen”) was good
f. Look at audience during prez
g. St. Vincent’s was his hope, tell more about St. Vincent, show faces, picture with backs of heads is distant, picture of him will help us connect
h. Gag yourself and ask “can you hear him?” on last slide
i. Wendel needs to change to make this a real story about him, a societal call-out is using him which is fine, give way for audience to feel good and do something about it
2. Education (Nico)
a. Complicated audio-visual set-up, a lot going on, video + Nico + handout, blocked Oren’s view, hard to talk over a video, must control what the audience sees, could have spoken entirely alone or entirely video
b. Don’t read your slides, make it a handout afterwards or don’t share at all, dangerous to hand out something while you are speaking
c. Oren: Appeal to credibility should be edited out, don’t share interpretation of the story, seems like justification, meta-comment makes Oren suspicious about why you are doing that, let audience come to that conclusion themselves about Vincent or the school
d. Justine: Liked knowing he was a friend, gave it a personal connection
e. Liked the last 30 seconds of video with kids saying their names & career goals best, shows potential
f. Think of 5 one-liners that best convey the story
g. Know who your audience is, are they funders? Word of mouth?
h. If goal is funding, then need to show conflict and need for $ to make a call to action, school must seem successful but not going to make it without funding, show how hard the current climate is, tell a compelling story about vinny, about the school, what the problem is
i. Combine Vinny story, student, school progress, and need for funding, makes for a complicated plot

-Micah

Class 02/09: How To Tell A Story

2009-02-10T21:50:00.000-08:00

INTRO BY JENNIFER
- Email JD Schramm to meet with him for one hour
o if you would like his help extensively starting to build out story from data, meet at least 2 weeks in advance. If already have story and data then it is okay to meet for an hour about one week beforehand.
o Jennifer’s suggestion: to write down sub-lots before meet with JD (i.e. subplot can add to main plot)
1) Title
2) Something to talk about
3) Two discrete groups (ideal viral videos will speak to two discrete groups):
o Start writing down one- liners for your pod
o Can email Jennifer your pods’ one liners to be passed on to Oren, JD, etc.

- Building Your Personal Brand: class Jennifer will teach next semester.

How to Tell a Story Presentation
- Little stories should add up to one big story
- Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional --> great framework that make a story stick
- Think about arc
o Story climax that brings about absolute, irreversible change
o Story structure is critical in arousing emotions

OREN JACOB
- A silhouette factor
o Let’s you know what to cut from a program by judging the number of people that walk out of the show/room.
- Inciting incidence: characters at one point of story where they decide to take an action that will change the rest of their lives
o In Casablanca: 34 minutes into the film the (page 15 of the script).This is unusually late into the story.
o Ilsa walks in, Rick can no longer deny his past.
- Main story in Casablanca: Rick makes a decision to send Laslo and Ilsa to America after Ilsa says“I cannot decide. You decide for us”
- Subplot: often simplified plot; includes introduction, escalation, climax, resolution, but edits out the main part
o All 5 subplots reinforce the main plot in the film
o Can edit out main elements of the story arc, i.e. important actions can happen off-the screen
- Plot: series of choices and instances that occur in order
o Beginning, escalation and end --> characters come out as fundamentally different human beings
o In the beginning: Rick is neutral; at the end he completely changes: sends Ilsa off with Laslo, kills German general
- “If your characters don’t change, you’ve told no story, you’ve related the incidents.”

- Storytelling
- Start wide, cull many stories before cutting
o Interweave the many stories you come up with, and then boil down to the essence of each; that is, make sure the final product reveals the most important part of each character
o Everything else is superfluous or additive material
o Keep asking yourself: is this superfluous?
- Sometimes it is hard to cut something yourself, this is why it is good to have other people edit and cut for you

- Words: tiny change (3 words can change a character i.e. in “A Bug’s Life”)
- Know when to shut up
o Brevity makes the audience feel respected
o Brevity mystifies
- If you find your sub-plot becoming more important that your main plot, drop your main plot and elevate your subplot
“The power of one-liners”
- One-liners: lines communicate the souls of characters very efficiently – they are effective, terse. i.e. “Here’s looking at you kid” (there is weight in the context of the film)
o The craft of screenwriting is to communicate the feelings of the characters obtusely (around the issue).
o Screenwriters use words only to add to what the audience sees on the screen. There is no need to describe what the audience already saw.

JUSTINE JACOB
- Documentary film-maker
- Go into film with an idea, shoot many, many stories and then cut the extraneous materials
- www.paperorplasticmovie.com
- Commitment, passion and food and 3 people using chocolate to change the world.
- Characters: the more specific information that is given about a given character, the more general that character can become
o Make sure that you are not coming across in a way that you couldn’t predict
o Notes do matter when audience interprets something differently from what you intended.
o Always look before the note/comment was given.
- “Own your audience.”
- “The only time audience does not lie is when they are watching a movie.”
o Watch the audience watch your film / audio/visual work.
- Be careful about receiving feedback from the audience.
o There needs to be one person and/or one core group that has the vision for the project. You take all the notes and zero in only on the ones that make sense for your story.

- Practice distancing yourself from your project.

PODS THAT TELL STORY
- Story of Wendel – one face among many
o Feedback: powerful and dangerous thing to silence a room
o Which way will take the story? It starts down, if go up then story will be one directional. If down, it is a bit sad because we already start low.
o One liner intro was great: we went to a soup kitchen
o Physically be consistent with your story – i.e. physically do not talk. i.e. gag yourself and end PPT with “can we hear him?” --> engage the audience.
o You put audience into an emotional state, now make the audience take action.
- Viny Dotolo
o Opened school in Harlem to give students a chance
o Be careful if toggle between various versions mediums If have audio/video going in the background when you are talking, be very engaging
o Do not comment about your own story, just tell the story. Let audience come to that conclusion yourself; this respects the audience.
o Know your audience.
o Hand out information at the end.
o Can tell multiple stories: i.e. of both Vinny and the kids.
-
3 story telling tips:
- “A good story, well told.”
o A good story is not enough. It must be well told.
- “What happens is fact, not truth”
o Truth is what we think about what happens.
- “A story must somehow express everything you left out.”
o Let audience make inferences.

How To Tell a Story - Class Feb 9

2009-02-09T16:20:00.000-08:00

Since this represents the class’ midway point we began with a summary of what we have done so far. We have learned of the power of social technology and experimented with sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. We have done an ethnography of Entourage. We have been inspired by the stories of Sameer and Vinnay, and Kiva; and in the case of the former we have been heartbroken as well.

The lesson for today was to learn how to tell a story and our guests were Oren Jacob from Pixar and Justine Jacob, a former lawyer turned independent movie maker. Oren spoke first, besides having a really cool name he also spoke really fast because he had a lot to say in a relatively short amount of time.

We used Casablanca as a spring board to discuss effective story telling. Oren said that almost all movies begin by introducing us to the main characters and their world. Then an interceding event occurs which changes the world in which the characters live at which point our protagonists must address this change by taking some form of action. In most movies this interceding event occurs near the beginning. But in Casablanca this happens at the 34th minute mark when Ilsa reenters Rick’s life which leads to the famous line “of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine”. It is at this point that Rick’s world shifts, and he must now decide how he will respond.

We also discussed sub-plots and the idea that while the main plot must have all elements of a story, sub-plots can do away with certain segments of the story and let the viewer infer the remaining pieces.

Justine Jacob spoke next and told us a bit about her career, and how she shifted from a career in law to one making movies. Her movie “Paper or Plastic” (http://www.paperorplasticmovie.com) about the National Grocers Association’s Best Bagger competition was recently released and she is currently working on a new movie about how chocolate can change lives (shocking but true).

Finally we discussed three key insights to telling a story:

1. Arcs
- Story structure is critical but chronology does not matter (think Pulp Fiction). You just want your story to follow an interesting pattern.

2. Start wide, cull many stories before cutting
- Don’t bore your audience with superfluous information that doesn’t add to the story.

3. Know when to shut up
- Don’t explain everything. Let the audience draw their own conclusions and interpretations.

Class 9: PET Brainstorm: How to Inspire Others to Take Action

2009-02-02T17:39:00.000-08:00

Introduction to Jamie Hartmann from Taproot: Pro Bono Action Tank
- Multiplier effect drives the organization

Call with Steve Knox, CEO of Tremor, at Procter and Gamble 31 years
- PG mission statement: “improving the lives of consumers”
- The most powerful way to market is friend-to-friend word of mouth: stories
- Social media does not equal digital media; #1 form of social media is face-to-face interaction (only 15% social media interaction is digital)
- Product Adoption curve: innovators --> early adopters --> early majority --> late majority --> laggards
- “Trend setter” pronoun is “I”. Once their idea is adopted, trend setters drop it.
- “Connectors”: very similar to regular consumers, they simply have a much larger social network (5-6 x larger than average peoples’). Connectors are “Trend Spreaders” – their pronoun is “we.”

- Word of Mouth: The Right Message
-- There is a message the consumer wants to HEAR (i.e. typically advertising message)
-- There is a message the consumer wants to SHARE
-- These two messages are always different
- Messages that consumers hear typically have 2 parts to them
1) Advocacy factors “Reasons to care”
2) Amplification factors “Reasons to share”
-- High Advocacy / High Amplification – High Word of Mouth potential
-- Low Advocacy / High Amplification – no effect on market share, waste of promotional funds (i.e. Office Max elf viral marketing, Budweiser “Wassup” commercial)
- People like to stay in psychological equilibrium; people talk if equilibrium is disrupted, talking helps return to equilibrium
- Consumers talk about brands for 2 reasons: 1) positively reflects on the consumer 2) consumer feels that he has something that will help someone else (altruism)
- Brand Congruency: information presented on brand must be congruent with foundational truth most of the time and incongruent some of the time
-- Brand Foundational Truth --> Disruptive Equilibrium -->“Buzz Tactics”
- Take-Away:
-- Connectors need to be scaled in the market place
-- Messages need to be rooted in foundational truth of the brand most of the time and need to be related to disruptive equilibrium only some of the time
- Q&A
- Can check out Vocalpointe.com to get a sense of screening questions that are asked of Connectors
- Measurement is very important
-- At Tremor, measure representative population to get measurements
- Connectors are not compensated monetarily

Jennifer Aaker’s Lecture:
- Critical Words (3 types; the exact words that you use)
-- Positive words: compel people forward
-- Neutral words
-- Negative words

- Q to class: What are the words that have traditionally been used with your pod/project?
-- Brainstorm other words you can use
-- In-class exercise: Write down 5 words that have traditionally been associated with your cause THEN reverse the words or use other more-positive words that you would like to be associated with your pod and cause. (i.e. on topic of privacy: “secretive” --> “selective”)
- Metaphor Model:
-- If start to develop a set of metaphors around a business model then can get people on board faster, or at least engage them to a greater degree

- Keep in mind:
-- The words that you choose will be influenced by your pod members
-- Words mean different things when different people say them (i.e. some may say certain words in more authentic ways than others)

- GET Framework
- “Get Attention”
-- Aesthetics (that get attention i.e. bring green color, pleasant design)
-- Personal connection (i.e. joke, humor, something that resonates)
-- Surprise (“sticky ideas”)
- “Engage”
-- Fall in love (think in the context of our brands, pods)
- "Take action”
-- Emotional circumflex (?)
--- Negative emotions are highly motivating, but not as sticky or long-lasting as positive emotions are.
----> Fear
----> Anger
----> Guilt
--- Positive emotions also motivate, but do not drive action as much as negative emotions do. Compared to negative emotions, positive emotions are more sticky and long-lasting.
----> Empathy
----> Happiness
--- Powerful use of negative emotions in the right context is very important for your pod. This class is focused on getting others to take action, negative emotions are extremely effective at this.
--- The combined use of negative and positive words is very effective. For example, two words that are not aligned are at times very powerful (“i.e. peaceful energy”)

Friday is offsite, watch Casablanca
- Watch or read screenplay

Take Action Assignment (due this Wed 02/04 7pm):
- create some sort of action/message/ video/ etc that inspires people to take action.
-- For example: Do two things and write-up a one page that explains each item: 1) inspired people to take action b/c [look for metrics, use experimentation] and 2) another did not inspire people to take action b/c [look for metrics, use experimentation]
-- Keep in mind that this assignment is not limited to digital technology; just make sure to keep the right metrics in place.

Word of Mouth Spread - February 2nd Class

2009-02-02T11:19:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone, here are my notes for today's class.

Today we had Steve Knox from Procter and Gamble’s Tremor division talk to us about Word of Mouth Advocacy over conference call. Steve has worked there for 31 years and ran Tremor for 8 years. Tremor is the world’s largest consumer research division in the world.

There is a misperception about where social word of mouth is taking place.

Actually, only 15% of conversations are happening digitally (digital is a small portion of social media), 85% of conversations are conversations, phone calls etc. I found this to be an eye opening statistic as I believed most conversations now happen over text, emails, and online websites such as Facebook. This made me realize that for our group projects, we need to do more than just set up Facebook groups, or send out emails.

Steve also talked about the product adoption curve which shows different groups of users ranging from innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, laggards. P&G targets “Connectors” (10%-15% of consumers) who are trend spreaders which is different from trend setters. Spreaders tend to use the keyword “we” and setters use “I”. A connector talks to 20 to 25 people daily vs. 5 people on average.

You can identify connectors through research in usage behaviors, and demographics.

There is also a difference between the messages consumer wants to hear vs. share. These two are ALWAYS different.

Buzz Marketing (amplification without advocacy) does not drive business results. Advocacy (need to use) vs. Amplification (easy to talk about) and you need advocacy to have effective advertising.

So when do we share ideas? When there is a “disruptive equilibrium” (this razor is so good, I don’t need lotion – Venus Breeze). Consumers talk about brands two reasons:

1. It’s cool

2. I have information that can help you

To spread word of mouth advocacy, Brand Foundational Truth, Disruptive Equilibrium and Buzz Tactics must all be connected.

For more please visit: http://tremor.com or http://site.vocalpoint.com

Next, we talked about word associations and how we can redefine “negative” words associated with our cause. An example would be changing the word “death” to “end of life” or “peaceful journey”.

Strategically, this allows people to freely spread ideas and be more comfortable listening and talking about subjects which may make some feel guilty.

Most people who want to “do something” are associated with anger. Fear, Anger, Guilt, Empathy, or Happiness are drivers for action (in that order).

Rest of the class, we met with our PODs for PET Labs to discuss how we can encourage action and word of mouth spread for our causes.

Falling in Love – Class January 23rd

2009-02-02T08:09:00.000-08:00

(Hi all - I finally figured out how to post! Yes, I am that naive about social technology. Apologies for this going up so late!)

“Losing control. Emotions take over, and you have to go along with it.”
“Everything else falls away.”
“You feel like you have the strength to do anything, no barriers can get in your way.”
“You can’t imagine life without that person.”
“It’s losing yourself. It’s not a moment, it’s a whole nebulous thing in here. You lose yourself.”
“Total inability to express in words.”

These are just a few of the snippets I wrote down as people in class answered the question, “What does falling in love mean to you?” (who thought we would ever be quasi-cold-called to answer this question in a GSB class?). In Friday’s class, we talked about what it means to get people to truly engage with your cause or idea . . . how do you get people to “fall in love” with it? In the grab attention, engage, and take action framework, engaging requires that your idea becomes personally meaningful to your audience. It evokes emotion. When people are personally captivated by your cause, they are excited enough to share it with others and use their own networks to draw a wider circle of people to your cause.

“You don’t see any of the negatives.”
“Scary. Vulnerable.”
“Irrational.”

We also discussed the importance of authenticity when you are asking people to engage. If you are successful in grabbing attention and enticing people to become personally vested in your cause, the consequences of disappointing these people are significant. It can be dangerous to get people excited about an idea that isn’t authentic, or with promises that cannot be met. (I like to think about this in terms of having a hook - it’s great to have sexy hook that grabs attention, but if your hook isn’t attached to a fish, then you will quickly lose the affinity of your audience.). We talked about the Dove self-esteem campaign and how social technology can play a role in keeping companies (like Dove’s parent company, Unilever) and individuals honest.

“The process is different between falling in love and being in love.”
“You just feel really happy with that person. Pure and calm.”
“Nervous energy combined with a calming, grounding feeling.”

Once you have people engaged, another piece of getting people to stay in love with your cause is to listen. What do people want? What do they care about? What does this issue mean to them? How do you acknowledge peoples’ voices so that they can continue to believe in your idea and remain personally engaged? Jennifer shared a great tidbit about how simply acknowledging what you have heard from others and confirming their feelings can defuse anger and calm them down. This leaves room for people to problem-solve on their own.

“It’s like a pot of bubbling water with the lid on.”
“Intrigued. You want to learn more, go deeper.”
“You start to think bigger than yourself.”

I think a key to getting people to both fall in love and stay in love with your issue is to make sure you have a quick 1-2-3 punch with grabbing attention, engaging, and taking action. After they have turned their attention to your cause, people need a way to immediately connect to your idea in a personally meaningful way (it’s interesting, but why does it matter to them?). And once you’ve drawn them in, then you have to think about how and when to continue to keep them engaged. This naturally leads to the need to provide ways that people can turn their new energy around your topic into taking action.

Class on Friday, 1/30

2009-02-01T21:51:00.000-08:00

Pat Christian from Hopelab came in today, and had some great tips on how in situ ethnographies could be used in effective product development--in her organization's case, video games that empower children with cancer. Her guidance was powerful for its simplicity: she advised us to be humble and respectful to our subjects, and to be mindful of who does most of the talking when we approach subjects for our ethnographies.

She gave us a really instructive tutorial in those listening techniques, simply by being on listening end of our pod project ethnographies. In response to the team working on privacy issues, and on debunking the myth that private people are anti-social, she asked an interesting questions about private people's social networks, and whether they were linked to others who consider themselves private. It was a question that was, in itself, illustrative of the potential of the team's project of connecting individuals who might not want to broadcast their lives online.

The team focused on boosting adolescent girls' self-esteem gave us a great montage of photos, quotes and music--I myself am a sucker for the great KT Tunstall--and a good example of how open-ended questioning can lead to great insights. When they talked with girls in East Palo Alto, they'd simply asked them about their passions, and from there, realized that these girls didn't always have access to the things they loved doing.

Team College Football Reform had some great anecdotes about dietary-profiling their rabid football fan subject by bringing him donuts, only to discover that he lived more of a smoothie lifestyle. Their presentation, I thought, was particularly interesting that they juxtaposed their preconceived notions about football fans' opinions of the BCS with his actual thoughts on that much-maligned insitution. Pat offered some great tactical tips about how to mobilize fans against an undefined foe (the BCS), and how to leverage their anger in support of underdog players and teams--sentiments that could go far in the current economic environment.

The organ donation team gave us some really interesting information on what the problems facing transplant doctors really are; their interviews must have been very thorough. The deceased's families, they discovered, were really the critical decision-makers--not, as I'd thought, the would-be donors themselves. They gave a great presentation, giving us not only tons of information about the problem, but exploring ways to change the behavior of the key target, families in the position of deciding whether to donate the organs of their loved ones or not.

The group focusing on yoga classes for girls in juvenile detention offered up some powerful images that the girls had made themselves; Pat noted that those images could be very effective in marketing their cause. And the team focusing on education inequality gave the class a great example of something I think of as the "zoom-lens" approach that this class has us taking. Their cause, education inequality, is a huge one, but through talking with the principal of an East Palo Alto Charter school, they were able to zoom in on the small ways change could be enacted, such as bringing students to a university class, or providing money for books.

What organ donations have to do with picking up women?!

2009-02-01T18:57:00.000-08:00

Hey Guys,

the first "Donors are sexy" campaign video is online!

It has the title "How to pick up beautiful women - 7 golden rules and 3 deadly mistakes"
and features Hilary and Alexander Salazar from our class as actors.

Have a look at it (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJcmETPf3sY) and tell us what you think!

See you tomorrow!
Alexander

The Power of... this Amazing Class

2009-01-31T15:01:00.000-08:00

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.

2009-01-31T08:20:00.000-08:00

Class 8: Pod Presentations and HopeLab

2009-01-30T15:37:00.000-08:00

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)

Fiat and Authenticity

2009-01-29T20:53:00.000-08:00

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.

10 Ways to Increase Your Twitter Followers

2009-01-26T23:10:00.001-08:00

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/

Class 6: Kiva Case

2009-01-23T16:34:00.000-08:00

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.

Finding your own voice in the proud stories of entrepreneurs:

2009-01-22T22:39:00.001-08:00

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"

2009-01-22T17:53:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-22T12:22:00.001-08:00

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

Jessica Flannery and her great story

2009-01-21T21:48:00.000-08:00

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

Class 4: Grabbing Attention

2009-01-19T22:02:00.000-08:00

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!

PoST – Class 3: Being an Anthropologist

2009-01-12T23:55:00.001-08:00

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

Speed Storming

2009-01-11T21:04:00.000-08:00

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!

PoST Class 1 Summary & Insights

2009-01-07T23:27:00.000-08:00

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

Class 1: Introduction to the Power of Social Technology

2009-01-04T20:31:00.000-08:00

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.