Some links outside the cozy confines of this blog to some other stuff I've been working on, involved in, or peripherally tied to:
- Newsweek's Brian Braiker has a piece on "Facebook Philanthropy," a topic I've been interested in since the beginning on the year. Brian focuses on the Causes app that's raising money (tiny) and attention (huge) for causes, and he quotes me as saying the young wired demographic "wears their causes like the way they wear their favorite fashion." True.
- Brad Burnham, managing partner of Union Square Ventures (and partner with my old buddy Fred Wilson), graciously gave his post on the Hacking Philanthropy conference he hosted last month to us at onPhilanthropy (where I'm publisher), and we adapted it for our audience of nonprofit professionals. It's very good, and analyzes the effect of capital market forces on philanthropy - please comment on this hot topic.
- Speaking of markets and philanthropy, I wrote a piece for onPhilanthropy a couple of weeks ago about a fantastic organization in Kenya that is, in many ways, bringing the philanthropic quotient back to microfinance, which has become big business in recent years: "Jamii Bora (Swahili for “A Better Family”) makes loans to street people, specifically targeting thieves, beggars, prostitutes and the HIV-positive population of Kenya. Yet repayment rates are as high if not higher than some of the big lending programs, and the immediate benefits of lifting the destitute out of poverty are more apparent, said Ingrid Munro, a soft-spoken woman who moved from her native Sweden to Kenya."
- You can't get 'em online (alas) but I've also got columns in the current issues of both Contribute and Worth magazines about the confluence of philanthropy and social networking. If I get links eventually, I'll post them but if you catch them in the doctor's office, give them a read and drop me a note.
- My longtime partner in crime Jason Chervokas returned to the Silicon Alley beat this week (who'd a thunk it?) with a post in Henry Blodget's Silicon Alley Insider (which I changed my mind on and now read daily) on Halo 3, the best-selling video game for X-Box and his claim that content may again be king. I loved the lead, of course: "In Silicon Alley's formative years, 'content is king' was the most commonly heard slogan, an article of faith repeated like a mantra from the scruffy tables of Eureka Joe's to the board rooms of media companies uptown. In truth, like the name 'Silicon Alley' itself, 'content is king,' was a phrase we used defensively. Back then we had coder envy. Sure, we clung to the notion of the Internet as a media platform first and a technology platform second, but more than believing it we desperately hoped that it would be so."
- Speaking of Silicon Alley, one of its pioneers - the redoubtable Howard Greenstein - joins our lineup of bloggers over at newcritics with a post on (appropriately enough) the geek factor in the new NBC lineup. If anybody knows geek cred, it's Howard. At the same address (and man, I'm really loving the newcritics experience - such a fab crowd), I've got a post on Pete Townshend's masterpiece, Quadrophenia. Pete (I all him that since he posted here last year) is expected in town next week at the Paley Center for the new Who documentary.
