how-to

In this interview from Knowledge@Wharton, Alex Brown, owner of the website Alex Brown Racing, dedicated to the welfare of horses (and saving them from the slaughter house), gives us a first hand account of his experience building the website and its popularity using social media tools including Wikis, discussion forums, YouTube Contests and Twitter.

What I really like about this video is how open Alex is about the mistakes he made, the difficulties experienced, and more importantly, how he used these tools to help raise funds for the cause.

If you're a social media veteran, you might find some of the tips Alex shares elementary, but if you're new, this is a video you want to watch to understand the decision-making process involved which led Alex to use the platforms he does today. (And it's not every day that people talk about how they raise funds with these tools.) Enjoy!

By Su Yuen, CHIN (suyuen@gmail.com)

This post contributed by Mindy Zhang.

Timothy Prestero—Lemelson Fellow, Ashoka Affiliate and Co-Founder of Design that Matters—sheds some light on how to and how not to develop technological solutions to social problems.

A successful example.  (Video source: GOOD Magazine)

So last week I wrote about pre-gathering surveys.  Today I want to write about a new tool I have in my arsenal for getting those responses back.

Are you ready for it?

EventBrite.

Now, I should probably clarify (given these new FTC rules that everyone is chatting about) that EventBrite isn't paying me for this post, although that would be nice.  No, I'm just a happy user of their free tool.

Why am I so happy?  Because EventBrite gives you the option of creating your own survey questions and then allows you to REQUIRE them to be answered in order for guests to register.

You can write short answer, long answer, multiple choice and even "check all that apply" questions and you can even specify different kinds of questions for different guests. 

For Hyderabad, we stuck with mostly multiple choice and "check all that apply" so that having to answer the questions didn't become a deterrant to registration.

So far, its working out great.  I sent the invitation out on a Friday afternoon to a group of busy, busy social entrepreneurs, for an event happening in February.  So far, we already have about 15% of the group registered.  If that isn't close to magic, I don't know what is.

Try it, my friends and until next week, stay techy.

Ashoka-Lemelson Fellow Howard Weinstein from Paula Castillo on Vimeo.

The above is my attempt to making a soundslide of Ashoka-Lemelson Fellow Howard Weinstein whom I recorded while he was presenting a brown bag in our office and then I added the pictures from his power point plus pictures I took from Flickr and music from Jamendo.

How I learned to make these:

You are out in the field and all of a sudden your phone loses battery power--what to do? A) Panic. B) Bike back to your village. C) Charge your phone with your bike. If you want to answer C) check out how to make a cellphone charger powered by your bike.