Sky's Blog

{File under Pitfalls of Startup Organizations…}

Every unpaid volunteer; every pro-bono professional; everyone working on some project without pay; all of them are investing in their particular futures. This is particularly true for nonprofit startups.

And I mean to use specifically that word—investing—this means they are giving of their talent and time with some hope or expectation that things will work out in a particular (and good) way in the future. They have some vision of what they are working toward. A truth that so few nonprofit CEOs understand is that volunteers are actually donors and they deserve the same respectful treatment as donors. (continue reading…)

I was browsing the history of Esperanto and discovered Rose Island, a micronation in the Adriatic Sea that declared itself the Republic of Rose Island in 1968. (And whose official language was Esperanto.)

Apparently there have been any number of these escapades, including, of course, pirate radio broadcasters off northern Europe. The story of Sealand is especially entertaining.

Gotta read up on them.

The photo is from Wikimedia Commons and has been released into the public domain by its copyright holder. Click for a larger view.

At LeWeb in Paris (December 2009) Chris Pirillo articulated some underlying principles for creating true (virtual) community. Matt Buckland^[1] recorded Chris’ points in text form. I’m going to make some comments on them now.

Chris started by saying “I don’t have an agenda; I don’t have an announcement…” referring, of course, to the number of companies that had been making announcements on the stage. Probably not unusual, since you want to make product announcements where they will be heard, but it was certainly being noticed this time around.

The full video of Chris’ talk appears at the bottom of this article. I’m going to pick and choose from the points that Matt jotted down.

So, what is the essence of community? Community… (continue reading…)

There’s a whole new world of digital activism now, including a new report The DigiActive Guide to Twitter for Activism. There have been digital activists as long as the Internet has been around, but with the appearance of social media it has really ramped up. This document contains a number of interesting case studies of Twitter being used as a communication channel, as well as a cookbook of steps and tips.