Non Profit Idea

I love not having to recreate the wheel. I have been searching for what kind of business to start, that would have an impact on the community, but would also allow me to do the things I have a passion for doing (being around like minded people, playing on computers).

The answer to my dilema? Free Geek

In case you were curious, I am using Bitty Browser link to embed the web page of Free Geek into my blog.

So they take computers, use volunteers to take the donated computers apart, get the working parts out, recycle the bad parts, and all get to hang out and get better at computers.

There are individual value propositions that I could get into, but most anyone can see that it is a cool idea, with lots of benefits. Now the only problems will be getting the space to use, and setting up the non-profit organization. My goal is to partner with a club on campus called SIFE (Students In Free Enterprise) to market, organize, and ensure a large impact on the community (while making it a sustainable concept).

College Business Web Consultants

You are a web guru, and want to build a profile, but you need projects, what do you do?

You are a graphics designer, need things to try out new graphics programs, and build your portfolio, what do you design?

You are an Entrepreneurship student, need graphics designers and website designers, but do not have the money to pay people, but need guys that know their stuff to give you advice, and create cool sites for you, what do you do?

Well, bring these groups together of course!!

I think it would be great to setup a "business" bringing these separate groups together for added benefit to all. The web and graphics guys get to see the business side of starting a company, whilst creating cool stuff for their portfolio, and the entrepreneurship students get a free website design, with the caveat of paying for the services rendered if they choose to launch their venture.

There is a greater benefit than just website development. The entrepreneurship students may need technical advice for their projects, or "experts" to go with them to meetings with advisers or potential investors to explain how some technology would work, or the time/cost commitment needed for x project.

Non-Profit Meets For-Profit, Cool!

I want to change the world, but I want to make money also (provide for my family, have influence to do cool stuff). How do you create a socially responsible company, that really provides benefit, yet also becomes profitable?

Answer:

If you are familiar with what has been happening in the Linux world (I skim the surface of this with my rss reader), then you have heard of Ubuntu. There are plenty of sites that talk about Ubuntu, but I am looking at it from the way they have chosen to structure their company.

So from my understanding of it, there is a commercial side, Canonical, and a non-profit side, Ubuntu and others(Kbuntu, Edbuntu, Xbuntu).

Another cool company that has a similar business model, but kind of opposite, is SpikeSource. So it is good to see that there are companies out there that can use open source as a foundation of their business model (either building on it, or building it).

Social Networking

Fortune cookie promotes social networking
Originally uploaded by BigBlue.

Social Networking

How Can we fit popular sites like Myspace and Facebook into the teaching curricula, and culture of school? I think the idea here is of a digital self. Online there are many aspects that define who your are perceived. On myspace you are the drunk college kid, flicker you are the artistic photographer, and Monster.com you are the perfect employee who lives to work. There is a kind of balance in "real life" how much information you give people access to, and how much you tell someone at one time. I think this same concept applies to a persons online digital self.
In business, a common form of communication is the business card. It has some information, but not everything. You could research more with that info, but it would take time. The same can be applied to the digital identity of a person or business. A business can have a my space page, and use that as a medium to communicate about their goals, vision, and the such. Or it could be brief with lots of flash but little content, begging the viewer to find another aspect of that businesses digital existence. Just like in real life, these are decisions students and teachers should be aware of, but will have to apply differently to each circumstance.

As these new technologies and means of communication, there will come a standard of what information is commonly provided, and in what way, just like the company, title, cell and email address, printed on that specific sized business card (who in the world thought of that size business card anyway?)

Building an "Online" company

How do you build an "online" company? One where most of the workers call Starbucks, the office?

How do you have meetings?
What do you do if a laptop gets stolen?
Do you need face time?

I may or may not answer all of these questions. But they are interesting. Lets approach these backwards. From a brick and mortar company.

What would starbucks look like as an online company(more integrated into new tools, not digital cups of coffee). Their star partners(employees for those of you not up on the lingo) would blog about what it was like to work there. They would write comments about their favorite customers. It could be a door into deepining that 1 min a day conversation with those interesting artistic (or whatever) folks.

Maybe they would have a wiki for secret shopping excursions, and have people who know alot about coffee go in and do their snapshots (secret shoping) for the company, in exchange for a free cup of joe (you economists can ponder the principal agent problems of this, but it could work).

The key here is that it is user generated content, and categorization (more on the categorization in my tags post, and future folksonomies posts) of that content. It has the potential of a huge network of information, and a kind of grass roots marketing, while building the lifetime value of a customer by deepening the connections with those customers. It would also make recent new additions to the neighborhood (metephorical social "neighborhood", or whatever..... you know what I mean).

Internally there could be wikis for all kinds of stuff. Best practices of the coffee masters for how to make the best french press, repairmen sharing the latest problems and bootstrap solutions to fixing the latest brewer. By having the people "in the trenches" create and update the info, you always have current info. Sure there are problems, pr issues and whatnot, but that is where the corporate wiki could champion the good contributors, and discourage the bad ones (not sure what this all looks like yet, but who does?)

So none of those questions got answered, but I think going from what currently could work is a good start. How do you know what is on the other side of that mountain, unless you start writing erp, crm, charts and graphs of the best possible route..... I mean try and put two feet forward to climb that mountain?

Interesting Wiki Info

I have thought about the time to adoption of wikis quite a bit recently (all those sleepless nights now have meaning). How long does a good idea take to be implemented by a large group of people? Or at least a sub group of people in say, one company?

There are many questions that pop into my head. How is the technology or tool modeled?(both by the upper management, and by direct reports of each level in the company) Is it (the tool, wiki, hammer, toy) really as user friendly as everybody says it is(ma by user friendly needs to ask the question, who is the intended user?). So these are good questions, but I found a website that is trying to answer some of these.

I frequent the blog Wikinomics, and they featured a site(If you have not guessed yet, it is the screen shot above).

The site is called Wikipatterns and it is exactly the kind of website I am finding useful these days. I am hoping it answers some of the questions about implementing a wiki, but even if it is not helpfull for me, at least it can serve as a sort of knowledge repository for me to refer people to(I love not having to reinvent the wheele, or wiki, or sliced something or other).

Text Book spawns Ideas

I was reading in my management book ("Strategic Management, A Dynamic Perspective" Case 2) about a marketing director named David Ogilvy. I want to share a little about who he was, why he interested me, and several ideas that came to me from learning about him.

What interested me about David Ogilvy are how different he was from my understanding of his contemporaries. The book states that he was "Quirky".

He took pride in his agencies "Streak of orthodoxy". He once advised a young account executive, "develop your eccentricities early, and no one will think you are going senile later in life".
.... He also exhorted his staff to achieve brilliance through "obsessive curiosity, guts under pressure, inspiring enthusiasm, and resilience in adversity."

As I read these sections, I wanted to call him up and say "I will work for you at any price, just let me show you what I can do." I felt like he was describing my insatiable curiosity, and was admonishing things that I am striving to achieve and aspire to learn when given the opportunity(I don't feel like I have the resilience in adversity, or the guts, but definitely the eccentricities and obsessive curiosity).

I mentioned he was different from his contemporaries. I don't think this is the route that interests me, but here is where I would go if it did. What are the similarities between David and other CEO's? What is the personality makeup of a good marketing CEO?

Back to what is interesting (a.k.a. interests me).

Because of his creativity(and recognizing that as a strength and exploiting it, and disciplining it, and searching it out in others), he was able to change with the dynamic marketplace. He was also a catalyst of positive change in his organization. He cast a unifying vision for the future of his company through his strength of creativity, and eccentricities(e.x. the quotes above and New York times add below).

(possible character traits I am extrapolating from limited information and attributing to him, ok so that also describes some of what I wrote in the previous paragraph, but I just thought of it so I am putting it here)
I believe as a leader, it is important to be consistent(more explain later). Although eccentric, he was consistent in that. I guess the idea I had about this point is, know your strengths, exploit them, and communicate them to others(and why you believe they are strengths). Know your weaknesses, avoid situations that would require their use, but have others who know that is your weakness, and who are strong in those areas you are weak.
(this article is not meant as a proof of these ideas. It will take more research to prove them, but I think the inklings for making my case are present in the outward manifestations of this man's philosophies)