Tag: web 2.0

Tags: collective purchasing, environment, social market, sustainability, technology for change, web 2.0, Web-native projects for social change, Add more tags...,

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1Bog: alias, 1 Block Off the Grid. Solar energy at it best. Collective purchasing for green home improvements at its best. Social markets an entrepreneurship meet green living, this meeting happening on the Web.

 

 

 

1Bog is run by Virgance,  a successful Bay Area "incubator" that builds and owns "social enterprises, preparing them for Tier 1 venture capital investment" (Virgance.com).

As a combination of "activism and capitalism" Virgance, founded by Steve Newcombe, a successful "serial entrepreneur", and Brent Schulkin, activist and filmmaker, is at present working on 4 projects, ranging from a network of environmental blogs to a project empowering sustainable consumers and a very tasty Facebook preview of what is defined "the American Idol of social change" (more soon).

 

 

1Bog appears to have all it takes to be a winning model: it is about connecting entreprises to individuals and individuals among themselves, and using the Web to do so; it is about about an environmental and surely a demand-growing issue, or rather "good" like that of green improvements, specifically solar energy; it is about constructing a "social market" and generally harvesting the benefits of a transparent market encounter around a sustainable "good"; it is finally about generating a critical mass.

 

 

 

It all starts from Post Code and e-mail. Subsequently, when enough homeowners interested in green improvements are aggregated, 1Bog "uses collective bargaining power to negotiate group discounts and group financing options on their behalf", launching a request for proposal to screened installers. The aims are thus becoming visible:making the process of buying solar panels easier, cheaper and safer while creating a market for partners in the solar industry.

 

The rest of the equation is composed by a rich set of information and practical solutions to problems associated to the costly process of greening our lives: the site area dedicated to solar financing provides with a good set of solutions including suggested partners, municipal contracts, home equity and even peer-to-peer lending through Lending Club.

 

If you want to visualize some of the activity going on check the section on solar cities. If you want to learn more about solar, check the solar university. The Blog is also quite up to date and an interesting "volunteering" page suggests way of being helpful, starting from "volunteer 5 minutes". All pretty nicely crafted, including the funny "About" slideshow.

Tags: online activism, personal democracy, politics, royal holloway, social web, web 2.0, web events, Add more tags...,

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I have recently been presenting at Royal Holloway's "Politics: Web 2.0 Conference" just outside London, extremely well organized by Professor Andy Chadwick and the New Political Communication Unit at Royal Holloway.

Yes, perhaps the focus could partly be considered a bit "simplistic" and not too academic - Does web 2.0 hinder or help democratic citizenship? - but in the end the event was fresh, enjoyable and cutting-edge, surely reaching its goals. A success.

Thanks to Andrew Chadwick for setting it up all and for the spirit and freshness he was able to transfer to the whole event.

Unsurprisingy, an academic who consistently deals with Web 2.0 is at the same time a very open, enjoyable and interactive person.

 

Despite not entirely matching my research interests - it is not always a disadvantage - and a clear (expected and pretty reasonable) bias towards American politics, elections, campaigns and candidates' strategies - rather than counter-politics, social movements and social activism - I had the opportunity to have my arguments heard by an excellent and surprising morning audience (including Mike Turk) and exchange my ideas with several scholars and practitioners.

 

Still struck by the gap in the amount of "liveblogging", "microblogging" and "twittering" done by Americans compared to Europeans, I was very pleased to discover the effects of it on me, thanks to Micah Sifry on his "Personal Democracy" and "TechPresident". :) 

 Very well representing such freshness and the openness to networking and sharing of those "New politics" events (compared to the theoretical barricades of some sociological venues), Micah Sifry was kind enough to invite me to the surely exciting event he is organizing in New York City, June 22-23, 2008. A good opportunity to advertise it now: it's called "Rebooting the system" and will include great speakers such as Michael Arrington, Vinton Cerf, Larry Lessig, Tom Steinberg, Patrick Ruffini among the many.

 

Other notes on the event, the people I met + my presentation coming soon... 

 

 

Tags: internet history, social software, social web, timeline, web 2.0, web history, Add more tags...,

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This quick post has the goal of introducing one of the most complete and well-produced resources on the pre-history and History of the Internet & the World Wide Web, named here as the "Social Web" (though not properly defined, but mostly broadly associated to "Social Software"). Embedded here are the slides of Trebor Scholtz, available also in article-form, posted on his website Collectivate.net.

 

Tags: online activism, philanthropy 2.0, review, social lending, web 2.0, Add more tags...,

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Surely on the best products of today's Web, as Technorati might confirm, Read/Write Web Blog is not only a source of precious and well-thought contents, but also of good practices.

Unlike the author of the present website, ,   the Read/Write Web posts with extreme constancy and with the same consistency adds to the more traditional posts weekly, monthly and yearly summaries of the best bits from the contents of the website. 

 

I found this practice, well represented by this article, "Best of 2007 ReadWriteWeb Editor's Picks", an extremely good way of adding quality editorial work to the blog while making our lives way easier in finding the best ideas and spotting where the best debates lie. Conversely, a not-as-good practice is that of noticing it in January and speaking about this in March only...

 

Ah, at Read/Write Web they have also interesting opinions on which article would best suite January First (2008).

Something like a guide to online giving (or lending), for example. More on Philanthropy 2.0 coming soon.

 

Tags: amateurism, debate, digital disorder, tagging, web 2.0, Add more tags...,

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The Wall Street Journal presented 1 month ago an extremely interesting e-mail discussion between Andrew Keen, author of "The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture" and David Weinberger, author of "Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder".

Two high profile books, one arguing that the Web has become overwhelmed with useless noise, the other one 

that Web 2.0 tools let users filter out irrelevant (or inaccurate) information, that try to respond to a tough question: is this democratization of information -- often called Web 2.0 -- the future of the Internet or a looming disaster?

Worth a look. Here is the link:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118461274162567845.html?mod=links_from_todays_paper_europe

Tags: digital ethnography, explanation, video, web 2.0, youtube, Add more tags...,

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