I spent the past couple days and the weekend at the Social Good Summit, watching, networking and tweeting. The format was executed really well. Literally, every 15-20 minutes there was one panel of speakers after another, from the eloquent Arturo Sarukhan, the Mexican Ambassador to the U.S. whose prodigious use of Twitter made the public he serves loyal fans to the brilliant Hans Rosling, who has an amazing knack of creating a visual narrative for public health data to the electric Todd Park, the CTO for the White House who is down right fun to watch as he makes government seem like a fun place to work. I'm geeking out of course, but celebrities like Forest Whitaker, Deepak Chopra, and Mira Sorvino also made an appearance to speak about their personal missions around social good.
If I were to sum up the Summit in one sentence though, it would be:
This was mentioned so many times that it became exhausting, but the point of the message was to use that voice since technology now allows you to do so. Mobile-savvy entrepreneurs, conglomerate tech company CEOs and a few ambitious teenagers from disparate countries spoke about the power of the mobile phone to change the world. It was a consistently motivational message peppered with real-world examples.
Couple of interesting things happened at the conference that are worth mentioning. The first day, lunch was served on plastic plates and cups. Being a social good conference, this was tacky and not very thoughtful. Since "everyone has a voice", people openly discussed and tweeted this fact and the next day the plastic changed to recyclable paper. It was pretty remarkable and sparked another thought stream of BYOC or BYOP; bring-your-own-cup / bring-your-own-plate. Sounds extreme, I know, but it was voiced and that was the point.
The other point to note was that while everyone had a voice, they were using it within their closed online social media networks more than they were with each other in person. I met more people there through twitter than I did through traditional face-to-face networking. Now this has some pros, like avoiding the first few minutes of small talk awkwardness before you figure out what you click about, if anything. But on the other hand, people were glued to their mobile devices so much that their attention span in live conversation was sporadic and limited. The phone was more their voice than their larynx.
It was amazing to see the buzz generated around and through the Summit unfold. The main goal was to legitimize social good and that's a smart move in a single bottom line world skeptical of the risk/reward proposition. Some people had made millions working in social good (though that wasn't the point) and some affected billions of lives (which also wasn't necessarily the point). By the end, it was obvious that social good wasn't simply a concept, it was a movement that worked through familiar financial and business models to impact scaleable change on the people and planet level.
It wasn't SXSW, but it certainly wasn't HIMSS. It was a conversation that would traditionally be one way if it weren't for social media. Next time, I would take it one step further and let the audience ask questions of the speakers and have the moderator curate in real-time. Make it more interactive for the audience instead of simply mobilizing them as a PR force.
This blog is my voice so I'm using it. I continue to stay excited about the developments in social good and would gladly attend the Social Good Summit again next year. It'd be far more interesting as a speaker. Though, which conference isn't?
If I were to sum up the Summit in one sentence though, it would be:
"Everyone has a voice."
This was mentioned so many times that it became exhausting, but the point of the message was to use that voice since technology now allows you to do so. Mobile-savvy entrepreneurs, conglomerate tech company CEOs and a few ambitious teenagers from disparate countries spoke about the power of the mobile phone to change the world. It was a consistently motivational message peppered with real-world examples.
Couple of interesting things happened at the conference that are worth mentioning. The first day, lunch was served on plastic plates and cups. Being a social good conference, this was tacky and not very thoughtful. Since "everyone has a voice", people openly discussed and tweeted this fact and the next day the plastic changed to recyclable paper. It was pretty remarkable and sparked another thought stream of BYOC or BYOP; bring-your-own-cup / bring-your-own-plate. Sounds extreme, I know, but it was voiced and that was the point.
The other point to note was that while everyone had a voice, they were using it within their closed online social media networks more than they were with each other in person. I met more people there through twitter than I did through traditional face-to-face networking. Now this has some pros, like avoiding the first few minutes of small talk awkwardness before you figure out what you click about, if anything. But on the other hand, people were glued to their mobile devices so much that their attention span in live conversation was sporadic and limited. The phone was more their voice than their larynx.
It was amazing to see the buzz generated around and through the Summit unfold. The main goal was to legitimize social good and that's a smart move in a single bottom line world skeptical of the risk/reward proposition. Some people had made millions working in social good (though that wasn't the point) and some affected billions of lives (which also wasn't necessarily the point). By the end, it was obvious that social good wasn't simply a concept, it was a movement that worked through familiar financial and business models to impact scaleable change on the people and planet level.
It wasn't SXSW, but it certainly wasn't HIMSS. It was a conversation that would traditionally be one way if it weren't for social media. Next time, I would take it one step further and let the audience ask questions of the speakers and have the moderator curate in real-time. Make it more interactive for the audience instead of simply mobilizing them as a PR force.
This blog is my voice so I'm using it. I continue to stay excited about the developments in social good and would gladly attend the Social Good Summit again next year. It'd be far more interesting as a speaker. Though, which conference isn't?