Cairns Blog: Crowdsourcing Governance [Video intro ends at 52 seconds; Intro by Dr. Gref ends at 2'18; Speech ends at 11'15; then Q&A] For Prime Minister Putin's presentation, click here. Crowdsourcing Governance We’ve heard today that as individuals we are smarter collaborating together than working alone. By Social Entrepreneurs, For Social Entrepreneurs® Welcome to SkollWorldForum.org former Social Edge users! Social Edge was an online community created by the Skoll Foundation from 2003 - 2013. The site has since closed as we have focused efforts on the new Skoll World Forum platform. Crowdsourcing improves predictive texting - tech - 25 February 2012 SMARTPHONES may soon get a lot better at finishing your sentences for you - with the help of words and phrases gleaned from crowdsourcing. The software packages in today's phones often struggle with texts and voice commands if a user attempts words or phrases that aren't included in the phone's database. To see if the crowd could help, Keith Vertanen of Montana Tech in Butte and Per Ola Kristensson at the University of St Andrews, UK, called upon workers of the Amazon Mechanical Turk.
How youth hostels have been given a new lifeline by social entrepreneurs The Youth Hostel Association (YHA) has been providing budget accommodation in England and Wales since before the second world war. It was set up to offer "young people of limited means better access to the countryside". But keeping up with modern expectations has proved challenging for the association, one of Britain's best known social enterprises. A series of programmes to invest strategically in its hostel network has forced it to close those that it deemed unsustainable. In February it was announced that eight hostels, including Derwentwater, Salisbury and Newcastle, would be sold at the end of the 2011 season. The most devastating round of closures in 2006 saw 32 hostels put up for sale – almost a seventh of the network.
Solver Develops Solution to Help Clean Up Remaining Oil From the 1989 Exxon Valdez Disaster Boston, MA and Cordova, AK - November 7, 2007 - InnoCentive, the leader in prize-based Open Innovation sourcing, is helping to make a positive impact on Environmental Conservation by working with the Oil Spill Recovery Institute (OSRI) and other conservation groups. OSRI has posted 3 Challenges on the InnoCentive website, all dealing with oil spill recovery issues. The first of these challenges was solved last week by an oil industry outsider who used his expertise in the concrete industry to come up with the winning solution. John Davis, an InnoCentive Solver from the Central United States, was awarded $20,000 for his creative solution. This first OSRI Challenge required a method for separating oil from water on oil recovery barges after the oil and water had frozen to a viscous mass. Having no background in the oil industry, John applied his expertise and proposed using an existing product commonly used in the concrete industry.
The Reinvention of Philanthropy: An Interview With The Aspen Institutes' Jonathan Greenblatt Jonathan Greenblatt currently serves as the Director of The Impact Economy Initiative at the Aspen Institute and is the founder and former president of All for Good (Our Good Works [OGW]), the open source, web-based initiative to engage more Americans in service. It is the largest database of volunteer listings ever compiled and provides content to a wide range of government, nonprofit, and personal websites. Jonathan is the former CEO of GOOD Worldwide and the co-founder of Ethos Brands, the business that launched Ethos Water, the premium bottled water that helps children around the world get clean water.
Microwork Microwork is a series of small tasks which together comprise a large unified project, and are completed by many people over the Internet. [1] [2] Microwork is considered the smallest unit of work in a virtual assembly line. [3] It is most often used to describe tasks for which no efficient algorithm has been devised, and require human intelligence to complete reliably. The term was developed in 2008 by Leila Chirayath Janah of Samasource. [4] [5] Microtasking[edit] Microtasking is the process of splitting a job into its component microwork and distributing this work over the Internet. Since the inception of microwork, many online services have been developed that specialize in different types of microtasking. Most of them rely on a large, voluntary workforce composed of Internet users from around the world.
Social Entrepreneurs 2011: What It Means to Be a B Corporation To become B Corps, businesses must prove that they care as much about society and the environment as they do about profits. The Classic Example Method, which makes eco-friendly home and personal care products and sells them in recyclable plastic packaging, became one of the first B Corporations, in 2007. Why go the extra mile? "Rather than just being a business that talks about 'people, planet, and profit,' we have put it into our corporate structure," says co-founder Adam Lowry.
Crowdsourcing Crowdsourcing is a sourcing model in which individuals or organizations obtain goods and services. These services include ideas and finances, from a large, relatively open and often rapidly-evolving group of internet users; it divides work between participants to achieve a cumulative result. The word crowdsourcing itself is a portmanteau of crowd and outsourcing, and was coined in 2005.[1][2][3][4] As a mode of sourcing, crowdsourcing existed prior to the digital age (i.e. "offline").[5] There are major differences between crowdsourcing and outsourcing. Crowdsourcing comes from a less-specific, more public group, whereas outsourcing is commissioned from a specific, named group, and includes a mix of bottom-up and top-down processes.[6][7][8] Advantages of using crowdsourcing may include improved costs, speed, quality, flexibility, scalability, or diversity.[9][10]
Social entrepreneur to feature on The Apprentice: Good or bad for social enterprise? Love them or hate them it's hard to deny that reality TV shows such as Dragons' Den and The Apprentice have generated a renewed interest in business. That's certainly true in my day job where as editor of BusinessZone.co.uk any content I publish focusing on the shows usually leads to a spike in traffic. What there is very little of in these TV programmes however is anything focusing on social enterprise.
Sustainable Life Media Nearly 800 business leaders from 19 countries convened at Sustainable Brands '11 on June 7-10, 2011 for the 5th annual Sustainable Brands Conference. The global sustainable brands community, made up of sustainability, brand, and design professionals from global companies, socially responsible start-ups, investors, NGOs and government officials and a raft of service and solutions providers, are leading the change towards a brighter future, and it's annual flagship conference has become the center of gravity for individuals and companies around the world that are committed to leveraging sustainable innovation as a driver of business and brand value. Follow SB and join our mailing list to stay up-to-date with our upcoming SB Events, and SAVE THE DATE for Sustainable Brands '12, June 4-7, 2012!
Takeashine: The First Crowdfunding Platform For Students In the last three decades, college tuition has grown over 900%. It is one of the biggest burdens families face today. The inability to pay for higher education is even greater for families from underserved backgrounds. Through the proven effectiveness of crowdfunding, Takeashine’s online community platform will help students meet their financial needs for higher education. The platform will allow students to showcase their talents using a variety of assets like a portfolio, resume, a photo of a sculpture they made or even a video of them performing a soliloquy from King Lear to encourage donors to support them and their goal of achieving a higher education. Students are not only able to attend college but they will also gain valuable business and marketing skills throughout the process.
Banks and Financial Service Providers Figure Prominently in FTSE4Good Attrition, DJSI Matriculation September 08, 2005 Banks and Financial Service Providers Figure Prominently in FTSE4Good Attrition, DJSI Matriculation by William Baue Corporate social responsibility plays an important role at banks and financial service companies, which are not only recipients but also increasingly purveyors of socially responsible investment. TOMS Adds Sunglassses to Products After weeks of anticipation, TOMS Shoes has finally unveiled their new One for One product: sunglasses! In case you don’t know about TOMS or their One for One program, the idea is this. For every one purchase you make, they will also donate to a person in need. They started with shoes in a small town in Argentina and have now given more than a million pairs of shoes away.