Category: Miscellaneous

Volunteerevolution – Am I a virtual mug?

Here’s something I’m going to watch closely. Micki in Auckland in New Zealand has set up a blog called Volunteer Evolution. She is using it to ask people to help her raise $20,000 dollars to allow her to stop paid work and instead volunteer for a year in her local community (wherever she happens to be).

This has similarities to students looking for financial support for voluntary work or gap years. However it’s seems a touch different, I think new – because (if genuine) it’s entirely bottom up – drawing its potential power from a network created online. So I emailed Micki to find out more and this is what she told me:

I’ve only just launched the volunteerevolution website this past week so I’m still waiting to see what kind of support I get before quitting my current job (which is customer service for a company that makes environmentally friendly household cleaners & bodycare products). The community I live in is much like any other large city. Auckland has about 1.5 million people including a large number of immigrants. There are big problems with urban planning, I don’t think the city can cope with the growth it’s experiencing which leads to transport problems and social conflicts. Non-violent crime is common (I just had my car stolen last week) and there are definite racial divides between middle-class and poor.

For my first project, I am currently training with RMS Refugee Resettlement and will be volunteering with a new refugee family over the next 6 months to help them adjust to life in New Zealand. It’s a fairly big challenge since they come from Burma, have lived in non-western society their whole lives and don’t speak English. They will be living in state housing which will give me some more insight into the problems faced in these low-income areas.

I’m really passionate about addressing people’s basic needs. If people don’t have food, shelter and healthcare they’re not going to be interested in environmental, political or other issues, so that’s what I’m focusing my work on.

Now Micki has no charity status, I don’t know her address and I have absolutely no recourse if Micki takes the money and swans off on holiday. So given all of that – I’ve made a donation.

Why?

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Second Wave Adoption – Let me catch up first.

Beth Kanter alerted me to Nancy White’s work on the problem of the “second wave of adoption” of social networking stuff. The problem as set out is simple. Some people really get it and move quickly to innovate in the way they collaborate online. Behind them comes another wave (or wavelet) who are not so keen and are much harder to bring on board.

David Wilcox writes about potential opportunities in the uk to encourage the reluctant second wavers.

So here are a couple of barriers: Read more

Web 2.0 or Why My Head Hurts


The possibilities of building relationships across the internet can leave us a little agog. We’re amazed for good reasons: common sense tells us that we can’t cope with limitless information or relationships. We have this image of other superhumans managing hundreds of fruitful relationships in dozens of countries, which is of course a myth. In my opinion those who heed common sense may well find the most productive ways to exploit the potential of web 2.0

You can only have so many friends.

Research from the early 1990’s found a correlation between the size of a human neocortex and how many others we can succesfully relate to. Evolutionary Psychologist Professor Robin Dunbar of Liverpool University and others predicted that human’s would be able to ‘maintain’ about 150 acquaintances – and this figure matched research on the size of neolithic villages (‘primitive’ comunities tend to split once they reach a figure of 150 members) and more modern personal networks.

We can recognise far more people than that – but the reality is that our brains only have the capacity to manage a limited number of relationships – each of various qualities.

This has literally mind-bending implications for people working in an apparently more connected world and for how non-profits might use web 2.0 technologies…..

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