Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
The El Show Episode 24: Finding Happiness
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010
Episode 24 of the El Show was an unusual one. We decided to take a show and discuss happiness, whether or not we are happy, and how we have found this elusive emotion that everyone wants.
Here’s a breakdown of Episode 24:
- SxSW 2010: Geoff’s take on the spirit of the interactive juggernaut
- Richard’s vacation and how Miami is a nice relaxing time for him
- Happiness, how do we find it?
- Pleasure through work and sex/love: Is it happiness? If not, what is happiness in those work/critical life elements?
- Spiritual paths to happinesss
- And happiness in the future: What do we think it looks like?
Download or listen to the El Show Episode 24 today! Also available on iTunes!
Warning: Some serious cursing in the happiness episode 
Popularity: 5% [?]
Tags: buddhism, happiness, happy, love, marriage, path, pleasure, sex, SxSW, vacation, work
Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »
Introducing the Zoetica iPhone Application
Friday, March 12th, 2010
Today we launched the Zoetica iPhone application, which provides a compilation of nonprofit tech blog feeds handpicked by our CEO Beth Kanter.
Now anyone can read the best #nptech minds and their social media tips from their iPhone (download now). Content feeds included on the application include:
- The Zoetica Link Feed
- The Case Foundation Blog
- Chronicle of Philanthropy Give and Take
- Great NonProfits
- Allison Fine’s Blog
- Social Edge Blogs
- Care2’s FrogLoop
- Britt Bravo’s Have Fun, Do Good Blog
- Working Wikily
- Kivi’s NonProfit Communications Blog
- IdealWare Blog
- Philanthropy 2173
- The NTEN Blog
- Katya’s Nonprofit Marketing Blog
We want to thank AppMakr for partnering with us to build and develop this iPhone application. If you do download, and you have feedback on the application, please let us now.
Popularity: 8% [?]
Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments »
Choose the LIVESTRONG Tattoo
Thursday, March 11th, 2010
As many of you know, I am raising money for cancer research in honor of two family members by donating some real estate on my body for a LIVESTRONG tattoo. John Haydon has umped the ante and joined the fundraiser. The response has been outstanding, and we are looking at roughly $500 a day so far in cancer research.
Will we make our goal of $5k? It’s going to be tight, but with a few big hits, who knows? Best to prepare…
In that vein, if successful my tattoo will happen on Sunday night at 10:00 p.m. in Austin at Golden Apple Tattoo Studios (come on by if you’d like). John will get his later on in the week. We need help choosing the design. Here are the three we like… Please choose your favorite, or add a new design in the comments section. And don’t forget to donate.
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Popularity: 12% [?]
Posted in Uncategorized | 16 Comments »
Winning Online Competitions: A Coalition of the Giving
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010
Zoetica has decided not to counsel potential clients on how to win contests like Pepsi Refresh, but many of you are asking for tips. That’s why when the opportunity came up to publish this guest post by Dan Morrison, CEO of Citizen Effect, I said yes. Hopefully, some folks will find it useful.
Philanthropy competitions are the new fad and mode for giving away millions of dollars to innovative organizations trying to save the world. Last year the Chase Giving Challenge gave away $5 million to 100 nonprofits and this year Pepsi allocated $20 million of its Super Bowl ad budget to launch its Pepsi Refresh Project that is giving away a total of $1.2 million a month to innovative ideas that will save the world.
While most of you have never heard of Scott Beale and Atlas Corp. you need to for two reasons. Atlas Corp is creating a new spin on the Peace Corp that will benefit your organization, and Scott is kicking your butts in these online giving competitions.
In the last 2 years, Scott and Atlas Corp have won $325,000 from online competitions, including $125,000 from the Chase Giving Challenge. And he just did it again by winning one of the ten $50,000 prizes from the Pepsi Refresh Project. This is impressive. But it is borderline unbelievable when you consider Atlas Corp’s 2009 budget was $400.000, they only have 1,700 friends on Facebook, 1,215 followers on Twitter, and an email list of about 12,000 people.
So how did they do it? Scott’s plan to win the Pepsi contest was ingenious and will likely have Chase, Pepsi and other online contests rethinking their rules in the future. Introducing the “Coalition of the Giving.”
The recipe for forming the Coalition of the Giving is simple: part good-hearted collaboration, part reality-TV show Survivor, and part persistence (or spam, depending on your threshold for receiving emails, Facebook updates and Tweets).
The Pepsi Refresh Project included hundreds of ideas from all over the country and Scott knew he would need more than Atlas Corp supporters to win. So how could Scott get people to vote for Atlas Corp that had never heard of them before, much less care about their mission?
Easy, ask another organization competing in the Pepsi Refresh Project to market Atlas Corp to their supporters. This was possible because every voter was given ten votes a day, but each voter could only vote once for a specific organization. That left nine useless votes… unless you could form a coalition and trade votes in a “I’ll vote for you if you vote for me” arrangement.
Scott found six other organizations competing in the contest (two vying for $50K, three for $25K, and one for $250K) and told them that every time he asked someone to vote for Atlas Corp, he would also ask them to vote for everyone in the coalition, as long as they did the same. Here again, Pepsi’s rules worked in Scott’s favor because there were ten prizes of $50,000, so it was not a “winner take all” competition and open to benefiting a collaboration.
Pepsi does not share the number of votes, but let’ assume that 70% of Scott’s supporters still only vote for Atlas Corp. That means that 30% of his supporters will vote for other coalition members. Thirty percent does not seem like a lot but multiply that by six and consider that everyone can vote every day. If Atlas Corp is able to pick up ten voters that vote every day through the coalition, that is 280 votes over the course of the February contest. That may not allow someone to go from worst to first, but it is highly likely that it can move you from a contender to a winner.
The results tell the tale. Six of the seven coalition partners won, that is a combined $225,000 for the coalition.
The strategy was ingenious in part because it was selfish as much it was selfless. Rather than just a “vote for me” play, Atlas Corp adopted a “vote for me and consider these other guys,” play. The better the coalition members did in the standings, the stronger the incentive was to continue with the plan and not defect because if they did, they would be dropped from the coalition and loose all those potential votes.
I am not sure voting contests are the most efficient way to allocate millions of dollars for innovative ideas since they reward innovative voter mobilization strategies rather than innovative projects. But at least in the case of Atlas Corp, both were rewarded, and we all learned a lesson that sometimes collaboration is better than competition. Thank you Scott and best of luck in the next competition, we will be watching.
For more information on Atlas Corp, email Scott Beale at scott@atlascorps.org and learn more about Atlas Corps at www.atlascorps.org. For more information on the author, email Dan Morrison, CEO and Founder of www.CitizenEffect.org, at dan.morrison@CitizenEffect.org.
Popularity: 23% [?]
Tags: Atlas Corp, chase, citizen effect, dan morrison, giving challenge, online, Pepsi, Scott Beale
Posted in Uncategorized | 51 Comments »
The Unconference Experience (Get Ready for @nonprofit20, Folks!)
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
With NonProfit 2.0 just around the corner and a wait list exceeding 50 people, attendees should be excited. To get folks ready for the event, here’s a short video from SocChangeCamp ‘09 in New York City last fall. This event really captured the spirit of a cause-based unconference.
Also, here’s a recap of the “unsession” that I led at SocChangeCamp on cause exhaustion.
Popularity: 12% [?]
Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments »
The El Show Episode 10: Carly Simon, Dr. Drew, Plus a Goofball Social Media Turnaround
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
Warning: There’s significant profanity in this podcast. 
Richard Laermer and I had an intertesting Episode 10 of The El Show. Geoff got off to a shaky start (and then ranted later) due to exhaustion and giddyness resulting from the Phillies exciting win. We then got into the mix talking Obama, Carly Simon, Dr. Drew, Brian Solis and the pathetic social media adoption curve of PR people, particularly those working for Motorola.
- Obama’s Nobel Peace prize nightmare
- Carly Simon’s retirement woes and the end of Starbucks record label
- Google Wave and the passive aggressive communicationsof the future
- Twitter’s decreasing value for search
- Dr. Drew, Brian Solis and Twitter (we had a big laugh on this one). We want Danny Bonaduce!
- Virtual Gifts
- Motorola’s backwards promo of their new innovative social media turnaround!
Download and/or listen to the El Show today.
Popularity: 20% [?]
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The Backside of an Illuminated Crowd
Wednesday, July 29th, 2009
The Backside of an Illuminated Crowd
Originally uploaded by Geoff Livingston
This famous sculpture — The Illuminated Crowd on McGill College Avenue — features a group of people watching something. But the most fascinating side to me was the backside, where you can see a couple making out, a passed-out person,a swami, a murderer, and more aspects of our human nature.
It’s kind of cool when a piece of art becomes the centerpoint of your picture. My job editing this one was making the art the centerpiece and de-emphasizing the buildings behind and other scenery. I did that with a lot of color manipulation, which while preserving the general color of the statue, definitely toned down the scenery.
On the right side, my wife Caitlin and her parents look on. They add some nice context to the photo.
In general, I am spending about 10-15 minutes editing shots that I am uploading to my Flickr stream these days. Be prepared for a lot of Montreal shots over the next week or so. You can watch the Quebec-based portfolio unfold here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/geoliv/sets/72157621840681898/
Popularity: 22% [?]
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Another Trip to Redeclare Love?
Thursday, January 8th, 2009
An entry into the HomeAway contest.
It seems like a vacation would be in the works. After several months my wife and I have worked through our separation and are now reconciling our final issues. The reality is that time away proved how much we really do need each other.
Our love has rekindled, and a trip seems to be in the works together, not just to enjoy each other’s company, but to renew our wedding vows and reinitiate our marriage on the right foot. My wife and I have always had a romantic travel bug in us. I proposed to her in Cannes at sunset, we married in Lake Tahoe and honeymoooned along the inns on the Pacific Coast Highway. We’ve seen the Pharoahs, Barcelona, Amsterdam, and Switzerland together.
It’s my dream to do this in Virgin Gorda, a place where both Caitlin and I have visited before (see above picture) and think is simply one of the most beautiful places in the world. In particular, it would be great to say I do at the Baths, a stunning place where rock formations create incredible scenic vistas (as demonstrated by my cousin Andrew and I below).
Why would a HomeAway vacation journey work? See, on top of everything else, the economy has been straining. First, we physically separated so swallowing an entire mortgage and household on one income was straining to the point I now rent a room out in our house. And as a business owner I’ve reduced my salary to a bare minimum to ensure financial prudence and keep as many people employed as possible. As a result, I cannot fund Virgin Gorda right now.
Yet my heart tells me to take her there. To tell her again, “I do. I love you.”
Popularity: 41% [?]
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
10,000 Tweets: Heaven and Hell
Monday, November 24th, 2008
I just tweeted for the 10,000th time. So what the heck does that mean? I am a Twittering fool? 20 months, 10,000 tweets, 3,000 followers. What learning have I gleaned from all this (image by Sonny Gill)?
Twitter remains a strange place. That’s what I’ve learned.
It’s just weird in a captivating, yet maddeningly ugly way. Twitter represents heaven and hell at the same time. It captures the best of life, and some of its ugliest aspects. Twitter is a big ole bazaar, and there’s nothing quite like it.
There will likely be variants, imitators, and maybe even the acquisition of Twitter. Who knows, who cares? Given my longevity and frequency, I’ll probably still be tweeting.
Fourteen observations about Twitter:
1) Twitter sucks until you start following about 100 people.
2) It’s the most viral place I’ve ever seen. Ask Motrin.
3) You can follow everyone or not. It doesn’t matter, because people can still follow and “@” you, and you can still converse with them. I know that now. Since I can’t deal with more than 500 people in my stream, it’s hard to get me to follow you.
4) Isn’t it amazing that suddenly there’s a competitive marketplace for Twitter books with Warren Whitlock already published, and both Laura Fitton “Pistachio” and Shel Israel rushing to be next?
5) I don’t believe in Pistachio’s theory of micro-messages (an idea propagated by Joel Comm in his Twitter book, too) or micro-sharing. I find it hard to believe that Twitter is in itself a place to build a solely focused social media consultancy. I like Laura personally and am happy to see her prospering, but I don’t get it. Just saying, but hey, proof is in the bank account. I’ll shut up on that topic. Or maybe I’ll just ask her to ’splain it to me!
6) Qwitter is for the self-absorbed. Get over it, and get into real conversations, will ya?
7) Real people on Twitter don’t treat it like a popularity contest for their “personal brands.” They just be. Get it, know what I’m sayin’, Shaq?
8)The amount of people following you doesn’t mean crap. It’s a number to drop in conversations. Influence is determined by value, and whether or not people believe in you enough to do something.
9) Stalkers, trolls, and not so nice people live on Twitter. Just like reality.
10) Trying to please all the Tweeple is impossible. Instead it’s better to find Tweeple like you or that at least can engage you so the conversation is worth your time. And their’s.
11) Twitter is a place people can take too seriously. The world exists without Twitter. Really. It does.
12) If you tell people to unfollow you, they usually won’t. Damn.
13) Jousting with Amanda Chapel is a serious waste of time. That’s why the last time I sauteed Brian Conolly – oops, Chapel was really the last time.
14) If you let the tyranny of the un-urgent — a.k.a. Twittering all the time — drive you, you can seriously negatively affect your life. Most weekends and every vacation I just turn it off.
Today I asked some other long-term Twitterer’s the lessons they’ve learned. Here they are:
Popularity: 35% [?]
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Why I Changed Course on Twitter
Tuesday, July 15th, 2008
For more than a year I followed everyone who followed me on Twitter. Then I stopped following new folks about a month ago. Finally, on what some are jokingly calling “Black Monday,” I suddenly dumped a thousand people I was following.
Why?
Because the experience was awful. I didn’t know most of the people on my Twitter screen. I couldn’t participate in any larger discussions or conversations. And I really hated getting unsolicited DMs from people that I don’t know.
So I reversed my position and purged. I gave up on being the ultimate community personality. I’m just a guy, I am not Chris Brogan or Guy Kawasaki, nor do I think I want to be. These guys are amazing, and they have much more patience and tolerance than I do.
The results, with 600 people I am following, I am enjoying Twitter again. It’s much more pleasant with valid conversations, and has returned my faith in Twitter. I also feel like I am adding more to those that I follow buy actually being able to read their tweets.
There are still some folks I don’t recognize, and I am weeding them out slowly. I will continue to add people, but only if there’s a relationship. Further, I am taking my lessons learned to Plurk, where after the first 150, I am only adding people that I know.
More is not better, I have learned.
Popularity: 42% [?]
Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments »
