Submitted by Daniel Ben-Horin (not verified) on 31 May 2007 - 10:22pm.
Tessie, Thanks so much for 'getting' what we were trying to do,and for leaning into helping it happen.
It was messy! At a certain point, we realized that some people were going to fault us for being insufficiently rigorous and some people were going to fault us for being too competitive and, mutually exclusive though those opinions may be, they're both, to some extent, correct!
When we look at the projects that won, we see two things: (1) *Smart technology voters!... The winners are,clearly, in a small group of the projects that have a real chance of staking out significant market share by virtue of great technological vision and execution. (2)A certain tendency away from the biggest social issues.... The project I personally most regretted not seeing in the top three was the Genocide Intervention Network and I'll quite frankly say that my attitude toward them wasn't based on either their technology or their business model, but about their issue and their potential impact.Even the chance of a small impact on our species' understanding of genocide seemed a worthwhile bet to me. But what the voters concentrated on was the best fit of *technology* to a social model with demonstable (though not necessarily transformational) social impact.
I'd give N2 a B or maybe B+. We can make it much better if we figure out ways of comparing likes to likes, apples to apples. I think we can do that.
I love that phrase--"support community". That's *exactly* what N2 was about--trying to get different sectors to identify with being part of a support community. Or support eco-system. Our sense here at CM/TS is that N2 did in fact work on that level. Yahoos and Googlers and Ciscos and Funders and VCs and web developers and nonprofits and social entrepreneurs all jointly entertained the idea of what they could all do together.
To be continued. Thanks again for your great post.
Thanks
Tessie, Thanks so much for 'getting' what we were trying to do,and for leaning into helping it happen.
It was messy! At a certain point, we realized that some people were going to fault us for being insufficiently rigorous and some people were going to fault us for being too competitive and, mutually exclusive though those opinions may be, they're both, to some extent, correct!
When we look at the projects that won, we see two things: (1) *Smart technology voters!... The winners are,clearly, in a small group of the projects that have a real chance of staking out significant market share by virtue of great technological vision and execution. (2)A certain tendency away from the biggest social issues.... The project I personally most regretted not seeing in the top three was the Genocide Intervention Network and I'll quite frankly say that my attitude toward them wasn't based on either their technology or their business model, but about their issue and their potential impact.Even the chance of a small impact on our species' understanding of genocide seemed a worthwhile bet to me. But what the voters concentrated on was the best fit of *technology* to a social model with demonstable (though not necessarily transformational) social impact.
I'd give N2 a B or maybe B+. We can make it much better if we figure out ways of comparing likes to likes, apples to apples. I think we can do that.
You wrote:
"...support community: techies, businesses, funders, investors, etc"
I love that phrase--"support community". That's *exactly* what N2 was about--trying to get different sectors to identify with being part of a support community. Or support eco-system. Our sense here at CM/TS is that N2 did in fact work on that level. Yahoos and Googlers and Ciscos and Funders and VCs and web developers and nonprofits and social entrepreneurs all jointly entertained the idea of what they could all do together.
To be continued. Thanks again for your great post.
/d