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Hacking Philanthropy


Hacking* Philanthropy

Will the Web Accelerate Positive Social Change?

Union Square Sessions - September 25th, 2007, 11:00 AM - New York City

* A few definitions of "hacking" that color our usage:


The event has ended! Thank you to everyone that participated.

The transcript is now available for this event.  You can view the transcript in wiki form here, and the original transcript file (with some formatting and error correction by USV) is uploaded in the "files" section at the bottom of this page. Please note: this transcript is pretty raw.  Robert, our transcriptionist, had some difficulty keeping up with the conversation, and as a result, some key points have been missed.  Please feel free to edit the wiki page or the raw file of this transcript in order to recapture any core missing points.

~300 Images are now available on Flickr, here's two quick shots:

  

We will have a transcript up shortly once we receive it from the transcription service. Also, please feel free to edit this page (click the big orange edit button at the top-right of the page) if you'd like to add some closing comments.

Closing Comments:
------------------------
  • Andrew Parker: "This was a terrific event, and I thank everyone for making time in their busy schedules to attend. As a closing thought, I think that the work of Luis Von Ahn's ESP Game and Amazon's Mechanical Turk could go a long was to inform the design for bite-sized contributions of activities that are a step past Premal's 'Kindergarten' as discussed today. If we could create the Mechanical Turk equivalent of contributing to social good and the incentive to contribute to the system was well-thought-out, then it could be a powerful tool for adding human resources to philanthropies where needed."
  • Ami Dar: Congrats to Saul Griffith! I just saw that the MacArthur Foundation announced today that he is among this year's 'genius awards'. And thanks everyone for a good day.
  • Marty Kearns: What do you do with 100,000 people for 10 minutes? They don't want to join. They are not there to donate. Hacking Philanthropy is going to be about aggregating not just the money from small donations but the skill and intelligence of a networked culture into meaningful game changing assets. Get them to call and research a project for Kiva. Get them to document a Donors Choose project in their area. Get them to do research on media. 
  • Insert Next Comment Here: ""
  • Etc...

About Sessions

A couple of times a year Union Square Ventures brings together a small group for a day long conversation about ideas or events that could change the course of the information technology industry. We call these conversations Union Square Sessions. To date, we have held two successful, engaging sessions events: Peer Production (Fall of 2005) and IT Innovation and Public Policy (Summer of 2006). We tried to summarize some of the insights in a series of blog posts on our site.

About Union Square Sessions, September 2007 - Hacking Philanthropy

In our daily routine at USV, we spend a considerable amount of time studying the conditions, environment, and secondary technologies that allows lightweight web services to thrive. Our goal with this event is to assemble a group of people with expertise building in lightweight web services and their respective communities in order to discuss how the principles that drive lightweight web services can be used to increase the efficiency, reach, and effectiveness of philanthropy. The format will be a moderated discussion. There will be no speakers, or panels. Rather, we will expect the active participation of everyone who attend.

About this Wiki

We envision this wiki as a peer-produced agenda. We hope that this can be a place where the participants in this discussion can engage before and after this event (or even during). The agenda links below lead to bulleted discussion items. We seeded some content to get the ball rolling, but we want to discuss what's important to you, so please feel free to edit anything you see here. Note: editing of this section of the wiki is open to the public, which could lead to some spam or malicious manipulation. If you see anything that you think shouldn't be here, please alert andrew@unionsquareventures.com and we will revert any problems promptly.

Participants

Here is a working Participants List.

See the participant lists for past sessions events for a frame of reference of a complete list: (Sessions '05 Participants) (Sessions '06 Participants).

Reading List (use the tag "usvsessions3" in del.icio.us to contribute to the reading list)

Dinner

A few people have expressed an interest in going out to dinner after the event. There is no "official" dinner organized with this event; however, we think this wiki would make a good forum for organizing informal dinners between attendees that would like to get to know each other better. If you're interested in going out to dinner after the event, please sign up for a dinner on the wiki.


Agenda (click through on topics to see discussion points)

11:00 - Introductions, Goals, and Logistics

11:30 - How lightweight web services change the structure of markets (more details)

12:30 -Lunch

1:30 - Is the promise of light weight web services to improve the efficiency of existing philanthropies and social movements, or to fundamentally disrupt the current market structure, or both? (more details)

2:30 - Break

3:00 - What is the minimum infrastructure needed to exploit the web? (more details)

4:00 - How will the web have impacted philanthropy/social movement in ten years?

4:45 - Wrap Up Discussion

5:00 - Cocktail Reception

6:00 - End

Logistics

Date: September 25th, 2007
Time: 11:00AM - 6:00PM
Location: Casa Italiana, 3rd Floor Teatro, 1161 Amsterdam Ave., New York, NY 10027 (Map)





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Author: Union Square Ventures   Version: 2.2   Last Edited By: Union Square Ventures   Modified: 23 Jan 2009