Smiles get returned way more than borrowed clothes, so don’t hold back the amount you give out.

At some point in our childhood, a curious intrigue became misconstrued for a threatening stare. I’m not sure when this happened, but so many of us walk around somewhat disconnected from the rest.  Whether we are in a rush or choose not to connect with passerbys because it’s not “what’s done,” it leaves many of us unaware of the isolation we’ve caused ourselves.  So the next time you are walking down a street, try to make some eye contact.  And when you are connected flash a quick smile.  I guarantee it to brighten up your day.

–

I was walking home from the gym today listening to Snatam Kaur.  I stopped to gaze at the way these two layers of clouds were passing over me.  The upper layer was pinkish in color, using the reflection of the sun’s rays to illuminate the clouds.  They moved rather slowly.  The second layer was thousands of feet lower and grayish in color.  They carried a lot of weight and were moving fast.  This was beautiful to watch.  I gazed for about 10 minutes and from time to time would notice passerbys trying to figure out what had my attention so focused.

As I continued home I came to a mother and her child.  She embodied the “dance as if no one is watching” mantra.  She was making funny faces into the cove of the stroller.  It turns out the baby was making those faces back.

It hit me then.

There is so much joy in other peoples’ joy.

So then I wondered… what would the world be like if we all felt this way?

much love

Back in September I experienced Burning Man for the first time.  For those unfamiliar, I think Jay Michaelson describes it best, saying:

“It’s a temporary city of 50,000 people, devoted to radical self-expression. So you’ll find anything you’d find in a regular city — art museums, dance clubs, yoga studios — only in the middle of the desert, with no money, and with more creativity than you’ve ever seen.”

I don’t think I’d be able to live in the desert permanently.  In fact, most life can’t survive without major adaptations over several generations, and the truth is that I won’t be around long enough.  It does, however, give me hope for a different kind of society.  A society based on compassion over greed.  One based on giving more than you receive.

Many people in our society want more than they need.  For every mantra of, “Money can’t buy happiness,” there are five more telling us, “Just one more promotion.”  Do you think you’ll be content once you make partner?

You think you can’t be free until you have it all.  The truth is you will never have it all. All grows faster than you can consume.  It can not be measured.  So when will you set yourself free?

This was the environment in which I crossed paths with Sergey Brin, the Co-Founder of Google.  It was a Wednesday or Thursday morning at the HeeBeeGeeBee tent at Burning Man.  We were both taking an AcroYoga class (my friends from San Diego happen to be the instructors that day too!).  Sergey turned towards me and a few others and mentioned that he’s never done this [AcroYoga] before.  I spoke in context of our environment and said, “That’s what Burning Man is all about.”

I listened to my heart that day and you should too.  Your heart is the voice of your soul.  It speaks truth absent of responsibility and consequence.  And your heart has no regrets.  I know mine doesn’t.

Much Love,
John

In 5 minutes you can create positive change

We’re working on project to bring transparency and engagement to organizations/donors and your vote can help us win $35,000 to continue helping projects doing amazing field work.

What do I need to do?

Ok, yes you have to register and give your email address. And yes it takes 5 minutes out of your day…BUT…

I’ve poured my heart and soul into this project… I quit my job and burned through my savings to help non-profits get their message across. And I’m not asking for your money, just your vote so I can get funded by someone else.

Besides we’re already in the TOP 4 and really need your support to push us through to win and take our project to the next level!

Already voted once, can you vote here too (this is for $25,000)?

Vote for us at Ideas4all too.

Background Info

Here’s what we built so far, but we need more funding to continue

Live demo: http://myactionmap.org

Want more information on the project? Here it is…

MyActionMap is a service to engage current and prospective donors with the ultimate goal of making them feel like a part of the solution — empowering them to take action in their own community.

Projects are searchable by region and issue. This allows new projects and people to be discovered and connected. And knowledge and resources shared. Our service can also be embedded on other sites which is especially useful to orgs that lack the resources themselves.

We are already working with over 30 organizations, but need to continue application development.

I want to apologize for taking such a hiatus from blogging. A lot has changed since I last blogged back in May. I sold all my stuff, spent a month driving across the country with my brother, and started a social venture of my own.

I have so many things to write about, but right now I feel that my time is best spent focusing my skills on creating positive change through development.

So a few months ago I thanked everyone for voting during the Change the Web Challenge.  After I won, I wanted to take that Social Interactive Map and make it real.  And MyActionMap was born.

So what is MyActionMap?

Organizations are doing amazing work on the ground. Unfortunately many of these projects go relatively unnoticed because of a lack of resources. To make matters worse, donors on the other end feel out of touch because of a lack of engagement. This ends now.

MyActionMap is an open platform for organizations to create that emotional connection that their donors have been waiting for. Through progress updates, photos and video organizations can engage with the people in more meaningful ways. People will feel empowered by this transparency and direct contact, and will therefore want to self-organize in their community around certain issues and causes.

Instead of reinventing the wheel, we are leveraging technologies that already exist (facebook, youtube, etc.) and only building the ones that don’t.

The goals of this project include:

As I grow the team I hope to have more time for blogging.  There are so many things to discuss…

For now here’s a sneak peek at the product:

http://myactionmap.org (use code:  ”socialgood”)

It came as quite a shock. I suppose there was no better channel for finding out than twitter — the same service that gave me the opportunity in the first place. Twitter connected me with great social entrepreneurs such as @christineegger, @peterdeitz and @engagejoe who introduced me to the Change the Web Challenge in the first place.

But, before I get into the “what next?” I want to thank all my friends, both old and new, for their support! I’d also like to thank the panel of 8 judges who see the same potential with this idea that I do.

See the demo

Here’s what others are saying about the Social Actions Map:

Since the NTEN conference in San Francisco earlier this week social change has received a lot of positive feedback.

“This application has the potential to be a bridge between online and offline actions - the holy grail of organizers”, said Beth Kanter, Change the Web Judge and Scholar in Residence for Nonprofits and Social Media at the Packard Foundation. “Linking actions with geographic information visually shown on a map could be a powerful stimulus to facilitate self-organizing groups of individuals who care about an issue and want to do something about it in a particular location.”

“inspiring”

- Chris Anderson, TED Conference curator

Also featured in:
triplepundit: Philanthropy in Five
The Huffington Post
Mashable
TreeHugger
PSFK - News, Trends, and Ideas for Inspiration
Pop!Tech
The Vancouver Sun
Idealist
Causewired
Social Actions Blog
Grist
Fundraising Success Magazine

Forget what I did, we need a bottom-up approach

There has been a lot of talk about location information.  The reason why its such a hot topic is because the majority of the social actions don’t have this infomation.  I’m using fancy entity extractors and the geonames database to add this layer.  Many have asked if I would build and document a way for others to get at this data too.  However, this is not the right approach!

I knew it would be powerful and engaging to see actions tied to a place — especially if its near you and your community.  I also love the intriguing factor of keeping people guessing on how locations can be shown if the API doesn’t provide it for all actions? However, the real intention of this mashup was to encourage 50+ platforms to start asking for more information themselves.  The effort has to be a bottoms-up approach.  Although my technique is about 85% accurate it misses some locations or gets too many and can’t determine which it should use (although I try my best to make thoughtful attempts).

We need to all put pressure on these platforms to get this information from the users themselves.  That is the only way for 100% accuracy.  Even better — we might be able to persuade the platforms to adopt standards like iCal (events, time ranges) and FOAF (to show social graph relationships).

What can we expect from the Action Map v2?

In the recent months I have grew frustrated with the lack of transparency provided by many superb non-governmental organizations (NGOs).  It’s a real shame that the efforts and impact that many NGOs are doing are going relatively unnoticed.  We need to change this.

Second, there is a lack of engagement between NGOs and potential donors.  I don’t know the numbers, but I could take a guess that the same donors are coming back (hopefully), but what about new faces?  I believe with transparency comes engagement (more or less).

Third, verification.  This is what has still left me quite dumbfounded.  When NGOs share their efforts how can this be confirmed?  Can the community do this?  A separate entity?  I’m still unsure.

The main goal going forward though is to bring more attention to the people and organizations that are really making a positive impact on this world.  And to those organizations that are inefficient and wasteful — I hope I put fire under your butt to either change your wasteful ways or file for Chapter 11.

Got ideas?  Like to brainstorm?  I’d love to hear from you!

A few weeks ago I embarked on a challenge to build a web application that uses data from a variety of volunteer services (like Kiva.org, VolunteerMatch, GlobalGiving, etc.).

People are volunteering, donating, signing petitions, making loans and doing other social actions as we speak — all over the world.  My goal was to display this information in such a way that would nudge people to take action immediately.  It is quite powerful to see someone taking action in your neighborhood right now!  Or perhaps your heart lies in Ghana?  You can see actions, like petitions, donations, and new small businesses asking for small loans in Ghana at this very second.

See the application yourself

And I won at the NTEN Change the Web Challenge!

I entered into a competition with a grand prize of $5,000.  This would help me to continue building this project.  And surprisingly… I won!

Read about where I’m taking this application next!

As I exposed myself to more information, shock than discomfort settled in. I couldn’t understand how our values are so deeply rooted in consumerism and our desire to have the best this or the newest that. Sure that is what drives our economy, but what happened to being rooted in connection-ism?  I decided to try to affect change the best way I knew how. Being a software developer I have some skill in developing web applications. I decided to spend an intense 48 hours cranking out code. When the dust settled I got imdoingmypart.org. I can’t say I hit the mark, but its a start.

As I dug deeper into this space I came across several other people doing wonderful things. There is a major effort under way to create positive change in this world. It may be somewhat disconnected, but that may be okay as everyone goes about it in the way they know how. I hope in the coming months we can help each other to further grow. Anyone that believes there efforts are inline with the efforts here, please don’t hesitate to contact me! I would love to integrate what I’m doing here with yours!

I really would love to hear what you think of my latest project… please comment below!

48 hours of development
12 hours of design
20 hours gathering content
Hoping to create positive change… priceless.

check it out:
im doing my part .org

I believe that people are willing to make small changes to their daily lives if they knew the impact it would have.  In order for my idea to work, ultimately I need to motivate you.

So I want to pose this question — what would motivate you to be socially responsible this year?

Here are a couple of my answers:

• seeing the measureable impact I’m making (e.g. by carrying my own thermos I have saved 100 lbs of trash this year).
• see how I’m part of the solution (e.g. because of your thermos carrying and the rest of the community, we saved 120 tons of trash this year).
• receive an e-mail every other week checking in on the changes I’ve promised to make (from the web application or perhaps other friends can get on you if you begin to slip).
• printable checklists to make sure I’m doing what I’ve said

Now it’s your turn… comment below (don’t be shy for those of my friends unfamiliar with blogs). 

Based on where the world is with the recession, I believe the US is further along than the rest of the world.  Therefore I will focus most of my portfolio on US funds.  As for the split between small, mid and large caps — I am on the fence.  For one, recessions seem to “trim the fat” in the sense that businesses with real opportunity, business models, liquid — fail.  The credit crisis also put additional pressure on these companies already strapped for money.  I believe there are innovations to be since in this sector, so I won’t turn my back on it, but I surely won’t focus on this area.  The large caps seem to be getting lots of the action (e.g. bail out money).  Many of them have fallen down dramatically even though they have proven to be good businesses (Johnson and Johnson, Coca Cola, etc.).  I will put extra focus on this group.

I’ve also neglected the “bonds” side of things.  I felt that I could be more aggressive (at 24) and so I went 100% in stocks.  (Note: I do have cash, but we’re talking about the 401k here).  However, I want to change that and add some stable value to my portfolio.  To do that I’m grabbing some of my companies stable value fund.

Here’s the full breakdown: