The Search for Authentic
February 28th, 2008 by Chantelle Oliver in Web 2.0 Museum
RUFFIN, NC—As I roamed the Blue Ridge Parkway today, I fell back into my last trip here. One week together for three girlfriends. For one of us, it was the final road trip of her life. Our beloved friend had breast cancer. When she died it crushed her community of friends and family. She was so damn young. She was so good. This was the worst thing. Why can’t we stop it.
Returning to this place will forever remind me of rolling through the loopy, tidy roads with her giggling; of thrift shopping and being inspired by her. To honour her memory I have rousted out some relevant change-the-world Web 2.0 stuff.
The Frozen Pea Fund: On February 8, Twitter users had the opportunity to help raise money for breast cancer research. A supportive twitterer could change their profile picture to an image of frozen peas to spread the message about breast cancer. The project was inspired by Susan Reynolds who used frozen peas to soothe herself during her cancer treatment. The results provoked one blogger to describe Twitter as “authentic social media.”
Good2gether is a potentially huge networking platform for non-profits to realize their mission statements through connecting vertically and horizontally all facets of a social justice enterprise. Similar group networking potential (not necessarily social justice-oriented) might be realized in Google Sites (formerly Jotspot) which should be launched by the time this gets posted. While it lacks the explicit social justice frameworks Good2gether has, it has the benefit of the sophisticated wiki software that Jotspot developed.
Finally, dreaming of using text to battle the avian flu, Instedd wants to use new technologies to do good. For example the Mekong Collaboration Program (MCP) combines biosurveillance and text to prevent disease outbreak. Of course Twitter (I’m obsessed!) has had much press about its use as a disaster reporting/prevention tool as well. It’s speed and cell-web brevity was useful during the 2007 San Diego firestorms.
Thinktank nerds are neck deep debating Twitter as a tool for non-profit work. I’m waiting for my invite code.
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Posted on Thursday, February 28th, 2008 at 12:00 pm. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.
March 1st, 2008 at 11:56 am
You forgot the best Web 2.0 organization for saving the world (and they have the ills that afflicted your friend squarely in their sites): FUCK DEATH (http://www.fuckdeath.org/). That’s right, they are telling death to Fuck Off! They even have a letter to death, telling death, in no uncertain terms, to fuck off, that we’re done with death. No more.