Blogging and Social Enterpreneurship

This whole blog thing is fascinating, and still a bit mysterious to me.

Is it narcissism, ego, the most democratic form of publishing, educational, what?

Does anyone really care about my daily thoughts enough to come back and read them more than once (besides my mother)?

Do I care about others enough to do the same? Or is this really a big mutual exhibitionist exercise?

Honestly, the jury is still out, for me.

For a test, I went surfing today for blogs in my field, Social Entrepreneurship. SE refers to the efforts of some people to create entrepreneurial organizations and companies to bring innovative solutions to societal problems.

Social entrepreneurs work in both the nonprofit and forprofit sectors and examples of their work are familiar to all of us: Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry's brought social advocacy to consumer products, Paul Newman of Newman's Own showed that a forprofit company can devote itself to charitable purposes, Habitat for Humanity has had incredible impact on low-income housing through its low-cost volunteerism model, and last but not least, the big kahuna this year, Muhammed Yunus of the Grameen Bank, has proven that microlending can develop real wealth and independence in the developing world, and recently won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his 30+ year effort. There are thousands of other examples and the words and topic are quite hot in business and philanthropy circles right now.

My work concerns both investment and entrepreneurial perspectives on social entrepreneuership. I've invested in them and consulted to them for over 10 years. I teach MBAs about them, help give prize money to promising plans for them, help investors find them, and consult on both around the country and at times around the globe.

And yet, I have done most of my work through in person meetings, reading books, and reading websites, and direct research. Before this week, I had, I'm not sure I have EVER looked at an SE-related blog.

My question was: what exists in blogs that I may not know about or might help me in my work?

Some of the interesting things I found:

From Tribeca to Tanzania - I had previously found the Acumen Fund blog, which they seem to be using as a live newsletter for staff and colleagues to post newsworthy items and thoughts in between their quarterly email newsletters. This is different. This is the online journal of one of their new fellows, who is documenting her learning process in their training program before going to Tanzania to work with one of their SE companies producing anti-malarial bednets. So what's interesting here? She posted the curriculum they ended up creating for the fellows (one of my former students, Eric Cantor, a fabulous guy, was leading that effort) and their guests and topics were impressive. Also interesting are the notes of a very smart young person making sense of all that Acumen can bring to her in understanding the world. Going to a NY strip club, for example, with a social entrepreneur from India working in sex trade trafficking. She has a journalistic writing style, though still personal, that makes for very compelling reading, I thought, for about 10 minutes that I spent there.

The host of her blog is Social Edge. They have about 10 different blogs they host, alongside Keeley's, above, like this one on Scaling. Or this one from Paul Light of NYU, who seems to be using the blog format to post chapters of his paper funded by the Skoll Foundation. Whose idea was that? Why is it better than on a website?

Social Edge the site, which it seems she helped create, is overwhelming in scope. They have bulletin boards on questions that would seem hugely helpful, like how to navigate the legal issues between nonprofits and forprofits and hybrids, but the postings are so random as to be somewhat painful. Still, a good place to peruse when bored. (note: am I ever bored??)

I feel similarly about the Omidyar Network, the uber-blog created by Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, as part of his charitable work. Its subject is all things SE. I have been there before, I realize. And I rarely find things of use.

Oxford Alliance, is run by some guy named Tom, no last name, who id's himself as a social entrepreneur in the UK. He has some good posts on the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship, though his posts reveal some lack of depth in experience with some definitions and ranges of activity within the field. I'd go back, though. Again, for the personal voice and approach. I must like this better than the random community comment board?

My blog search also revealed some SE things that are not blogs, like STVP Educator's Corner, a collection of videos for people like me to use in their classes. Again, useful in a very direct way.

Global Ideas Bank - this looks to have a much more complete summary of the Skoll World Forum, for those interested.

I also found more blogs used as news delivery sites, like 4Nonprofits, or Xigi.net or SocialROI. My research is complete for today as I must actually go do some real work.

I think my conclusion so far is that I like blogs that have a strong personal voice. The ones that are miscellaneous lists or news or questions asking for help seem much less interesting. I do also need to spend a bit more time reading blog responses to posts, but I think my take on that is that they are nececssarily light because there is no internal organization past a simply linear reply that gets posted underneath the last one.

So, that's my 2 cents on blogging for today.