Disqus - Latest Comments for mrbenjohnson

Re: The post where I slayed the personal branding dragon

Ben Johnson — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 10:20:54 -0000

Great blog post! Just the other day I was wondering why I hadn't had a blog post from Trina lately (or it looks like in years).

PS - Avenir is awesome. Be sure to get more of the typeface (like Avenir Medium Condensed).

Re: Twitter’s Wallflowers Get a Little Less Timid. But It’s Still a Service for Watchers, Not Talkers.

Ben Johnson — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:55:08 -0000

5x5's comment is great. I also wanted to point out that I had a bit of a knee jerk reaction when the writer lumped in not making tweets with not searching for them - how is this synonymous?

Re: Expansion!

Ben Johnson — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 13:00:46 -0000

You may notice, if you are extremely observant, that this post is different than any other before it. It's all thanks to Posterous. I am now able to use their service to post to blogs to Tumblr. You may ask why I would use one blog posting service to post to another blog posting service. The answer: Posterous is Tumblr on steroids. I would buy them out if I had money.

Check them out: http://posterous.com

Re: Microvolunteerism Defined

Ben Johnson — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:42:18 -0000

Updated!

Re: Microvolunteerism Defined

Ben Johnson — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:36:19 -0000

Hi Jacob,

Thanks for your feedback! I've emailed you with some follow-up questions. As I said in the email I am definitely open to re-phrasing the blog post and I wouldn't want to give an unfair or grossly incorrect critique.

Cheers,

Re: Killing the Infinite To-Do List

Ben Johnson — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 22:59:01 -0000

Also, I think it's important to find solutions that are good for 500 organizations and not worry about finding THE solution for 500,000. I'd be very happy if no more than 500 organizations were fully active on our site.

Re: Killing the Infinite To-Do List

Ben Johnson — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 22:55:14 -0000

Great response Jayne, thank you. To begin, I agree completely that a marketing pitch saying, "Hey, we've got too much work to do, why not take it off our hands?" is a failed campaign. I think it is critical for anyone involved in strategic planning to separate marketing messages from internal tactics. To your first point I wouldn't say we are promoting the old paradigm at all, but addressing the internal issues organizations face before embracing micro-volunteering.

Micro-volunteering is a very people-driven movement. As you mentioned, with even a little research anyone can see that our society is very pro involvement. However, many grassroots organizations have not shifted their approach to suit the changing desires of volunteers.

Crowd sourcing is similar yet distinct from micro-volunteering. I liken micro-volunteering to the contractor v. employee difference. I as a micro-volunteer participate on a project by project basis instead of the old job based model. Crowd sourcing on the other hand is an exercise in collective intelligence. Ask a question, and receive answers from the entire crowd.

These tools, as your blog point out should not be considered as altruistically as they often are. To have someone get involved, there needs to be an effective system for vetting people (and orgs too!) all the while reducing the time/cost of the volunteer 'transaction'.

Some things we are doing to address this: Profiles (with pictures!), a credit system, a leaderboard, volunteer history, a public discussion board (public promises vs. private), hyper-locality, etc. The Internet has taught many lessons on online collaboration since 1994; However, we'll see if we turn out like VolunteerMatch anyways.

I'd love for you to check out Urbantastic and see how our supporters are already doing great things for our cause (micro-volunteering).