Launch of RSA Digital Champions

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Charlotte Britton on May 21, 2012 at 10:14

Jemima - for the online event for the 29th - will the notes on how to join be emailed closer to the time?

Permalink Reply by Matthew Kálmán Mezey on May 21, 2012 at 21:56

> The first RDC Social, "What can the RSA learn from IBM's BlueIQ Ambassadors?" will take place on Tuesday 29 May, 6-8pm. We’re thrilled that our first guest speaker will be Stuart McCrae, Executive Collaboration and Social Business Evangelist at IBM.

If you're interesting in coming to the social/event on 29th May - with IBM social media evangelist Stuart MacRae (and learning more about the RSA's digital champions network) please RSVP: matthew.mezey@rsa.org.uk

We plan for a face-to-face meeting in London - with the possibility for those who can't get to London attending virtually - using a Google Hangout.

Matthew

Permalink Reply by Jemima Gibbons on May 24, 2012 at 16:52

Yes - I think Matthew is going to email everyone.

Charlotte Britton said:

Jemima - for the online event for the 29th - will the notes on how to join be emailed closer to the time?

Permalink Reply by Robin Houghton on June 1, 2012 at 10:56

Jemima - many thanks to you and Matthew for setting this up, I really enjoyed the evening. I still need to get familiar with the different forums/networks here, on LinkedIn and the Ning community which I haven't even been to yet... but would like to be a 'digital champion' if you'll have me. I look forward to contributing something useful in due course.

Permalink Reply by Matthew Kálmán Mezey on June 1, 2012 at 11:15

Hi Robin,

Thanks for blogging about Tuesday's 'Digital Champions' event with Stuart McCrae :-)

Here's Robin's tweet, for others who didn't see it:

Blog post - takeaways from @smcrae about IBM's Blue IQ program on Tues -http://bit.ly/L1ZWZp Thks for organising @matthewmezey & @jemimag

Matthew

Permalink Reply by Jemima Gibbons on June 7, 2012 at 17:05

Hi Robin,

Brilliant - we're thrilled to have you on board! I'll make sure Matthew adds you to the list.

Robin Houghton said:

Jemima - many thanks to you and Matthew for setting this up, I really enjoyed the evening. I still need to get familiar with the different forums/networks here, on LinkedIn and the Ning community which I haven't even been to yet... but would like to be a 'digital champion' if you'll have me. I look forward to contributing something useful in due course.

Permalink Reply by Jeff Mowatt on June 12, 2012 at 5:22

I'm a little perturbed to read the term social business in this context. The network I started on Linkedin 4 years ago on social business takes the definition from Muhammad Yunus of a non loss, non dividend distributing business with a primary social aim. What IBM refer to is social media business.

 That's not to say that it isn't part of the business for social purpose. As you''l see from our work in Eastern Europe for example, it's linked with childcare reform and microenterprise development. One of the impacts from this work was to see a national scale rollout of wireless broadband a year after submission. The greater impact however was from the childcare reform component.  

Otherwise, as a software business for social purpose we might well be digital ambassadors. 

       

Permalink Reply by Jemima Gibbons on June 12, 2012 at 9:00

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for raising a really valid point, and one that as you're no doubt aware has been hotly debated in the social media sector, and otherwise, since social software came to the fore. I blogged about this a while back, and concluded that, to my mind, social business (as social media consultants define it) and social business (as social entrepreneurs see it), are two sides of the same coin. They are both about putting people first. And ethical and environmental concerns are fundamental to any people-centric approach.

Also, it is hard to push against a wave - this was the conclusion reached by David Terrar, who was adamantly against using the term "social business" for the reasons you mention: he writes a great summary of the debate here, showing why he eventually changed his mind.

I hope this helps explain why RSAde (and, indeed, IBM) use the term with reference to social media.

 

Permalink Reply by Jeff Mowatt on June 12, 2012 at 10:05

Indeed it has Jemma, with myself taking part. I hadn't heard of David before today.

You're right that we're attempting to push against a wave. An interesting anecdote from our founder is that in 1996 after his paper on business with social purpose began to circulate on the campus at UNC, a couple of young turks from IBM showed up in a local restaurant to confront and deconstruct the idea. They'd seen it as a threat to capitalism, they didn't succeed.  

As I realised recently we'd addressed this argument 4 years ago, in an article pointing out the limits of technology only approaches, to deal with the bottom of the pyramid. 

"The corporations involved in this almost fantastical deployment of the machines and communications infrastructure that we now rely on profited for themselves and their shareholders, and certainly produced social and economic benefit around the world. Those efforts were and are so profound in influence as to transform human civilization itself. That is the Information Revolution, and it is nothing short of astonishing.

So it is safe to say that all these players in the Information Revolution -- the enterprises that created it -- have engendered almost immeasurable social benefit by way of connecting people of the world together and giving us opportunity to communicate with each other, begin to understand each other, and if we want, try to help each other.

It is that last phrase -- "try to help each other" -- which is what the phrase "social enterprise" is getting at. As Bill Gates said in 2000, "poor people don't need computers." and rejected a business approach to alleviating poverty. That statement served to mark the clear distinction between what traditional capitalism did and did not do. Gates' aim at that time was to profit from people who could afford his company's products, while those who couldn't were largely or completely ignored. That has been the accepted limit of traditional capitalism. It has been a marvelous means of social benefit and economic advancement for many people. Nevertheless, those excluded are just left out.

The term "social enterprise" in the various but similar forms in which it is being used today -- 2008 -- refers to enterprises created specifically to help those people that traditional capitalism and for profit enterprise don't address for the simple reason that poor or insufficiently affluent people haven't enough money to be of concern or interest. Put another way, social enterprise aims specifically to help and assist people who fall through the cracks. Allowing that some people do not matter, as things are turning out, allows that other people do not matter and those cracks are widening to swallow up more and more people. Social enterprise is the first concerted effort in the Information Age to at least attempt to rectify that problem, if only because letting it get worse and worse threatens more and more of us. Growing numbers of people are coming to understand that "them" might equal "me." Call it compassion, or call it enlightened and increasingly impassioned self-interest. Either way, we are all in this together, and we will each have to decide for ourselves what it means to ignore someone to death, or not."

     

   

Permalink Reply by Viv Long-Ferguson on October 1, 2012 at 10:32

Hi 

We are looking for a digital champion for Wales.  If the DE group know of an active online Fellow who would be keen to be a digital champion it would be useful for them to get in touch.

Vivs