Posts tagged foyble’s favorite links
Administrating the GIVE: A quick update on the blog
May 6th
Hey, look in the menu right under the header. We added a new page: a collection of resources for those of you interested in becoming a compassionate capitalist. Please check it out and submit your ideas for the page to us via email: contact@foyble.com
~Beej
(that picture is your friend Jerry live-blogging during the cafe experiment last year. I’m pretty sure that is approximately what I looked like while creating the new page.)
Four ideas for starting the GIVE on spring break
Mar 24th
It’s spring break time! When I was younger this meant something different than it means to me now. These days, I’m excited to see the crocuses blooming, pining to get my garden planted, and enjoying pretending that 57 degree weather makes me happy.
I have three kids. They are five, three, and 6 months old. Next year, my wife and I will have to schedule our vacation around SCHOOL. This blows my mind of course. But many of you already have kids in school and are used to waiting until spring break to vacation with your family. So we thought we would think about how you can spend your precious spring break time with your family but not lose track of the give while you’re out and about. More >
The internet depends on random acts of kindness to function
Oct 20th
I am always looking for new ways of describing to people what foyble is. Of course I have my trusty talking points. I deploy my elevator speech whenever possible (but rarely on actual elevators). I refer people to the what is foyble tab on the website. And we love bragging about the what is foyble video. We frequently like to use metaphor and analogy in our description of what we think foyble is and what it means to us.
During my research for what was going to be a post about some random act of kindness in the news I came across the below imbedded video. It is a talk by Jonathan Zittrain from this year’s TED conference. Jonathan is a Law Professor who teaches at Harvard. Read more about him on his bio page on the TED website.
It turns out the internet itself is the perfect metaphor for foyble. There is a lot of content that is produced, police-ed, and proliferated on the internet by people and organizations that have no obvious benefit for contributing to the content. Wikipedia is the most obvious example of this. The video contains some nice examples of how Wikipedia works. It drives home the notion of user generated content and demonstrates just how deeply involved the people who contribute to Wikipedia are.
Jonathan’s premise that the internet depends on one random act of kindness after another to function fits in nicely with what we believe the internet is. We believe that the internet is people. That despite all the popular criticisms of the internet- that it is filled with spam, and pornography, and viruses, and opinions disguised as news- that it really is just a fantastic interactive content generation mechanism that everyone owns. And since we all own it we all get to decide what content gets posted. And if we can’t decide what gets posted we at least get to help decide what is popular.
So that’s why we created foyble, because you should be able to use the internet to tell the world about your story, about your organization, and what you’re doing so that people can be inspired by the good that you’re trying to start.
Zittrain ends with a quote that I’ll take some license with and mash together just a little for effect: “the internet isn’t just a pile of information. it’s not a noun, its a verb. …that information is saying something to you…it’s saying: let’s march.” I like that. Help us help you use the internet to do your marching.
posted by Brian
Three websites foyble likes
Oct 14th
Note: from time to time we will post about websites that we like for one reason or another. When we do, we’ll post the links to the ‘links’ page on the blog. So don’t worry about not being able to find these links later, they will live forever on the links page.
Here at foyble HQ we spend a lot of time trying to learn exactly what is going on in the world of giving. We are also frequently trying to find other organizations that can inspire US or that might want to work with us to inspire others. Rather than keep all that information to ourselves we thought it might be a good idea to share with you what we’ve found. So here is our first installment of ‘websites foyble likes’. Feel free to suggest other sites for us to check out in the comments.
www.freehugscampaign.org
is a site devoted to spreading good cheer through free hugs. There is no need for us to ruin the story of how this guy got started here. But it’s a fun site. The story of his start is front and center with a YouTube video on the front page. There are t-shirts available if you’re really into it and there is a link to an e-book described as “an illustrated guide with over 40 illustrations”. We haven’t checked that out yet but it’s on our short list.
www.swapaskill.com The tag line on the home page of the website says: “swap what you can give or can do for what you need. Get what you want- do something you’re good at, or give something you don’t need”. The site is a marketplace for goods and skills for trade- a great concept. But the creators of the site also have paying forward in mind. On their “about” page their is a nice story about the creator of the site’s father and how he used to like helping out a local fisherman. Clearly, the spirit of the GIVE is in this place. Check them out!
http://www.hopecoins.com/
This site has a concept that is very similar to foybles but they use physical coins to track the goodwill. Users can order FREE ‘hope coins’ (“just pay shipping”). The coins have codes on them that, once registered, can be tracked. Once you get your coins, do a good deed and tell the story. The hope is that the recipient of the deed acts in kind and you can see what’s happening with your coin in the world. They also have lots of great ideas for good will on each page- the two that I noticed while browsing: bake goodies for the police/fire stations in your town and trade numbers at the deli counter if you notice someone who is in a hurry and you have a better number than them. Obviously we love this concept- check them out!
posted by Brian
