We create the stories of the connected society

NOTE:  We asked each of our 2009 Game Changers Awards Finalists to write about their projects, what they’ve learned along the way and what’s next.  This essay was written by Sara Bordo, Senior Vice President, Marketing of SocialVibe.

SocialVibe believes that empowering people to leverage their influence online can create positive impact for themselves, their brands, [...]

NOTE: We asked each of our 2009 Game Changers Awards finalists to write about their projects, what they’ve learned along the way and what’s next. This essay is by Sandra Ekong, founder, COO & Creative Director of Beanstockd.
Changing the Game for Online Games and Environmentalism
Quick stats before we get started:
Who we are. Pop [...]

URL: www.borninseptember.org
What: A former New York City club hopper and party promoter finds purpose in bringing clean drinking water to Africa, and changes the game for cause marketing by cleverly combining powerful photo and video story-telling with social networking for good.
Nominated for: Social Impact, Pattern Change, Story-telling
Rate here:  Born in September

URL: http://www.freewheelinwaytogo.com
What: Bike sharing was a hit when launched in Paris in 2007. It was cheap, convenient and eco-friendly. End of story? Not so fast. A U.S. health insurer changed the game and wrote a new story. Humana promotes its business agenda – lower health care costs – through a state-of-the-art bike sharing program tested [...]

URL: hub.witness.org
People: Peter Gabriel and others
What: Peter Gabriel’s Witness was a visionary game changer when it was created a decade ago: putting cameras in the hands of ordinary people to document and bring world attention to human rights issues. Its video sharing web site, Witness Hub, leaps forward by networking digital photographers and videographers. The [...]

Bono is a rock star musician. Jeffrey Sachs is a rock star economist. This week, they were also bloggers for FT.com. Read their posts and you can see clearly how people with passion and purpose can produce journalism that stands out from the routine, gutless reporting we’ve been indoctrinated to view as normal and right.

If you’re bored with the talking heads, check out the action on the streets of St. Paul. Police there conducted “a pre-emptive strike against disruptive protests” ahead of the Republican National Convention, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Liliana Segura writes for AlterNet that the raids targeted video activists.
Which leads to at least one riddle [...]

Newspapers are failing, and my friend and advisor Alan Webber knows why: the problem isn’t technology, shifting business models, the rise of social networks or all the other excuses newspaper executives like to talk about. The problem is lousy products.
From Alan’s Nov. 13, 2006 post:
What’s happened, I think, is that newspapers have stopped asking the [...]