We Media’s Brian Reich and I were wondering, based on the Game Changer Award winners, what would be the attributes that would not only win today’s Pitch It! presenters some of the available funding, but also see them be the Game Changers a couple/few years from now.
A few things have marked the Game Changers, based both on our case studies and some observations at the conference Wednesday:
- Ignite the Spark of Motivation. Inspire people. SocialVibe, a Game Changer, showed a video with excited participants from their community saying things like “I helped build a well in Kenya,” and constantly talked about how powerful they felt by being able to make contributions through charity just by writing content and posting SocialVibe’s advertising widget.
- Crowd Forging. Not only asking questions, and suggesting people come, but actually bringing them together, getting them to give their greatest assets: Time, Money, Passion, Energy. Shape a crowd, as much as assemble it. Listen to what it wants, and give the people more of it. (Corollary: It’s not about the technology. It’s the people, stupid.)
- The ability to do good while also making money. Holding both capitalist and social ideas in their heads (and their business models) at the same time.
- Play. Or, in the words of We Media co-founder Dale Peskin, “Play will be to the 21st century what work was to the industrial age.”
- It has to be more than “lipstick on a bulldog.” Don’t just repackage an old idea.
- Get in the game. Just do it. Don’t argue about the rules, the procedures, all the points. Game Changer Ze Frank brought us that one: “Sometimes what we do with all the media at our disposal is argue about the rules of the game, rather than play it.”
Hope that helps. (And for your copy editory types: yes, I know the bullets aren’t in parallel construction. So be it.)
Dorian Benkoil is the founder and principal of Teeming Media, a digital media content, publishing and strategic consultancy. He hosts “Naked Media,” which you can watch at NakedMedia.org.