One of my favorite people in the zone of Social Media-meets-idealism, Nancy Lublin of Do Something introduces 3 trends to watch in 2010 for the use of Social Media for activism:

1- Crowdsourced philanthropy enables “the crowd” to decide to whom organizations and companies grant money. As the advisor of both Chase Community Giving and Pepsi Refresh campaigns, Lublin knows the power of this new model. As for Pepsi, they have decided to ditch the expensive SuperBowl ads and instead introduce an online project, where people can submit ideas and vote for others.

2- SMS fundraising: Texting to give has proven powerful during the Haiti crisis, where people have been able to donate money via text messaging. This model might have upset a few parents along the way as the generous children rarely pay the mobile phone bill themselves, Lublin says.

3- Slacktivism is the idea of clicking to give online. The concept has suffered from negative connotations, but Lublin says that the quick and easy way to make a difference appeals to the younger generations.

Matthew Bishop of The Economist gives his take on the 3 hottest issues being discussed in the hallways of the Congress Center in Davos this week:

1- The banking sector: Will we be able to regulate the banking system to help the world economy instead of destroying it?

2- Haiti: How can we rebuild Haiti as a working country?

3- International aid: How will governments deal with aid and debt as they come out of a financial crises?

Bishop also talks about the general feeling and attitude towards the world economy. Unlike the previous two years, the world leaders now agree that it is time to move forward and make the necessary changes, he says.

But are the current economic leaders capable of doing that? This is really the main thing that has to be proven in Davos, he says.

In conclusion, Matthew made a shameless promotion of his book: “The Road From Ruin”. Now available at all fine bookstores.

As someone who has been fortunate enough to have been invited to attend the WEF annual meeting in Davos for many years, I can say it would be a tremendously powerful platform for any startup to be present.

Criteria:

1. Innovation
2. Sustainablity (in terms of business model, funding)
3. Proof of concept (more than just an idea)
4. Quality of management team (we bring one of them to Davos!)
5. Impact (not something too niche)

The advantages, as detailed on the WEF site:

Technology Pioneers are invited to participate in the activities of the World Economic Forum, including the Annual Meeting of New Champions and potentially the Annual Meeting in Davos-Klosters. These Meetings are the two premier international events bringing together leaders of business and government from around the world, providing an opportunity for Technology Pioneers to interact with the World’s foremost thought leaders and trend .

For this reason, the Technology Pioneers will definitely be invited to the Annual Meeting of New Champions for two consecutive years, and they will be potentially invited to the Annual Meeting in Davos should the Forum consider that the programme reflects the interests of the company.

Recipients of this distinction get worldwide media coverage at the time of recipient list publication. In past years, Time, BusinessWeek and Forbes have regularly profiled all or a selected group of Technology Pioneers.

Post your pitch here or send me an email: thomas at crampton dot com. (I do not make the selection, but have been asked to forward names of possible candidates)

Net, a friend who also works for Facebook, described how Israel’s politicians were the latest to use Facebook Connect prominently.

For those searching for a job, Reid gave a few tips on how to work with social networking sites:

Digital Self-branding: The important thing today is how you brand yourself on the Internet. Its good to be careful not only about how you establish profile but also how you run it on social networks. One of the things we do for you is we actually try to SEO your profile, so that people will Google you. Managing reputational information is that if you have an embarrassing picture it will be hidden because the LinkedIn profile is found first.

Endorsements: You should get some of your friends to recommend you, so you have recommendations there.

Brands and social networks:

At LinkedIn, we use our polling tool to allow people to run market surveys on specifically defined target audiences. When a car company like Mazda advertises and asks which of these characteristics you like the most in a car. From out polling tool, when you click on it, our polling product actually shows them how many people in a region, or how many senior professionals or how many from the Internet industry have said what about their brand.

One of the ways blogging is described is that it is essentially to establish your brand for conversation. Its another way of saying that o.k. I put my brand in a place where people are actually congregating, communicating.

Facebook has these fan pages. They say this is an area they like and this is a soft drink they like. They are treating a brand as another virtual friend.

Jeff Jarvis – who thinks that the Davos crowd really does not appreciate how much trust in them has slipped.

Richard Edelman of Edelman PR – describes the details of the report.

Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times, who says we should continue to trust financial journalists. (He points out that some of the FT’s reporters were writing about the vulnerabilities in the financial system long before the markets tanked).

In fact, this year at Davos he celebrated his 40th birthday in the piano bar with Richard Branson, more than 100 grandees and magnums of champagne liberally flowing.

For some reason Rich insists on calling me T-bone, often shouting across rooms crowded with CEOs and world leaders. He claims the nickname is a term of endearment.

“No self-respecting person from the part of Detroit where I grew up is called ‘Thomas’,” Rich explains. “You gotta have a nickname. A tough nickname.”

Um, gee, ah, thanks Rich.

Barry Colson has played at the piano bar for 12 years during the WEF meeting and seen more than his share of late-night scandals, including prominent people who seem to love dancing on top of his piano.

Sadly, he only shared one specific name: Actor Chris Tucker sang with Barry a few years ago. The most requested song by WEF attendees? Robby Williams’ Feel.

To save you the cost of a hotel room and airplane ticket, Matthew Bishop of The Economist kindly summarized what he found after a week in the Swiss mountains.

Mainly, it was pretty depressing and will likely get worse!

He has a great sense of humor, outlook and fantastic new book that I read on the flight back to Hong Kong: What Would Google Do?

In his book, Jeff does an intellectual road test of what a variety of industries would do, if invented from the ground up by Google.

This is a photo taken by Jeff in Davos of just such a concept, advertising supported toilet paper. The next stage should be individually targeted advertising supported toilet paper. Install a dot-matrix printer in each stall and you’re in business, so to speak.

Not convinced you should buy the book? Check out this video interview of Jeff about his book.

Disclosure: I just signed up to the Amazon associates program, so I would get a small amount (15%, I think) if you buy the book. I wonder how much Jeff makes on the sale of each book. I imagine it is about the same, but he did a lot more work.

Speakers included the schoolchildren, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Richard Branson and Peter Gabriel, who sang Biko a capella.

Hearing Desmond Tutu speak was an incredible experience. I have rarely seen someone captivate and hold an audience with such simplicity, humility and light heartedness.

At the end of the event Peter Gabriel led the entire room in singing his tribute to Steve Biko.

Government leaders are feeling pushed towards protectionism while business leaders fear protectionism will hurt their business.

Who will win?

Lamy said he is neither optimist, nor pessimist, but activist.

When I asked whether he thought Social Media could help bring about world peace, he suggested I ask Barack Obama.

Sadly, Obama is not here in Davos, so will have to wait on that question.

Now based in New York, Nora has lived in Egypt, doing Middle Eastern studies at the American University in Cairo and later working in Business Development and Corporate Marketing for a Kuwaiti company.

Jarvis is also consulting editor of news startup Daylife and was the Creator and founding editor of Entertainment Weekly. Before getting passionate about the new media, he was a critic for TV Guide and People.

In order to truly know Jeff, one needs look no further than his comprehensive list of disclosures.

Wolf wrote The Entertainment Economy: How Media Forces Are Transforming Our Lives (1999).

As a non-musical person, this quest for the meaning of music has become a bit of a crusade. I asked the same of the Chinese composer Chou Wen-Chung.

The video is much better value, but here is a compressed resume of our discussion. (Which concluded with my opening question unanswered!)

Music is wonder, magic, life, without the limitations of words.
Music expresses emotion without the brain betraying the heart.
Music does not have the limitations of language because it is free of words.
Music allows you to communicate through time, allowing a composer from hundreds of years ago to move us to tears.
Don’t expect anything from music, just let it take you to places in your soul that you didn’t know existed.
We sometimes cry while listening to music and we don’t even know why.
Sometimes music just touches a string of the soul that needed to be released or relaxed.
The more you know the work and the composer, the more powerful the impact of the music.
The beauty of performing is that your relationship with the work changes as you change.
At the same time, music is close to science and based on mathematical ratios.
Why is it that Mozart’s requiem has such a profound effect on its listeners?
I don’t think we can really know what music is.

Van Jones, a green economy activist and founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, describes how US corn ethanol subsidies have created a dangerous perversion of the food prices.

The great ethanol swindle:
Ethanol is supposed to saves the environment by offering a renewable source of energy (corn and sugar), but the truth about ethanol’s impact is far more complex.

Corn ethanol is inefficient
Jones explains that due to the fertilizer inputs for growing corn, the energy consuming conversion to ethanol and low output of usable fuel from corn, corn-based ethanol is not an efficient means of producing fuel. Corn-based ethanol’s return is roughly on a one-to-one basis, meaning that you are only getting out the same amount of energy you are putting in. By contrast, sugar-based ethanol produces something like ten times as much energy as it takes to create. The US is not, however, a good zone for growing sugar cane.

Linking food and fuel hurts the poor
By offering American farmers another market for selling corn besides food, ethanol subsidies more tightly link food to the price of oil and other fuels. The result is that rising fuel prices create a direct demand for corn, thus increasing the price of a basic food material. Jones cited Mexico’s food riots last January as a precursor to what we will see in the future. Angered at the rising price of tortillas, tens of thousands of Mexican’s took to the streets in protest. To draw an extreme image from Jones’ thinking: The poor will starve while the rich drive cars fueled by food.

Sugar ethanol also has risks
While sugar ethanol offers a far greater energy output than corn-based ethanol, there are environmental risks: A rise in the price of sugar cane could inspire Brazilian farmers to cut down more rain forest to grow sugar cane.

Technorati Tags: ella baker, ellabakercenter, ethanol, food, food prices, poor, van jones, vanjones

In this video, Leslie Maasdorp and I speak about the program we just attended that Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government created for the World Economic Forum‘s Young Global Leaders.

Entitled Global Leadership and Public Policy for the 21st Century, the program has been described by the World Economic Forum and written about by Harvard, so this takes the participant’s perspective.

Intended for those members of the YGL community considering the program, I invite other attendees to add comments that would help those considering the program this Spring.

Previous YGL postings can be seen here.

Thomas Crampton:

I found the program highly intense and extremely rewarding on several levels:

1- Knowledge: The Kennedy School gathered a range of A-team of faculty from across Harvard and MIT to present great overviews of issues ranging from global security and climate change to trade and demographics.

2- Skills: The Kennedy School brought in professors from at least three business schools (Harvard, Wharton and Stanford) to work on a variety of skills from negotiation and improved decision-making to the skills needed for creating and leading a team.

3- Participants: As in every YGL gathering, the participants themselves are a highlight. Really great group of people, each of whom has more than one amazing story.

Jennifer Corriero:

This program was incredible!

Through the many presentations and interactive sessions, we have been exposed to such a diverse range of perspectives on the problems facing our world today – with an underlying sense of hope in our capacity shape the future. The power of our individual and collective leadership is yet to be fully realized – and I know that coming together as a community has been an important step in a critical process of change.

Let’s continue to learn and grow together!

Technorati Tags: Davos, Harvard, ksg, Leslie Maasdorp, WEF, World Economic Forum, ygl, Young Global Leaders