Craigslist Foundation Boot Camp 2009 - Save the Date!

Save the date - June 20, 2009 Craigslist Foundation's 6th Annual Boot Camp Join us at the University of California, Berkeley for a full day packed with community building ideas, tools, and networking, followed by happy hours at local pubs and restaurants. In the spirit of true community , please tell us your ideas for Boot Camp Workshops by taking our very short survey:  Boot Camp Workshop Survey More information and online registration available soon... -The Craigslist Foundation Team P.S. Make the Bay Area your 'Destination for Service' this June - even if you live here!   Consider joining the Corporation for National & Community Service and Bay Area organizations for the 2009 National Conference on Volunteering & Service from June 22nd - 24th in San Francisco.

Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) 2009 Online Webcast

For those who missed out attending the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) last month in Texas, check out the webcast of the Plenary Session.

Watch webcasts of the CGI U Meeting sessions, held at the University of Texas at Austin. This year’s program participants include President Bill Clinton, Natalie Portman, Matthew McConaughey, Paul Begala, and Luke Russert.

What's Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U)?
Each year, CGI U hosts a meeting for students, national youth organizations, and university officials to discuss solutions to pressing global issues. The second CGI U Meeting was held at The University of Texas at Austin from February 13-15, 2009. Nearly one thousand students came together to make a difference in CGI U’s five focus areas: Education, Energy & Climate Change, Global Health, Peace & Human rights, and Poverty Alleviation. To learn more about the CGI U, click here.

TED coming to India in Nov'09.. Look Out!

News is out that TED would be coming to India from Nov 4-7, 2009 in Mysore. Lakshmi Pratury (TED India Director) also announced about the India conference at the TED 2009 Long Beach. I hope more details would be released very soon.

Also, while attending TED 2009 at Long Beach, we got to know about an amazing new program called TED Translated. TED along with support from Nokia will roll out a Translation platform that will enable all its talks to be translated into various languages (Hindi and Tamil included too). Each of the talks would be having subtitles that can be enabled within their website. The platform would also enable users from across the globe to translate the TED Talks into any language and share it within their community. Now this is what will help disseminate the "Ideas worth Spreading" :)

I found a raw video of the TED Translated program:


Another new program to look out for is the TED Fellows program that I was privileged to be a part of this year. The fellows program brings together world-changing innovators from around the globe to become a part of the TED community and, with its help, amplify the impact of their remarkable projects and activities.

The best thing is application process is currently OPEN for the next TED Global Conference in UK and TED is looking out for approximately 25 Fellows to TEDGlobal in Oxford, and 100 fellows to TEDIndia in Mysore.

Applications for TEDGlobal Fellows
Open: March 6, 2009
Due: April 3, 2009

Applications for TEDIndia Fellows
Open: April 20, 2009
Due: June 15, 2009

You can read about the current TED fellows here and APPLY to be considered for the fellowship program.

HYSTA Business Plan Competition Announcement

Message from the HYSTA Emerging Leaders Forum

You are cordially invited to enter a second Business Plan Competition hosted by HYSTA, as part of our Entrepreneur Bootcamp. HYSTA is a prominent Bay Area non-profit organization focusing on promoting entrepreneurship. Just like E-Challenge, our Business Plan Competition provides an excellent platform for you to present your business ideas to Silicon Valley VCs.

Please consider the following benefits of our competition:
- Winner will get a prize of 3-month free rent at Plug and Play Incubator;
- Runners up will get a 50% rent discount for 3-months at Plug and Play;
- Pitch in front of VCs from Accel Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mayfield/GSR Ventures, and Incubic Ventures (seed/early-stage investor);

Since you already have your executive summary ready, why not double your chances of getting VC attention (and eventually funding) by participating in both competition? Our competition is a simple one-day pitch event requiring minimum additional effort, but getting you in front of more top-tier VCs.

To participate in HYSTA Entrepreneur Bootcamp Business Plan Competition, startups should submit a clear, concise two page executive summary to: submit.bootcamp@hysta.us including the following information:
· Company's Name
· Name of the Participant(s)
· Email and Phone Numbers for Each Participant

All Executive Summaries will be handled with high confidentiality.
Example can be downloaded via this link: ES_Template.doc.
Executive Summary Submission Deadline: Midnight, March 1, 2009

The 2009 EBC Competition will be held on Saturday March 14. Please note that the pitch will be in front of an audience of investors and general public, so please plan your presentation accordingly.

Please refer to the following link for full details:
http://sites.google.com/a/hysta.us/bootcamp/call-for-entr...

If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at davidzhuang@stanfordalumni.org

David Zhuang
Co-Director
HYSTA Emerging Leaders Forum

New Media & Blog Camps - Delhi & Bangalore, March 2009

The Indian Blog and New Media Society & IndiBlogger.in are pleased to invite you to the latest editions of the New Media and Blog Camps in March 2009 in Delhi and Bangalore.

What is New Media & Blog Camp?
The event is an unconference where a relevant audience comes together to talk about/ discuss/ rant/ brainstorm/ share opinions on all possible subjects related to new media and blogging. BarCamp style, these are open events where anyone may sign up to attend and choose to speak on a topic of common interest.

This is the second edition of the event in Delhi and the first in Bangalore.

Who is organizing the events?
The event is being organized by the Indian Blog and New Media Society (www.ibnms.com), the umbrella body for this space in India.

Attendees
These events are attended by many kinds of people, each with their own interest in this space. These include, besides others:

• Users, content creators and publishers of new media and blogs
• Individuals and companies providing services in this space
• VCs, Angel Funds and other investors
• Techies
• Journalists looking to or already using new media as an outlet for their work
• Consumers and readers of new media and blog
• PR, Advertising and Communications industry
• Social Media practitioners and users

There is no restriction on anyone participating nor is there an entry fee. Total audience size is expected to be 300, an optimum number to allow for quality discussions.

Schedule
Delhi: March 7
Bangalore: March 14 (and March 15 too probably)

Sessions run from around 10:00 am to 5:00 pm daily. The schedule is drawn up at the last minute as speakers come and pick up an available slot.

Possible Topics to be Covered
The following are some of the broad categories under which speakers will address the audience. This list is not exhaustive, nor restrictive in any way. Speakers are welcome to come forward and select any relevant topic:

• Investment & Monetising New Media & Blog Properties (covering VCs, revenue streams etc.)
• Multimedia
  • Photoblogging including Photo Sharing on sites like Flickr, Snapfish and PhotoFlock
  • Podcasting
  • Vlogging a.k.a. Video Blogging including Video Sharing on sites like YouTube
• Blogging & Platforms
  • WordPress, Blogspot, Live Journal
  • User Generated Sites like TripAdvisor, OkTataByeBye, HolidayIQ, WAYN etc.
  • Regional Language Blogging
  • Moblogging
  • Blogging via mobile
  • Photoblogging & Vlogging via Mobile
  • Tips & Tricks regarding different blog platforms
  • WordPress Plugins
  • Microblogging (Tumblr, Twitter etc.)
• PR and Advertising 2.0
• New Media vs Old Media, Citizen Journalism
• Demo: Come and demonstrate a new product or application
• Social Media
• Basics of New Media and Blogging
• Hardware and Software for the above

Would you like to speak or attend the event?
You are welcome to speak at the event or attend the same in your individual capacity. It is a great way to network with and understand this space.

Follow the links to the wikis given below to register, get information on the venues and stay updated on the events:

Delhi Event Wiki: http://wiki.ibnms.com/BlogCampDelhi2
Bangalore Event Wiki: http://wiki.ibnms.com/BlogCampBengaluru

Core Idea behind TED

I recently came across this piece where Chris Anderson tells about the idea behind TED. Check it out.

A WEB-EMPOWERED REVOLUTION IN TEACHING

Today when we think of the world's teeming billions of humans, we tend to think: overpopulation, poverty, disease, instability, environmental destruction. They are the cause of most of the planet's problems.

What if that were to change? What if the average human were able to contribute more than consume? To add more than subtract? Think of the world as if each person drives a balance sheet. On the negative side are the resources they consume without replacing, on the positive side are the contributions they make to the planet in the form of the resources they produce, the lasting artifacts-of-value they build, and the ideas and technologies that might create a better future for their family, their community and for the planet as a whole. Our whole future hangs on whether the sum of those balance sheets can turn positive.

What might make that possible? One key reason for hope is that so far we have barely scraped the surface of human potential. Throughout history, the vast majority of humans have not been the people they could have been.

Take this simple thought experiment. Pick your favorite scientist, mathematician or cultural hero. Now imagine that instead of being born when and where they were, they had instead been born with the same in-built-but-unlocked abilities in a typical poverty-stricken village in, say, the France of 1200 or the Ethiopia of 1980. Would they have made the contribution they made? Of course not. They would never have received the education and encouragement it took to achieve what they did. Instead they would have simply lived out a life of poverty, with perhaps an occasional yearning that there must be a better way.

Conversely, an unknown but vast number of those grinding out a living today have the potential to be world-changers... if only we could find a way of unlocking that potential.

Two ingredients might be enough to do that. Knowledge and inspiration. If you learn of ideas that could transform your life, and you feel the inspiration necessary to act on that knowledge, there's a real chance your life will indeed be transformed.

There are many scary things about today's world. But one that is truly thrilling is that the means of spreading both knowledge and inspiration have never been greater. Five years ago, an amazing teacher or professor with the ability to truly catalyze the lives of his or her students could realistically hope to impact maybe 100 people each year. Today that same teacher can have their words spread on video to millions of eager students. There are already numerous examples of powerful talks that have spread virally to massive Internet audiences.

Driving this unexpected phenomenon is the fact that the physical cost of distributing a recorded talk or lecture anywhere in the world via the internet has fallen effectively to zero. This has happened with breathtaking speed and its implications are not yet widely understood. But it is surely capable of transforming global education.

For one thing, the realization that today's best teachers can become global celebrities is going to boost the caliber of those who teach. For the first time in many years it's possible to imagine ambitious, brilliant 18-year-olds putting 'teacher' at the top of their career choice list. Indeed the very definition of "great teacher" will expand, as numerous others outside the profession with the ability to communicate important ideas find a new incentive to make that talent available to the world. Additionally every existing teacher can greatly amplify their own abilities by inviting into their classroom, on video, the world's greatest scientists, visionaries and tutors. (Can a teacher inspire over video? Absolutely. We hear jaw-dropping stories of this every day.)

Now think about this from the pupils' perspective. In the past, everyone's success has depended on whether they were lucky enough to have a great mentor or teacher in their neighborhood. The vast majority have not been fortunate. But a young girl born in Africa today will probably have access in 10 years' time to a cell phone with a high-resolution screen, a web connection, and more power than the computer you own today. We can imagine her obtaining face-to-face insight and encouragement from her choice of the world's great teachers. She will get a chance to be what she can be. And she might just end up being the person who saves the planet for our grandchildren.


Ref: http://www.edge.org/q2009/q09_2.html#andersonc