They call it Power Hour–after-school tutoring for at-risk kids–and it works wonders. Connects kids to positive role models, keeps them of the streets and passing algebra, and fosters social adjustment and self-esteem.
I figure I could use a little tutoring (not to mention positive role models who understand the “algebra” that is the intersection of business, social change, technology and media) to prepare for some of Tipping Bucket’s next adventures. So, I’m launching my very own PowerHour!
This next week will be a big jump-start, but I plan on 1/week into the foreseeable future. For now, we’ll meet on BYU campus; Tanner Building W139 conference room. Come in person if you can, but Skype can work wonders for you geniuses outside “happy valley.”
Here’s the tentative lineup for next week (starting the 13th).
MON: Target Market/Market Sizing
TUES: Branding/Messaging/PR
WED: Social Media Strategy
THUR: Development (Prospects List/CRM)
FRI: Strategic Partnerships
Please leave me comments with the topics you’re interested in, your broad availability next week, your lunch/snack suggestions… and vote here on the best time slot for you going forward.
Let’s see if this works as well as it does for the 4th graders!
Vibrant Young Social Venture Seeks…
July 8, 2009
Things with Tipping Bucket are, well, typical…I think. Bursts of excitement that keep me up at night dreaming of trips to Boston to interview fellowship candidates and trips to Botswana to interview newly-trained midwives interspersed with nights where I feel like the massive parasite of doubt and indecision writhing in my gut will certainly finish me off by morning.
Mostly it’s somewhere between the two. And lately I feel like there are so many “next steps” that I spend most days playing the social entrepreneurship edition of DDR; stomping around, mostly off-rythm, ending up right where I started, but really tired.
So, here are a few of the hats I wish fit me and the “next steps” I could use some help with…
HR Master
- Develop policies for hiring, performance reviews, etc.
- Create job descriptions for employee and volunteer positions
Market Analysis Wizard
- Create target market profiles/personas
- Conduct market sizing research
Development Guru
- Outline a “prospects list” management strategy
- Build foundations prospects list
- Build individuals prospects list
- Develop fund raising action plan
Technical Sensei
- Research/recommend/configure CRM solution for prospects list management
- Research/recommend partner for project sites construction and maintenance
PR Genie
- Outline TippingBucket launch PR strategy
- Outline tTB branding strategy
- Create messaging guidelines
- Write press releases
- Generate/refine messaging and content for the website (how it works, about us, etc.)
[Ir?]Relevance.
June 9, 2009
Been ruminating on this one for a while (isn’t it funny how deep personal understanding of a word can make it at once more crude and more perfectly appropriate?) anyway, I’ve been ruminating on relevance. And I’m becoming convinced that more than interest, more than engagement, more than challenge or even feedback, relevance is the key to motivation in education.
rel-e-vance : relation to the matter at hand : PERTINANCE
per-ti-nent : [from L to reach, belong] : to belong to something as a care or concern or duty, to have reference to, to be appropriate or suitable for application.
Relevant material is suitable for application to the matter at hand. Relevant instruction carries with it care and concern, a duty to relate to the matter at hand. So, what is the matter at hand? I think it’s deceptively simple. In that way that makes it really easy to answer that question in a workshop (or a comments section) and yet still be baffled when it comes to actually doing it. I think the “matter at hand,” for students of all ages all over the world is simply LIFE. Read the rest of this entry »
Next Iteration…
June 5, 2009
What do you think?
Looking for Feedback…
May 26, 2009
This is my first shot at a homepage for the Tipping Bucket website. What do you think?
#75 … Check.
April 10, 2009
We incorporated the Tipping Bucket as an official non-profit in UT sometime around 10pm this Wednesday. I didn’t actually even realize I had another check mark to add to the list until my sister Molly congratulated me on crossing another one off. Several reflections on this:
First, and rather simply, how grateful I am for people who keep me in touch with my dreams!
Second, and slightly less simply, how important it is to be patient with dreams. Now, in now way am I qualified to extolling the virtues of patience. But there was a little lesson in this experience for me. See, I started the list–wrote the first 60+ items–as a gawkish 13-year-old in Mr. Maddox’s 8th grade science class. I’d capped it off at 100 before high-school graduation.
I haven’t the slightest idea how I’m going to accomplish most of the items on my list (reading all the Caldecott, Newbury and Pulitzer prize-winning works since 1900, for instance). But that’s never bothered me.
Far more vexing have been the times I’ve been tempted to “revise” my dreams. See, I no longer wish to have anything to do with purebred Persian cats (#4) nor do I particularly relish the idea of #52 (Watch all the Star Wars movies in order) after literally plugging my ears through the last half of episode 3 so as to be spared any more of the tortured dialogue. Read the rest of this entry »
What IS Development?
April 3, 2009
I’ll be honest, I got a little annoyed with the results of my google search on this subject. Most of the sites I got to (including this potentially great one from the world bank targeted to primary school children) all basically said the same thing; Development is about rich countries giving money to poor countries to help them become rich countries. Some were full of buzzwords like sustainability and economic mobility. Some were sappy, some were dry and some were downright condescending. Most were pretty oversimplified. And none of them, for me, captured what I think development is all about.
Development to me, is about releasing potential energy. Like a drawn bow, or a loaded spring, or just an arm pulled back to throw something, developing communities (whether they’re in Bamako or Boston) are FULL of potential energy—they vibrate with it. But there are things about living there that prevent this force, this generative energy, from being released.
Failing Forward
March 31, 2009
A friend shared a video with me (well, with the world) a few days ago, that makes some interesting connections to development. You can see it here.
The video is about failure. About its role in innovation and competition. About its consequences (both painful and productive) and about how it can transform our view of the past and shape our futures.
Easterly talks a lot about failure in White Man’s Burden. And I have to agree that most of the efforts of international aid have done little good, and in some cases, a great deal of harm. But if something as relatively simple as designing a race car entails such dramatic, such profound, such persistant failure, how can we expect something as complex, convoluted and nuanced as “development” to come without it?! Read the rest of this entry »
Hockeystick-ing
March 27, 2009
This is my new vocab for the week. You can find it here. But in case you happen to lack a somewhat-less-than-engaging class during which to search through all the comments for the explanation, I’ll just tell you.
Going hockeysticks describes a period of radically accellerated (usually positive) change. Think of a hockey stick as it’s held by a player. Something, anything really, putters along at a fairly stable, respectable rate for a while and then [BAM!] it takes off on a completely (often exponetially) different trajectory.
YouTube videos hockeystick. Kudzu hockeysticks. Last summer, gas prices hockey…stuck? Female hormone levels hockeystick about once a month. The US economy is definitely not hockeysticking. You get the picture…
Anyway, the analogy probably isn’t perfect. But, I can definitely think of some things I’d like to go hockeysticks right now.
A Singlular Experience…
March 26, 2009
Just started what might be to coolest class of my graduate career. (Oh, forgive me, second coolest, professor _______ .)
Just to give you a taste, this is a quick run-down of my discussion group (about a quarter of the participants in the class):
Vasileios Paliktzoglou – Greece
Frank Kiel – Germany
Johan Hellström – Sweden (in Uganda)
SaraJoy Pond – USA
Andrés Moreno – Spain (in Finland/Sri Lanka/Kenya)
Xavier Justino Muianga – Mozambique
Thai Bui – Viet Nam
Sören Norrgård – Finland
Rajarshi Sahai – India
Lenandlar Singh (Len) – Guyana
Notice anything? I am the ONLY American! (I’m also the only woman. Somehow I don’t find that quite as exhilarating…perhaps I should.)
I am so excited to be part of an active discussion on issues I am completely passionate about (using information and communication technologies for development) with people from all over the world, who are all commited to (and unquestionably capable of) changing the world.
If you’re interested, the class is using the ICT4D Consortium’s Elgg site as a discussion forum. I can’t imagine anyone would object to lurkers…or even sporadic contributions.
