Comments on: Spare Change: Internet Homeless Social Entrepreneurs

By: Dwight/ดนัย

Dwight/ดนัย — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 10:06:41 +0000

Thank you Karalyn for the great feedback and congrats on getting rid of that cuisinart. Can’t get bogged down with all the trappings the world is trying to sale us to distract us from being unhappy. I appreciate your honest sharing too. I keep reading it over and over it again, it’s so encouraging!

By: Karalyn

Karalyn — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 15:58:15 +0000

Great post. Reminds us that we ARE still part of a community, even in the absence of all the usual trappings that surround one. Personally, I find it uplifting to open my head up to other free thinkers. I’ve thought outside the box all my life and that has often led to problems.

I’m tired of the hype — I’m exhausted from being accosted on all sides by the scams and shams folks try to run on the internet. Let’s be honest here — survival is not easy. Everyone needs to make a living. Don’t sit there and offer me the “secret to life” and then just feed me drivel from your personal Cuisinart — I don’t want to feed the world on drivel. I threw out my Cuisinart! Give me something useful. Help me climb my own personal mountain and I’ll help you scale yours! That’s the way it works, folks.

Staying connected is not nearly the challenge it was even 10 years ago. I wonder what it will be like 10 years from now. It’s that sense of joy that comes with exploration that makes getting up in the morning worthwhile. If you don’t have it in your life, you should — and there are (obviously) many of us out here who’d love to help you. It’s a platitude, but true: either you’re part of the solution or you’re part of the problem. Pick a side — any side. Then pick up a (virtual) shovel and get to work!

By: Dwight/ดนัย

Dwight/ดนัย — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 10:00:26 +0000

@Christina Thank you. I’d like to hear more about your project as it develops and look forward to following you on twitter.

@Roz Thanks for all your feedback. Connecting with you has helped a tremendous amount to solidify some of my ideas. I hope we can collaborate on somethings in the future and setup something to encourage the type of discourse to give social entrepreneurs a great community to build from.

By: Roz

Roz — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 17:43:32 +0000

Hey Dwight! As I’ve told you before, I love this post – thank you for it! I can identify with just about everything you’ve said in your post. I definitely agree that the social entrepreneur community needs to be more open, and organizations, individuals, and/or websites need to be more encouraging and guide those who do care to actions that cultivate their skills. Hopefully this message will resound with others and this can be changed.

By: Christina

Christina — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 12:19:34 +0000

Your lovely post points directly to the ripeness in the Better World Building sector for a new project I’m planning to start working on in September. I look very much forward to reading more about your ideas, and invite you to follow me on Twitter @ChristinasWorld as I set about unleashing some of mine.

By: Dwight/ดนัย

Dwight/ดนัย — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:59:08 +0000

OMSEI is a definite need and I appreciated the discussion on this in the forum. I didn’t really address this in my post. Mostly because there seems to be a sort of push for this with what changefusion is doing and groups like beunreasonable. What worries me is I haven’t found a comfortable place for social entrepreneurs to have a community. The closest I have seen is futureshifters. I must say I log in very frequently and I’m not a fan of ning sites. So I’m all about stirring this place up and making more connections here and we’ll keep discussing more ways to do that. The potential to connect with other people here is what makes FS attractive to me. The great content is a plus, but there’s already so many sources for that on the web. I would like to see FS have it’s own hashtag and have some forums about people who’d like to share content via twitter etc. So we’ll talk, I have a bunch of ideas and I’m beginning to work on some info products to make joining the conversation easier for beginners.

By: Brooke

Brooke — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 10:53:45 +0000

Hi Dwight,

Thanks for this great post! I love the tone in which you wrote it. I even did instinctively take my hands off my keyboard!

I think one of the most challenging things I face in my work is to combine the online and offline components. As you can see from my FB, Twitter and FS profiles I post A LOT of information. This is because I feel limited as to what I can actually do with the information except participate in viral communications and spread the word about what I come across. But you brought up a great point with balancing that with actual tangible work on the ground. This is something that I feel really challenged by and I am sure so do loads of other people.

One of the things that we are doing to try and combat this is to create OMSEI- Online Marketplace for Social Enterprise Investing. This is ideally going to be a site that connects people and facilitates interactions (both financial and non-financial services) to help connect people who need support with those who can offer support.

While Twitter and Facebook and Youtube and so are are limited, applications such as Sharaholic for example, are emerging that help to bridge some of the gaps with this.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about proposed solutions for this in a practical way?

Thanks again for the post, Dwight!