Inspired Elders Are Listening to You
We live in a global village and we need global wisdom. So, what would your life look like each day if you knew about a group of inspiring leaders, no longer bound by the governments that elected them, no longer bound by the influences of career building, no longer bound by the constraints of personal capital, who acted to build peace where there wasn’t any, who acted to speak and listen to the unseen and unheard?
The Elders are an astounding group of individuals who have made a commitment to work together to try and answer these very questions. Founded by Peter Gabriel and Sir Richard Branson, 12 Elders including Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Mary Robinson, Kofi Annan and others, are embarking on a journey to build a world leading NGO from ground up using the Internet as the core voice of the organization and I’ve been invited to work on the project team.
Lead by good friend Jason Mogus, Alexandra Samuel and I, along with some of the smartest people working with human rights issues today, are working together to help shape the foundational vision of how just such a group of wisdom leaders might be able to use the Internet to support these noble and audacious goals.
What would the Elders mean to you and your world?
Bar-Camping Vancouver 2008
Slowly getting back to work after taking a few weeks off work to celebrate the arrival of our son Magnus. I’ll be attending BarCampVancouver2008 to really get back in the groove with all the Western Canada digital media clans. The event is sold out, but check the wiki for active stories, blog updates and the steady thread of photographs that will stream out of the camp.
The World is Bigger When You Think Local
One of the main challenges for those of us working in sustainability, conservation and social values work is limited resources. The truth is resources are always limited. Those of us who have worked with non-profits, foundations, start-ups, small and large scale service firms, and/or the Fortune 500 (and I’ve worked at, or with them all) know the same thing; resources are limited everywhere. What I’ve noticed is that we often think the other guy doesn’t suffer from limited resources. The non-profit thinks the foundation is flush with cash (when I say cash here I mean, cash and resources), the foundation thinks the start-up is flush with cash, and on and up with most everyone thinking that the Fortune 500 have it all. They don’t.
Resources are limited everywhere, to varying degrees and in context. Okay, I know this isn’t a grand, new business revelation, but one area scarcity thinking and the argument that limited resources prevents all these organizations from taking on the challenge of excellence is localization. All these types of organizations at one time or another all make the decision whether intentional, planned, prioritized or otherwise not to extend their user experiences into local markets and languages. Traditionally, it has been expensive, and no it isn’t easy, but the decision to take on this challenge is often both; necessary to accomplishing the goals of the organization, and vital for future success. The great part is that now it is getting easier for organizations at all scales and with varying resources to reach local markets.
Here’s a round up of the some ground shifting changes that have happened in the last two months to help you and your organization open the gates to big thinking on getting local with collaborative translation;
- Facebook Is Not Only The World’s Largest Social Network, It Is Also The Fastest Growing
- How to Start a Multi-lingual site by Google
- Google Announces the Google Translation Center and the creation of the world’s largest Translation Memory
- Google Hits 40 Local Language Translations
- Google Launches the Google Translation Widget
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Welcome to ThinkHive
This is Christopher Roy's workspace for Internet strategy, localization and project management consulting. The news, analysis and resources you will find here are for sustainability professionals working in Internet marketing, localization, collaboration, project and community management.
