Storify was founded by my friend Burt and its utility and ease of use were icing on the cake. But it had been a while since my last Storify, so WebFWD graduation was a fun reason to dip back in. Enjoy!
Sometimes you need to just scroll down….
I’ve been a proud supporter the World Affairs Council and enjoy seeing all of the wonderful educational events they put on in San Francisco. I was thus quite surprised to see Dick Costolo as the honoree at their annual awards dinner. If you know anything about the CEO’s flippant attitude towards progressive causes, you’ll only chuckle deeper as you read the premise for the honor: “…for helping to achieve positive social change through private enterprise, and for his leadership of Twitter, which is making a transformational impact on societies, economies and polities here and around the globe.”
Certainly the medium of Twitter has supported many noble journalistic and human rights initiatives. On the other hand, it’s also been used for countless (and some say increasing) cases of abuse and harassment. Should the one taking credit for all of Twitter’s noble uses escape accountability for the myriad of destructive uses?
But if you simply scroll further down WAC’s page, the mystery quickly clears:
Now the WAC has educated us in something again: that payola is alive and well in both tech and non-profit.
The Geek Renaissance, Tempered
Dave McClure has called the current startup environment a “Geek Renaissance” for good reason: capital, resources and expertise on starting a tech company abound, reducing much friction in the product development process. But as Danielle Morrill astutely tweeted, (paraphrase) starting up is different from becoming a healthy business.
Today I had the usual pleasure of sharing at the HTML5DevConference my thoughts on how developers can set proper expectations, while at the same time increase their odds by availing themselves of the buffet in today’s renaissance. The ensuing discussion was perhaps even more fun than this chat, touching on the importance of user research and how the “grand slam” outcome may not be for everyone.
Enjoy!