Welcome to ICT4SE!

Welcome to the Spring 2015 ICT for Social Enterprise course!  Thanks for a lively discussion during the first day.  This week we will be listening to members of the Captricity.comAwaaz.de, and LeadGenius teams share the process of forming their respective social enterprises. In preparation, please skim through each of their websites. Also, please make sure to:

  • Join the mailing list
  • Do the readings on the course schedule
  • Come prepared with social enterprise ideas to pitch and brainstorm!

Final Project Presentations 12/2 130-4PM

Come join us on Friday, December 2nd from 130-4PM in South Hall 210 as students present their project ideas leveraging novel information and communication technologies to support social causes worldwide, while competing for $5,000 in prizes. Winners will be chosen by a distinguished panel of judges, and will receive seed funding to further advance their ideas. This year’s projects are:

  • Acopio is a student-driven venture that seeks to improve the livelihoods of rural farmers through better management of source information. To this end, Acopio offers a software platform that leverages cost-effective technologies to improve the flow of information in coffee value chains
  • GetSmart is an online platform to empower stakeholders entrusted with the well being of youth to source, generate and share with them, meaningful and engaging content on life skills and issues critical to their personal and professional development. GetSmart engages youth through creative and competitive content development, incentivizes them with attractive corporate sponsored rewards and tracks their progress with analytics and interactive features.
  • Ideal.ly is an easy way for local governments to create questions on local themes, collaborate with citizen groups and discover new ideas. A novel approach to crowdsourcing citizen feedback, the platform makes it easy for governments to include citizens in the decision making process.
  • SpeakEZ is a web and mobile-based platform that lets students from around the world learn a foreign language through video chat exchange – and allows teachers to track students’ progress and give feedback. Speaking a foreign language is challenging, and most schools struggle to empower their students to practice speaking.

Guest Lecture: Somik Raha

Im really looking forward to having Somik Raha in on Friday to discuss the value of values in business. Somik has suggested the following reading and prep for class on Friday:

Here is the beyond-profit reading that I’d suggest assigning, with an appropriate opening question on the lines of, “What is the core value that you wish to embody in your venture, for which you will need resources (that profits can generate)?”. Here are some more resources that may or may not be helpful:

  1. The Purpose of Marketing
  2. Quantifying intangible value to get to decisions – outlines a decision-making approach to invest to save the Amazon rainforests. This was work done for the Moore Foundation, and the part that might be of interest is of defining the value function, although my caveat is that it if people are clear on their intrinsic values at the time they start the business, then profits will be subservient to that, and a great metric of feedback, as opposed to the end-in-itself. In such situations, one may not need to place dollar amounts on intangibles. This is still an open question for me, and there might be specific places where valuations of this sort can help.

Also a final reminder that your project groups and topics are Friday.  We will start off class with each group introducing themselves to Somik.

ICT4SE Social Hour – Friday @ 3PM

Please come join us this Friday from 3-5PM in South Hall 205 to mingle with this years cohort of ICT4SE students!  Refreshments will be provided. In this the third installment of this course, we have students considering a range of exciting social entrepreneurship opportunities. They will benefit from more contact with experienced social innovators such as yourselves, as we try to make this course as successful as in years past. Looking forward to see you on Friday!

Welcome to ICT4SE!

Welcome to the Fall 2011 ICT for Social Enterprise course!  Thanks for a lively discussion during the first week.  This week we will be listening to members of the nextdrop.org and mobileworks.com teams share the process of forming their respective social enterprises. In preparation, please skim through each of their websites. This video captures nextdrop’s (winning) pitch at last year’s GSVC competition. Also, please make sure to:

  • Join the mailing list
  • Do the readings on the course schedule
  • If you need an I-school account to access readings, request one using this form
  • Come prepared with social enterprise ideas to pitch and brainstorm!

Readings and Assignment for Next Week

Hi Folks –

Next week in class we will be discussing how to write a social business plan, by looking at 2 concrete examples.  In preparation for next week, please read the following article (including some of the links), and be prepared to discuss the following two business plans – for NPowerBasic and WeCare Solar.  The latter is for the business that won the Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC) last year, which could also be an outlet for some of your projects.

Also, next week in class you should also be prepared to discuss any updates in your User Research, or in your Prototypes; and what your plans are for both for the rest of the semester.

See you in class!

Readings and Assignment on Forming Partnerships

Next week (10/1) in class we will be discussing forming strong and sustainable relationships with field partners and other stakeholders.  There is only one reading for this week:

Also for next week, please browse the websites of potential partners or institutional users or customers of your social enterprise.  In class, come prepared to discuss the 3-5 institutional partnerships (with specific names and websites, if possible) that it will be most important for your group to build.  See you on Friday!

Readings on Personas, Probes and Prototyping

Next week in class we will be discussing some more methods for user-centered design.  I am posting a few readings below.  Remember to start conducting your participant observation!  More about that in class this week.

See you tomorrow!

Readings on User-centered Design

Next week in class we will be discussing methods for user-centered design.  I am posting a few readings below.  Remember to also finalize your groups, and prepare project pitches and paragraphs for next week.

See you next week!

Wednesday Social

Thanks for a great class today!  Just a quick reminder that the Social will be held next Wed at 7PM at the Hub in the David Brower center just off campus.  The address is 2150 Allston Way #400.  More details about the location can be found here.

Also, if you havent already, please make sure to join the Google Group.

See you next week!