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I recently wrote about this site on the Made by Many blog. Here’s an excerpt:

“The Web is changing and the world is changing. The biggest gains — monetary and otherwise — are to come from being a part of that change, and influencing the direction of that change so that we — and our industry — become smarter, kinder, and just, well… better.

Today, through the serendipity engine that is Twitter, I found a really clever, thought-provoking site. It’s called Vote for Policies and in addition to being beautifully designed and very useable, it’s also really timely…”

The full article is here

Another take on Rheingold’s talk chez BBH — this one by photographer and digiman Jon Block. Interesting personal anecdote off the back of Rheingold’s point that ‘leveraging self-interest’ helps drive a shared creative or intellectual economy. Fair play, Jon.

NYT looks at the growing trend of using social media to highlight causes, spark conversation and, ultimately, funnel money into action.

A specific example is Target (lower-cost American clothing and homeware retailer) and their just-launched-on-Facebook campaign to give $3 million to deserving charities.

Target asks customers to ‘Expect more. Pay less.’ And while the brand is no stranger to CSR, its shimmy with crowdsourcing is new and, I think, kinda exciting. With corporate use of social media still in its early days, just taking on a campaign like this one raises the expectation bar quite significantly. I’ll be keeping an eye on this one (and making a recommendation!).

inner architect has put together a simple campaign breakdown — worth a read.

Ben Malbon of BBHLabs (follow ‘em!) posted something of a manifesto on all the things we are doing WRONG — or at least, could be doing better — in creative digital communication. Worth a read.

I read with interest point eight, ‘Not invented here’: “We’re frequently seduced by the temptation to want to invent from scratch rather than borrow (&, critically, credit) with pride.” — as in, why reinvent when the tools we already have work perfectly well?? Ah, Comrade Malbon, I agree — and I went on and on about it my 20 March rant Fish where the fishes are.

There is an element of the ego to this game that we need to, well, defenestrate. This is NEW media. The old rules, they don’t apply so much. In fact, to get just a teensy bit tangental about the whole thing… We need a Warhol, a visionary doer just the other side of McCrazy to tip the old paradigms that we still use (‘I must invent’ and ‘only marketers market’ and ‘there is a direct correlation between unique and valuable’ and ‘I must keep processes secret, otherwise they could copy me!’) on their greasy little heads and help us see what our new toys are capable of.*

But better than hoping this will happen, I would like to hope that WE do it — that the second coming is a coming-together of the best and brightest in the industry, an iterative approach to creative revolution. Anyway, who wants to be saved when you can save yourself and tweet/blog/blab about it to everyone afterwards?

A further comment along the how-we-can-do-better lines comes from Made By Many’s Tim Malbon (relation? could it be?!), in his blog post How to be better at digital, or interactive, or new media or whatever it’s called….There may be a Malbonian mind-meld at work here, with these points supporting and complementing and further developing the the BBH Labs piece, and then back again, but there’s also a different, more web-orientated perspective at work. Again, it is uncommon sense and worth listening to.

Final (ha!) word on the subject: we’re all learning together on this one. We have a lot to learn. But we are making strides — indeed, debate like this is hugely useful — and we will likely make even greater strides in the near future, media messiah or no.

*I realise this would enable the rise of a whole race of new media Damien Hirsts, but such is the price of progress.