The Foush » Conference Live Blogs

Sandbox Global Summit – Lisbon

Rahaf — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 20:21:02 +0000

*** Disclosure: I am a Global Ambassador of Sandbox***

“Don’t be afraid to use your knuckles.” This is the advice given to me by DJ Saul, who is teaching a small group of us how to throw a proper punch. DJ, when not playing Mr. Miyagi to our Karate Kid is the VP of New Ventures at iStrategy Labs and one of our DC Ambassadors. He’s volunteered to share his knowledge about some of the basics of self defence for one of our afternoon sessions.

I’m in Lisbon, Portugal for the first ever Sandbox Global Summit. Sandbox is a global network of selected innovators under 30, a community of over 600 people in 48 countries and 23 hub cities, including Cairo, New York, Nairobi, Singapore, Mexico City, Bangalore, and San Francisco.

Our members include innovators such as Cynthia Hellen from New York, founder of GIRLS WHO ROCK, a benefit concert fundraising for girls’ education worldwide while mentoring local volunteers to be leaders;Sebastian Lindstrom from Nairobi, who travelled 20 African countries to produce a documentary on young leaders with his What Took You So Long Foundation; and Marita Cheng from Sydney, recently announced as the Young Australian of the Year, founder of Robogals Global, who is using the art of building robots to get more girls excited about the engineering discipline, discussed their experiences, stories and key learnings from diverse fields.

Held at MUDE (the design museum), 200 Boxers and various mentors gathered to share ideas, wisdom, and laughter for one jam-packed, whirlwind of a weekend. The goal of this gathering was to foster meaningful relationships within a community that is driven to create a positive impact in the world.

Peer to Peer Learning: We’re in this together

The vibe is laid back, fun, and inspiring. There are no speakers here, instead Sandboxers host peer-to-peer sessions covering a wide variety of subjects:

«On Stealing Ideas» by Mattan Griffel, CEO of a NYC-based digital agency

«How to have the luck of the Irish and pour the perfect pint of Guinness» by William McQuillan, Founder and CEO of Osmoda.com

«Social enterprise future moulded by Asia» by Kalsoom Lakhani, Founder of Invest2Innovate, and Achyutha Sharma, Director of Sulochana Development Trust.

In a session called «How to be a modern wonderwoman» led by Niamh Hughes, partner at Fol.io and New York city Ambassador, we discussed the challenges in maintaining a balanced life when so many of us are road warriors, constantly being pulled in a million different directions. The words “global friendship” are jokingly thrown around referring to how Sandboxers tend to meet each other at various places around the globe. (Case in point: I first met Niamh in Zurich, then in New York, followed by a weekend in Cabo and now, finally, Lisbon.)

The conversation is frank and honest. It’s reassuring to hear that others share your frustrations, insecurities and fears. From heart wrenching breakups to epic professional failures, there is a rich tapestry of experiences and perspectives made possible by a foundation of trust that seems to be uniquely Sandbox.

Friendships First: What do you need? How can I help?

The entire city is our playground as afternoon activities involve going out and exploring various parts of Lisbon. From hunting through flea markets for treasures and checking out Lisbon’s Graffiti art scene to early morning jogs and sharing coffee by the water, I am constantly delighted by the mutually shared joy that comes from simply being in each other’s company.

What set this weekend apart was the unwavering sense of giving and support, coupled with the desire to help each other overcome challenges. “What do you need? How can I help?” were two of the most often repeated questions I heard throughout the weekend. Boxers are genuinely invested in helping each other succeed.

It doesn’t feel like a network, it feels like a family, an online community of kindred spirits, punctuated by real life meetings. Prior to meeting in person, I had only exchanged a few emails with John Egan (Dublin Ambassador, Founder Archipelago), yet we slipped effortlessly into hour long conversations as though we’d known each other for years. I quickly discovered that I shared an identical sense of humor to our Amsterdam ambassador Tim Rutten and was laughing non-stop for three whole days.

Somehow, I had found myself in the middle of a global network with some of the most caring, intelligent, inspiring people I have ever met. Tara (Port-du-Prince), Niamh (New York), Kalsoom (the magical land of Pakistan), Nico (Zurich), Fabian (New York), Antoine (Berlin), Steve (New York), John R (Wagadu), Toby (Amsterdam), Will (London), Kasper (Copenhagen), Gamal (Cairo) have become an important part of my digital tribe, essential anchors of support, friendship and humor that I can count on as I navigate the perils and pitfalls of following an unconventional life path.

In fact, I had the opportunity to catch up with one of my closest friends Robyn Scott (Author, Founder of OneLeap.to, and another friendship I have Sandbox to thank for) who echoed my sentiments. “It’s rare to find a gathering of people that embody a sense of family who are all brilliant and have your best interests at heart.”

If this all sounds a little sentimental it’s is because, to be honest, I was caught completely off guard. I’ve never bonded with so many people at once before or shared such strong connections right off the bat.

I will be following up this post with a more analytic perspective of technology’s impact on the the creation and maintenance of these types of networks and what it means for relationship building.

For now, I’m just looking at my calendar, already eagerly anticipating the next time we can all be together again.

SES & Social Media Strategy: what happened to ethics?! (A rant)

Rahaf — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 03:35:31 +0000

I was all set to cover the Social Media Success panel at SES Toronto. I was excited to see how I could apply my New Media & Strategy background to generate higher traffic and ranking. Little did I know what would be said in that panel.

Details: It should have been called “What not to do in Social Media.”

Moderator: Mitch Joel, President, Twist Image

Speakers:

Marshall Clark, Director of Search, Organic
Stephan Spencer, Founder & President, Netconcepts, LLC
Liana Evans, Director of Internet Marketing, KeyRelevance
Marty Weintraub, President, aimClear

I was especially looking forward hearing Mitch Joel speak because I have been reading his blog for a while, and he is definitely one of the brightest voices in the Social Media & Marketing space. I also love his work at PodCamp. You should definitely subscribe to both his blog posts and his podcasts.

Anyway, a little into the session and I started to get a little puzzled. While Liana Evans had presented some actual examples of how certain companies had used the social media space to build a dialog with their consumers, what Marty Weintraub and Stephan Spencer had to say really disturbed me

SECRETS DON’T MAKE FRIENDS

The focus seemed to be on corporate strategies trying to get as many people as you can to subscribe to your social network profiles by almost tricking them or manipulating them.

YOU CAN’T MAKE PEOPLE CARE

Stephan Spencer spoke about a corporate MySpace tactic to building a large base of friends. He suggested to trick consumers into thinking that you were popular so that they would be more willing to add you to their contact list by to adding “Bands, celebrities and DJ’s because they’ll take anybody.” This will inflate the number of friends you have. Then, after a while, once your hapless consumers have joined, you can quietly remove the celebrities and bands leaving you with only your consumers.

At this point, I was visibly appalled and judging by the expression on his face, so was Mitch. Joey DeVilla, the who was also liveblogging echoed my sentiments. I couldn’t believe this was the advice that was being given to people! I mean seriously, so you’ve got two thousand friends but SO WHAT?

I always tell clients that it’s all about what you want to use the medium for that matters. So are you communicating with them? Do you want them to try or buy something?

YOU CAN’T FAKE REPUTATION

Stephan also had a lot to say about “building credibility” on sites like Wikipedia, so that you can use the influence to negotiate with Digg Power users and other social networking superstars who will then push your content in exchange for you helping them out on. So in exchange for Digging your article, you’ll help them set up an article on wikipedia. That’s all fine and good but if you’re going to negotiate posting content based on a corporate agenda, then you’re going to lose all the “street cred” you’ve worked so hard to build. People will see your intentions aren’t authentic.

He even suggested heavily using the StumbleUpon feature to send it to all the contacts you’ve amassed because if you send it to a specific person, then they’ll have to view the URL before they can continue stumbling. It’s one thing if the site is interesting, but to do it in the name of raising rankings is annoying, and quite frankly short sighted.

Mitch tried to undo some of the damage but I think even he was unprepared for the what was said today. He was fabulous and gave some great advice on how to build authentic conversation which I will put in a following post along with the interview I did after the session.

My Take: Defending the Social Media Space

Here are my personal pillars of Social Media- and what I wish I could have told all those people in that room taking notes today. I say this as a blogger, a content creator, a consumer and a human being. I also say this in defense of the countless of corporations and people like Mitch, and Joey and Amber who are putting time and effort into creating truly value adding content to the web.

Social media is about meaningful conversation – do you run into a party where there are people you’ve never met and start screaming in their faces about something you’re selling or something that you want? No. (If you do, then you probably have bigger problems than social media strategy) What you do is probably walk in take a look around, listen to the conversations, approach different groups and then add something meaningful into the conversation. If you’re not bringing anything of value to the table, then you probably shouldn’t be saying anything at all.

Meaningful conversation takes trust- The old bait & switch doesn’t really work with people on the internet. At least not for long. You can’t pretend to care about what they’re saying and then a short while later reveal your true intent to sell them something or manipulate them. Trust means you give and take. You share what you know with others and help others when you can. Relationships both online and offline are forged by trust, and by a track record of authentic actions. You might be able to fool people in the short-term but the long term damage to your reputation might take longer than you think to fix.

Trust requires authenticity – Who you are online and offline should be pretty close. Don’t pretend to be something or someone that you’re not. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Authenticity means that when you engage me in conversation, that you have a pure intent. You are actually interested in what I have to say and value my conversation

The internet has a short attention span and a long memory. Be smart. Treat your consumers like idiots and they won’t stick around for long.