ericj Blog Posts

Aug
04
2009
Nonprofit service as software?
by Eric Johnson
Lew Moorman is the CEO of Rackspace, a company that operates computer data centers for companies. Rackspace’s business, while touching racks and racks of servers, is concerned primarily with less glamorous things—electricity, for one, and air...
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Jun
30
2009
Crowdsourcing Philanthropy
by Eric Johnson
A couple of months ago, we reported that Paul Buchheit, co-founder of FriendFeed and, before that, the engineer behind Google Mail, had inspired a discussion around the best use of $20k for the common good. Looks like that conversation has lead to...
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Jun
10
2009
Storytelling Power
by Eric Johnson
A fellow once wanted to give away $100 bills to people in New York City. Because he was wheelchair-bound, he hired a young fellow to help him out. Together, they found that giving away money was not the easiest thing to do. Through trial-and-error,...
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Jun
02
2009
NetSquared Mobile Challenge winners
by Eric Johnson
I spent much of last week at the NetSquared N2Y4 conference in Silicon Valley. NetSquared brings together social entrepreneurs, whose tech projects compete for funds. Last year, the projects were mashups. This year’s theme was mobile. To see the...
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May
21
2009
Where are my people?
by Eric Johnson
You’ve seen those nonprofit fundraising challenges, haven’t you? A funder or corporation puts up some funds—donation or matching grant money—and asks nonprofits and their supporters to compete for it. Maybe it’s a race of donations or votes, or...
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May
11
2009
FriendFeed wants to be your BFF
by Eric Johnson
We use FriendFeed here at the office to share links and discuss news. A week or so ago the service launched a big redesign that added features. You can now use it entirely by email, for example. Stories show up realtime. And you can...
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Apr
30
2009
Cluetrain 10 years on: Markets are still conversations
by Eric Johnson
This month marks the tenth birthday of the Cluetrain Manifesto, those 95 theses meant to explain the web to corporations—and to explode corporate-speak online. The web landscape has changed, of course. The web is social now, and in 10 years some...
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Apr
22
2009
Getting popular: search vs. shared links
by Eric Johnson
If links are currency, who’s your sugar daddy? It’s been Google, of course. Google and the other search engines make you famous by sending your website all that traffic—the folks who donate to your nonprofit, or who comment on your blog. That’s why...
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Apr
14
2009
How would you spend $20,000 for the common good?
by Eric Johnson
This question, by Friendfeed co-founder Paul Buchheit, solicited more than 270 replies on a Friendfeed discussion thread over the weekend: Assume that I’m going to get rid of $20,000 and my only concern is the “common good”. Which of these is the...
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Apr
07
2009
Apps for America
by Eric Johnson
The Sunlight Foundation aims to use the internet to help make government—especially lawmaking—more transparent. To this end, they’ve funded projects that get legislation and financial records online. These projects typically release APIs to let...
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