SolSeed < SolSeedMovement < Organizing
"The thing that I want to build is . . . so vast! I not only don't know how to build it, but I'm not even sure what it will look like when I have built it. I'm just feeling my way, using whatever I can do, whatever I can learn to take one more step forward."
- Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler
Brandon, well met, and warm regards returned in kind!
“What would you like to see happen next?”
The end of global conflicts, rescuing the environment, providing clean water, food, and good education opportunities to everyone on the planet – and building spaceships, you mean? lol
Great! Are any of these close to DoneDone? :-)
No, but we're already several steps closer! -K
I guess I am an “idea” person, and not so much a practical person, and so I have a gazillion ideas that I’d like to somehow implement. Actually implementing them will be the challenge for me.
Immediate Short-term Goal:
Grow the organization.
SolSeed will be nothing without people committed to making it something. I have a number of other more-or-less defined goals I’d like to see SolSeed attain, however addressing this one short-term goal needs to be the focus right now. I see three main ways to do this:
- Let people know we exist!
- Invite people to join us.
- Recruit people we think (or know) have an interest in working to fulfill the mission(s) of our organization.
And maybe a fourth thing is to make the web presence for SolSeed warm, welcoming, inviting, easy to navigate, etc. I have some (limited) skill in this department, although it may take some time to familiarize myself with the workings of the AboutUs host/community before I attempt anything here.
Sounds great. I'll work on bringing over the content from Omidyar and elsewhere.
And maybe a fifth thing … I assume web space on AboutUs is not free (correct me if I am wrong) and so we will need a way to encourage donations and fundraise in order to make SolSeed self-supporting. I know SolSeed had T-shirts for sale at some point and maybe we can do more of this kind of thing if there is interest.
While I'd like to start raising funds soon, I'd like to have a specific project in mind for the first batch of fundraising. Clean drinking water and schools for girls are especially near and dear to my heart.
Immediate Goal-Attainment Tasks:
- Let everyone who was even somewhat active with SolSeed on Omidyar know that we have a presence here, and we warmly encourage them to remain with us (or come back to us.) I am not sure how to do this as I do not know if that contact info is still available.
Okay, I'll try to do this as well.
- Find a way to stop or deter the now archived omidyar.net pages from soaking up web traffic that really ought to be directed here. Another task that’s probably beyond my skill set. (Although I think I could edit the wikipedia earthseed page to point here rather than there. I think that’s how I found SolSeed in the first place.)
Wikipedia entry has been changed. -Kevin
- Ensure that people who do actually stumble across SolSeed find pages that are clear, communicative, easy-to use, and basically eye-friendly. The TestDriveYear page is blank, for instance. Is there content that someone has planned to put here? This looks like an idea about to be implemented. Or am I missing something?
There is a lot of content at Omidyar that needs to be moved over here.
- Find ways to build networks with like-minded people who share or would wish to join our cause. I have some of these people in my current orbit. My wife does relief work in Honduras, for example, and we both attended a United World College, an organization devoted to building peace and international understanding through multi-cultural and multi-national learning. I can probably begin some form of “recruitment” immediately.
- A nuts and bolts thing I’d like to see happen is a streamlined method for people to join Solseed. I think having to do a page edit as a signature agreement to the group’s principals is liable to put some people off. (It kinda put me off, and I’m very motivated, and I knew I could figure out how to do the edit.) I see no reason why it should not be very easy to read & accept the Destiny and join. For the time being I think this is fine, so maybe this is a less-than-immediate task.
I could go on, but I think that’s enough for starters.
I see you are a Rochester.edu U of R graduate. My spouse is Rochester.edu U of R medical faculty, and we have been living in Rochester for the last ten years. Small world! Anyway, good to finally ‘meet’ you! If any of this sparks an immediate response I’m all ears.
My wife ShelleySchoepflinSanders graduated from U of R medical school. She is currently chief resident at Providence St. Vincent here in Portland :-)
--Kevin | talk 16:00, 13 January 2008 (PST)
Playing Around with Images
Kevin | talk 18:03, 16 January 2008 (PST)
See also SolSeed Emblem.