Talk about threading the eye of the needle….Wow.
Talk about threading the eye of the needle….Wow.
If you were to line up all the causes I wish I could support more, Homelessness comes to the front. It’s not that I think it is more or less worthy than others, but it feels like something we should be able to make more progress against.
Every time I go into my neighborhood QFC, I pass between 1 and 3 homeless people asking for money. One man stands at the front of the store with a “Homeless Vet” sign, one woman sits across the street by the parking lot and occasionally there is a representative from “Real Change.” Clearly, we can do better than this as a society.
Now, there are a couple of problems that we all face. If we write big checks to a charity that helps with homelessness, we don’t know where the money goes and if it is being used to help people get out of their situation or just make their situation more tolerable. If you give money directly to a person, you don’t know if they’ll spend it down the street at 7-11 on a bottle of Boone’s.
So here’s my dumb idea that will likely offend a bunch of people.
I would like to try to focus some efforts on the homeless who are closest to climb their way out. The people who have cleaned themselves up, paid their debts to society or taken other steps to get back to a position where they can succeed. There are plenty of people who just need that little burst of cash to get the first and last months rent, a nice set of clothes, a moped or bus pas, or whatever is keeping them just 1-2 degrees from that point.
So how do we do this? I’d like to propose a kind of combination of Anonymous LinkedIn and Kickstarter managed by some reputable organization. In this system, i could look at the anonymous profiles of everyone who is applying for personal donations and what they will be need the money for. They set personal goals and achievements that they need to hit. With each success, they get closer to collecting their donation from me and the others who are rooting / supporting them. The reputable organization then makes the purchase of the apartment, clothes, car, whatever on behalf of the client.
So in a nutshell – the homeless person “earns” the money they need by achieving some set of goals and objectives, people like us get to choose the unnamed profiles we want to support based on our preference, and there is a group in between making sure everyone stays anonymous in the process.
I can already hear the 100 reasons this is unfair to a whole set of people and not a solution to a massive problem. But I’m not trying to boil the entire ocean here. I’m just trying to help a few people out. Anyway, that’s my latest dumb idea.
I’ll preface this with two notes:
1) I don’t like picking on marketing or advertising teams in this blog.
2) I have no data to tell me that these guys aren’t geniuses whose campaign is killing it.
But, I want to use this ad at Century Link Field to show why a good url is important.
I have seen the ad about 30 times now, have made comments out loud, took a picture, started to write a blog post, and STILL can’t remember the url.
You can do 100 better things with this url.
1) Buy VisitTanzania.co and redirect it to your crazy url
2) Buy an offshoot, such as ComeVisitTanzania.com.
3) Build a page such as Facebook.com/VisitTanzania
4-100) etc…
For all I know, trips to Tanzania from Seattle have increased 120x and they are going to send me an email telling me why I’m wrong. Even if they have, I’d encourage marketers to grab a url that makes sense before investing 6-7 figures in a stadium deal.
It’s been a long time since I wrote anything here. If only there was a tool that helped people write coherent blog posts…
Well no one asked me, but here’s what I would do if I had to make something out of the NFL Pro Bowl. Keep in mind the following items:
So here’s my dumb idea.
High Level: Make the Pro Bowl a week long television extravaganza featuring all the TV shows on the network hosting the game. Send the producers of all that network’s shows (that make sense) over to Hawaii to film programs that feature Pro Bowl players. Heck, you can even create shows.
Let’s say that CBS was televising the Super Bowl. Without doing too much thinking you could have some sort of episode of:
All of these shows could involve Joe Fan, and reach a cross over audience. But here’s the kicker: You get to charge new advertising dollars for NFL related shows. Super Bowl sponsors would have more ways to extend their Super Bowl buy into earlier in the week, and companies who can’t afford Super Bowl ads would have a way to invest marketing money into the game.
And really, I don’t really care what they do with the game. You could still play it, but instead of 3 straight hours of dreadful football, you’d have mini-bites of content from some of the shows that just aired, and some that are going to air that week.
This is a kernel of an idea, not a well thought out plan. Would love to get your thoughts.
Since I graduated from the UW’s MBA Program back in 2006, I’ve been proud that I continue to have the opportunity to be a judge in the annual Business Plan Competition. It’s truly inspiring to me to see what comes out of the minds of young entrepreneurs, especially those whose excitement has not yet been polluted.
This year is especially exciting though. For the 1st time, I knew a little about three of the companies that made it through to the round of 32 before they received their Golden ticket. (No, I was not allowed to judge these companies.)
So, before they prepare for their Investment Round battle in a few weeks, I want to congratulate the three teams that I’ve been able to get to know a little bit.
Good luck to all three teams (and the other 29 of course), and we’ll see you in a few weeks.
Catherine has been volunteering for a little while with a group called Teen Feed.
Now, for a little while there, I didn’t spend too much time thinking about what Catherine was up to. But I have had the great opportunity to volunteer with her a few times in the last few weeks, and want to relay a thought or two.
It’s hard to find something much more disturbing than a room full of 18-25 year olds with no home, no food and a pretty hopeless outlook. If someone is 40, you can put some level of blame on them for being in the spot they are in. But it’s kind of hard to fault an 18 year old.
For about $100-$150, a Teen Feed organizer puts together a menu and buys all the groceries for about 50-60 people. Anywhere between 4 and 8 volunteers take over a kitchen of a neighborhood church, and prepare the meal. The kids arrive at 7pm, and dinner ends promptly at 8pm.
The kids who show up for the free food have no place to go, and in some cases no other food to eat. Some just spend the entire hour taking advantage of the heat and chairs they are allowed to rest in. But they are all polite, thankful, and just happy someone cares.
I’m going to write more about this over the next few weeks. But I really want to commend the volunteers of Teen Feed, and urge you guys to consider Teen Feed when you are considering where to donate some of your time or money. In my mind, 18-25 year olds are still save-able. We should be working on ways to do that.
I always enjoy attending business plan events such as NWEN’s First Look Forum, the UW Biz Plan Competition, Startup Riot, etc… I tend not to call them competitions, and lean towards words like “showcases.” Sure the teams may be competing for a prize, but what they are really doing is showing the public the amount of work they’ve done on taking an idea from imagination to execution.
The real inspiring part of days like this is to see people striving to reach or exceed what is generally concluded as their “potential.” For every 100 people sitting in Westlake Park complaining that the world is unfair and out to get them, there was 1 person in the NWEN First Look Forum pitching an idea that they believed would create jobs and money. If I had my way, that would be the 1% / 99% ratio we should be trying to change.
This was the first year I was involved with a team (Relaborate) that made it through the process, even succeeding down to the final 5 companies. And now I’l use the term “competitor” because from the team’s viewpoint, making it from 37 to 20 to 12 to 5 really is a gauntlet, and you do feel a measure of success each time your name is called to advance.
But when you look at the other 11 companies, you can’t call it a competition, because I don’t know how any consumer would ever be making a choice between any of our products.
Another nice find by DigitalBuzzBlog.
This McDonald’s campaign asks you to watch a :50 YouTube video and look for a certain character hiding in the scene. If you click on the character, you move on to the next level.
It’s actually a little hard at first, so don’t lose your patience the first time to get to the end without spotting Grimace. It’s a neat gimmick for a campaign, and definitely something you could replicate if you have the creativity and motivation.