This is the question posed by Digital Family Reunion (DFR). jungle [8] has taken on the task of bringing the molecular level into a unified visual field. It began with Creative Director Lainie Liberti giving the visual interpretation of what a tech holiday party would want to stir in the consciousness of its attendees.

You will not find images of dreaded Christmas sweaters from grandma nor will this party leave you cringing from the onslaught of lackluster, forced, and drunken conversations about office politics and gossip. The goal of DFR is to synthesize 1.0 + 2.0 and create a platform for collaboration, discussion, and innovation for our communities, while of course, having a great time in the company of like-minded individuals.

One look at the website and invite for DFR and you will know this is not your typical holiday party. As with all things jungle [8] takes on, causes run the gamut of our affections. We aim to unite, to create, to empower, and leave in our wake a trail of limitless possibility.

On a cellular lever, we are molecular energy working in brilliant formation. The visual depiction created by jungle [8] for DFR is a flow of energy created by the visible light spectrum. Each of us vibrates on different energy levels, and we merge to create a community reflective of our unified energy. Out of this energy field, bursts of solar power emanate indicative of our social selves, active, powerful and radiant.

The task of translating this image into a live installation rests on the design concept of jungle [8]’s graphic designer Tuan Vutran. With creative genius beginning a steady knock on the door of perception, the installation takes on an earthy form. A week from today, at 8:15 PM, DFR will begin a yearly tradition known as the Business Card Installation Ritual.

Tuan is piecing together the Business Card Installation one Styrofoam ball at a time. Like planets, connected through clear, plastic umbilical cordlike tubes, reflecting prisms of rainbow light, the balls will appear to take flight with wings made from 2000 business cards from the original dot commers. The molecular representation symbolizes all of our talents fusing to herald a new year, a year of collaboration, change, and interconnectedness.

All in attendance for DFR will be asked to add their business cards to the Card Installation and become immortalized in a tangible reflection of our ever changing molecular bonds.

Be sure to see: Magnifying Connections: creating an installation, episode 1

from Patrick Davis Partners, the six priorities for the post-agency market:

1. Find your voice.
2. Engage with the semantic marketplace.
3. Return to humanist marketing.
4. Live the renaissance.
5. Champion social agenda marketing.
6. Build brand integrity.

And if I were to add a seventh priority, it would be to simply cultivate each of the previous six.  Finding, engaging, returning, living, championing, and building are wonderful starting points, ideas to help shift a brand in the right direction, but without cultivation, care, attention, and sustainability ideas can and will die.  So, hold true to the future of a more honest, more conscious, more open environment for us all.  Cultivate that ideal.  We can make it prosper.

Let’s not be so pessimistic, some we have to admit participate by donating time and money to caritative organizations who consecrate their activity to voice westerners’ acknowledgment of others’ suffering. Those “others”, who share our lives virtually, are Iraqis, Afghans, Tibetans… Let’s say people pertaining to war zones or potential unstable worldwide platforms.

But, since the formation and the development of online communities, people interact with each other with more realism, objectivity, with what makes human beings so magic, their human touch.

For instance Iraqis’ versions of the war are more individualized and not only seen under one and only one reductive scope, the media eye : FOX’s, CNN’s, CBS’…

To illustrate the power of people, the power of community, what they can do as one, when they are willing to gather to break all the molds, let me just refer to the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse project to mark the sisterhood, between Boulder (Colorado) and Dushanbe (Tajikistan). To honor their special bond the Mayor of Dushanbe Maksud Ikramov outsourced 40 Tadjik artisans to redecorate the Boulder Teahouse (the place where friends meet to talk or play chess in Central Asia). What could be associated to online community sites, couldn’t they?

To reciprocate Boulder financed a Cyber cafe in Dushanbe. The Cyber cafe will symbolize an open window to the world, a tool for communication, a structure for information, knowledge, a foundation for both cultures.

Based upon their original idea of antinomic cultures reciprocity, partnership, Don Philabaum gave birth to his “Adopt a War Affected Person or Family”. Roughly the concept consists in adopting an Iraqi or Afghan family through the Internet. His goal is to establish a partnership between all social categories, from lawyers to bakers, and the war casualties, and the collateral casualties by creating a bank, a web of responsible, caring people to be involved in sponsoring, educating Iraqi and Afghan citizens. In his innovative and audacious program, actions isn’t it the right way to express the difference between the Americans and the American government?

Barack Obama has changed the entire scope of not only how an election is run, but who is running the election.  Barack Obama is contemporarily one of, if not the most recognizable brand worldwide and has one of the most fervent followings domestically.  Andrew Rasiej, founder of the Personal Democracy Forum, “[The Obama Campaign] made sure the message machine was providing the message where people were already assembled. They’ve turned themselves into a media organization.”  And Brand: Obama, as a media giant and community, is extensive and pervasive.  So, what of the community if, say, Obama is elected President?  Can the President have such a community of followers?  Will he? Will his face continue to be emblazened on t-shirts, hats, sweaters, sneakers, dish towels, contact lenses?  In a word: no.

The Commander and Chief is, by necessity, a secretive and walled-off position.  And after an election, especially an election of such length and venom, all parties concerned are bound to have a much-required drop-off.  But Brand: Obama is most likely going to see its demise come November 4th IF Obama is the victor.  However, much like Al Gore in 2000, with a loss (please! don’t let it be a loss) Brand: Obama could be leveraged to an even greater extent in the interest of worldwide change.  Sadly, such a large community, in my opinion, can only see growth if the reason for the community in the first place fails.  Bizarre.

Becoming a member of the community, participating proactively from within, and resisting every urge to “sell one’s self” (in the traditional marketing sense) are most important.  And it’s all about relevant content and interaction – and listening.

Listening is not participating.  Listening is reconnaissance and research and should begin on sites such as:

Bookmarks
Ma.gnolia
Delicious
Diigo
StumbleUpon

Crowdsourced Content
Digg
Yahoo Buzz
Mixx

Conversations
Google Alerts
Blogpulse
Radian6
Ask.com
BuzzLogic
Google Blog Search

Blog Communities
Blogged.com
MyBlogLog
BlogCatalog

Micromedia
Tweetscan
Twemes
TwitterLocal
FriendFeed

Social Networks
MySpace
Bebo
Ning
Facebook
Friendfeed
LinkedIn

It’s important to synthesize not only the information being aggregated, created, and talked about by people on these sites, but also the community of people that inhabit them.  How do people relate to one another?  What is the language? What is acceptable, what is forbidden, and why? Their interactions between one another are paramount and will allow the listener to learn how to interact successfully before entering the contribution stage.

Now, once the brand is confident in their target and prepared to participate as a part of the larger community the brand must contribute as a person, not a marketer, spokesperson, or sales representative.  Talk like a person, and more specifically, from your brand’s point of view.  With each contribution assure that as a participant you are: bringing value to the conversation, creating honest, original content, and are engaging in proactive, helpful conversations.  Throughout this process the brand’s personality and viewpoint will become the synonymous with the brand itself.  With some great conversation, link-backs (others’ links to the brand’s content), and constant activity among the community, the brand will begin to accumulate followers.

A testament to social media community activism and the leveraging of a powerful web presence is Skullcandy.  Relatively small at its birth, Skullcandy (a high-fashion headphone and audio accessory company) has now become an evangelized force among the social media community.  This was, and continues to be, achieved through their active and consistent contributions to the community from downloadable music, custom artwork, peer-to-peer photo and video sharing, embeddable widgets, and virtual street teams to blogs, self-started communities and forums, social networks, virtual and physical events, and customer-centric traditional marketing.  The customer became, and now is, their friend.  And that relationship is at the center of every interaction they initiate.

And so should the community-centric relationship be all brands’ focus.  It’s expected.  And if your brand isn’t delivering, your competition will be.

Thank you to Brian Solis and his comprehensize blog post on PR 2.0 from where much of the information above was synthesized and presented originally.  For even more on creating and sustaining a social media community and how to further leverage the community in favor of your brand, do hang on his every word.

Google has, since its conception by co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, positioned itself as both immensely socially conscious and wholly philanthropic.  Seeking solutions to our world’s greatest issues — climate change, global public health, and global poverty — Google started the for-profit philanthropic subdivision Google.org with the initial funding of one billion dollars.  But Google, as they’ve become more and more ingrained in the purveyance of the vastness of all-encompassing, readily accessible information, has realized that, well, it’s simply the idea that makes the difference — and that idea can come from anywhere and anyone.  Google knows that they don’t have all of the answers, but what they are sure of is that the answers to the world’s largest problems are, in fact, out there.  It’s just a matter of finding them.

So, welcome to Project 10 to the 100th.  Take a moment and give this a watch.  Don’t worry, I’ll wait.

As Google puts it, “helping helps everybody, helper and helped alike.”  Truer words do not exist.  So here’s the gist.  Google is committing ten million dollars to set up to five of the best, brightest, and most far-reaching ideas into motion.  It’s up to all of us, however, to put our collective thinking caps on and submit those ideas.  Anyone can submit as many times as he or she wants with the Project 10 to the 100th Submission Form.  The deadline for submission is October 20th 2008.  That’s a mere 18 days, people!  After submitting, Google’s leaving the semi-finalist decision in our hands.  A public online poll starting January 27th 2009 will determine the top 25 ideas from around the world, which will then be narrowed to up to five by Google’s own board of advisors.  Sounds simple, eh?  Well, it is!  Start submitting!  And remember, helping the most people, for the longest amount of time, in the most encompassing way possible is the paramount goal.  But, let’s just let Google fill us in on the rest, shall we?

Criteria:

• Reach: How many people would this idea affect?
• Depth: How deeply are people impacted? How urgent is the need?
• Attainability: Can this idea be implemented within a year or two?
• Efficiency: How simple and cost-effective is your idea?
• Longevity: How long will the idea’s impact last?

Categories:

• Community: How can we help connect people, build communities and protect unique cultures?
• Opportunity: How can we help people better provide for themselves and their families?
• Energy: How can we help move the world toward safe, clean, inexpensive energy?
• Environment: How can we help promote a cleaner and more sustainable global ecosystem?
• Health: How can we help individuals lead longer, healthier lives?
• Education: How can we help more people get more access to better education?
• Shelter: How can we help ensure that everyone has a safe place to live?
• Everything else: Sometimes the best ideas don’t fit into any category at all.

So, from Google, from jungle [8], from Earth, good luck, and may those who help the most win.  Because when they win, we all win.

The Sunday afternoon shadows are falling across your front yard, and you’re staring at the mounds of stuff your garage sale’s best efforts didn’t eliminate. Next step:  a quick trip to Goodwill, then the dumpster, right?

It’s Monday morning at the office, and you’re standing in front of a large pile of old monitors and telephones, the result of the office’s big move and upgrade. It’s seems a shame to throw it all away, but then again, it’s not like anyone could use it, and even if they could, how could you contact them, anyway?

Enter the website Throwplace.com, where people can recycle used goods by offering them on an online forum to anyone who needs them. People can view and bid on the items, and the giver picks the worthy recipient of their choice. It’s all free, with the goal of keeping the items out of landfills, and helping people who are struggling in the current economy.

The site as launched by the owner of a prestigious graphic design firm in Washington DC, when she saw a need for a place where goods could be given to those who needed them, instead of thrown out. Lomangino developed and financed Throwplace.com herself, with the goal of aiding nonprofits across the country, specifically those benefitting victims of natural disasters, or recent economic hardship.

So, next time you’re staring at a load of what you consider useless stuff on your lawn or in the workplace dumpster, remember: one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Unless it’s a Hummer. In that case, I doubt anyone wants it.

And as a very last resort, if the item won’t even be accepted by recycling centers, follow ENN’s brilliant little suggestion, in their List of 21 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Recycle: send the item back to the manufacturer as a statement that they need to make products that “close the waste loop responsibly”. 

Just like high-school-age adolescents, businesses crave being the center of everyone’s conversation, especially within online communities. Advertising is basically a way to make more people think and talk about you in a positive way, more of the time. So the steady influx of business and corporate presences into social media networks is no surprise. They’re approaching it like a new kid in town who’s trying to make friends: they’re leaving behind conventional interactions, and going where people go on their time off, where they go to socialize. Businesses are trying to make friends with their customers by hitting the proverbial coffee shop, lounge, bookstore etc, where people go to talk and relax. And everyone knows people have to be talking about you to be cool. So the only difference is, businesses pay people to talk about them.

That’s what Whole Foods is doing with their new promotions targeted at users of Twitter, a micro-blogging tool. Users are encouraged to “tweet” about anything and everything Whole Foods, with the goal of being selected and awarded a $25 gift card.

 If only high-school were like that, where you could hand somebody a five to carve your name followed by “ is hottt” onto a bathroom stall.

Businesses and their efforts to penetrate friend groups and create an online presence sometimes resembles the kid who was always strutting down the hall, virtually screaming for attention, only in this case they are after virtual attention. And while he may get that attention, people are often more annoyed than anything else. 

It’s hard for businesses to hit home in these arenas, because this is where people go to interact with friends, and are very selective about the brands they will let into their personal ‘space, so to speak. A brand truly has to resonate, and represent a part of a person’s identity to be included as a friend, or their Twitter feed followed.

At first, one would wonder why anyone would follow the Tweets of a supermarket, a rather impersonal corporate entity, since most of the other users are individuals.

It also seems strange Whole Foods has their writers writing as Whole Foods, instead of individuals representing Whole Foods. Isn’t that contradicting the whole premise of online community and social media sites like Facebook and Myspace, who try to create a level of cyber intimacy friends can enjoy amongst themselves, as individuals?

This new forum for advertising and marketing has the potential to truly test how close a brand is to their market’s heart. Or, maybe it just tests what we’re willing to for $25 worth of groceries.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go blog about how I want to be married in the wholegrain bread isle.

Los Angeles is a city where people are hesitant to even talk to one another – let alone water houseplants, offer free private cooking lessons, or teach Photoshop to complete strangers. And yet Echo Park Time Bank, an online community where members exchange and barter services to complete strangers, could very well be the closest thing this city ever sees to Pay It Forward.

In 2000′s Pay It Forward, individuals performed spontaneous acts of good-will for complete strangers – with no expectation of return or thanks: just the request that they “pay it forward.” Echo Park Time Bank does not reach quite such cinematic levels of altruism: the online community relies on a barter system, in which members post services they are willing to do for free – as well as requests they want in exchange. Founders Lisa Gerstein and Autumn Rooney began the Echo Park Time Bank hoping to “rekindle the kind of community spirit and thrift that existed before we got wrapped up in our iMacs and Motorolas, and paid for housekeepers and guitar lessons.”

Gerstein and Rooney have taken into account that inviting complete strangers into our lives – without the security of a company reputation or trusted referral – does not come easily. Echo Park Time Bank works because it relies on a market-like system of exchange: members trade through the bank, never directly with one another, and there is an approval process for prospective members that includes an orientation meeting/informal screening. And yet when it comes down to it, Echo Park Trade Bank is about recreating that small-town trust within a city hardened by first-hand knowledge of the potentially disastrous consequences of interactions among strangers (gang violence and drive-by shootings, anyone?). Perhaps that’s what makes the philosophy behind it so darn appealing: it’s founded on the conception of a vibrant, interactive community, a dying breed within our self-enclosed, iPod generation. Particularly for services like house-sitting and dog-walking, Echo Park Trade Bank requires a foundation of trust between people who might never have met before – indeed, who might never have met otherwise. It’s shocking – and oddly comforting – to realize that faith between strangers can exist in a city of this size, where people are more apt to avert their eyes than offer guitar lessons to a man they meet on the sidewalk.

1. Create branded profiles and start groups on existing social networks. Prius drivers have already created their own Facebook user group – a real opportunity for Toyota, according to the report. “Users often connect to a brand or a cause as an expression of their online identities.”

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