Social Media for Social Change

Our story starts with aliens. Extra-terrestrials actually. Intelligent ones. And how to find them.

Back in the mid-1990’s academics were starting to do data analysis that even the superest of supercomputers couldn’t handle. Plus, the giant machines were expensive and not readily accessible. But we had this Internet thing that was kind of taking off, and some very smart people started figuring out that if you could cluster a bunch of smaller computers together you could do as well as, or even better than, the supercomputers. The process came to be known as grid computing.

In May of 1999, some researchers from Berkeley convinced hundreds of thousands of people to install a screensaver that would allow their personal computers to aid in the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence. They called the project SETI@Home. (And they’re still looking.)

Based on the success of the SETI project, the idea of voluntary grid computing took off. Researchers starting using it for economic, medical and seismic analysis. Basically any time you needed to crunch a huge set of numbers, you could do it with volunteer computers linked together by the Internet.

Ok, got a little nerdy there, are you still with me? Good. Because this is where it starts to get social. A group called World Community Grid is using grid computing technology to do research for Social Good. And they’re looking for volunteers. With research projects that range from clean energy to helping to find a cure for HIV/AIDS, World Community Grid is attempting to “create the world’s largest public computing grid to tackle projects that benefit humanity.”

How does it work? You download and install a small program onto your computer. When your computer is not in use, it will request data on a specific project (selected by you) from World Community Grid’s server. It then performs some fancy math on the data and sends the results back to the server.

The World Community Grid site has a ton of information about how you can get involved, forums for getting together with others who are participating and they’ve even partnered to create a site that explains the concepts to kids (warning: funky music). And of course, there’s a Facebook Application so you can let all your friends know that you’re doing your part to help save the world.

So what do you say? Willing to lend a few spare CPU cycles to Do Some Good?

Photo credit: CloCkWeRX via Flickr

It’s no big secret that both Michelle and I are huge twitternerds. (Follow us if you like, but beware, we’re terribly chatty.) I’ve come to rely on it daily, both for information and the desire to be a part of a greater community. Twitter went down for maintenance for about an hour the other day, and I suddenly felt like Laura Ingalls Wilder might have when the telegraph broke: disconnected.

Which in the end is what Twitter, and all Social Media for that matter, is about: connecting people. Connecting people personally and professionally. Connecting them around Ideas. Big and Small. Around Events. Interests. Causes.

Recently I saw the following tweet in my twitterstream:

And I immediately did three things: I went to the site to do a little research on edureliefs’ Twitter Library Project. Then, liking what I saw I retweeted the original message so that others in my circle might be moved to do what I did next. Donate. I gave five dollars to a cause based solely on a tweet because they are trying to do what I believe to be a Good Thing. From the site:

“We’d like to invite you, the Twitter community, to be involved in a special project. We’d like you to help us build a library, the Twitter Library. We setup libraries in rural Mongolia, where textbooks, reading books, teachers’ manuals, and educational materials are scarce if not non-existent. We would like to call on the motivation and generosity of Twitter users to work together to found a new library. You can donate $1, $2, $5, or more if you like, and we’d love you to tweet about your experience. Our target school is in northern Mongolia and serves 500 students from families classified as poor and very poor. Our goal is to raise $2,000.”

It wasn’t too long before I saw others doing the same. Whether they found the site through my tweet or elsewhere isn’t important. What is important is that Twitter has become an excellent mechanism for raising awareness around any number of issues. I, for one, am hopeful that Twitter is able to fund this library and look forward to hearing about and supporting the causes of people I follow.

It’s been a while since we’ve posted, but what better way to get things started again than to encourage non-profits to help give away free shoes to children in need? Payless Gives is a program sponsored by Payless shoes that has the goal of giving away $1 million in free shoes.

“Our aim is to select as many charity partners as possible to help us distribute the shoe gifts – and hope — to American children of families in need this holiday season,” said Matthew E. Rubel, chairman and chief executive officer of Collective Brands, Inc., which owns Payless ShoeSource.

Payless is using Twitter, YouTube, and bloggers (like yours truly!) to get the word out about this program. Non-profits can fill out a brief application on the Payless Gives site, and full details can be found there as well. But hurry — the application deadline is this Friday, November 21st.

Bravo to Payless for making this commitment to helping others during what promises to be a tough holiday season for many families across the country. Please help spread the word!