The willingness to be vulnerable.

This TED talk "The power of vulnerability" by Brené Brown seems like a great way to start 2013. Thanks to Mary Shindler for including a link to this TED talk in her fantastic end of the year email.

Obama Administration support for US Entrepreneurs

... a little late to the game but still here!

Last July Obama established the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The group supports his innovation strategy by helping to develop policies that foster entrepreneurship, and by identifying new ways to take great ideas from the lab to the marketplace. One of the members is Holden Thorp, the Chancellor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I got to see him speak at TEDxAshokaU on Feb 25. So exciting to see that he is a member of this team.

That was the main point that I wanted to cover in this post, but I'll breeze through some other things that I pulled up by flipping through the White House website:

Where's the federal money to support entrepreneurs?

* Through the Recovery Act and the Small Business Jobs Act, the SBA was able to work with its lending partners to provide SBA loans to entrepreneurs and small business owners.

* The Export-Import Bank has loans that can help small businesses who are looking to export their goods and services.

* The USDA offers loans to farmers and rural businesses.

* The Department of Transportation helps small businesses who need working capital to finance a contract they’ve won from that agency.

* Energy-related research funding opportunities here.

Speaking of energy, the annual ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit kicked off yesterday, just outside of DC. It showcases the most advanced and revolutionary breakthroughs in energy technology - check out the agenda.

Support for entrepreneurs?

* Via a partnership with the Small Business Administration, the Administration is reinventing the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program, one of largest federal innovation programs, to encourage entrepreneurship.

* Creation of the i6 Challenge, a $12 million innovation competition administered by Commerce’s Economic Development Administration in partnership with the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. (Winners were announced last September.)

* A selection of resources specifically for military veterans.

And for students ...

* The deadline for the Race to the Top High School Commencement Challenge has been extended to March 11! Details here.

2011 TEDGlobal Fellows class :: Apps due March 11

Learned about this via Twitter today, and then grabbed the info from a post by Simone Alexander, the Project Coordinator for the TED Community Team. Simone manages the TED Book Club, builds community around the TED Fellows program, and integrates Fellows into the TED community.

The TED Fellows Program - an international fellowship bringing entrepreneurs into the TED community - is looking for 20 young innovators to be a part of their 2011 TEDGlobal Fellows class.

Apps due March 11 or nominate someone by emailing fellows@ted.com.

We look for remarkable, multidisciplinary, and paradigm-shifting innovators from around the globe who have shown exceptional courage, moral imagination, and the potential to increase positive change in the world. We're looking for individuals who straddle multiple disciplines -- polymaths, if you will. Essentially, people who are doing insanely cool and unconventional things.

All TED Fellows participate as full members of the TED conference (Long Beach, CA) or TEDGlobal conference (Edinburgh, U.K.), as well as a two-day pre-conference event where they collaborate with their peers and deliver their own TEDTalks.

The Fellows will also participate actively in the TED community throughout the year, telling their ongoing stories on the TED Fellows blog, contributing to TEDx events, being featured in the online Fellows directory and participating in a private TED social network. There are no monetary awards associated with the TED Fellowship.

TedxChange: The Future We Make :: Sept 20

Convened by Melinda French Gates and featuring some of the world’s most inspired thinkers and doers, TEDxChange marks the anniversary of the Millennium Development goals: Ten years in, where does the global community stand in the work to save and improve lives around the world? And what does the future hold?

It will be hosted by TED curator Chris Anderson (who is married to the very awesome Jacqueline Novogratz, Founder/CEO, Acumen Fund.)

11am EDT/8am PDT

You can either attend (or host) a live screening of the event, or watch it online. If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area then you can head over to Mills College for their screening, which is sponsored by the Center For Socially Responsible Business, Lokey Graduate School of Business.

RSVP on Facebook to get the latest updates.

One Tribe

I Love Jacqueline Novogratz.

Here she is, speaking at Milano: The New School for Management and Urban Policy. This was a standing-room only event that took place on Feb 17, 2010.



If you enjoyed this then check out the Acumen Fund, and read Jacqueline's book The Blue Sweater.

LOVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE her!

Incidentally, she's married to the curator of TED, Chris Anderson.

It's all Happening ... in Kibera

Got home from Sparkseed's awesome ARE YOU DANGEROUSLY AMBITIOUS? Happy Hour last night and after turning on my laptop, first thing I did was look up the video for The Script's "Breakeven." (If you listen to pop radio then you know it; currently #15 on Billboards Pop Singles chart.) Took me a while to locate the video because I thought it was an Adam Lambert song. My excuse? I haven't followed American Idol since the night in May 2008 that my favorite, David Archuleta lost to David Cook:)



But I digress.

After bopping along to Katy Perry's video for "California Gurls" I moved onto an email thanking me for volunteering at Do Something's Social Action Boot Camp this past Saturday. The email mentioned that Do Something will be announcing the winner of their $100k grant, as a part of a live show on VH1 on July 19th at 6 pm. I clicked on a link in the email, and a few clicks later found myself on a Do Something website reading about The Kibera School for Girls and Shining Hope Community Center, founded by Jessica Posner, Wesleyan '09 and Kennedy Odede, '12.

Here's an interview Wesleyan did with Jessica and Kennedy, where they talk about their venture and how it came to fruition:



I like this from Jessica: "We have a responsibility to the world because we went to Wesleyan, you know we got this type of education and we should use that to reinvent, reimagine how things are."

I found Jessica and Kennedy's organization on Facebook and saw that Jessica and Kennedy are in Echoing Green's 2010 fellows class! How did I miss them when I was blogging about the fellows 24 hours ago?

Their Echoing Green video:



By reading about Jessica and Kennedy, I learned that Kibera, the home of their venture, is the largest slum in Nairobi, Kenya and the second largest urban slum in the world. It's home to 1.5 million people, yet it's smaller than the size of NYC's Central Park.

Kibera seems to be everywhere, this week.

Last Tuesday PBS showed the Acumen Fund documentary "The Recruits", which I recently blogged about. I watched it online this past weekend. It profiles 3 Acumen Fund fellows, including Suraj Sudhakar, a native of Mumbai, India. As an Acumen Fund fellow, Suraj worked with Ecotact, a Nairobi, Kenya-based sanitation company. In "The Recruits" Suraj visits Kibera and encourages Ecotact founder David Kuria (an Ashoka Fellow himself, I just discovered) to build toilets in Kibera. It was a great eye opening film, and the first time I'd gotten that close to Kibera.

While I had never seen a video tour of Kibera, I was recently involved with a community project that benefits the community.

While attending my friend Lesley's baby shower three weekends ago in Monterey County, I learned that one of her fellow teachers, Caitie Ireland, was about to leave for Kenya, to volunteer at the Daraja Academy of Kenya. Caitie and I caught up at the party, and a few minutes into our conversation I found myself volunteering to collect women's running shoes for the secondary students at the private boarding school for girls - Kenya's first. Some of the students at the school are from Kibera.

After emailing a few select Bay Area fellow runners, and posting it as my "status update" on Facebook, I collected 50+ pairs of women's running shoes in less than 2 weeks from many friends, friends of friends, and friends of friends' co-workers!

Caitie and I met up for a hike at Big Basin Redwood State Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California on Sunday, so that I could give her the shoes I'd collected. She shipped them to Kenya a few days ago, and is now enroute to the Daraja Academy of Kenya.


photo: myself and Caitie with some of the shoes destined for the Daraja Academy


photo: me with some of the shoes

So that was my tiny contribution and brush with Kibera.

But now, Kibera is everywhere - late last night, thanks to Facebook, I stumbled upon an article about a solar power project set for Kibera, related to the World Cup.



Also thanks to Facebook yesterday I learned about this TED video: Charles Leadbeater: Education innovation in the slums. I admit I haven't had a chance to watch it, yet.



Also just found out that Suraj organized a TEDx for Kibera last fall. Check it out here.

I am certain that there are many other ventures either already underway or planned for Kibera ... Jessica, Kennedy, Caitie, and Suraj just got me started:)

Dance Moves that Generate Electricity

I frequently visit live music venues. I can't remember the last time that I saw a recycling bin available for public use ... and trust me, I look for them! So I was very psyched when I found an article in the Nov/Dec 2008 issue of E: The Environmental Magazine about dance clubs that are going green!

Some stats from the article:
* The average dance club uses 150,000 watts of electricity.


* Temple Nightclub opened in San Francisco, in 2004:
- Diverts 89% of its landfill waste.
- Use corn-based biodegradable cups.
- Emloys a Director of Sustainability - Mike Zuckerman.
- Use rainwater collection system for toilet plumbing.
- Boasts a vertical garden that landscapes teh exterior of the club (located in a100 year-old building.)
- Considering giving $1 discount on drinks to a patron who re-use his/her cup.
- Energy generating dance floor!

* Other establishments of note:
- The Butterfly Social Club in Chicago, IL
- Beta Nightclub in Denver, CO (spokesperson is Cathering Nguyen)
- Greenhouse in NYC (spokesperson Adam Starkman; ownder John B.)

* The green clubs trend started with a company called Qurrent BV, based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands (spokesperson is Vera Verkooijen).
- The first company to devise the energy-generating dance floor.
- Each dancer generates 5-10 watts of energy, depending on the size of the dancer, and how energetically the person is dancing.
- The company won Richard Branson's contest, the Green Challenge, and a prize of €500,000 (US$700,000), for their winning entry "The Sustainable Dance Club." "The Sustainable Dance Club" entry was selected from a pool of 400 projects that originated in 50 countries.

This is the company's story --



Interestingly, the annual Virgin Festival, which takes place in Baltimore, MD is a Richard Branson event. Branson aims to make it an environmentally friendly festival. In 2007, I was a member of the green team, organized by the Spitfire Agency. It was a great success! The festival diverted 90% of the waste by establishing recycling, trash, and compost bins for use by fans, bands, and crew. Check out the Virgin Mobile USA press release.


Richard Branson and actress Daryl Hannah, are among the first to check out the University of MD's "light bike" at the Virgin Festival, in Baltimore in early August of 2007. They had this bike custom made to demonstrate alternative forms of power. If you ride the bike, you have a choice to power the traditional incandescent light or the compact fluorescent. To power the traditional bulb, you have to peddle 4x as hard as you would have to peddle, to light the fluorescent bulb!

Branson also held a contest that awarded an environmentally-themed concert, Flick-Fest, to a Canadian city.

From CBC Radio 3's blog:

"Humanity's window to act on climate change is narrowing," said Branson in a press release. "And it's up to each of us to find new ways of getting more people involved in this global fight. So next spring, Estevan will hold a carbon-neutral party to raise awareness-spreading the word to more Canadians. It's going to be a blast."

To win the contest, people across Canada had to log on to www.flickoff.org, and test out the site's carbon calculator, which measures people's environmental impact, then offers up tips for improvements they can make. Estevan won the concert because it had the most people per capita sign on and measure their footprint. (No measurements were done after that to see whether or not people actually made changes.)

Also, if you missed it - in 2007 Al Gore and Branson teamed up to offer a $25 million (£12.5 million) Earth Challenge Prize to the person who comes up with the best way of removing significant amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

For those interested in this kind of thing, an enviro social networking and activism site, called Green Thing was a runner up, in Branson's 2007 the Green Challenge contest. One of Green Things co-founders Andy Hobsbawm spoke at TED 2008.

Here's Andy's talk. Andy shares a fresh ad campaign about going green -- and some of the fringe benefits.