[chronicle] Spreading the #Changeblogger meme - and how things, ideas, projects and people can spread and connect

Britt Bravo - the 'Have Fun * Do Good' blogger - with a very appropriate multiplier in the title - fun and doing good are an exponential positive feedback loop, the more fun you have doing good, the more good you will be doing because you are having fun! - and yes, btw, that is her name! Last name she got from her husband ;) - is one of my fellow/follow twitters. From the beginning, we actually coincided to be posted in the same blog update introducing 'new 2kbloggers' in a now dead project about democratizing and broadening the attention scope of the blog-o-sphere beyond the A-list. [Thank you the Web Alexandria of web.archives.org for making it possible retrieving posts from a nowadays domain-for-sale!].

That's how we made contact - a project that actually spread my blog 'reality avatar' called 'face' included in the 2000 blogger face collage all the way to China...! Then, in the beginning of August 2008 I had a very broad blast to almost all emails who had entered my the part of virtual sphere called 'mail'. Some four-figure address blast of spreading the Handshake for Tibet Avaaz call, at the day of kicking off the olympics, crying out for a peaceful change in the Tibet situation. Now adding beyond 200 000 handshakes that began with Dalai Lama in London targeting 500 000 in the campaign, returned some few respondents with comments - a powerful reconnector vehicle, indeed! Britt was one of them, with a simple "thanks for sharing this"! Yes, shaking hands, stretching out in peace. And, in another association here, one of the other 2kbloggers, by the way, was Jack Yan (and that is how I found the project of 2kbloggers as well, through his web, responding to and joining the call!) - proud member of the Yan dynasty moving to NZ in early childhood, from the Guangdong province.

 
Coming this far in the post, tags line up in context a general mash-up of connected net-flows one-thing-leading-to-another. Democracy. Spreading virally. China. Change. And, yes - Connect. I decided to add Britt to my Twitter feed after re-connecting and re-visiting her blog. And, the other day I received a tweet from her, with the concept of 'changeblogging' from Britt's tweetstream.

This background brings me to topic. And illustrates it very good too.

Linking around, it showed out that Britt coined the term 'changeblogging' some months back, the original post is here - from May.

But it was not until three days ago the changeblogging meme kicked off things started to happen - and now, in a few days, have moved to a Facebook Group, a Ning Community, a Twitter ID, an official #hashtag twitter meme tracker, beyond the Wiki created earlier. And this explosion happened after the blog meme was started. Vibrant!

So what is this all about?

The definition is dead simple. A Changeblogger is:

"A member of the blogging community who is using their blog, podcast or vlog to raise awareness, build community, and/or facilitate readers/listeners/viewers' taking action to make the world a better place."

(posted in the original Britt Bravo post, "Changebloggers. Using Social Media to create Social Change").

Beyond email, I coin blogging to be one of the most simple and most straightforward of all internet-traveling media and communication formats. Just get you out there, share, in all transparency beyond your little mail inbox to the big, big world. So, why not use the media in itself to transform and accelerate the change in the McLuhan spirit of 'the medium being the message'? Now in the days we really experience the Global Village: in order to unite, in order to create peace, in order to gain momentum of the movement towards a Sustainable World - why not use a follow up the original changeblogging post, where the action creates meaning in itself, and where the concept of changeblogging is lived and done 'being the *change* we want to see' through a blog meme?

Usually blog memes are quite pointless, and just seems to be a simple way to generate traffic and reconfirm blogrolls to each other, where you get tagged with ego questions like what you had for breakfast and what you plan to do tomorrow. I got tagged in the 'swedish blogger meme' from the mentioned 'honorary Swede' Jack Yan (having late jazz Swedish singer Monica Zetterlund as one of his favorite artists by the way, to add to the type of trivia usually showing up as results of these memes, if the hypothetical would question was 'what swedish artist do you think is the best?' ;). And that's about the only time I jumped on one of these blog memes.

But, as the Changeblogger Meme starter Qui Diaz pointed out;

"The ChangeBlogging meme has arrived. On a meta level - not just the three question blog-a-long at the end of this post. Eyes are shifting from the internal “me” meme to a season of “we” and “us.” The winds of change are welcome - and overdue."

We see the Power of We in living, vibrant here. There are much to add here of insight from the phenomenon as such, but I will keep that for a more esoteric and analytical posting on the Sustainopreneurship Research Blog beyond the publishing of my book chapter on researching sustainopreneurship, since I elaborate in that contribution on the power of social media to "collapse the degrees of separation" in between sustainopreneurs specifically, also applicable for change agents for a sustainable world in a more general sense as well. Eventually, getting to IRL community building with offline events really gets it going in the localities, such as the first Changeblogger meetup in D. C. Let's hope for a similar development trajectory as with the Social Media Club with a common, global phenomenon and shared community of practice and interest, with local chapters spreading to explore, network and connect, more, and deeper.

After all, about half of the top ten of the world's most popular sites are all social, and all in the top ten do have deep social dimensions, or have direct social web affiliations as parts of their brands, so there is certainly many overlapping interests here!

Concluded - get out and socialize in the new media spheres - you never know what happens :). Especially if you want to change the world for the better!

So, 'nuff for the general intro stuff and my adding to the conversation and reflections - let's take the Quiz and the 'Changeblogger Mantra', as coined by Alexandra Rampy, the Social Butterfly and Changeblogger Wiki Wizard - the three-question meme, answered :). So, here I go!

What is one change - big or small, local or global - you want to see in your lifetime?

Given the topic of my blogging, it would naturally be seeing more entrepreneurship and innovation for sustainability, both big and small, both local and global (and motivating strongly why I embraced the meme :). Sustainopreneurship is ALL about change to make the world a better place. The agenda is big enough to create millions of businesses for the benefit of the billions of people - and planet - to turning the world's biggest problems to even greater business opportunities. If I need to prioritize within what areas, I would refer to my SEEDS Model - Strengthening of Health, Education, Entrepreneurship, Digital Unification and Sustainable Distributed Energy and Mobility. Poverty, climate change, water and food security, HIV/AIDS, clean production and consumption - you name it. Solutions are captured within these SEEDS areas.

Who is already working this issue that you think others should support?

I am all living, breathing, dreaming, acting, networking, branding, creating, enacting, empowering, entrusting, enjoying, exploring, experiencing, proliferating, facilitating, writing, doing, making, living this issue 24/7/365.

So support me ;).

An that is not shameless self-promotion, rather the work I do to make leverage to the sustainopreneurial movement at large, e. g. things I focus and point to with those making a change - change makers I find along the way and blog about. Help them out. Blog their work. Use your sphere of influence to give them a helping hand. For some inspirational case stories, see the SEEDS Innovation Fund web.

How are you going to use your Web/tech/marcom skills to further this cause? (Or, what are you already doing that works?)

I have defined five action areas with ventures rolling out in part parallel, part serial process, with my own practical down-to-earth contribution. The first two to get moving fully and established next in the curve, both in parallel built up -

to have the research venture ÆREAS ("Association for Enactive Research, Education and Application of Sustainopreneurship") constituted finding 150 Founding Members, with http://interim.aereas.nu, http://blog.aereas.nu and http://community.aereas.nu as three destinations for the web, blog and community for the interim association, and 

to get the primary SLICE Service and Publishing (my freelancing brand) project focused reaching success - the virtual freelancing Ki-Work Category Marketplace Social Enterprise empowered with 75 Category Experts working with empowering the  Sustainability Businesses Movement at large with web-workers offering their services through that platform. For more details on this task, see the presentation of that Ki-Project here. (SLICE stands for "Sustainopreneurial Lecturing, Inspiration, Consultancy and Events".)

Besides that, getting even more leverage, spread and power for the two SLICE-Published blogs; Notes from a Sustainopreneur - the blog you're reading now - covering the 'What?' aspect of Sustainopreneurship, and 43 Tools covering the 'How?' dimension with popular blogging (where the more research oriented iÆREAS blog above covers both dimensions of idea and practice from a more academic point of departure).

That's it!

Now, tagging! Karin Johansson, Naima Benali, Jack Yan, Chris Heuer, Johnnie Moore, Tim Kitchin, John Caswell, Chris Macrae, Mostofa Zaman, Sofia Bustamante, Sadiq Baig, Ed Daniel, John Dierckx, AainaA Ridtz A-R, Lilly Evans, Don the Idea Guy, Ben Koot, Jozefa Fawcett, Richard Gatarski, Simon Warrick, Fabian Pattberg, George Pór, Vincent Wright, Steve Purkiss, Anna Dani, Ed Mitchell, DK, Scott Allen, Tav Espians, Tracy Ann Sheridan, Yvette Dubel, Takuya Misawa, Dennis Barker, Daniel Westergren, Kerry Santo, Josef Davies-Coates, Margaret G Orem, Linda Pierre, Karl Goldfield, Frauke Godat, Patrick Moore, Tom Ball, Johan Thomas, Tim Sandgren, Nick Clayton,  Niclas Ihrén, Christian Conrad, Zach Lane, Cristina Andersson, Curt Rosengren, Paul Arthur Smith, Ahmadou M. Sall, Therese Weel, Inger-Mette Stenseth, Marcus Berneström, Dave Hampton, Simon Sharp, Richard Nelson, Steve Brant, Celine Ruben-Salama, Christine Crowstaff, Annie Berger, David Bowman, Curt Beckmann,

Comments

[Alex, aka Socialbutterfly]

The meme is taking off! Thank you for contributing! I wrote the other day explaining the Changeblogger Story further on SocialButterfly (www.fly4change.com)

Thank you for getting others involved and for helping to creating the hastag #changeblogger. =)