While the medical cause of death will be dehydration, the actual cause of death will be death-by-bureaucracy.

Over the past five years, my business partner, Lonnie Harmon and his wife Kim Harmon have adopted five orphans from Haiti. As a result, they became responsible for the US charity that supports the Haitian orphanage of 100 people. They also have one child who was almost fully through the Haitian adoption process when the earthquake hit.

Early on there were reports of people robbing the orphanage for supplies.  The US military is ready to evacuate the kids to the US, but they’re waiting on ok from the State Dept to allow the kids to enter the US.

Most kids have been in the adoption process for several years and parents approved by U.S. These kids can be brought to the US and the adoptions fully (and safely) processed here.

Kim and Lonnie have been friends for ten years. They are exceptional people. According to Kim:

“We are going to start losing babies due to dehydration very soon if we do not evacuate these children quickly. We do not have time for a one-by-one assessment of the state of the adoption process and visas prior to evacuation.”

According to Lonnie, Fox News has caught wind of the story. On Monday, Shepard Smith covered the orphanage in his show. Lonnie and Kim got to see their son on tv. Lonnie was crying when he told me this story.

• Article about the orphans
• Fox News coverage about the orphans’ plight (the video here is actually of the orphanage)

Lonnie and Kim have asked for your urgent help.

Please take 10 minutes to call your congresspeople’s offices and ask them to request the State Department to let the children and infants into the US. The adoptions can be processed here in the US.

The name of the orphanage is Maison des Enfants de Dieu. (The US Charity is the “For HIs Glory.”)  These children had begun the adoption process before the earthquake. With so many records destroyed in the earthquake, it will take time to process these adoptions. However, these kids shouldn’t be left starving and dehydrated while in a legal limbo.

Bring them to the US where the adoption paperwork and visas can be processed properly while the kids are safe.

Here’s a link you can use to locate the phone #s for the offices of your senators and congresspeople. Please call today.

P.S. Some congresspeople have asked for contacts with the U.S. charity. If that happens, please contact me, and I can provide phone and e-mail contacts.

One of the nation’s most passionate puzzlers, Mike Selinker, solved the mystery of the status updates. Mike is an old friend of mine, and he’s the president of Lone Shark Games, a Seattle design studio that specializes in social network games such as puzzle events and alternate reality games.

Mike and I exchanged messages as we think through the bra-color meme: relating it to social networking, marketing, and social learning. We’re reprinting it below.

Mike Selinker: Today was… interesting. I woke up to check my Facebook feed and saw that a number of people on my flist were posting colors as their status. Instead of asking why, I tried to figure out what the people who did this had in common. They came from very different sets of friends, who had no connection to each other beyond me. Then I realized that they were all women. And I thought, “In which arena would my female friends pick wildly different colors?” It had to be something they didn’t know about each other, something intimate. And then it hit me. They were all posting the colors of their undergarments, specifically their bras.

So I posted a message of amusement, and the secret was out. I’m sure I became a vector for this meme, despite not being contacted in any way by the propagators, and not being able to participate directly. (I am not currently wearing a bra.) The virus spread through email and inboxes, and manifested in public. That’s something I don’t think I’ve seen before.

Only later did someone point out that this was started as an awareness mechanism for breast cancer. Which I find fascinating, because I’m sure that if the Susan Komen Center spent donation money on getting people to post colors on their Facebook statuses, there would be a board of directors meeting hastily convened. And yet I certainly thought more about breast cancer today than any other.

Bill Sherman: Like you, I found myself smiling and laughing during the day as I saw the meme propagate across Facebook.

I’m going to focus here on transmission vectors, misidentifications, and mutations.

By evening, I started to see a trend of women who had received the e-mail in their personal account and didn’t post until after dinner. So, there was a second wave of color postings that rippled east-to-west in the evening.

The bra color meme, in some way, is a mutant strain of the pink campaign. For many years, breast cancer awareness (as an advocacy issue) has been associated with pink. We have pink ribbons, turn buildings pink, and redecorate grocery stores each October. We’re conditioned to think about [color] –> breast cancer awareness. In many ways, we’re primed psychologically to connect the concept of color with breast cancer awareness.

Throughout the day, the virus followed two separate transmission patterns. E-mail was the initial vector. It included an explanation of what to do, why it was important, and a note of encouragement. It also turned the activity into a gender-divided game.

However, the Facebook status updates quickly produced an array of responses (from men and women) who hadn’t received the e-mail. Many women and men had their first experience with the meme outside of the e-mail.

In these cases, the meme was misidentified or and in some cases even mutated.

For example, early yesterday morning a male friend posted the following cryptic status update “is in on the joke. It’s not hard to deduce, guys . . . ” He had deduced the game component of the meme, and he assumed that it was merely a semi-risqué meme that had propagated.

Also, it became possible to track mutations created by people (men and women) who had not received the e-mail but wanted to participate. Here are two of my favorites status updates:

• a list of fifteen colors in one status update (by a man)
• “infrared”

While these posts were delightful (and caused me to laugh), they were mutant strains of the initial meme which had been divorced of the breast cancer awareness element. These actions reinforced the self-replicating social game, but it created “noise” that competed with the issue-advocacy element.

So, we have two transmission vectors for the same meme. And it’s a really exciting way to use social media technology. The primary vector (e-mail) reinforced the social advocacy, and the secondary vector (seeing the meme first on Facebook) often produced mutations and misapprehensions.

Splitting the meme this way created some interesting ripples. It’s like throwing two rocks into a pool of water. We saw a single meme’s ripples create interference patterns with itself. That was incredibly cool (and compelling to watch).

Here’s my question for you, Mike. We both found this meme fascinating. Yet, when it comes to issue advocacy (or even marketing), awareness is good but moving people to action is far better. Was this a five-minute diversion or did it make a difference?

Mike Selinker: A reasonable question, and one I get asked about games all the time. I’m a proponent of buried messages, important points that bubble up when you think back on the experience you had. For example, for our alternate reality game Citizens of Virtue, left-wing evangelical preacher Rob Bell asked us to make people think about hypocrisy in church messaging, a very complex issue. So we invented a fictional Focus on the Family-style organization called Citizens of Virtue, which sounded very plausible to many. Their “Virtual Virtues” campaign—”virtual” in the sense of “electronic,” but also in the sense of “not real”—was a weekly dispensation of tasks that purportedly would inspire one of the Seven Cardinal Virtues, but instead propagated the corresponding Deadly Sin. So for example, “Humility” was encouraged by purchasing an expensive “LORD shackle bracelet” a la Cartier’s LOVE bracelet, to show how humble you were. This of course was the height of Pride. These were complex messages to pass on, but as people were having fun exploring the game and undermining the CoV from the inside, they walked away with some important thoughts about important issues.

So too, I think, with the bra meme. There were three things going on that I think directly benefited the cause of breast cancer awareness:

1) The repetition of the rationale for the color posts. People would say “Why are you doing that?” and others would respond “It’s my bra color. It’s a breast cancer awareness thing.” That alone could lead to quite a few reminders to schedule mammograms.

2) The minor backlash that concerned the female-only delivery method. There were several posts that said, “Hey, men get breast cancer too!” Now, we do so only at a rate of 1% of the female population’s incidence, and it’s a very strange sense of male entitlement to demand equal treatment for diseases. But there are probably men who thought, “I better get myself checked out.” They may never have considered themselves at risk before.

3) After I posted that I was tempted all day to write “Pics or it didn’t happen,” the call to action you’re looking for came from a friend who pledged $5 to breast cancer research for every “proof” picture he received in his inbox. Quite a few women took him up on that, apparently willing to sacrifice that amount of dignity for a good cause. So voyeurism gets subjugated to good works. Creepy, but awesome nonetheless.

So I’d say yes, it was a five-minute diversion, and yes, it made a difference. Is it more effective for cancer awareness than the TheTruth.com ads? Probably not. But which would you rather watch?

Bill Sherman: Although this meme launched on Facebook, the social media ripples have extended to Twitter and blogs. This quickly became a meme that people wanted to discuss. And the discussions have been fascinating:

1. A woman who had a double mastectomy blogged her thoughts to the meme.

2. Mary Carmichael at Newsweek blogged her response to what she called the “pointless underwear protest.”

3. Users created and joined new FB groups: “Your Bra Can’t Fight Cancer, But Your Wallet Can.”

4. Individuals became fans of Susan G. Komen for the Cure on Facebook.

We saw two distinct phases in this game. First, many women chose to play the game, and that created the many color “status updates.” I honestly didn’t expect so many people would want to discuss this meme.

I think that people inherently sensed many of the flaws of the original meme, and social media facilitated the conversation about those flaws.

A friend of mine wrote a status update where she: “is fairly certain that everyone knows that cancer exists. How exactly is this game helping? Instead of posting @%#& telling people to post more @%#&, why don’t you go donate a dollar?”

In this way, we saw a social media game begin to evolve as people identified the flaws and want to improve them.

The color game has spread to Twitter, but the text mutated into Tweets like the following one:

“White! Which color of bra do you wear? Add a Twibbon now to support breast cancer awareness! ”

This new mutation contains the original game, a viral question, and a call to action. Is this new strain better than the previous one? Well, it depends on the goals of the meme. I’m sure the people who provide twibbon icons are happy.

People care about this game (because of the issue advocacy), but they also recognize the original game’s flaws. They have taken time to discuss and improve the game in a form of collaborative game design and development.

We’re looking at the intersection of social games and social learning. Fascinating stuff.

Mike Selinker: I quibble with the word “flaws.” There’s nothing necessarily valuable about hemming something toward the ordinary. When a friend turned the meme toward underwear color, she added a sentence “For ovarian cancer awareness” and a link explaining symptoms of that horrible disease. While this was laudable, turning it into a link (as opposed to a status update) automatically blunted the spread of the mutation. We’ve all seen friends post charity links before, so this was just a variation on that. If it’s ordinary, it’s probably not going to spread virally. That’s not an improvement of the game.

Without any question, this was a chain letter, spread through a whisper campaign. Those are negative terms; nobody I know is going to admit to sending a chain letter, or engaging in a whisper campaign. This got them to do it. It’s a good game as is.

It’s also important to view it as a limited-time game. As people continue to post bra colors, people are already in the mindset of “Honey, that was so yesterday.” That’s okay. If you were part of the spread, you talk about it later. If you weren’t, you’re made to feel like an outsider. Even a nationwide in-group enforces clique rules.

Now comes the question of whether this is a marketing lesson. I am sure that I soon will get a call from one of my advertising clients saying, “Mike, can you make the color thing happen for us, but this time with varieties of yogurt?” Even if I say no, someone will say yes.

Bill Sherman: As you said, “Can you make the color thing happen for us, but this time with varieties of yogurt?”

If we’re going to think about marketing, then we need to pull in some ideas from the social psychologists. First, the behaviors of people around us influence our behaviors. We saw this behavior manifest with the bra-color posts, but it resonates with Milgram’s crowd-behavior experiments.

Stanley Milgram, who performed many different (and notable experiments), ran one experiment on the streets of NYC in 1968. He positioned research assistants at strategic points on the street and had them look at the window of a nearby building for one minute.

If only one person stared at the window, then 4% of passersby would stop; however if 15 research assistants stared at the window then 40% of the passersby also stopped.

It’s the old “made you look” technique. We can create buzz and direct eyeballs and behavior (whether fully or partially) by planting conspirators within a social network. Then passersby mirror (wholly or incompletely) the behavior.

So, while stunts can attract attention, will they be significant enough to get people to notice the product (our yogurt) or cause them to act (refer to a friend, make a purchase, etc.)? That’s what matters.

For that, Robert Cialdini makes a good point about descriptive norming and behaviors. He’s done a lot of research around environmental messaging (such as recycling or towel reuse at hotels) and finds that people respond when people believe they are acting in concert with people like themselves. Descriptive norming creates a positive social pressure to spread behaviors virally. These ties of “people like me” are powerful, so that even knowing that people who have shared the same physical hotel room typically reuse their towel influences your behavior.

In Connected, Christakis and Fowler argue that we’re influenced by the behaviors of our friends’ friends’ friends (3rd degree connections) for behaviors such as smoking cessation, depression, suicidality, etc.

If the average Facebook user has 130 friends (which approximately correlates with Dunbar’s number of 150), then a single person launching this meme would have had access to 130^3 (2.179 million) users. However, that number would have been reduced by many duplicated connections. So, just like radio broadcasts, retransmitters boost the signal.

I think our strategy for replication would depend on a number of different factors:

1. Yoplait (known brand) vs. Mike’s Yummy Organic Yogurt (unknown brand)

2. Definition of success . . . do you want people to become Facebook fans, want them to buy yogurt or become aware you exist?

3. Is this a flash-in-the-pan strategy or does the client want to create a relationship with these people?

I think we could craft many “made you look strategies.” There are also many “build relationship strategies;” however, it’s often difficult to achieve both goals simultaneously.

Mike Selinker: Amusingly, it took less than a week for a client at a marketing firm to say to me, “Did you see people posting their bra colors on Facebook? Well, like that, but….” (But not on a yogurt account, sadly.)

Facebook seems a direct challenge to Dunbar’s number. Dunbar believed that settlements broke at 150 people, because humans couldn’t maintain social connections with more than that number of people. But Dunbar was talking about groups with intense external pressure to stay together. An army unit in wartime has such pressure, because if it fails to move effectively, its members will be killed. So too with an office or a school, where social disorganization is problematic to authority. I think what we’re seeing is that without that pressure, without that need for authority, we are capable of monitoring and casually interacting with much larger numbers. I’ve had a running joke of every time I get another 100 friends, I make a stupid status report announcing it (e.g., “Mike has 20 square friends” for when I hit 400). I didn’t expect I would have to keep doing it past 1300.

And here, I think the army travels at the speed of its FASTEST member. I don’t need all my friends to be aware of a meme to respond to it, I only need one. I wasn’t the first of my friends to hear of it, but I was certainly the first male I knew to figure it out. That made a whole lot of people spread it outward from me. The meme was designed to treat me as a scalar, but I became a vector.

That’s where marketing can learn. We ask all the time, “who is this message aimed at?” What we also need to ask is, “what is the effect of this message on people it is NOT aimed at?” There was a horrible example in the game industry of my former employer Hasbro marketing the new version of the boardgame Risk to boys with a site featuring a game where you try to sleep with as many women as possible, and another where you fling poo.

Though I doubt it, let’s assume this hit square with the boys it was aimed at. The resultant backlash among women—specifically mothers, who buy almost every boardgame—likely destroyed any positive effect Hasbro could have gained. As it spread among Facebook friends, the female gamers I knew couldn’t see what any of this had to do with Risk itself. All they knew is that they weren’t going to buy it. (Not that I dislike things aimed at males, of course. There’s an amazing promotion for the Dodge Ram. That’s all male, all the time. But it’s also awesome, which excuses a lot of sins.)

When you set something out where everyone can see, you have to consider the impact on everyone who can see it. Facebook has the potential to reach everyone, but you have to reach them with something they want. Otherwise, you may wish you hadn’t reached them.

Bill Sherman: According to the current Facebook press page, the average user has 130 friends. According to a research study published in 2008, that number was 110 friends, so we have seen an upward trend.

Also, check out the 2009 analysis of maintained relationships on Facebook’s site. It’s well worth a read.

I’d argue that your 1300 friends is probably several standard deviations from the mean. Quite simply, you’re a network hub.

When we look at a social graph, your Facebook friends’ network has a high degree of centrality. You’re closer to the center of a network than to an edge.

When you cracked the code of the colors in the status lines, you became the equivalent of a high-powered radio station broadcasting louder and farther than people with smaller networks. If we accept the 3 degrees of influence benchmark, then 1300^3 leads to a network reach of 2.3 billion (but that number will certainly be lower in practice due to mutually-shared connections).

If you hadn’t touched the meme, then it would have evolved and spread in an entirely different fashion.

Technology has changed how messages are transmitted through networks. Instead of closed, geographically-bound relationships within villages, we have been able to maintain strong, geographically-distributed relationships. Yet, I’d say that Facebook allows us to maintain many more weak-tie connections than we could previously (even when compared with Granovetter’s day).

Interestingly, the Risk example and the Ram microsite are both examples of a traditional marketing message where each visitor interacts with a company-approved site. Memes work differently, because they spread person-to-person rather than through an approved central hub. That opens the opportunity for mutation.

So, here is what I see as our final takeaways:

1. You point out that you have to consider the potential impact on everyone who can see it, and that message may produce undesired reactions.

2. I emphasize that the message itself transforms when people within the network interacts with the meme and rebroadcast it. Therefore, once you set a social meme out to the world without requiring it to “phone home,” it takes on a life of its own.

All in all, these two very powerful trends reshape how marketing messages and learning ripple through a large-scale social network.

Mike Selinker: That all makes sense, Bill. This has been without doubt the most interesting discussion about bras I will care to admit to having.

• What does it mean for you to be healthy?
• What does it mean for you to be happy?
• What does it mean for you to be successful?

Mark works in the world of IT and databases. On Friday, his recruiter called him. “Mark, I need you to go to an interview right now. I know it’s short notice. The client just called and asked you to meet him. He doesn’t care how you’re dressed.”

Mark asked, “are you sure?” The recruiter replied, “I’m positive. He wants to meet with you immediately.” Mark hung up the phone and pulled himself together for the interview. The phone rang again, it was the prospective employer. “Mark, don’t worry about getting in a suit–can you meet with me in 30 minutes?”

The two met for alunch, and the employer explained that he’d lost a key employee. He had a deadline coming due in just a couple of weeks. The employer was desperate and needed someone immediately–ideally this afternoon. Mark listened to the work and recognized that he wasn’t the right person for the job. Here’s what Mark said.”

“I’d love to tell you that I’m your guy. I would love to start work after lunch. However, I’m not your guy. I know X and you need someone who know Y. It would take me six weeks to get up-to-speed on the areas you need. However, I do know the person you need. Give me a moment.”

Mark pulls out his mobile and makes a call to a past colleague. Mark knows she’s looking for work also. He explains the need and then hands the phone over to the prospective employer. They schedule a meeting for an hour later. The prospective employer exhales and returns the phone.

Then, the magic happens. The prospective employer pulls out his phone and makes a couple of calls. He explains that he’s just met a great guy who really knows X area of databases. Within just five minutes, the prospective employer has lined-up two interviews for Mark with different companies.

Kudos to both Mark and the prospective employer. Mark created instant social capital by conneting the prospective employer with a friend who had the exact skills required for the job. The prospective employer recognized the opportunity to reciprocate and made equally-valuable connections.

The job interview could have produced an ill-fitting hiring decision. Instead, both left the meeting with opportunities more closely aligned to their needs and their skills.

Marie is not wealthy. She owns her own home, but she lives paycheck-to-paycheck, slightly above the poverty line. She’s the sort of person who lives frugally and manages her account to the penny. A few months ago, she purchased a used four-year-old laptop. It was a big investment for her, but she decided that she needed to improve her computer skills so she can get a better job.

The break-in happened during the afternoon, while Marie was away at work. The thief kicked in the garage door, emptied the contents of every drawer, and tossed furniture and bedding around. Most importantly, the person took Marie’s laptop.

After leaving Marie’s home, the thief next went to a neighbor’s house, but the neighbor was home and she called the police. Marie learned about the break-in when the police called her. There wasn’t a formal neighborhood watch program in the community, but neighbors cared for neighbors. They looked out for each other.

Marie put out a call to her friends asking her to help her reorganize her home. Several people came over, and within a couple of hours we tamed the “whirlwind” of strewn possessions.

Next, she turned her attention to the door between the garage and the house. The door frame was destroyed, and it needed to be replaced. She called her friend who works as a locksmith. They’ve known each other for over 10 years, and they live within 5 minutes of each other. He was out-of-town for a week, but he said, “hang on, let me call a buddy for you. He’ll take care of you.”

When the locksmith arrived, he said, “My buddy said to take care of you. So, let’s take my truck to Home Depot. You buy the door. I won’t do any markup, and then I’ll install it for you at 40% my usual rate.” She blinked with surprise and gratitude.

The story doesn’t end there. Her coworkers had heard of the break-in. The employees are a mix of full-time and part-time. Yesterday, one of her coworkers asked her to step aside with her. The coworker said, “I know you lost your laptop. I’d like you to get another one.” She then handed Marie a check and said “if it costs more, let me know.” Marie was thrilled, but she deeply wondered “why?” As the conversation progressed, she heard her coworker explain.

The coworker (in her sixties) had gone through a rough divorce and then spent time mustering courage to rejoin the dating pool. Marie had sat with her for many days in lunchroom–listening to her frustrations and encouraging her to get back out and meet people.

It all came down to this: “You were there when I needed support. I want to be there for you.”

That night, Marie reached out to one of her tech friends and asked for suggestions on purchasing a laptop. So, within a week, she’d found help that will get her back on track.

What can Marie’s story tell us about social capital?

1. It’s not the number of contacts in your network, it’s how willing people will be able to act on your behalf: the neighbor who called the police; the locksmith and his friend; the coworker; and the tech friend.
2. A heterogeneous network allows you to mobilize different types of knowledge, skills, and resources. Marie could reach into her network to find someone to fix her door and an IT person to help her choose a laptop.
3. Investments of time and care made into others will sometimes yield unexpected returns.

She’d lived a long life, giving generously to those in her family and to her community. She was well loved. When she became ill with cancer, she was surrounded by those same friends and family. She’d deeply invested in relationships with many people who were substantially younger than herself.

Dan was impressed by the outpouring and affection and care shown to his grandmother. People who had received care from her years ago returned to support her at the close of her life.

Often we associate with our age-peers. They’re the people who resemble us most in our daily lives. They face similar challenges and often similar interests. Yet, when we explore the concept of social capital, there’s a definite value to heterogeneity within your network.

Robert Putnam, principal investigator of Harvard’s Saguaro Seminar and author of Bowling Alone explores the breakdown of community-based social capital. A life spent in tight isolation of “bowling alone” can lead to a situation many of us fear–dying alone.

Strong social networks can even help us live longer. Spend time learning from those people who are older than you, and take time to connect with people who are younger than you. It’s not only a way to get exposed to different ideas, it’s a way to stretch your mind.

Yesterday, LinkedIn created an opportunity for me to solve a challenge for a good friend of mine. Here’s the story.

In May 2008, LinkedIn added a “status update” feature. On your LinkedIn page, there’s a question that asks “What are you working on.” When you answer this question, it appears on your friends’ homepage. It also gets picked up in the e-mail blast.

Typically, the e-mail blasts are snoozers. They over-emphasize “who connected with whom” and they provide interesting (but really useless) status updates.

• Ravi connected with Maria
• Ted connected with Walter
• Anna is enjoying Saturday
• Andrew will be traveling to NYC soon.

Yesterday, buried within this laundry-list, I saw the following gem from my go friend Patti Hill; she’s the CEO and Founder of  Blabbermouth PR which provides executive-level service to each of its clients. Here’s what Patti wrote:

Patti Hill is interested in interviewing PC gamers. Know anyone?

Wow! Patti’s request is clear and direct. Most importantly, it contains a genuine call-to-action. There was a genuine request for help cutting through the noise. I knew instantly what to do.

Moved to Action

I’m a PC gamer myself, but even more than that, I’m well-connected with a lot of avid PC gamers. So, I reached out to Patti and asked how I could help.

She told me she was looking for high-end gaming enthusiasts. Within 10 minutes, I sent out an e-mail to key folks in my network, and asked them if they’d be willing to help Patti. They’re gaming geeks who work in the tech field and chat gaming and tech daily. I knew they’d be willing to help.

Then, as the answers started rolling in, I forwarded the responsed to Patti.

Online social networking tools represent a way to locate and mobilize hidden social capital within your network. Patti had no idea that I was a PC gamer, but since she has a large network, there was a good chance that someone could help her.

Savvier Ways to Ask for Help

Generic status updates are nice to share with your social network, but they remain low-value activities. If you want help, you have to ask–clearly and specifically.

Here are a couple of learned-lessons on ways to fine-tune your use of LinkedIn’s status-update feature:

• Share your tough challenges with people;
• Remain humble and genuine; and
• Create a call to action (ask for help).

As always, you have to be known as someone who will be willing to give help (rather than just ask for it).

I wish that more people used their social networking status-updates this way. Facebook offers a similar tool.

Ideally, LinkedIn would let me customize the e-mail alerts. I’d prefer to know more about my network’s needs/projects and less about “who-connected-with whom.”

Recently, I spoke with Joseph Porcelli about his efforts to develop social capital within neighborhood communities. Joseph combines a zeal for social capital with an amazing sense of humor.

In his day-job, Joseph works as a civilian coordinator for the Boston Police Department’s Neighborhood Watch Unit. He currently incorporates community-building and new-technology initiatives into the program.

In August of 2004, Joseph founded Neighbors for Neighbors (NFN) in response to crime in his neighborhood in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. Four years later, NFN has grown into an organization that engages thousands of neighbors at Neighborhood Socials and Community Organizing Expos and created over 70 community groups that serve to keep neighbors together.

Joseph has gained international recognition for the Nametag Project and the Mug Project.

BS: You say that “everybody can make a difference.” What does that mean to you, and can you provide a few examples you’ve seen in NFN where that’s been especially true?

JP: Absolutely. Everybody can make a difference!  We all have the capacity, and we want to contribute. What I’ve learned from my work leading Neighbors for Neighbors is that when you give people a chance to connect, they become interested. If you provide them with simple actionable steps, they will (more often than not) take them.

BS: You’ve told me that your interest in local social capital began with a class project. Tell me a little bit about that project and the impact it had on you.

JP: In 2004, a class required me to create a gift to the community as a reflection of a value that inspired us. At that point, two of my neighbors had been violently assaulted. I made my project about connecting and empowering my neighbors. Our community felt frightened and helpless. I handed out 500 flyers at the T station: informing my neighbors of the problem; explaining  what they could do about; inviting them to a community meeting. From these efforts, people felt informed and empowered.

Additionally, the course taught me to facilitate new possibilities for the community. So, I constantly asked, “what should we do next?” and “what’s missing?” People said, “we should do a neighborhood social next . . . so we can meet the rest of our neighbors.” After the social they said, “we should have an organizing meeting where we should create groups so we can stay together.” Then, they said “we should build a website to support our efforts.”

I had no idea what the heck I was doing. I just kept asking “what next” questions. So essentially the community led, and I facilitated. Cool huh!

BS: In 2004, you started Neighbors for Neighbors, which began connecting  your neighbors through neighborhood socials and helping them create community projects that kept them together. How have online social networking tools sustained your organization and its growth?

JP: What Neighbors for Neighbors is committed to, and the resources we have available to us, are very different and not even close to what we need. We are all volunteers, and we operate on a budget of about $2,000 a year funded by people getting a $121 discount at Mike’s Fitness when they donate $15 to us.  Ideally, we’d like a paid, event director, program manager, and admin.

So in place of monetary and human capital, we leverage technology to create the best systems we can. In other words, our members invest their time and passion into our network. Then, network cranks out multiples of everyone’s efforts. Online social networking tools allow myself and our communication board chair to “get out of the way.” Before these tools, everything had to flow through one of us. We nearly killed ourselves trying to keep up with all of the announcements. We were the bottleneck.

Now, we’re out of the way and the technology is in place. Everyone has become much happier, and the organization now runs itself online.

BS: You’ve been involved in many fun, unconventional projects-such as the Nametag Project and the Mug Project. How do see unconventional humor and ice breaking fitting with community building?

JP: I’m a really busy guy. These projects are on-top of my full-time job. I burned out really bad about a year ago. That’s when I decided that I have to make it all fun.

Humor helps people let their guards down and makes content more authentic. The “Don’t cheat on your mug video” still makes me laugh.

There are many great and serious causes out there. It’s hard to get your message noticed. So, we have a little fun. We let people know that we are human, just like them. In turn, they relate to us. I believe our humor increases participation.

I use humor to catch attention and cause people think about changing their behavior-whether it’s wearing a nametag to encourage neighbors to talk to each other or using a mug to reduce waste.

BS: Neighbor for Neighbors now attracts thousands of volunteers within the Jamaica Plain area. Would you please share a story or two of moments where the group has exceeded your expectations?

JP: Let me tell you about two groups.

Jamaica Plain Trees started a couple of year ago. They wanted to plant more trees. They had only a handful of members. Two year later, they planted over 200 trees in Jamaica Plain and have about 40 members. I also believe they influenced the mayor’s decision to commit to 100,000 trees by 2010. Just awesome!

The JP Women’s Group, now the Boston Women’s Group, started about a year ago. They wanted to create an inclusive and open group for gay/queer women. Within months, they had 400 members and couldn’t say “no” to other women in Boston who wanted to join.. Now they have over 1,200 fabulous women and have had 163 meet ups.

Both of these groups came to one of our community organizing expos, where they launched and totally flourished. I guess you could say we’re a Social Capital VC incubator.  “How-ya-doin?!”

I’m really proud to have been a part of helping these folks transform their visions into action that make a difference for our community.
BS: You’ve been involved with launching neighborhood watch programs as well as community events and socials. At first, these two events seem really different-one is designed to reduce risk and the other to promote connections. What have you learned from both of those networks and what do you plan to implement in the future?

JP: Traditionally, Neighborhood Watch has been focused solely on crime and reporting crime to officers. What I’ve learned is that for the groups to be sustainable, they need to incorporate fun and social activities. On the other hand, socializing is fun a couple of times, but the group needs a passion, interest, or issues to stay focused. It’s been great observing from the process from both sides, and I’ve been able to assimilate lessons and make stronger programs.

BS: In addition to your work with Neighbors for Neighbors, you work with the Boston Police Department as a civilian program coordinator for the Neighborhood Watch program. Part of that project seems to require building trust between neighbors as well as increasing the level trust between the community and the police department. What insights have you learned?

JP: Fear plays a huge role, and it greatly influences how the community experiences and deals with crime. Often times, the community will work itself up into a panic, because they lack facts. Then, anxiety sets in. To deal with this, the Boston Police Department focuses on developing relationships and rapport-which builds trust over time. Communication is key, but more importantly, we are most effective when we give the community tools to help themselves and our enforcement efforts.

BS: What have you learned about social capital that you wish everyone else knew?

JP: Social Capital is a community’s most important asset. Take away the fancy homes, cars, clothing, iPhones, etc. What are you left with, people. No matter what, we always have the capacity to make a difference. It comes down to remembering you have a choice. It’s easy to embed community-building choices into our daily routines, culture, and politics. Go Service Nation!

BS: Do you encounter people who are resistant to getting involved with their community? If so, how do you help them over that?

JP: There are three common reasons people are resistant.

• They think they don’t have enough time or that it’s not worth allocating time;
• They don’t see themselves relating to the topic or issue; or
• They perceive somehow they are not invited or good enough.

I find it’s important to repeat messages and invitations to people who are “on the fence”. Then, I go to the event myself. We collect photos and videos, which make it easier for people to envision themselves participating.

But, you know the most effective way? I have a conversation with them. I listen to their objections and obstacles, and I let them know that I’ve heard what they said. Often, when people know they’ve been heard, they become willing to consider new possibilities and will call themselves to action.

BS: What sustains your passion in developing communities?

JP: I lost a very dear friend to suicide a couple of years ago. I believe that if he had a community of friends that new what was going on with him he might still be here. My work honors his life.

Everything becomes possible when we come together. I see this over and over again every day.  My life’s value come from my service to my community. I love working with and learning from the incredible people I work with, and I really dig playing with new technology that creates efficiencies and produces social capital.

Some people spend their lives making and investing money to become rich. I am spending my life developing social and technology systems that produce social capital so we all can live rich lives.

BS: How can people get in touch with you?

People can write me at josephporcelli (at) gmail (dot) com or through www.josephporcelli.com

Yesterday, I traveled from my home in St. Louis to a client onsite in Vancouver, B.C.

When I fly, I’m typically pretty busy. I’m either reading documents, preparing reports, or catching up on much-needed reading. It’s usually my quiet time.

During yesterday’s flight, I struck up a conversation with a couple from Philadelphia. As a result, I heard a wonderful example of local social capital. The couple was traveling on their way to a two-week Alaskan cruise. The elderly man was a passionate gardener (he reminded me of my own grandfather), and he had several vines full of green tomatoes that would ripen before they return.

He hated to see them spoil, so he began a massive cooking adventure of fried green tomatoes. His wife described a kitchen full of cookware, plates, seasonings and oil.

Then, this weekend, the man went around and handed out plates of fried green tomatoes to his neighbors. According to the man: “they were going to go bad on the vine; I hated to see a summer’s worth of care remain unenjoyed.”

I asked him who he took the tomatoes to, and he described a long list.

• There was the person across the street who would be collecting the mail while they’re gone;
• The family whose teenage son mows their yard;
• The neighbor who will be caring for their cat; and
• The elderly lady who hosted them for dinner a few weeks ago, etc.

His list kept going while we flew westward. He and his wife were able to come up with over 12 people with whom they’d shared their green-tomato bounty. Surely, they were well-connected with their community and liked people.

Rather than let the tomatoes go rot on the vine; they turned them into an opportunity to create social capital.

Today, let’s explore the world of LOLcats. Specifically, the world of icanhascheezburger.

When we talk about social networks, we often think about groups that are bonded by strong ties and shared interests. However, in the internet age, weak ties can become exceptionally powerful due to the web’s global reach.

Yesterday, Daniel Terdiman at CNET retold the origin story that he heard Ben Huh share at Gnomedex about icanhascheezburger. It’s a great read that discusses how a meme grows into a self-sustaining community.

LOLcats are simple. Put some ironic (or funny) misspelled words over a picture of a cat. Upload it to icanhascheezburger, and you have an instant LOLcat.

According to Terdiman, when Huh bought the original site for $2 million, his investors were skeptical.

“When you tell investors that the site we bought has pictures of cats and not only pictures of cats, but cats with misspelled words on it,” Huh said, “they call their lawyers.”

Now, icanhascheezburger expects to have over 1 billion pageviews in 2008. (And those once-skeptical investors are thrilled).

If someone set out to write a business plan that involved creating a LOLcat community that could be monetized through advertising, people would have laughed. They’d have treated it with less respect than Fred Smith’s undergraduate research paper (that later launched FedEx) but received a “C”. It would have been perceived as yet another piece of dotcom fluff.

icanhascheezburger didn’t originate the LOLcat, but they successfully developed a community and have expanded to dogs, graphs, and four other affinity groups.

At some point, the self-replicating LOLcat meme (as described by Richard Dawkins, Susan Blackmore, and others) became a viable business.

Mark Granovetter wrote about the strength of weak ties in finding a job. However, there’s a different type of weak-tie at play here. LOLcats are an entertainment business built around self-identified affinities and weak-ties. Most visitors are consumers who view the latest images for a few seconds, read a few ads, and leave. Yet, a percentage of the community actually produces more content for the site.

The owners served as stewards/gardeners to nurture the site. According to Huh, their mantra has been:

“Don’t friggin’ touch a thing. There’s a community here. Without submissions (of users’ LOLCats), there’s no content. And without content, there’s no traffic.”

It only takes a few minutes to create a LOLcat, but that effort scales when thousands of people each spend a few minutes each week.Even if a small percentage of people create content, it’s still enough to sustain the social network. Distributed social networks allow scalability. We’ll look at that more tomorrow.