Summer Stage this Saturday

If you're in the NY area this Saturday definitely stop by the Summer Stage in Central Park. Chester French and Q-Tip (vivrant thing, soundtrack to high school dances) will be there.

And above all, it's free! Oh the little things.

Showcase: The Walls Speak

Compelling multimedia reporting put on by Lens- the photojournalism blog of the New York Times.

In Showcase: the Walls Speak, award winning photographer and filmmaker Tim Hetherington exposes graffiti he discovered while living and working in Liberia for four years. The cryptic and deranged drawings reveal the deep psychosis of Liberians bearing the brutal hand of warlord Charles Taylor.

"Amnesty International estimates that between 60 and 70 percent of the population suffered some form of sexual violence during the civil war that ravaged Liberia in the 1990's. Children became killers, schools were scenes of brutality- society itself had become inverted."

To learn how you can help orphaned and displaced children in Liberia visit The MacDella Cooper Foundation. MCF is building the first tuition free school in Liberia to house and educate 200 children, hoping to restore peace and a brighter future for the Liberian people.

12 seconds

Mashable is hosting the Summer of Social Good charity campaign and has collaborated with Kodak to ask readers to create an entertaining 12 second clip to help raise awareness for the social good fund (equally benefitting 4 key charities). The contest is simple:

1. Visit the #12forGood week page on 12seconds.tv
2. Submit a 12 second video (there's some suggestions on the page)
3. The winning ideas will be chosen at random and it's only 12 seconds long. So even if you embarrass yourself, it'll only be for 12 seconds and you could still win! Isn't that motivating?

The Summer of Social Good is the first large scale online charitable campaign to raise funds strictly online through the power of Social Media and the Internet. The goal is to use the power of "Social Influence" via Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Blogs and other online media to raise an unprecedented amount the fund benefiting The Humane Society, LIVESTRONG, Oxfam America and WWF from June 1st until August 28th, 2009.

To learn more visit: http://summerofsocialgood.com

UFO lounging

The sculpture Skystation by Peter Newman is available to the public until September, 14th 2009 (if you're part of the London public).

The public seating installation sits outside the Haywood gallery on London's South bank and looks as uncomfortable as the Ikea couch that's aesthetically polluting our living room as we speak. Although, I guess it looks cooler.

My nail beds suck!

One of the best pieces of feminist advice I've ever gotten is not to insult my own body in front of others. It perpetuates the idea that women should hate our bodies

(via Jezebel w/ thanks to Anna Brew)

Read the complete article Female Confessional Journalism And The Business of Self Hate

I'll do this any day of the week

People allowed to have personal assistants who put on their wellies and hold umbrellas for them when it's raining, yet somehow make it not seem like an obnoxious narcissistic stunt:

1. Tina Fey

end of list.

Lead By Example

Speaking of Think Social, check out the case study they put together for Charity: Water

Read it here http://think-social.org/case-study-charity-water.htm

Think Social

Yesterday I attended an event put on by The Paley Center for Media in support of the new Think Social. Think Social is a platform dedicated to advancing the public interest through social media.

Their aim is to:

• Conduct, aggregate and share research and new developments
• Recognize people, initiatives and institutions taking bold and innovative action
• Enable networking and collaboration among social media, private and public sector leaders

The Think Social luncheon brought together thought leaders of the social media/cause space to discuss tactics, feedback and further ideas for Think Social implementation. As a takeaway, I believe one of the most valuable assets to Think Social is to lead the way in aggregating the do-gooders and non-profits.

One of the (best) problems in the social cause and non-profit space is that it's crowded, very crowded (thankfully so, apparently the whole world isn't full of aholes) but how do we start segmenting these groups and individuals? How are we organizing their success stories and causes? How do we know what's a best practice of cause marketing? If Think Social can highlight leaders in the social good community, but also tell us exactly why they're leaders, what works and what doesn't we'll have better organizations and campaigns moving forward. Which means we'll have more impact to keep this world spinning. PHEW.

To learn more visit: http://think-social.org/