360DigitalInfluence

Philanthropic and non-profit volunteer work have always played a big role in my life. Well, I won’t lie, at one point, while attending a Catholic all-girls school it was a mandatory part of our curriculum to volunteer about eight hours per week to a local non-profit or philanthropy. I chose to become a candy-striper at a hospital walking distance from my house. My experience volunteering at the hospital was a lot more depressing than philanthropic, however, at the end of the day, the daily stories I read to the elderly, the special apple sauce runs I would make for the sick, or the comfort and attention I would provide the premature babies were all special moments and experiences for me that would change my life forever.

Since my candy-striper days, I’ve volunteered for organizations such as Future Leaders of America, The Woodland Mentorship Program, Enterprise for High school Students (EHSS), Habitat for Humanity, Miami Children’s Hospital, The Red Cross, Green Peace, and the Mexico City earthquake disaster relief program. Each providing a deep, humbling and educational experience, I feel that volunteering for non-profits fulfills and enriches my soul and day-to-day life. It has become an important part of my daily schedule, even a priority, to give back to under-developed communities, the environment, to those less fortunate than I, and helping provide immediate assistance to victims devastated by a natural disaster.

Below are a few virtual philanthropies that I suggest you check out. They are creating massive, global change by bridging the gap between technology and non-profit efforts. These organizations are making it seamless to provide awareness, assistance, and fund raising on an accessible, scalable and social level. Become a part of the Virtual Change Movement!

TechSoup.com — Powered by CompuMentor, one of the nation’s oldest and largest nonprofit technology assistance agencies, TechSoup.org offers nonprofits a one-stop resource for technology needs by providing free information, resources, and support. In addition to online information and resources, we offer a product philanthropy service called TechSoup Stock. Here, nonprofits can access donated and discounted technology products, generously provided by corporate and nonprofit technology partners.

Kiva.org — Kiva’s mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty. Kiva is the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs in the developing world.

Change.org — Change.org aims to transform social activism by serving as the central platform that connects likeminded people, whatever their interests, and enables them to exchange information, share ideas, and collectively act to address the issues they care about.

DonorsChoose.org — DonorsChoose.org is dedicated to addressing the scarcity and inequitable distribution of learning materials and experiences in our public schools. We believe this inequity is rooted in the following factors:

1. Shortages of learning materials prevent thorough, engaging instruction;

2. Top-down distribution of materials stifles our best teachers and discourages them from developing targeted solutions for their students; and

3. Small, directed contributions have gone un-tapped as a source of funding.

DonorsChoose.org will improve public education by engaging citizens in an online marketplace where teachers describe and individuals can fund specific student projects. We envision a nation where students in every community have the resources they need to learn.

WorldofGood.com — Our mission is to provide a trusted platform where individuals can create positive change through commerce, as part of a global community. We believe that a growing number of individuals want to understand how the choices they make impact people and the planet. There is an important need for trusted information, and a need for transparency into how and where products are made. Our goal is to provide our community with the resources needed to make good choices and connect with others who share the same passion.

1.) It’s PRETTY: The UI, the easy-on-the-eyes “Intel” blue and clean lines make it easy to read, browse, and view what’s on your news feed and profile page. I also like the small, colorful app icons, photo icons and profile details . . . small, cute, concise.

2.) And what a RESOURCE it is . . .: You can educate, comment, learn, share information by posting interesting blog entries, articles and videos.

3.) ARCHIVE my stuff!: Just like every other photo sharing and video distribution site out there, Facebook allows its users to archive an infinite (I think) amount of photos and videos on their profiles. There is also tagging features so you can highlight your friends or contacts in your network featured in photos or videos AND you can send your archived photos to friends, family or colleagues whenever you want, for years to come . . .

4.) Virtual NETWORKING on steroids: It’s crazy, but I’ve been able to recruit employees, conduct business deals, connect people and pitch reporters and bloggers via Facebook. Not that it’s the most ideal mode of communication to to do business in, however, it’s an easy, quick way to reach someone and refer someone should you need to hire a social media specialist yesterday (like I’m doing now!)

5.) Promotional tools for EVENTS: Facebook allows users to promote events, invite people to their events and keep track of who is attending through the social graph. It’s ideal if you’ve, for instance, started an organization called Girls in Tech and need to promote your events, but have no man or “woman” power to do so. Events also show up on your sidebar calendar and in your news feed.

6.) K.I.T. with friends and family: It’s super easy to keep in touch with high school friends, family and pretty much anyone on Facebook. Not only do you know what they’re up to based on what shows up on your news feed, but you can easily send anyone in your network, or multiple people in your network and email or a ping. It’s also simple to get in touch with specific subsets of people in your network by creating a group. This way you can send messages, post items, send pics, videos, whatevah to that specific subset of contacts!

7.) INTUITIVE Intuition: Facebook is seamless in its very personalized and customized approach - It knows you you’re up to, what you like, what to advertise on your newsfeed (err . . . no comment on this one). It’s just cool, to know that a social network is “sensing” your behaviors, so that you don’t get random ads, but stuff that you truly can be interested in based on past transactional, browsing online behaviors.

8.) APPS-Gone-Wild: Anyone and everyone can be an application developer with Facebook’s open developer platform. It’s frikkin’ awesome, genius, and it has evoked so much creativity and entrepreneurialism amongst the masses, mainly kids in college . . . Quizzes, Friends for Sale, Easter Eggs apps were created by kids (even some that have dropped out of school . . .mums the word Eric!)

9.) $$Cha-ching$$: Facebook is a cash cow . . . maybe not HUGE returns right now, but with an existing network and audience - if your app does well, downloaded, shared, etc. you’re bound to make a ton of money on ad sales. It’s a business . . . and probably the best, most nimble kind right now.

10.) Dave Morin: Last, but not least I have to highlight a good friend and all around awesome guy that has helped make Facebook what it is today - D-bone, D-dawg, D-nice . . . jk - Dave is a managing developer at Facebook and tours Silicon Valley and the world talking about how Facebook is evolving and taking over the world ;). He is as big-hearted, as he is smart and a nice dresser (surprised the heck outta me, since he’s from Montana )

Who would’ve thought that mixing Lunch and the Web 2.0 crowd would be so popular? Well, maybe it’s the free food, maybe it’s all of those nerdy conversations, or maybe it was Ogilvy’s “Lonche 2.0″ theme, seasoned with maracas, sombreros and of course a sumptuous burrito bar from Mexico Au Parc (our favorite lil’ South Park joint).

Lunch 2.0 is the prefect two-hour window that allows people to mix, mingle and chat it up with fellow VCs, freelancers, PR peeps, bloggers, developers, designers, biz dev’ers, tech professionals and industry influencers.

Created by my dear friend Terry Chay, Mark Jen and the amazingly fashionable Bernadette Balla, Lunch 2.0 has proven to be a total success in the Bay Area, Silicon Valley and beyond. So do people really come to get to know more about a company? The employees? To learn more about what Ogilvy does? Judging from the feedback we received, people really didn’t know much about Ogilvy’s 360 DI division. People were asking tons of questions on what types of services we provide, commenting on how the social media and WOMM markets are growing and how we plan to be the top agency in this space, as well as wanting to learn about some of our case studies and what was the “secret sauce” to our success (of course I didn’t divulge that!) It was exciting to know that everyone’s ears were perked and if they didn’t know what 360 DI was, now they do!

Online gaming is on the rise. From your kid brother to your to your Mom to your Grandpa Joe, everyone is catching on to the casual gaming rave.

As a 30-year old female, I never thought I would enjoy online gaming, however just like the URL, addictinggames.com reveals, casual games can be addicting and a great way to distract one-self on a rainy day, during work or if you’re just plain ol’ bored.

Just last week San Francisco was inundated with gaming geeks at the Gaming Developers Conference (GDC). Thousands of people loitered around the Moscone Center for the five-day conference to listen to the Microsoft keynote, play around with the Xbox Live community arcade and attend the Blogger’s breakfast.

Following the GDC, ClickZ released an article with some interesting statistics on the online gaming industry, highlighting that the online gaming market will experience a nearly four-fold revenue increase by 2008. In-Stat/MDR predicts that the total online gaming industy will grow from just over a billion in 2003 to nearly $4 billion by the end of 2008.

With revenues exploding by advertising integration and millions of new players, if techies are smart they will start pulling themselves away from building other online applications and redundant site developments to focus on creating the next big virtual, viral game.

A recent NPD Group research report noted that two-thirds of the surveyed 13 to 44-year-olds are using their PC or Mac instead of consoles and online gamers spent more time playing PC games online than offline (60 percent compared to 40 percent).