Topic: Social Networks and Networking

Even without deep technical knowledge or a fat Rolodex, you can be a community superhero. In this talk from the 2009 MySQL Conference, Sheeri Cabral, the 2007-2008 MySQL Advocate of the Year, shares some pointers on things anyone can do to help the technology and community of your favorite open source project.

When it comes to online giving market places, the adage is: If you build it, few will come. So how do you drive enough people to such online spaces to make them work? In this audio lecture, sponsored by the Stanford Center for Social Innovation, William Meehan, McKinsey senior director, talks about the opportunities and challenges in making online giving marketplaces successful, and what lies ahead in this new philanthropy field for organizations dedicated to making a genuine sustained impact in communities.

Kiva has created an online marketplace that allows ordinary citizens through responsible investing to help specific entrepreneurs around the world thrive with as little as $25. How did Kiva get the critical mass it needed to make its operations a go? How does it work with nonprofits, entrepreneurs, and lenders through the online format? In this talk, sponsored by the Stanford Center for Social Innovation, Kiva President Premal Shah talks about how the organization got started, how it functions, and how it plans to grow.

Alexander Saint-Amand and Thomas A. Desmond describe how their firms use social networking techniques to meet the unique challenges of investment research and online trading. Saint-Amand explores how Gerson Lehrman Group qualifies & engages a global network of experts. Desmond details how TradeKing uses community features and user-generated content to change trading from a solitary experience to a social one.

For Linden Lab's founder and chairman Philip Rosedale, the open-ended social experiment that is Second Life doesn't end at the borders of the virtual world he envisioned and brought to life. The company itself is an evolving social and organizational experiment. In this conversation, Philip Rosedale tells host Jon Udell how mechanisms like the Love Machine and the Rewarder have succeeded -- or sometimes failed. And he discusses the ways in which Second Life supports the decentralized work style of Linden Lab.

MySpace, Flicker, YouTube, and Facebook are big brands and major movers in the commercial, social networking world. In this audio lecture recorded at the 2008 Nonprofit Management Institute, an event convened by the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Jeff Patrick of Common Knowledge shares how nonprofits can use such tools--and customize their own--to capture constituencies and raise funds. He further shows where social networking is headed so that nonprofits can begin to incorporate it into their long-term horizons.

David Glazer says that people are the killer app of the web. That is, finding ways to connect people easily and seamlessly is the next great wave in computing. There are barriers to overcome, but the desire to see it happen is great. In this presentation Glazer offers a snapshot of how we got to this point and where things will need to go from here.

The key to success in any team or enterprise is to develop good working relationships. In this talk, sponsored by the Stanford Center for Social Innovation, consultant Diana McLain Smith, author of Divide and Conquer: How Great Teams Turn Conflict into Strength, shows how those who care about performance and relationships can simultaneously nurture both. She offers tips for seeing work relationships in new ways, and practical suggestions for enhancing them.

Chris Messina has been an advocate of an open, social Web for many years. In this talk at the Graphing Social Patterns conference, Chris outlines potential problems with the current "walled garden" ideology of the major social networks and how the DiSo project aims to tackle them.

We play many roles in our daily lives: colleague, friend, parent, consumer, family member. Yet, says Charlene Li, our multidimensional lives are not currently accessible or integrated in any significant way. In this presentation Li discusses what she sees as the future of social networks, where the media we use will both reflect and inform the lives we lead.