I had the privilege to attend the Social Good Conference in New York City sponsored by social media leader Mashable.com. About 150 people gathered at the 92nd street YMCA to listen to some of top names in social media talk about the intersection of ‘social’ and ‘good’. Highlights included:
Oxfam talked about their partnership with rock bands like Coldplay. The band allows a representative from Oxfam to embed with them while they are on tour. They teach Coldplay fans about their cause.
Livestrong.org just returned from their international conference on “inspiring and empowering people with cancer” at their Global Cancer Summit. They hand selected 500 delegates from 60 countries to come together in Dublin to share their experience, strength and hope in the fight against cancer.
Beth Kanter, one of my favorite bloggers, talked about her work in helping Cambodians emerge from poverty and her passion for training. Her take away was, “small actions online and offline add up.”
The highlight of the day for me came from a talk by a young man named Drew Olanoff (@drew- twitter). He created a movement called “Blame Drew’s Cancer” (#blamedrewscancer – twitter). He is fighting cancer and realized he was blaming everything wrong in his life on his cancer so he thought, why not let everyone blame my cancer for everything that’s wrong? For inspiration, follow Drew on twitter.
I can’t even describe how Drew inspired me with who he is. I keep trying to write it down for you so you’d know, but nothing is adequate. So I’ll leave you with this picture of Drew and the hope that you will, in whatever way you can, do good in the world. Thank you Mashable, Zappos and MailChimp.
Please tell me how you are helping to make the world a better place.
(Note: the closing was a marriage proposal between 2 Mashable staff, she said yes!)
What do you think?