For the sake of this post and citizen journalistic integrity, I’ll try to be as objective as I can here as few of us outside of Iran can know enough to truly know what is accurate. This noted, the consensus of the digerati has been made known and it is clear. In the world of Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube–the crowdsourced view is behind the ‘Green Uprising.’

A tipping point may be reached after today’s day of prayer and Ayatollah Khameni’s speech which may only inflame protesters. The momentum behind a movement has begun and it won’t easily taper.

As I browse Twitter tonight, I see tweets like the following:

• ravenclawgirl RT from Iran: Many of my friends calling & say goodbye, as they feel in 2morrow’s demonstration they may get killed #iranelection
• Macagogo A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history. Gandhi..#Iranelection
• dijitalboy RT @chestkneeshawk: RT BBC adds 3 satellites to overcome signal jamming in Iran. Yay BBC! http://budurl.com/ea4f #Iranelection
• KDSarge All followers of #iranelection think and review before you act or retweet. Iran govt out in full force on Twitter now
• maryamwebster Until we are all heard, none of us are free. Pray for those who are silenced/killed in Iran. Violence isn’t answr. #pray #iranelection #gr88

I am seeing Facebook Statuses tonight like this one:

• Shervin Pishevar - please pray for Iran and the brave Iranian people. In 5 hours we meet our destiny. I will not be able to sleep.

The informative Green Brief is coming out nightly from an Afghan man named NiteOwl, sourced entirely from Tweets from inside Iran. There are instructions on “Anonymous Iran” on how to surf in Iran using proxies so one can access the social web. There is a tremendous set of Flickr photos of the protests on the Fhashemi Flickr account. There are 180 posters from protesters shown at Design for Iran.

In two days, hundreds of thousands of Twitter members have turned their avatar green in support of the Iranian protesters using a tool at HelpIranElection.com.

Here are some videos seemingly showing violent oppression of the protests:

There are so many ethical issues here that we must tread carefully on. We must be careful in the West to so naturally and quickly support this uprising simply because we tend to lean toward the beliefs and views of the more moderate candidate Mousavi. Here is a good article supporting Ahmadinejad’s win. There are folks on the Ahmadinejad/Khameni side who are claiming that the support for the “American led coup in Iran” is causing unneccessary blodshed. Here is an example:

• @JimJones45 - 99% of tweets are from US backing a BLOODY revolution. People are dying. STOP destabilizing the Iranian state! #IranElection

This noted, others on Twitter seem to suggest these twitter accounts, most of which have no history before yesterday, are agents of the Iranian government.

To me, this doesn’t seem to be a Western-led coup. The pictures and videos of the hundreds of thousands of people in the street lay doubt to this claim.

Here is an excerpt of an email posted on Iran Fax Blog the that seemingly comes from an Iranian citizen:

Tomorrow, people will gather again in Valiasr Square for another peaceful march toward the IRIB building which controls all the media and which spreads filthy lies. The day before Yesterday, Ahmadinejad had hold his victory ceremony. Government buses had transported all his supporters from nearby cities. There was full coverage of that ceremony where fruit juice and cake was plenty. A maximum of 100,000 had gathered to hear his speech. These included all the militia and the soldiers and all supporters he could gather by the use of free TV publicity. Today, at least 2 million came only relying on word of mouth while reformists have no newspaper, no radio, no TV. All their internet sites are filtered as well as social networks such as facebook. Text messaging and mobile communication was also cut off during the demonstration. Since yesterday, the Iranian TV was announcing that there is no license for any gathering and riot police will severely punish anybody who may demonstrates. Ahmadinejad called the opposition as a bunch of insignificant dirt who try to make the taste of victory bitter to the nation. He also called the western leaders as a bunch of “filthy homosexuals”. All these disgusting remarks was today answered by that largest demonstration ever. Older people compared the demonstration of today with the Ashura Demonstration of 1979 which marks the downfall of the Shah regime and even said that it outnumbered that event. The militia burnt a house themselves to find the excuse to commit violence. People neutralized their tactic to a large degree by their solidarity, their wisdom and their denial to enage in any violent act. I feel sad for the loss of those young girls and boys. It is said that they also killed 3 students last night in their attack at Tehran University residence halls. I heard that a number of professors of Sharif University and AmirKabir University (Tehran Polytechnic) have resigned. Democracy is a long way ahead. I may not be alive to see that day. With eyes full of tear in these early hours of Tuesday 16th June 2009, I glorify the courage and bravery of those martyrs and I hope that their blood will make every one of us more committed to freedom, to democracy and to human rights. Viva Freedom, Viva Democracy, Viva Iran

On balance, to me the evidence seems to show that a reasonable person could come to the conclusion that this election may have been rigged. To avoid a revolution and further bloodshed, a new fair election must be held.

In an age of instant communication you cannot deceive your population for long. If you throw an election, it will get out. In an age of transparency, the days of leaders who don’t serve their people are numbered.

If you’re on Twitter, you can connect with me via @ryanallis.

The revolution will be Tweeted.

P.S. - Here is an interesting article on how protests were organized before the days of social media.

I’m in Dedham, Massachusetts tonight (pronounced Dead-um I think) just southwest of Boston.

Tonight, I started Day One of the Class of 2011 EO/MIT Entrepreneurial Masters Program. The program is a four day a year/three year program open primarily to members of Entrepreneurs’ Organization who are founders or co-founders of companies doing at least $1M per year in sales. It is held here at the MIT Endicott House.

Tonight we started with introductions. So far, I’m impressed with the group. I’m particularly impressed with the international diversity of the attendees. Of our sixty four classmates, twenty eight are from outside the United States. We have classmates from 16 countries including the U.S., Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, Spain, South Africa, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, India, the Netherlands, the Phillippines, Australia, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia.

Going into this evening’s introductory session, I knew only one other attendees, the 26 year-old brilliant phenom Sachin Duggal of Nivio. I met Sachin while in New Delhi in February and have to say he is on the list of the 10 Most Impressive People I’ve Met in the Last 12 Months.

During the introductions, I circled the names of a few folks to ensure I speak further with; Craig Fuller of Transcard, Chris Hanahan on Rotten Gorilla, Itu Kgaboesele of South Africa’s Sphere Holdings, David McMullen of RedPepper, Cam Mochan of The CRUX Company, Francisco Prado of El Salvidor’s d’Anconia Investments, Shashi Reddy of Case-mate, Susan Hrib of Signum Group, Sebastian Ross of Spain’s Grupo Intercom, and Martin Schuurman of the Netherland’s fastest growing company, Inkoopcollectief Yiggers.

I’m also glad to have learned that at least two of the attendees are iContact customers so far.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow. We’ll be hearing from Verne Harnish on the Rockefeller Habits, Patrick Thean on the One Page Strategic Plan, John DeHart on Nurses Next Door, and Geoff Smart on TopGrading.

I look forward to posting tomorrow night about what I learn!

How to Protect Your Trademark

If you run a company or organization that owns a trademark and you want to prevent others from registering your trademark as their username, you need to fill out this Trademark Registration form on Facebook right away.

This form is just for company names and trademarks, not for personal names. You can’t prevent others from registering personal names. So to be sure you get the URL you want (which will stick with you for the rest of your life) be ready and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/username/ at 12:01am eastern time this Friday night/Saturday morning!

Cheers,
Ryan Allis

1. Visit the non-profits that The Humanity Campaign and iContact have provided funds to in order to see and document how they are using the funds and to learn about their operations and needs;
2. Find additional qualified non-profits for The Humanity Campaign to invest in;
3. Find companies with unique innovative appropriate technologies that address local social needs and for-profit companies with a social mission to invest in;
4. Learn as much as we can about conflict resolution, IDP camps, food and water distribution, rural health care provision, and rural primary and secondary education; and
5. Dance, dance, and dance some more like Matt from Where The Hell is Matt!

On our first day in Nairobi we’ll be meeting with Amon Anderson from the Acumen Fund and Mary Muhara from Africa Rising. Amon is a friend of mine from back when we went to UNC together and from when he was in charge of the entrepreneurship minor at UNC. Mary is the in-country local representative for Africa Rising who vets the non-profits that Africa Rising contributes to. Mary will be taking us to visit TULIP Nairobi a program supported by AR. TULIP “strives to deliver hope for girls subjected to poverty and its vices: teenage pregnancies, HIV/AIDS, drugs, crime, and prostitution.”

On day two in Nairobi we’ll be visiting with Carolina for Kibera. CFK works in Kibera, a slum in North Nairobi to “promote youth leadership and ethnic and gender cooperation in Kibera through sports, young women’s empowerment, and community development.” CFK was started in 2001 by a UNC students Kim Chapman and Rye Barcott. Rye has since completed five years of service as an officer in the Marines and completed a MBA/MPA joint degree from HBS and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, which is what I’d love to be doing in a few years. They operate a soccer league, medical clinic (Tabitha Clinic), and a reproductive health and women’s rights center (Binti Pamoja). I’m so excited to be seeing their operation first hand.

On day three, we’ll be flying from Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta Airport to Entebbe, Uganda. We’ll stay the night in Kampala with our friend Louis Ntale, the brother-in-law of Duke’s Christopher Kigongo, and then wake up early to catch the five or six hour Posta Uganda bus from Kampala to Gulu and traverse once again the adventurous roads of rural Uganda.

Upon arriving in Gulu we’ll be meeting up with Andrew Morgan of Invisible Children. Over the past year I have been studying the conflict between the LRA, led by Joseph Kony, and the Ugandan army known as the Ugandan People’s Defence Force and formerly known as the National Resistance Army.

Invisible Children (IC) is working to put an end to the conflict, which has died down considerably in Northern Uganda but spread to the Central African Republic and the Northeast Democratic Republic of Congo, near the Garamba Forest. IC also working to re-integrate and educate former LRA child soldiers in the surrounding region’s Internally Displaced Person’s camps and to lobby the U.S. government to put State Department resources into ending the conflict. I had the chance to spend a couple days with their CEO Ben Keesey and co-founder Bobby Bailey while at The Summit Series trip in Aspen in April. They’ve put out a series of very well done DVD documentaries explaining the conflict and highlighting the stories of particular child soldiers. I’m very excited to see the IC operation while in Gulu.

After a day with IC, we’ll be visiting the Concerned Parents Association, another organization supported by Africa Rising, which mobilises parents of abducted children toward the objectives of:

1. Immediate and unconditional release of all abducted children
2. Peaceful resolution of the conflicts
3. Creation of an awareness of the plight of children in conflict

After three days in Gulu, we’ll head back down to Kampala on July 1st, visit with Opportunity International Kampala and then Jonathan Gozier of Appfrica, and stay the night again with Louis. On Thursday, July 2nd we’ll have one free day and either head to the Kampala Hospital, do a follow-up visit with the the Kyetume health clinic an hour away in Nkokonjeru, or head over to Jinja to see the source of the Nile.

On Friday we’ll head over to Mityana, Uganda to visit the Naama Millennium School and get an update on the scholarship program that iContact and The Humanity Campaign have funded that will be helping students at Naama attend secondary school. We’ll also be visiting a team from Duke and Nourish International. Naama serves 321 students, 113 of which have lost one or both parents. It was a true joy last year visiting Naama and seeing the school children dance!

After visiting Naama we’ll visit the Mityana Secondary School. One of my favorite memories from the visit last June was sitting in on an entrepreneurship class and seeing first hand the drive in the students to excel.

On our final day, Bob and I will head back to Kampala to fly to Nairobi and then back to RDU through Heathrow and JFK to be back in time for work on Monday morning July 6. Jess will continue on and head down to Karagwe, Tanzania to work with Juma Masisi at WOMEDA, a women’s rights organization.

I look forward to blogging about our experiences! Stay tuned.

The topic was “The Great Opportunity of Our Generation”

Some of the formatting is off in Scrib but mostly OK…

MIT IDEAS Social Entrepreneurship Competition, Ryan Allis, The Great Opportunity of Our Generation, May 200…

Here are some notes from the award ceremony following my presentation from Joe Chung. Congratulations to the winners! AquaPort, HeatSource and EGGTech were especially interesting to me.

Opening: Nick Fontaine
Keynote: Ryan Allis

Chancellor introduced
$2.5k IDEAS Award Winners
Aquaport
Oladapo Bakare
Ashley
Mary
Rob
Joonhaeng
Ash
Rebecca
Daniel
(water filtration)

Professor Thomas Byrne introduced
$2.5k winner
Vision Group (seeing machine)
Quinn Smithwick
Brandon Taylor
Yi Fei Wu
(project image directly into eye, bypass distorting part)

Barbara Baker introduced
$5k IDEAS Award winner
sponsored by Baruch Family
Global Citizen Water Initiative
Scott Frank
Stephanie Bachar
(place water in tube for 24 hrs to see if clean)

Allan Powell introduced
$5k IDEAS Award Winner
sponsored by The MIT COOP
BLISS
Saba Gul
Dr. Ishrat Hussain
Nadeem Mazen
Ghanzala Mehmood

Presented by Dean Stephen Lerman
$5k IDEAS Award Winner
sponsored by the office of dean of grad education/Yunus Challenge Winner
EGGTech Blandine Antoine Emmanuel Cassimatis Alla Jezmir
(providing battery for lighting to those in tanzania without electricity)

Yunus Challenge Winner
$7,500 IDEAS Award Winner
Lebone
Alexander Fabry
Aviva Presser
Hugo Van Zuuren
(microbial fuel cell solution for providing electricity)

Presented by Professor Thomas Byrne, MD
$7,500 IDEAS Award Winner
Braille Labeler
Aleksander and Anna Anita Leyfell
Adelaide Calbry-Muzyka
Josh Karges
Karina Pikhart
Maria Prus
Rachel Tatem
(electromechanical braille labeler)

Presented by Professor Michael Cima
Sponsored by the Lemelson - MIT Program
$7,500 IDEAS Award Winner
HeatSource
Amy Qian
Celeste Chudyk
Scot Frank
Allen Lin
Mary Masterman
Catlin Powers
Saad S
(encapsulating solar radiation through textile/material that provides heat during night)

Winner’s Retreat 2 Days at Endicott House

I loved going barefoot as a child. There was something so incredibly freeing about ditching my shoes and giving the tootsies some breathing room, and yet the thought never crossed my mind that I wouldn’t eventually have to put my shoes back on to go to school, church, or the store. When my brother and I rode bikes or played in the woods with the kids next door we didn’t think twice about putting on shoes to protect our feet. And as I grew up, “new” shoes were bought to accommodate my growing feet. My closet was full of shoes and still more I would buy.  So little did I know.

Around the world, millions of children go barefoot all day, every day without choice.

This past Thursday, April 16, TOMS Shoes challenged shoe-wearing individuals around the globe to leave their shoes behind and spend “A Day Without Shoes.” Twenty-four hours make up a day, and being a bit of a literalist, I decided a full day barefoot is exactly what I would do, thus for 24 hours my feet were bare. It was quite the experience—and I got quite a few ‘looks.’

One of Ryan’s friends Blake Mycoskie from Summit ‘08 is the founder TOMS and is the “Chief Shoe Giver.” He began the company in 2006 after a trip to Argentina opened his eyes to the very real need for shoes. Centered around an incredible “One for One” mission, for every pair of TOMS shoes purchased another pair is made to GIVE to a child in need. One for One. I fell in love with the TOMS mission in 2007 after coming across a pair of TOMS in an unknown magazine and immediately wanted a pair for myself. And although I did indeed get a pair for myself, in the end I received so much more. TOMS has sparked a passion in me unlike any other cause before and going barefoot for a day was the very least I could do.

Soil-transmitted parasites are the leading cause of disease around the world. In Ethiopia alone, where the soil is full of silica-rich volcanic particles, a disease by the name of Podoconiosis (Podo) affects nearly 1 million people with over 11 million more susceptible to contracting the disease. Massive swelling and ulcers on the lower extremities cause sever pain and deformities, ultimately preventing those affected from moving freely, going to school, or holding a job. Often times these individuals are shunned by their families and left to fend for themselves. Sadly, Podo is 100% preventable by simply wearing shoes.

Shoes protect feet from cuts and sores, from disease and infections. Shoes also enable children to attend school where they are often dress-code requirements. Shoes are so simple and yet so powerful.

Shoes can change lives; they changed mine.

TOMS’ core “One for One” principle defies traditional business practices where the pursuit of financial wealth and power are often central.

The power of the TOMS mission does not reside solely in its giving away of shoes, but perhaps even more so in what is given along with each pair. By providing shoes for their soles, TOMS is touching the souls of children around the world and reminding them of their immense value as human beings.

For eighteen months I have looked at six pairs of shoes from Africa. Not one single pair is fashionable by typical American standards, in fact quite the opposite. Three pairs are haphazardly untied and two are without shoelaces entirely; they are worn, torn, scuffed, and coated in a film of brown dust, and they are beautiful. Twelve little feet are the focal point of the screen saver on my computer and together they form one of my most treasured images. Crammed together on a wooden bench, in a crowded school chapel one glorious afternoon in Kenya, the six pairs of shoes belong to six of the precious children who changed my life.

This screen saver, these six pairs of shoes, remind me daily what it means to live.

I have a dream of one day returning to the Kenyan school yard where I experienced life to the fullest, and take with me 400 pairs of a certain shoe I have come to love.

As I spent the day up-close and personal with the rocks and dirt of Mother Nature, rode on public buses, and traversed the UNC campus, my bare feet were a constant reminder of the power in a pair of shoes. I haven’t had a day quite so good in a very long time.

So now, I’m applying for an internship with TOMS this summer, and this blog post is the least I could do to show them I would love to work with them. Check out TOMS online at www.tomsshoes.com.

I am in a Social Media Giving Contest to see who can generate the most unique contributions by this Sunday April 12 at 8pm ET to Nothing But Nets, a campaign to eliminate malaria in developing countries. So far I have 7 unique contributors and if I can get it above 50 I’d be in the lead. I think I might have a good chance with this blog post and announcing it at The Public Policy Forum Meetup tomorrow night at our house to get in the front.

Would you contribute ten bucks at https://www.causes.com/fb/donations/new?cause_id=183&fundraiser_id=1604&m=38d81d22?

If I get the most unique contributions by Sunday night at 8pm ET I will win a trip to Africa with Nothing But Nets and the UN Foundation to distribute the nets. Wouldn’t that be awesome!

You can win a trip to Africa too. One contributor will be selected at random to receive an all-expense paid trip to Africa to distribute the malaria nets later in 2009 with the UN Foundation. A $10 donation will provide an insecticide treated malaria net that lasts five years that two children can sleep under.

It’s not about how much we raise, but how many unique individuals I can convince to give. Malaria infects more than 500 million people a year and kills more than a million. One person dies about every 30 seconds from malaria.

This contest is part of The Summit Series, an event I was at last weekend in Aspen. All proceeds of the contest benefit the Nothing But Nets Campaign of the UN Foundation.

Nothing But Nets is a global, grassroots campaign to save lives by preventing malaria, a leading killer of children in Africa. Inspired by sports columnist Rick Reilly, tens of thousands of people have joined the campaign that was created by the United Nations Foundation in 2006. Founding campaign partners include the National Basketball Association’s NBA Cares, the people of The United Methodist Church, and Sports Illustrated. It costs just $10 to provide a long-lasting insecticide-treated bed net to prevent this deadly disease. To date, Nothing But Nets has raised more than $25 million and distributed over 2.5 million nets to children and families in Africa.

All contributions are secure and tax deductible and are run through the Nothing But Nets Cause on Facebook. Thank you so much for your help!

The link to make a contribution is https://www.causes.com/fb/donations/new?cause_id=183&fundraiser_id=1604&m=38d81d22

Thank you so much for your help!

Sincerely,
Ryan Allis

The last four weeks have been non-stop. It’s been passion-filled entrepreneuring and social entrepreneuring. Love it.

At the beginning of March I had the opportunity to speak at Yale University at the StartingBloc Greater NY Institute. I spoke on “A Vision for Our World in 50 Years.”

In mid-March I spoke at the Montgomery Tech Conference in Santa Monica to present iContact and meet with investors and saw Tim Draper of DFJ do an excellent rendition of The Riskmaster. I spoke at Southeast Venture Conference in Atlanta the next day to present an update on iContact to investors.

On March 6 I had the chance to visit The White House in D.C. to attend a Summit of Young Entrepreneurs and heard Macon Phillips, Yosi Sargant, David Washington, Michael Strautmanis, Jason Furman, Martha Coven, Greg Nelson, and Heather Zichal of the Obama Administration present on what they were working on to make an impact in the areas of the economy, budget, healthcare, energy, the environment, and transparency.

March 20,  I hosted Entrepreneur & Social Entrepreneur Meetup #27 at my house in Chapel Hill where Nate Seaman of Bike and Build (he’s biking across the USA this summer to build and raise funds for low-income housing),  Gene Nichol of the UNC Center for Poverty, Work, and Opportunity, Dan Moore from Triangle Gives Back, and Michael Kelso from the startup Briteroots presented for 7 minutes each.

The peace activist inside of me was stimulated on March 26 when Betty Bigombe spoke at UNC’s FedEx Global Center on what she learned negotiating peace in Uganda between the Museveni Government in the South and the LRA in the North.

At the end of the month I attended StartingBloc’s NYC Institute at NYU Wagner and Columbia Business School. I heard presentations by the passionate Robert Egger of DC Central Kitchen, Ami Dar of Idealist.org, and environmental activist Majora Carter of Sustainable South Bronx.

Finally on March 30th, I was inspired to build schools in developing countries as a way toward lasting peace and security when Greg Mortenson of Three Cups of Tea fame spoke at UNC. He has built dozens of schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Here are two memorable quotes from Mortensen’s talk:

“Fighting terrorism is based on fear. Promoting peace is based on hope” - Greg Mortensen
“The solution to terrorism is education, not bombs.” - Greg Mortensen

Other notable events in March were the Nourish International (side note: if you’re in Raleigh, Nourish is hosting a fundraiser on April 17 called Brew Local, Act Global at Mosaic Wine Lounge from 6pm to 8pm) and Leadership Triangle Board Meetings, an Entrepreneurs’ Organization Forum, and an EO Raleigh Recruiting Event and Jess Lipson and Brooks Bell’s house. EO Raleigh is working to bring together the largest group of successful entrepreneurs in the Triangle.

On the personal side of life, I fit in visit to the wonderful NC Museum of Art in Raleigh, three ultimate frisbee sessions at UNC’s Carmichael Fields, and celebrated with my mom for her 57th birthday.

In the book world, right now I’m reading An Assault on Reason by Al Gore, Three Cups of Tea by Mortesen, and Mastering the Rockefeller Habits by Verne Harnish.

At iContact, we’re up to 162 full-time employees, 159 of which are based in our Durham office. We hired six new team members last month and are continuing to hire in customer service, sales, and development. We passed the $2M in monthly sales milestone for the first time in March. Because we hit this stretch goal, I’ll be dressing up like Tina Turner (with wig, shaved legs, mini-skirt and all) on April 17th. I was able to extract a few commitments from other members of our Director team…

• Chuck Hester will sing the UCLA fight song at the April company lunch, wearing a UCLA jersey
• Ken O’Berry will dress up as Steve Perry, complete with tuxedo tails, and sing Don’t Stop, Believin’ at the April Company Lunch
• Sarah Stealey will take a $25 gift card, go to Wal-Mart, buy an entire outfit (shoes included) and wear the outfit to work (and yes, the trip to Wal-Mart will be videotaped)
• Cindy Hays, David Rasch & Brandon Milford will dye half their hair iContact Green and the other half iContact Blue
• Eric Sternkopf will come to work on day in April dressed as his favorite artist, The Prodigy.
• Tim Oakley will come to work on a day in April dressed as Michael Jackson.
• Robert Plumley will auction off the right to put a cream pie in his face at the April company lunch to the highest bidder and donate the proceeds to The Shriners’ Hospital in Greenville
• Kevin Fitzgerald, Aaron Houghton, Ralph Kasuba, and David Roth will rewrite the lyrics and perform a song parody video of “We are the World” – renamed “We are not SPAM” and put it on YouTube

Whew. What a month!

On Sunday March 1 I got a voicemail. The call was from Elliott Bisnow. It said, “Come to The White House on Friday.”

Background on The Summit Series

I’ve written about Elliott before. He’s 23 and somehow, with an excellent team, has put together The Summit Series, designed to bring together the top entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs, and innovators under 40 in the world. The group started in April 2008 in Utah wanting to bring together cool people. The purpose has evolved and strengthened as the group as grown.

Today, the purpose of The Summit Series is to bring future global leaders together to figure out how to make the world better. They’ve brought together people like Jessica Jackley, co-founder of Kiva, Scott Harrison, the founder of Charity Water, Eric Ryan and Adam Lowry, co-founders of environmentally-friendly soap maker Method, and Blake Mycoskie, CEO of TOM’s Shoes, who has given away tens of thousands of shoes to children in developing countries.

They’re working to build a community of the most influential young entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs, and innovators to make a positive impact. It’s the Clinton Global Initiative, Davos, and TED for Generation Y.

At the next Summit Series in April in Aspen, the focus is on philanthropy. They’ll be bringing in Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen (inventor of the LifeStraw) and Elizabeth Gore from Nothing But Nets, Lauren Bush from Feed Projects which sells bags that enable a contribution to feed a child for a year, Bobby Bailey from Invisible Children which works with child soldiers in Uganda, and Ethan Zohn from Grassroots Soccer, who took his $1 million from winning Survivor:Africa to set up soccer leagues in Africa that enable children there to get tested for HIV/AIDS.

In just one year, The Summit Series has grown through hustle, hard work, and word of month to 120 members, including some of the most well-known and respected ‘under-40′ entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs in the world.

This brings us to three weeks ago.

How The Meeting Transpired

On February 22, Elliott met David Washington and Yosi Sergant (the guy who launched the iconic HOPE poster) from the White House Office of Public Liaison at a DC event. Elliot told David and Yosi about Summit Series. They were interested in getting the message out on the Obama Administration’s efforts on job creation, the economy, energy, health care, transparency, and new media and building relationships over time with the attendees.

So it happened. David and Yosi told Elliot to find 30 people from Summit Series to come to a meeting at The White House on March 6th.

When someone calls to tell you to come to a meeting at The White House, you go. The White House has a “strong gravitational pull” as David Sutphen of Brunswick Group put it on Friday morning. And so I went.

Friday At The White House

So on Friday morning I flew to D.C. After getting a last minute haircut at an ‘old-school barbershop’ on 15th and H and running into my NASA-friend Stephanie Fibbs on the walk back, the Summit group met at 12pm at the Hay Adams Hotel for a reception.

At the reception I had a chance to meet Jake Nickell from Threadless, Evan Williams with Twitter, Mark Ecko from Ecko, Michael Chasen from Blackboard, and investor Chris Sacca from Lowercase Capital and reconnect with Tony Hsieh from Zappos, Aaron Patzer from Mint.com, Ben Kauffman from Kluster, and Josh Abramson from College Humor.

Lunch followed. At the table was Jessica Jackley from Kiva, Aaron from Mint, Ivanka Trump and her fiance Jared Kushner of the New York Observer, Catherine Levene of Daily Candy, and David Sutphen of Brunswick Group.

Setting Expectations

Prior to heading to The White House, David Sutphen and Phillipe Lanier of Eastbanc set expectations. We were not there to add on to the endless to-do list of the Administration. We were there to understand what was currently being done, ask questions, and build a long term relationship.

We heard that the Administration members we were about to meet were “drinking from a firehose” currently. They explained that we not there to give lots of ideas, but rather to learn what was happening so that we could be the entrepreneurial implementers and doers in our own communities working toward addressing critical needs. It wasn’t just about one day, but an ongoing relationship that started that day.

They shared that the Obama Administration saw us as one medium to communicate what they were working on to others via new media and as one filter of constituent thoughts and suggestions. With the CEOs of web firms Twitter, Zappos, iContact, Threadless, Mint, and Blackboard in the room we could certainly do that. They wanted to build a long term relationship with us and authentically wanted our contribution and ideas–just not all at once and in a usable ’summarized, bulletted form.’

So we walked over. We got our security passes at The Eisenhower Building and then went inside. We went up three floors and down a hallway to a room with thirty chairs and a table.

The Agenda from The Meeting

The meetings during the 90 minute session went as follows:

2:00pm - David Washington, Ph.D - Assoc. Director of the White House Office of Public Liaison and Michael Strautmanis - Chief of Staff to the Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Relations and Public Liaison

2:15pm - Jason Furman - Deputy Director of the National Economic Council

2:30pm - Martha Coven, Special Assistant to the President for Mobility and Opportunity; Greg Nelson, White House Office of Public Liaison; and Heather Zichal, White House Office of Energy and Climate Change

2:50pm to 3:30pm - Macon Phillips, Director of New Media

Notes from The White House Meeting

Here are my rough notes from each session. All quotes are paraphrased and could be incorrectly attributed in some cases due to my sub-par note taking system

David Washington

• We want to know your ideas on how we can make government more transparent.
• We want examples of how the stimulus is helping–anecdotes and stories that you see.
• Our focus is creating jobs–but we need your help in doing this.

Michael Strautmanis

• Some of the stimulus may work. Some may not. We’re here for solutions not banter.
• When I met Michelle Robinson, she treated me as if I had value.
• President Obama challenged us to make government more transparent.
• From transparency comes legitimacy.
• The OMB is more transparent now. Longer explanations. Posting on Recovery.gov.
• As entrepreneurs, I want you to think creatively about the world of making the world a better place for our children.
• Only way to fix economy is to get on a sustainable path with fiscal responsibility.
• We have to create dynamism and energy. It takes heart.
• Other generations have had other challenges. Together we can meet these challenges.
• We are partners for creating a sustainable future.
• In response to question from Chris Sacca on will Obama start Twittering again: That is up to the Secret Service.

Jason Furman

• We’re working on unfreezing credit, bringing down the cost of health care, energy independence, the climate, education, and fiscal sustainability.
• In response to question on budget deficit from Aaron Patzer of Mint: Right now a fear is deflation. A deflationary spiral is the biggest nightmare for economists. The amount we’re borrowing today is small in comparison to our GDP and needed. Our economy can afford the deficit. We have a path to cut the [annual] deficit by 50% in 5 years. People are lending to the U.S. cheaply at 2.5%.
• We have 12.5M unemployed. Some banks may have negative net worth. Housing was overpriced.

Martha Coven

• We are working on creating green jobs.
• I want the best ideas from the private and social sector to bubble up to Federal Policy making.

Heather Zichal

• In response to question on solar power and home owners selling energy back to grid: We will think about homeowners selling electricity back to the grid.
• We are focused on energy and climate change.
• Administration making a commitment to CAFE standards and reducing dependency on foreign oil
• Cap and trade revenues to start in 2012 according to budget

Greg Nelson

• As business leaders you have a chance to redefine what the role of a business leader is.

Macon Phillips

• Creator of change.gov, whitehouse.gov, and recovery.gov
• We want to work with you on creating a PSA 2.0
• I love free dissemination
• We’ve made time for this because we want you to be empowered.
• Wants abilities to get mass response, but with usable outcomes. 8,000 comments can be unusable sometimes.

What They Asked of Us

Overall, I was very glad to participate. Each of the 30 attendees has been asked to do the following:

1. Act as a filter/community ambassador for the best ideas/suggestions/thoughts on what we can do on the economy, budget, energy, healthcare, education, and new media. Get feedback from your community and send the best to us from time-to-time in summarized, bulleted form.
2. Send any examples/anecdotes/stories that we hear of due to investments from the Stimulus making a positive impact in your community.
3. Send any ideas/suggestions/thoughts on how to make government more transparent and open.

Finally, they asked us to go back to our communities and work entrepreneurially to create positive change, address social needs, and create jobs. They said we must create a true partnership between the public, private, and non-profit sector for it to work.

My Thoughts on The Meeting

I very much appreciated the meeting. It was done with good intentions, and not as a media stunt. They shared with us what they were working on and how we could be part of it to increase the chance of success.

It was clear how smart, busy, and focused these people were. They were glad to meet us and we were certainly glad to meet them. They could be us and we could be them.

They gave us their direct email addresses and encouraged us to act as a filter for them for them on the best ideas. Finally, they invited us to build a long term relationship and explained that as we built trust over time, our influence as a group would grow.

After the Meeting

After the meeting, we all went to a local restaurant to discuss what we had experienced. We broke out into four groups to talk about our ideas and begin to refine them. The groups were:

1. Economy and the stimulus
2. Education and job creation
3. New media and transparency
4. Energy and the environment

I led the group on the economy and the stimulus. I’ll be writing up my notes and posting them soon.

Where It Goes from Here

So we’ve been asked to be one informal filter (of many) for these individuals in the Administration and Office of Public Liaison and help ensure they’re getting the best ideas from the best people filtered to them every few months in summarized form.

I’ll be holding an Entrepreneur & Social Entrepreneur Meetup at my house in Chapel Hill on Friday March 20th at 8pm at which I’ll present what we’ve been asked to do and start the discussion with the group.

We’ll likely hold a separate meetup (date TBA) in early April to discuss and debate ideas and policy proposals on the topics of: economy, budget, energy, healthcare, education, transparency, and new media. We’ll then filter the ideas and present a summarized form to our new contacts in the Obama Administration.

If you have any ideas or thoughts please post them below via the comment section.

The Tweets From The Meeting

Since Evan Williams, the founder of Twitter with 231,000 followers, Tony Hsieh of Zappos with 197,000 followers, and Chris Sacca with 132,000 followers were with us, we may have been in the most tweeted meeting at The White House in the history of the world.

The post-meeting Tweets were positive.

@ev wrote: “Lessons from today: Obama’s team: smart and committed. Learned a lot and was inspired.” and

@saaca wrote: “The folks from the White House are sharp. Obama made it cool once again for awesome people to serve in government.”

@tomsshoes wrote: “Just left the meeting - pretty inspirational. The administration really does want our input, each gave their personal email addresses and encouraged dialogue.

Feedback from Readers and Friends Prior to the Meeting

I was amazed at the response I got by soliciting feedback prior to and during the meeting on Facebook and Twitter. More comments flowed in than I’ve ever gotten before on a status update or Tweet.

I asked on Thursday night via Facebook and Twitter, “meeting at White House Friday to discuss ways to improve economy. Any suggestions?” I got 29 responses. Note that you’ll have to be my Facebook friend or in the UNC or Raleigh-Durham network to read them I believe.

I also asked on Friday, “just challenged by the Obama Administration to provide idea on how to make govt more transparent and open. Ideas?” I got 17 responses.

Photos from The Day

Here’s a photo of the front of the brochure for the day:

And here is Jeff Rosenthal and I with Jessica Jackley of Kiva inside the Einsenhower Building.

Comments Sought

What are your thoughts/ideas/policy proposals in the areas of economy, budget, energy, healthcare, education, transparency, and new media? Post and get the discussion going…

So I’m standing in front of 150 social entrepreneurial peers at Yale on Saturday, attempting to set the scene for why I think we can actually end poverty, hunger, genocide, warfare, and preventable disease in our lifetimes.

First, I start with the challenges.

This is a continuation of the last post “The Great Challenge of our Generation.” The material comes from my StartingBloc presentation on Saturday, “The Immense Opportunity our Generation Has.”

First, let me take a step back and take a shot at some of the major the causes of this economic decline. Some of these causes may be controversial or debatable, but it’s a stab.

The Major Causes of the Economic Decline

1. De-regulation of financial industry in 1999 (Glass-Steagall)
2. Low interest rates to stem 2001-2002 recession
3. Easy credit to unqualified home buyers from 2002-2007
4. Lack of consumer savings in the U.S.
5. Over-leveraging of trading accounts
6. Over-derivitization of securities, de-linked from their underlying assets (CDOs, credit swaps, MBSs)
7. The collapse of key counterparties to risk

And the resulting effects of the declines…

The Effects of the Economic Decline

Mar 2008 - Forced Sale of Bear Sterns to JP Morgan
Jul 2008 - IndyMac Bank collapses
Sep 2008 - Bailout of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG, Forced Sale of Merrill Lynch and Wachovia, Collapse of Lehman Brothers
Oct 2008 - $700 billion U.S. government TARP
Feb 2009 - Unemployment rises to 7.6%, over 3.6 million jobs lost, DJIA down 50% from Oct 2007 peak, $787 billion U.S. government stimulus package

I showed graphs showing of the rise in collateralized debt obligations…

the decline in NASDAQ to levels not seen since 1998…

the decline of the DJIA to the lowest levels since 1996…

the decline of the Brazil-Russia-India-China ETF down 61.47% since June 2008…

the rise in unemployment to the highest level since 1992…

the rise in U.S. foreclosures…

and the drop in IPO pricings, down 84% in 2008…

Finally, I listed the key global challenges we currently have:

Key Global Challenges

1. Extreme hunger and food distribution
2. Water sanitation and distribution
3. An $11 trillion U.S. government debt and unfunded liabilities in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security
4. Lack of access to childhood education
5. Infant mortality, Malaria, measles, TB, diarrhea, HIV/AIDS
6. Human rights violations and sex trafficking
7. Climate change causing increasing temperatures
8. Nuclear proliferation
9. Major conflicts in Congo, Palestine, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq
10. Lack of transparent leadership in Zimbabwe, N. Korea, Somalia

And the wonderful graphic I showed next to illustrate just how scary these challenges are…

Yes, this baby has good reason to cry.

And to transition to the section on opportunities I started by showing…

I showed the DJIA over a 40 year period to show a longer term perspective…

I showed the DJIA from 1969 to 1982 to show another 13 year period that was flat…

Then showed what happened to the DJIA in the thirteen year period from 1982 to 1995 (from 900 to 4700)…

And showed Yale Economics Professor Robert Schiller’s P/E10 ratio that shows Price to Earnings ratio over a 10 year period to give a longer term perspecitve, showing that the P/E10 today is 13.38 down from 43 in May 2000.

And showed the 13.38 P/E10 lower than the long term average since 1881 of 16.84 indicating it may be a good time to buy.

And showed that only 23.5% of the world population (only 1.5B people so far) have access to the Internet today and that this percentage is rapidly expanding, which may provide a great coming power from a connected humanity that can communicate…

Showed that infant mortality has been cut in half in the last 45 years via the chart from Bill Gates’ annual letter…

Talked about the old model of government-to-government bi-lateral aid…

And shared three case studies of non-profits that are following a new model of aid, Aid 2.0, that could make a huge impact…

And finally listed all the great entrepreneurial opportunities there are in the world that entrepreneurs can work to solve–all of which could generate a billion dollar business…

Key Global Entrepreneurial Opportunities

1. Agricultural production yields
2. Food distribution and logistics
3. Water collection, sanitation and distribution
4. Wireless electricity distribution
5. Wireless mesh broadband networks
6. Ending conflict through trust and communication
7. Leadership transparency consulting
8. Improved education and reform
9. Improved preventative health care and reform
10. Clean tech/alternative fuel (the coming Green Revolution)

And finally ended with…

Perhaps, it’s time to invest long in our futures.

A Vision for the World

So, with these great challenges and opportunities in mind, I’d like to work with each and every one of you over the next fifty years to shape a world that addresses the great inequities of opportunity in the world all based on the principle that all human lives have equal value. A world in which…

1. There is no killing of humans on a mass scale (genocide or warfare)
2. All humans have access to the basic human needs of clean water, nutritious food, shelter, and primary education
3. We end preventable diseases like malaria, TB, and measles
4. We are environmentally sustainable

Is this possible?

Some may laugh.

But there’s no legitimate reason why humans have to kill thousands, tens of thousands of humans on a mass scale. Especially not in an age of increased communication and hopefully increased trust. Is there?

There’s no legitimate reason why if we have the logistical ability to get a package to Shanghai by the morning that we can’t create a system that enables basic, inexpensive food to be produced and distributed to starving children in the developing world, especially not in an age of increased grain yields. Is there?

There is no legitimate reason why preventable diseases can’t be prevented in the next 50 years. By definition. Is there?

And there is no legitimate reason why we cannot find alternative energies to fossil fuels that don’t destroy the world. Is there? We already have them. They’re just a bit more expensive per KWh than fossil fuels. This price doesn’t include the true cost of the externalities caused by the fossil fuels currently being paid by society. As Tom Friedman talks about in Hot, Flat, and Crowded, once we scale the usage of alternative energies, their price per KWh will quickly come down to be sustainable from an economic and environmental standpoint.

We’ve had bigger challenges before. In 1962 in the midst of the Cuban missile crisis. In 1943 in the midst of World War II. In 1930 in the middle of the Great Depression when unemployment was at 25%. These are challenges our generation can overcome if we make the right sacrifices and investments in education, infrastructure, leadership, and sustainability.

People laughed at Edison when he said he had a device that recorded sound.

People laughed at Marconi when he claimed had a device that wirelessly transmitted sound.

People laughed at Yunus when he said he could lend to poor women with no assets.

Your thoughts? Is this world possible?