Billions With Zero Knowledge

I spent last week in Toronto where I had the incredible pleasure of doing a keynote discussion at the Mesh Conference with Tom Williams of GiveMeaning and our great friend and Mesh organizer Rob Hyndman.

Our panel was on social change and charity online, and I was a little nervous when I accepted the invitation because Akoha, my main project and current startup, is still under development and has yet to launch anything.

I had plenty of ideas to talk about. I’ve spent the last three years studying and thinking about ideas on how the Internet can be leveraged for social change, and how the emerging gift economy of social media creates new structures for collective action.

Tom was incredible telling his story of how he came to be working on social change & philanthropy and the great work he is doing at GiveMeaning. Someone later that evening would tell me they felt awful for me after Tom spoke first because they felt that no one could follow such a great opening. (He did go on to say that we complimented each other incredibly well and loved our panel)

I also spoke publicly for the first time about how the loss of my brother Morgan after his battle with cancer and my attendance at the TED conference a week after his funeral was a turning point in my life.

Tom’s write up of the panel say’s it all when he mentions we were both grounded and authentic and I think the fact that neither of us were selling anything, just sharing our experiences that shaped our careers and how we are choosing to be entrepreneurs is what resonated with people.

The panel was an incredible discussion that Tom and I continued throughout the next two days with the attendees and other speakers. Tom and I are kindred souls and I think out shared passion for these issues came through on the panel.

There were a number of people who wrote about our panel, including some liveblogging that gives you some feel for how the discussion went. Here is a round up of some of the posts about the panel from Google Blog Search & Technorati. Here are some photo’s I showed up in from the conference. (Yes I am going bald - blame genetics & 15 years of startups :)

I have tons of other Mesh stories that are deserving blog posts, including some thoughts on the incredible number of young entrepreneurs I had a chance to meet. There was an incredible energy in the hallways where I found myself hanging with old friends and new.

The conference was different from many I attend in that there was a large diversity in the types of attendees with entrepreneurs, social media experts, investors and venture capitalists, technologists, programmers and corporate representatives from large and small companies. This created some unique conversations, as people were sharing lessons and ideas in a very co-operative discussion that wasn’t just focused on who acquired who that day.

I want to thank my friends and Mesh organizers, Mathew Ingram, Mark Evans, Stuart McDonald, Mike McDerment and Rob Hyndman.

They did an incredible job hosting a great conference. Thank you all for inviting me to be a part of this fun event.

On Mon 4 Jun 2007.