There’s a big problem with online competitions and challenges, they’re not doing it right!

Most of these challenges have quickly become a modern day cliche of cheap marketing and nearly all of them have dropped the ball with a very poorly misplaced focus.  Now that the big brands like Pepsi and GE have popularized “competitions” with the C-Level suites, everyone wants one for their organization, and like a virus, the bad versions are spreading. Even our U.S. government has gotten into the game, “by making prizes more attractive” for the Feds.

Bigger money, better competitions, that’s good, right?

Wrong.

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Have you heard of the campaign to send 1 million shirts to Africa?  Probably.  And you might not think that it was a very savvy idea.  I think it was brilliant.

Jason Sadler from IWearYourShirt.com created 1millionshirts.org and did something right.  He got noticed.  He didn’t hurt anyone.  Now, the question is, what will he do with all of us watching?

Do I think that the notion of sending 1 million t-shirts is ignorant and ill conceived?  Yes.  But there are many positive outcomes that can come from this mission.

If Jason had spoken to my friends Mariéme Jamme or Teddy Ruge before launching his campaign, he would have made smart choices; or he may have sent just another shipment of one million nets to fight malaria or one million vaccinations.  Would you have paid attention to that?

How many Twitter profiles do you know besides Keith Olberman who can get 1,000’s of followers in a week?  Not many.  Jason painted a cow purple. (more…)

“What is your big dream?”  That’s how I started out my workshop at the Africa Gathering conference in Nairobi, Kenya back in December.  “What do you want most to accomplish right now, no matter how crazy or unattainable it seems?”

Africa Gathering, a conference for social entrepreneurs and innovators who are passionate about technology and development in Africa, was a perfect venue for introducing my concepts for what makes a great start-up business.  I traveled to Kenya along with the National Peace Corps Association’s Africa Rural Connect (ARC) Project Manager, Molly Mattessich, to meet people like us who were interested in and impacted by the ARC website and wanted to make a difference in rural communities in Africa.

Giving a workshop at Africa Gathering

Similar to the collaboration platform that I helped to develop for the National Peace Corps Association’s Africa Rural Connect community, I wanted to get the Africa Gathering workshop participants thinking about networking with other people and offering any advice that they could to assist someone else with their project or business idea.  We did what I like to call “low-tech social networking,” and shared ideas on notes that we posted on the wall in the conference room so that everyone could see them.

Also at the Africa Gathering conference, Molly presented the story of the Africa Rural Connect community and told how we were able to build the site with a tight budget and even tighter deadline and still achieve our goals for getting lots of people from around the world to participate and helping them to collaborate, meet each other, and generate creative and practical project plans.

It was great to meet so many people interested in ideas for Africa, and see the presentations that others gave, like Kenyans for Change, Access Kenya, Essential Africa, Movirtu and Kenya Imagine.  Of course, I enjoyed meeting those folks with whom I’d only interacted with on Twitter prior to the conference.  I’m glad that I was able to make connections with people in Nairobi because I am passionate about helping out great startups that can make a difference in people’s lives.

Africa Gathering is coming to my hometown, Washington, DC, in April 2010, and I’m looking forward to getting people together again to discuss innovative tech ideas for Africa.

Additional pictures of Africa Gathering in Nairobi, Kenya

Mickey and I have been pretty busy these past few months.

Our Africa Rural Connect project with the National Peace Corps Association has gone into its fourth round of the competition. We have been really pleased for our client as they continue to receive national and international media attention for this project; recently the Washington Post and The Seattle Times mentioned the ARC project, and it was featured on the radio across the African continent on Voice of America.

So, what’s Africa Rural Connect?

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