Today is Blog Action Day– where thousands of bloggers unite in blitzing green tips across the Internet. What is happening is a small group of bloggers have started a veritable movement of social action asking the question What would happen if every blog published posts discussing the same issue, on the same day? Today’s issue:
On October 15th, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind – the environment. Every blogger will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topic. Our aim is to get everyone talking towards a better future.
The issue I would like to raise in terms of the environment is to show further evidence how a group of people are becoming “super-empowered” to put important issues into the minds of the world- Issues that have previously languished. No matter where you stand on the environment- one thing is for certain- the issue will cross your desk today one way or another…. and for the purposes of what I am pointing out- recognize that this is happening outside the sphere of the “traditional media” of TV, radio, and newspapers. Some group of concerned citizens put together a website, promoted the event, and now have tens of thousands of bloggers writing about it, and even more reading about it.
So what is the environmental issue that I am promoting on this blog? I say that it is the most fundamental one- that you, the reader, are empowered to change the world… See something that does not make sense- wasted energy, pollution, an innovative product, or something that just is not right? You can take action on it in a way that never was possible before, for the dynamics of social software are shifting the tides that one person can engage a few thousand others, and make a difference.
But that is not all… Given that this blog is about entrepreneurship, not just community organizing, recognize the sheer amount of awareness that is being built today around green issues… Opportunities abound for starting up companies, whether they are large or small, bootstrapped or venture capital financed. the amount of press and awareness driven by this day of “doing good” is also creating a great customer appetite… whether your business and your passion be about alternative fuels, green roofs, buying a efficient car (like the Prius that we have that gets 54 miles to the gallon!), or saving energy with LED lights, opportunities abound in nascent green markets – opportunities that entrepreneurs are uniquely suited to target- for entrepreneurs create the new businesses that reshape the existing marketplace with their disruptive innovations. So… do something for the environment- and have your voice heard on this Blog Action Day- build a green business! Don’t just make a difference, make a profit while making a difference!
Can you give a concrete example of how a union of bloggers have made measurable change in the world, or are “unity” movements like this a lot of talk without measurable impact to date? This would be interesting to track.
MJ,
The simple answer is “awareness”. No matter how you spin it… there was a great amount of awareness that was created that one day because of the messages that were posted in blogs around the world… A simple way to think about this is that imagine how much money would have had to been paid through traditional media outlets to have gotten anywhere near as much awareness that was created today…
The funny thing is that most people might get lost in the notion of “unity movement” as “let’s all decide one thing and agree to it”. I think that it is naive to think that unity movement needs to be “let’s all agree”. In an ecology, there is not one idea… the notion of one organization promoting just one idea (say biofuels) just is not what we are talking about here… but the fact that awareness was promoted in a general area (environment) is what was powerful about this “unified” statement across tens of thousands of blogs.
I don’t think that there is an easy way to presently measure the impact of this message, other than going to google, and seeing how many people linked to the site http://www.blogactionday.com… the software is just not sophisticated enough to measure (yet) the disperse actions of this number of people across a similar (but not the exact same) message just yet. Or actually the technology is there but it is not available generally to track all of the issues yet. I do hear you though… it would be great to have a sense of now much _action_ was created by this one day, not just _awareness_. Thanks for your comment!