Final Post...at this address

This will be my final post on the Wikipreneurship blog, thank you to everyone who has been reading and commenting on this blog. Also a big thanks to all those who sponsored me for Movember. I guess the idea of this blog was to follow my progress toward starting a new venture and to some extent I have now done so. The new venture is called 273 connectivity it is a 'crowdsourced, ad supported, philanthropic venture capital fund to help Kiva.org microfinance aspiring entrepreneurs in the developing world.  

You can read the full description of the idea at http://www.273connectivity.com but the basic idea is that 2 of my class mates and I have set up a lending team through Kiva.org (a site that helps people microfinance aspiring  entrepreneurs in the developing world).  We aim to inspire you each week with tales of innovation, entrepreneurship, technology, science, education (and maybe even some fashion tips...) in return we are asking you to join the 273 team and lend $US25 to an entrepreneur of your choice.  We will then pay you a dividend from any profit we generate through advertising on our site and you will get to join our exclusive network of like minded individuals.

I hope you all join me there.

Steve

Top 4 - Bottom 1 - Advertising - Me No Fry!

Ok so I have been a little slack with my updates lately but here is the second in the series of the Top 4 - Bottom 1 advertisements of all time.  It's the 'Me No Fry' commercial which featured a number of eggs dancing and rapping in the street and trying to avoid being fried by the sun!  I'm not sure why, but this ad 'cracked' me up and the song and corresponding message has stuck with me since my childhood.  Even more impressive this ad was put out by a non-profit anti-skin cancer organisation proving that you don't need a lot of money to make a great ad - all the giant corporations who consistently put out tripe take note!  To tie this all in to my marketing course, I found that the whole campaign was followed up with much research into its affect on attitudes toward skin cancer and skin protection (see here, here and here).  A great example of following up your advertising campaign with some sort of research as to whether it has achieved its goal (this goal may be slightly more noble than trying to increase the obesity of the general population...)

Ok so enough of my rambling let's see the commercial... well this will teach me for starting to write a post without having the video to back it up!  But unbelievably I can't find this online anywhere despite having spent the last hour or so looking for it!  Now I know I'm not alone as the following quotes from a 2003 study would suggest 

“... me no fry with the egg. I used to love that ad”.

(Year 11 male)

"The ‘Me No Fry’ campaign was also recalled by participants in half

the groups, which could be considered surprising given that the

campaign took place during 1990-1996."

So I'm issuing a challenge to all you readers (or Mum as the case may be),  find the commercial and send me the link so I can embed it here and share the brilliance!  I have already emailed the Cancer Council Australia who do great work (and who you can donate to by following the link) to see if they can provide this for me.

Change the World 1 Grain of Rice at a Time

Free Rice is one of my favourite ever charity websites its so simple, so addictive and a great cause.  Basically it is a vocabulary game (there are now also other subjects including geography, chemistry and languages) where you get a word, four potential meanings and you have to know the right one.  For each correct answer 20 grains of rice are donated to the UN World Food Program to help end hunger.  

I have decided to set a challenge.  I want all you loyal readers to play this game as much as possible (its a great way to procrasinate at work - and then bamboozle your boss with your new vocabulary when explaining why you haven't finished that project) keep track of how many grains you have donated (go to options and select 'remember my personal rice donation...') then by the 20th of December I want you each to send me a screenshot of your total rice donated - along with a picture of yourself.  I will make it my personal mission to go onto Free Rice and equal the total amount donated as my Christmas present to the world...Clearly after this my posts will get a lot more sophisticated and less accessible to the non-charitable reader :-)

Good luck and I'll post a reminder closer to the time.

Project 10 to the 100

Hippo Morph by Aizxana on Deviant Art

Google wants us to change the world and is willing to pay $10million for the best ideas.  A great example of a very simple idea that appears on the Youtube video on the competition web page and which neatly fits in with the animal theme that seems to be appearing on this blog, is the 'Hippo Roller' a rolling cannister that allows villagers (mainly in Africa) to more easily transport fresh water.

Coincidently this week we have been given a number of interesting lectures by Dr. Eyþór Ívar Jónsson of the Copenhagen Business School on techniques for idea generation and opportunity recognition.  Two particularly interesting techniques were mind mapping (FreeMind is free software for doing this, see also Imindi a social network based upon mind maps - currently in Beta) and Blue Ocean strategy.  Over the next few days I will be uploading the mind maps I have created to see if I can find an area in which there is an opportunity to change the world and then attempt to use a Blue Ocean Strategy to map the current state of affairs within that field and how they might be changed to create a new idea - hopefully to change the world...