:Michael Anuzis

One of my goals for 2007 is to raise $15 million for Kiva.org, a non-profit site that turns cash into microcredit then returns it to the lender. My first tactic was a potentially viral facebook group called “We’ll invest $25 in microcredit per 100Kth member”. Do the math and 300,000 members means $15 million raised.
The idea was based off the group “For Every 1,000 that join this group I will donate $1 for Darfur” that reached over 480,000 members within about 6 months. Unfortunately, after a couple weeks our microcredit group has only got 150 supporters and the momentum’s just not there. I’ve been brainstorming the challenge since day 1, and the best solution I’ve come up with involves a potentially lucrative web2.0 company that I don’t yet have the programming skill to create.

The idea’s similar to fundable.org, a site that helps groups of people raise money for their cause. Rather than require everyone interact directly with fundable.org, however, the site I envision allows people to embed a fund-raising gadget on their own site.

Look at the fund-raising gadget Wikipedia uses as an example.  It updates in real-time as donations are made, it’s easier for visitors to trust since it’s embedded right on Wikipedia’s site, and it’s successful at raising money (it’s got over a million in donations already!).

Imagine all the other sites\organizations that would love to have such a simple\effective fund raising application on their site, but don’t know how to program all the complex back-end processes to process transactions and post real-time updates to the web. If one website allowed people to register their fund-raising initiative with it and they were given a simple piece of code to paste onto their site to make it work it could benefit thousands of organizations. Take 1% of the money for providing the applet and you could be rolling in an automated revenue stream that could easily make a few families well-off.

Another function that would enhance the site’s success is allowing people to choose from a set of pre-made fund structures. Is this a one-time event like Wikipedia, or are you raising money via a 3-tiered structure (e.g. donate $25 per 100K members, up to 300K members total). I’m sure there are ten other creative\effective methods that could be used if you thought it through. Also, allow people to customize the graphic from some pre-set models. Do they want a horizontal bar like Wikipedia? or would a vertical bar embed better on their site? Perhaps an image of their choosing is slowly revealed as they approach their fund-raising goal.

To leave you with one last idea, such a site would spread the surface area of fund raising exponentially. Rather than hosting your fund-raising applet locally only, organizations could encourage their supporters to post the applet on their personal website, myspace profile, or w/e else they prefer.

Seems like a great idea to me. If anyone makes this happen please let me know. I think we could help Kiva raise $15 million with it - and that would be just the beginning…

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Going out to dinner and a movie is okay, but honestly I prefer setting up knowledge management systems and optimizing internet marketing campaigns. If you or anyone you know has an NPO that could use some help with their IT, I’d be happy to offer my assistance.

Even if your IT systems are already solid, there’s about a 100% chance I can help make them better. It’s what I love to do. Don’t be shy - drop me a line. I look forward to hearing from you.

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Three entrepreneurial ideas have been churning in my head for a while now. Rather than hide them for some competitive advantage, I’d like to share them with you and possibly tackle them together. If sharing these ideas leads to direct competition, so be it. As my ideas are all triple bottom line business models at least the competition will move us forward.

Before reading the rest of this post, you’ll benefit greatly from watching William McDonough speak on the concept of design. As one example, McDonough puts you in the shoes of Thomas Jefferson charged with the task of designing the Bill of Rights. Feel ready to take on that one yourself? For better or for worse, we’re faced with similarly massive design problems today, and the solutions are far from clear. Together, however, I am optimistic we can design a better future.

My entrepreneurial opportunities follow. I estimate the solution to any of these challenges, taken to market properly, would be worth millions (if not billions) today.

Idea 1: Climate Crisis, Sustainability and Green Technology

The fact that we face consumption rates far beyond sustainability is no longer controversial within the scientific community. We need a massive change and we need it now.

Many people take the political route to elicit change. Frankly, I have no faith that government alone can move fast enough to save us. What’s the alternative? Empower individuals.

In the next few years several green technologies will emerge that will save you money to use while saving the environment. One problem will be adopting them fast enough. It takes time for information to spread, and we can’t implement solutions we don’t know exist.

Background out of the way, here’s my idea: Create a website aimed at serving the the simplest, most effective means for maximizing sustainability at any given time. At the top corner of the site, put a panel that tracks how much money all the site’s visitors have saved in real time (think Traineo) by allowing users to report product usage & calculating their savings from the database.

Use that panel to set community-driven goals. Imagine a value of “$27,014,210.XY saved by our members!” XY is flying upwards. Right below that it reads “Goal: $38 million saved by the end of 2008!”

This site would gather some interest. People would be excited to check back and see the progress made. Teens would help their grandparents install new things to report it on the site & together the world would be motivated by measurable progress towards sustainability.

I’m actually already working on this very project. It’s at greenolution.com - as of this time of writing the site is only a placeholder until I finish the back-end. Competitors & collaborators welcome - my wish is just to see such a site in existence sooner than later. Let’s go!

Idea 2: Our current models for educational content suck.

I’ve already talked about this extensively so I won’t go into detail here. Take McDonough’s approach to design and combine it with a better model for educational content and you’ve got the potential to make millions. Whether you’re interested in designing the first prototype for a particular subject, or laying out a site where others contribute their expertise through a superior content framework, a solution here will be huge.

Idea 3: Establish ratings for educational content.

The internet presents an opportunity to advance education like never before. Companies like Microsoft and Google are building massive databases of educational content. At the same time, innovative organizations like Connexions are striving to create a global repository of educational curriculum by enabling anyone to contribute. With these sites offering increasingly massive amounts of educational information, we have no shortage of options to choose from. Given the choice between the hundreds of Geometry lessons available, the question we naturally must ask is which shall we use? Certainly one of these lessons is better designed and easier to understand than the others, the data we are missing tells us which.

Lessons designed by a better teacher likely outperform those of an inferior teacher. Lessons that leverage objectively superior learning methods from cognitive psychology likely outperform material that doesn’t. Lessons that are interactive and fun likely outperform those that are dry and passive. Yet the back of our textbooks don’t provide any bar graphs or otherwise persuasive evidence of their refined effectiveness over alternatives.

Information on the effectiveness of educational content is measurable, yet we lack a framework through which to interpret it. The design problem: create that framework.

As people’s awareness of objectively superior educational curriculum grows, so too will the monetary incentive, pace, and vigor in which cognitive psychology is studied. The increased emphasis on cognitive psychology will lead to further enhanced educational content, and an accelerating upward spiral for human education will emerge.

For my final thesis prior to graduating I reviewed current research in the learning sciences to identify the objective metrics for learning people are using. Several confounds emerge when you dig deeper into this problem, but in the end there is reason to believe we could create an effective solution. I won’t paste my whole assessment here; but if you’re interested let me know & I’d be happy to share the findings. Let’s make it happen!

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I’ve been watching some videos on Social Impact Investing.

Here are the highlights:

- Social impact investments frequently outperform non-social impact investments.
- Certain social impact mutual funds have outperformed major bottom-line-only mutual funds for years.
- (Your) professional asset manager can be told to invest in socially screened investments.

The take-home message? If you like to make money while helping humanity, social impact investing is a no-brainer.

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I’ll cut to the chase - I have a job interview with Google in January and am helping as many people as possible, for free, as I work on my credentials. My job will be helping people advertise on the web with measurable, positive results. That’s where you come in!

Having already helped several companies launch successful campaigns, Google provides me with $50 promotional tokens to give out. It’s a smart move by Google, because it gives people a low-risk, guided way to test out internet marketing for their business.

I’m selective in who I work with. After all, I’m working free. If you’re nice, your company isn’t shady, and your product is something I think we can be successful with, your chances are good. I don’t care how large or small your company is; some of my clients run massive international campaigns, some focus within a 15-mile radius. The important thing is you’re happy with the results.

I don’t want to brag, but I put full effort and attention to detail in every campaign I create and I have an extremely strong track record - references available. If you’re ready to grow your business, rather than posting a comment please contact me directly. I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have. Look forward to hearing from you.

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Teams of people are passionately working to eliminate global poverty - and they’re seeing unprecedented success. Sound too good to be true? It’s not. The solution is called microfinance, and it’s empowering the world’s poorest people on a massive scale.

The idea is simple: Give someone enough money to invest in their own small business, and use their social capital as collateral to handle the risk. Groups of women accept individual loans in a group agreement and help cover for each other in the case of personal emergencies.

Money donated to microfinance is continually effective because it keeps on giving. After your five dollars helps one family get food on the table and children in school, the money is reloaned to the next family in need. Best yet, the system is profitable for investors and enables banks to contribute millions in capital.

This is a shining success for humanity and a great opportunity to contribute your own intelligence, creativity, and resources. A flourishing global community is within our grasp. Do your part - help spread the word!

Google Video: Grameen Foundation - Microfinance (15 min. Invigorating Documentary)

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Humanity will never reach its full potential as long as our approach to education remains the same. The current system worked for its time, but its fundamental flaws increasingly irritate people who know they could learn exponentially more.

What Limits Us?

Limited supply of gifted teachers - Of the teachers we have, only a select handful are truly gifted at engaging students to reach their full potential.

Classrooms are Obsolete - Consider the extreme inefficiency of a classroom as compared to a 1-on-1 teaching environment. In a 1-on-1, the teacher zeros in on the student’s level of understanding and moves them forward at an optimized speed. In a classroom, teachers must moderate their speed to accommodate the weakest link.

Cognitively, the most critical determiner of success or failure in most classes is attention. Pay perfect attention and your success will be high. The trouble is paying perfect attention. It’s natural in a 1-on-1 when everything said is relevant to your current level of understanding, but in a classroom setting students lose attention when they already understand a concept and the teacher’s words become redundant.

The student’s challenge in a classroom, therefore, is phasing in an out of attention at an interval that they hope will catch enough crucial ideas to follow along. The teacher naturally becomes even more redundant and verbose with each concept to accommodate these attention intervals, and learning efficiency goes out the window.

Exponential Improvement is Simple

I had trouble with Geometry in high school. It was hard to pay attention in class, and the problems didn’t make much sense to me from the start. The moons must have aligned, however, because one night I came across a friend’s dad who could articulate Geometry very well. He looked at where I was struggling and started to help. An hour later, I was plowing through proofs we hadn’t even learned yet in class.

To my pleasant surprise, in that one hour I learned everything I needed to know about Geometry for the rest of the semester. I still couldn’t pay attention in class, but it didn’t matter because I aced every test the rest of the year.

Why don’t we all take classes like this all the time? Why do we waste months struggling with something we could learn better in hours? Soon we won’t have to ask these questions anymore.

Envision the Future

Imagine a global repository of videos of the world’s greatest teachers - your choice of the top 3 most inspiring, entertaining, and articulate Geometry teachers of all time. One is funny and uses a lot of stories to explain ideas, one is serious and concise, and one is a mix of the two. All are passionate about Geometry, and you can choose who you’d like to learn from.

I hear the arguments already “But it’s just not the same learning from a video than having a real teacher. You lose the human touch!” There is legitimacy to this response, but let me ask you this: You have to take a Geometry class, would you rather watch videos of the greatest Geometry teacher of all time whose teaching style suites your desired learning style, or would you rather go with the luck of the draw? If you’re still on the fence, read the next point.

Make Content for Self-Paced Learning

Presume you’re about to learn from a video of the greatest Geometry teacher of all time. How exciting - but as soon as you understand a concept you’re still going to have to wait through redundant explanations before she goes to the next concept. There’s no 1-on-1 efficiency.

Here’s where the new educational content model comes in. The greatest Geometry teacher of all time broke down the key concepts ahead of time, and mapped them to sequential times throughout the video. The key ideas in your current lesson are listed on the right side of your screen with a brief description of your current learning objective. You can skip to the next concept as early as you feel ready. If you move forward prematurely and get lost, simply go back and hear out the previous explanation.

Questions are Key

Teachers who have taught Geometry for 30 years know it’s the same questions that keep popping up over and over again. The solution? Post a list of questions that link to elaborated answers.

This will cover the vast majority of questions that come up. When a new question does come up the student can submit it to be answered. The teacher who curates the lesson will receive this question and be able to append another answer, if worthwhile. Her incentive for maintaining the content leaves the scope of this post, but in short it upholds her reputation as a quality content-provider and retains the royalties that accrue (if she doesn’t provide it free).

Optimize Your Feedback

A quiz assesses your understanding at the end of each lesson. So what? Here’s the value add: The new system tracks the type of errors you make, and provides a report with actionable information on precisely what you need to improve on.

Forget useless feedback like “B+” or “71% - Try harder!” Optimized learning should provide you with a report on your strengths and weaknesses of the key concepts. Got multiplication down, but always mess up on long division? Your report should show that.

The Possibilities are Endless

Imagine the shift in human potential with ubiquitous optimized education. Children and adults alike could continue education indefinitely. The world’s most talented teachers would be accessible by all, in a system that allows the individual to move forward at their full potential. Courses could be accredited through an educational review board, and passing a particular class would validate a standardized metric of understanding to be included on a resume.

Job postings could require X level-of-understanding in courses X, Y, and Z, and the ability for humans to assimilate understanding of emerging technologies would go through the roof.

Make it Your Volition

These improvements are required for us to move forward as a race. As a student currently attending one of the top educational institutions in the world, I find it increasingly unbearable to sit through lectures and learn so slowly. Whether you are a youngster just entering the system, or a professional acquiring new skills for your career, agree that our current system of education is rapidly growing obsolete. Tell me I am not alone. Spread the word, keep innovating, and help make this opportunity a reality.

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Brilliant talk by Majora Carter from the 2006 TED conference.

Worlds of opportunity exist for today’s workforce. As our knowledge as a race advances, so too does the nature of our work. Where lawn mowing services used to be the norm for early entrepreneurs, why not green roof projects?

It’s hard to have sympathy for those who don’t enjoy their jobs when such an abundance of fulfilling work is available. Carter gets paid to have fun. Why settle for anything less?

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Looking for satisfying work? Check out the success of this greening project: [flash video - 5 minutes]. If that gets you excited and you are thirsty for more, this Google Video will put you on the edge of your seat. It’s by William McDonough, the world’s leading innovator in green architecture & technology.

Background on McDonough while your video loads:
- Made the Ford Rouge Plant proactively sustainable.
- Designing a self sustaining village in China.
- Author of Cradle-to-Cradle.

If you see both these videos today, sleep easy knowing you’ve done something worthwhile - maybe even found your passion for a career path, or at least informed yourself to inform another. With this kind of work available, it’s an exciting time to be alive.

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Check out this great podcast from IT Conversations. In it, a panel of bright minds discuss positive change in the developing world & how it effects us globally. To be aware of these changes is invigorating, to say the least.

The speakers focus on how to scale solutions to meet the needs of millions. Each hour they work significantly improves the lives of thousands. For any of you bright minds seeking meaningful employment, tracking down one of the speakers seems like a fast-track to some exilarating work. To everyone else, check out the podcast and enjoy being well informed.

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