Communicopia

Along with nearly everyone else on the planet, I just watched the Inauguration of Barack Obama as the USA's 44th President. There is so much to say today, but I'll leave most of the words and insights to others. What I do feel the need to comment on is how often we heard the powerful word, humility, today. 

A very interesting thing is happening right now, centered in Toronto but connected and relevant to the whole world. Last night, a digital executive named David Armano posted a story to his blog and sent a message to his Twitter network that has, as of a few minutes ago, raised over $14,000 in less than a day (he was at $5K in less than 2 hours) for his cause. This is an exciting story about new emerging models of social change, people's self-organizing capacity for creative response, and the power or networks. 

A few recent articles I found over the holidays shed some light on where things are going in 2009, at least in our little web world. The first shows recent survey responses on marketing manager's shift towards digital media in 2009. The second is an article filled with great stories of how social change orgs are using social media to create new results. Despite the enormous economic difficulties around us, both offer hopeful news on the power of social media to help navigate times of massive change, and perhaps even create a stronger, more reslinent, and more innovative sector as a result.