Posts by Carol Ross
The Secret Sauce for All Successful Communities
An interview with boundary crosser, Karen Stephenson, reminds me that all the technology, networking, marketing, and wisdom in the world is useless in building a community if one thing is lacking: Trust. Stephenson calls herself a corporate anthropologist (she has graduate degrees in anthropology) and writes about creating trust in the online world. A few…
Read MoreThe Gut is Right After All
A Wall Street Journal article points to how our brains make up our minds long before we are conscious of the choice. Some might say that this negates free will. I would argue that it means that our gut instinct knows first and that our heads then try to make the logical case to support.
Read MoreCrossing Boundaries is Worth the Risk
I’m convinced that our most pressing problems as a society will be solved by boundary crossers, because it takes multiple perspectives and approaches to understand complex issues. An announcement about David Yarnold’s appointment as Executive Director of the Environmental Defense Action Fund, speaks to this point. Yarnold, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist turned environmental activist,…
Read MoreUsing Social Media to Influence Public Policy
One of the questions that I’ve heard from people interested in A Bigger Voice is, "How can I influence public policy?" This is an interesting question. I think it requires BOTH top-down (interacting with individuals at the top of an organization or institution) and bottom-up (interacting with the users/consumers/customers) approaches. The mistake I see people…
Read MoreBig, Bold Choices
A friend sent me the link to her new blog, part of a "citizen blogger site" set up by the Houston Chronicle. I rarely plug personal blogs (as opposed to ones that specialize in a discipline, like marketing or social media). This is one I can recommend because the writing is passionate, honest, and intelligent–something…
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