“Find a partner and build a team. No one changes the world alone.” – Alan Khazei

As part of the live video podcast Rule53 Alan Khazei brought his passion for social entrepreneurship and his experience founding City Year to a room of young entrepreneurs Sunday the 22^nd.

The podcast – a production of DartBoston – pairs a proven entrepreneur with an under 30 Boston professional who has an early stage startup. On Sunday Alan was paired with Ashli Stempel a Northeastern senior who is founding PULSE. PULSE is a non-for-profit with a mission to help juvenile offenders transition back into their communities through activity based workshops.

The event brought out some of Boston’s young bright stars including entrepreneurs, social media folks and tenacious students. Based on my informal pole post event (“Hey, what did you think?”) The crowd was genuinely impressed by Alan’s deep experiences as a business man, entrepreneur and social activist. Alan’s ability to articulate and transfer his knowledge and experiences maybe his greatest strength as a public speaker. Several times during the show he provided one line bits of genius:

“We need a system to celebrate social entrepreneurs, like the system for entrepreneurs.”

“You need 5 people to start a project…you need a team”

“Sun Tzu – every battle is one or lost before it is fought….it’s not the battle, it’s the training and preparation.”

The show centered on how Alan was able to establish City Year and then turn it into such a successful non-for-profit. He also talked about how he had to fight to keep Americorps (modeled after City Year) alive after funding was cut for the program. This transitioned nicely into Alan telling the story of why he is running for senate. He made a great name for himself as a champion for big citizenship at City Year and that’s what he wants to bring to the senate.

There are 9 days left before the special elections on the 8^th. I hope you all get out and vote and choose someone who will be the kind of person you want in the senate. I’ve been working with the Khazei campaign for the last month and he is the candidate I want to fill Ted Kennedy’s old seat. He is a savvy business man, a tough negotiator and the peoples champion.

If Alan wins this election it will be because of a groundswell of support from citizens. It wont be because of money, TV ads, political leverage. I find this one of the most attractive ideas behind this campaign.

The word-of-mouth for Alan’s run, generated by the event was tremendous. The live podcast reached an online and offline audience of over 50 people and the video has since been watched over 100 times. The link to the show was shared on Twitter, Facebook, blogs and through email and was clicked through by over 300 people. On Twitter over 30 people sent over 100 tweets to a combined network of 27,020 people.

You can watch the whole show here:

Alan Khazei and Ashli Stempel – Rule53 DartBoston

If you are reading this you are probably involved with social media or online communications in some fashion. If this is indeed true I think you will be impressed by the support that Alan has demonstrated for our community and his understanding of the big ideas behind it. The video below expresses this.

I would love to hear your thoughts about how Alan can improve his chances in these final days. As always I appreciate any and all comments!

Thanks

-Marcus

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I’m addicted to my Google Reader. It brings everything I could ever need right to my doorstep and helps me stay informed and up to date. I take pride in the amplitude of my reader and how well stocked I keep it. From time to time I’d like to tell you about the latest subscriptions that have made the grade and the people behind them.

This week’s RSS All-stars.

http://www.schneidermike.com/
Mike Schneider the man behind @schneidermike is a funny guy with lots of rich content on his blog.
I had the pleasure of meeting him for a quick second at the infamous #burritup and have been following him for a while on Twitter. It wasn’t until this week however that I checked out his blog. (Sorry Mike not sure what I was thinking!)
What I got was two great video’s that kept my attention, were funny and valuable to me as a new media marketer.
If you’re in Boston he is definitely a dude you should meet and wherever you are you should subscribe to his blog.

Mike is a strategic technology consultant focused on web content management, social media measurement and dual shore delivery models.

http://www.sparkminute.com/
I found sparkminute while doing a search for creative contests on Google. What I found was one of most interesting Mashable articles I’ve ever read. It was written by David Spark who happens to run a hilarious twitter handle and publish some great content on his blog.
His latest blog post was an excellently well done interview with Adam Curry of Mevio.com. I guess I’ve just got a thing right now for blogs with video.

David Spark is a journalist, consultant, producer, and owner of Spark Media Solutions, a firm that helps companies build voice through storytelling.

http://tomokeefe.com/
You most likely know TOK (Tom OKeefe) by his real name @BostonTweet. But if you think this knowledgeable local only knows burritos and beer you’re very wrong. Mr. OKeefe is an epic content producer yes but he also knows his social media. There are some great insights on his blog and interesting information on his many projects.

Tom O’Keefe is based in Boston, MA and is the Twitterer behind BostonTweet, VP of Business Development for Sayagle, founder of Bizak and c0-founder of infoMedMD.

http://www.yifeizhang.com/
Yifei (Pronounced E-Fay) is a young guy with a killer attitude. Already a serial entrepreneur in his early 20’s Yifei is producing some content to take notice of on his blog. Yifei most recently started hosting DartBoston family dinners. The next one will be this Friday at Tupelo.

Have you heard of these guys? Do you think they are relevant like me or are they all hogwash? Please comment and feel free to add you own great RSS feeds.

-MA

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