Logos via Webtreats.

TransForm, a California nonprofit focusing on improving public transportation and providing pedestrian access to public spaces, just completed their 2010 Car-Free Challenge.

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Open Source, Creative Commons and the Non-Profit

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During the week-long event people were asked to abandon their cars and instead try to commute via public transportation, biking or walking and report back to TransForm’s Web site about the experience. The goal was to raise awareness, have a good time, and acquire data sets and user stories that the organization could then use to further promote its mission.

In the podcast to the right I talk with Seth Goddard, the organization’s Online Communications and Database Manager, about how they use Open Source Content Management Systems, Creative Commons and the Social Web to promote, reach and interact with their constituents.

One of the interesting parts of the discussion concerns TransForm’s use of the Open Source Content Management System Drupal. As Seth points out, while the learning curve may be steep, a little bit of patience gets you up and running with an incredibly powerful community and publishing platform at your disposal.

TransForm uses a few key modules to extend Drupal’s functionality. These include Views, Image Cache, Custom Content Types and Ubercart for e-commerce integration and registration.

The run-time for this podcast is approximately 35 minutes. Enjoy.

About Open Source and the Non-Profit

This article originally appeared on ScribeMedia.org.

Please visit the original to rant, rave or otherwise discuss.

Managing reputation can be tricky. Take a colleague of mine. As far as I know — and I know him pretty well — he’s a capable, intelligent and amiable fellow. Oh, and law abiding too. Yes, law abiding.

Why do I say that? Because if you search on the Google for him your second result will be for a convict with his exact same name. It’s come up when dealing with clients and potential employers. This usually happens after an awkward pause and goes something like this: “So, um, I hate to bring this up, um, but, ah… ah… you ever spend time in jail?”

No he hasn’t. And when explained there’s usually a laugh followed perhaps by another awkward silence.

Search “Colombia” and Ms. Colombia greets you.

I bring all this up because of a conversation this morning with my cousin. He wants to visit Colombia. He mentioned that when he did a search on the country, one of the first image results is of beautiful women. Sure enough, here it is.

This got me thinking. Usually when doing image searches for countries the first results are maps and flags. But what does the first results with people in it say about national character? How does it brand the country.

Brand Colombia: sultry.

Let’s try Iran. It’s in the news. The world’s talking about it non-stop. Negotiations go on in the UN Security Council to figure out how to halt the nation’s nuclear ambitions.

Here are the first humans we get via an “Iran” Google image search.

Iran’s digital reputation? Less Good.

Obviously not so good.

My cousin and I went back and forth on this for a while. We’d select a country and just like that, brand image in a search result.

Definite loser of the bunch after Iran is Mugabe’s Zimbabwe below.

Not only are there no maps and flags, the first result is just a disgusting abuse showing the horror of torture. The second image? A baton wielding cop chasing a civilian.

It’s interesting to watch how countries are starting to focus on digital diplomacy.

For better or for worse, many are coming to understand that much rests on actual digital reputation. That is, what topics trend in Twitter, what search results are seen on YouTube and Google.

Mugabe’s World of Nightmare

Better, what search results are buried and mostly forgotten.

National Public Radio recently had a story about Israel’s “pre-emptive PR” strategies for dealing in the Middle East.

Part of the country’s strategy to improve its image in the diplomatic world is to engage the social media world. This was most famously pursued during and after Gaza but diplomacy and reputation is a 24 hour a day, year-round affair.

The Israelis are keenly aware of this.

From All Things Considered:

Noam Lemelshtrich, dean of communications at IDC Herzliya, the university that hosted the conference, says Israel should be using new media — such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube — to get its message across to a wider audience.

“I think we are handling this very, very poorly,” Lemelshtrich says. “It’s not being handled by professionals, it’s being handled by politicians. But fortunately, the Internet and social networks allow the people of Israel, who are much better than their government, to tell their stories to friendly crowds across the world in the United States and in Europe. So I am optimistic, because the new social medium allows us to bypass the government.”

When Tony Blair became Prime Minister he famously sought to rebrand dour England. The attempt was made to make Britain “cool”.

Today, the social Web takes that out of government hands and places it in our search results.

Update

Due to a personal reasons, I’d be remiss not to post the first anthropomorphic image when searching “Russia”. Not quite sure how to interpret this but here goes.

Related posts:

1. Video Search
2. LIFE Photo Archive Now Available on Google Image Search
3. Can Search Queries Track the Flu

It’s a story that repeats itself throughout the business cycle: upstart company causes upheaval and disruption throughout the market place. Said company then takes its place among the industry elite, coasts on its laurels and becomes at best irrelevantly successful and at worst the victim of the next upstart.

About this Video

Road to Innovation is a ScribeMedia/BrainJuicer co-production and includes interviews from leading practitioners and thinkers in the corporate, scientific, branding and media space as we explore change, disruption and innovation across various industries.

You can view our growing video library here, or follow us via RSS here.

Think Nike, no longer the brand innovator that burst on the scene by fashioning the feet of Michael Jordan. Or Microsoft, now fudging its way through desktop operating systems no one really wants while companies like Google have already moved to the computational cloud.

The issue here is one that befuddles corporate culture: once you corner the market do you batten down the hatches and defend your turf, or do you continue to take risks and branch out into into the perpetual unknown?

Or, as market researcher, founder and CEO of BrainJuicer, John Kearon puts it, are you a farmer who harvests what you’ve planted, or a pioneer seeking new fields to sow? Do you seek incremental change or strive for the game changer?

More often than not, successful companies farm while fighting for market share, but in that fight for market share they also recognize the need and value of true innovation. The question becomes, can they do it?

There’s an inherent tension to this process. On the one hand, a corporation needs the cultural flexibility to take risk, move outside its comfort zone, interact with outsiders and constantly think itself anew. On the other, a corporation needs to do all this while not distracting itself from their core.

“WD-40 is the golden goose,” explains Graham Milner, Executive Vice President, Global Development and Chief Branding Officer of WD-40, when discussing the company’s open innovation approach. “Your job is to get more golden eggs, but whatever you do, do not kill the golden goose. And killing the golden goose is a lot about don’t mess with success. Don’t fix that which isn’t broken.”

The innovation challenge remains though, and corporations are creating often autonomous innovation teams to deal with the task.

For example, in the video above, Kearon talks with Russ Conser, General Manager, GameChanger, Shell; David Thomas, European Innovation Leader, Mars Europe; Kevin G. McFarthing, Director, Strategic Alliances, Reckitt Benckiser, Milner and others about the challenges they face, the failures they’ve endured and the success they look forward to in the future.

When the iPod came to market in 2001, technophiles waxed rhapsodic and it quickly became the must-have gadget among the geek chic.

Sales, of course, didn’t stop there. The pure lustiness of it all catapulted the device to iconic status with the iPod’s white headphones doing for consumer electronics what the Nike swoosh did for sneakers.

But what actually happened that brought the iPod to global status symbol while earlier MP3 players like the Diamond Rio ended up in the historical dust bin?

Mark Earls writes in Herd: How to Change Mass Behaviour by Harnessing Our True Nature that traditional marketers completely misunderstood the mechanics of mass behavior. Instead of a direct relationship between brand and individual, our instinct is to look at what others around us are doing, using and possessing, and emulating that behavior.

Think the ubiquity of text messaging, the explosion of the Internet itself and the crowding of social networking sites: all examples of activities that entered daily activity not so much because of top down marketing, but because each lubricated the social interaction of those among us.

In the video above, John Kearon, Chief Juicer of market research firm BrainJuicer, and Earls discuss specific examples of this phenomenon, how the advertising and marketing industry has changed over the years, and what all this means for products, brands and those that create and market them.