GreenSmith Consulting

Maker Faire Africa and Beyond: GreenSmith Sessions #3 with Mark Grimes

In the third edition of GreenSmith Sessions, I talked with Mark Grimes, a Co-Founder of buzzing coworking hubs NedSpace, and one of the driving forces behind Maker Faire Africa. 

 A man of many hats, mostly of a social entrepreneurial bent, he and a small crew of people from around the globe took a leap of faith last year with the first African edition of this gathering of the inventive, the resourceful, and the appealingly crazy. It worked, and they went back again this past August.

Our conversation ranged from open source stop signs to fulfilling on the eight Millennium Goals , and an interesting puzzle for you: how to reshape social media to fit African entrepreneurs, within the current technological constraints they face?

An idea that particularly stuck out to me is when Grimes explained how small local African companies can compete with the often quite a bit larger Indian companies based there: Let the consumer decide how much they can afford, and build an object, i.e. a bed, within that budget. Makes you wonder, perhaps this idea can be applied in developed markets as well. It’s in a way the reverse of the high end notion of made to fit, this time made to fit your budget.

Please enjoy, comment, and add to what you hear in GreenSmith Sessions, below.

 

images via Maker Faire Africa

 

Click me to play/download GreenSmith Sessions #3 Mark Grimes

Paul Smith is a sustainable business innovator, the founder of GreenSmith Consulting, blogs weekly on green start ups of note at Triple Pundit and has an MBA in Sustainable Management from Presidio Graduate School in San Francisco. He creates interest in, conversations about, and business for green (and greening) companies, via social media marketing.

10 Ways to Change the World Through Social Media

We are honored to have our friend and fellow traveler of the intersection of social media and green, Max Gladwell grace our blog with a host of innovative ways for each of us, as individuals and collectively to make an impact. Citizen journalism, open government, status updates, community building, information sharing, crowdsourcing, and the election of a President are in the mix here. 

Our children will inherit a world profoundly changed by the combination of technology and humanity that is social media. They'll take for granted that their voices can be heard and that a social movement can be launched from their laptop. They'll take for granted that they are connected and interconnected with hundreds of millions of people at any given moment. And they'll take for granted that a black man is or was President of the United States.

What's most profound is that these represent parts of a greater whole. They represent a shift in power from centralized institutions and organizations to the People they represent. It is the evolution of democracy by way of technology, and we are all better for it. For most of us, social media has changed our lives in some meaningful way. Collectively it is changing the world for good.

Given the pace of innovation and adoption, change has become a constant. Every so often we find the need to stop and reflect on its most recent and noteworthy developments, hence the following list. Please note this is not a top-10 list, nor are these listed in any particular order. It's also incomplete. So we ask that you add to this conversation in the comments. If you'd like to Retweet this post or take the conversation to Twitter or FriendFeed, please use the hashtag #10Ways.

Enter The GreenSmith...

Greetings, and welcome to the first entry of the GreenSmith blog. You have Chris Brogan and Max Gladwell to blame  for this.

Well not entirely.                

I've been wearing the green business blogger hat for the past few years as a weekly contributor to Triple Pundit and Ecopreneurist, in addition to being a green/sustainable business consultant here at GreenSmith. And having a grand time at it. So why start my own? Why now? Great question, and it's one I'm going to answer for myself as I write here.

I'd have to say it's because I see things. No not ghosts and goblins (though those were quite prevalent a few days ago, to be sure!) No, I have a set of eyes and brain that sees things out there in the world, perhaps with a slightly different lens than most. I consider this an asset, as I find possibility and promise in what others may miss, a benefit to both myself and my clients.

And I want you to see it too.

But before I dive into the innovation that comes across my radar, what GreenSmith Consulting is up to, promising future scenarios that I'd like to see realized, and interesting people, I want to stop and ask:

What do you want to see me write about? What's not being covered out there these days that you'd like to see more of? What gems are underneath the muck, waiting to be discovered? Many of you reading this are probably somehow connected to me via Twitter, and you've watched what I've shared on there. What do you imagine me writing about? 

I have many ideas in the cooker ready to be written about, but I want to hear from you first. It's how I work as a consultant, listening carefully to my clients so I can best help them. Now I'm listening to you here. I can't promise I'll write about everything you suggest. But I do promise to listen to what you have to say, and to be grateful for all suggestions.

Some boundaries: I'm not interested in writing straight up environmental pieces. I'm interested in the intersection of commerce and consideration (of environment,  resources, and people). Solutions being created for supposedly intractable problems.  Exuberance over despair.

I'm not interested in polarizing people, or emphasizing what's wrong. I want to shine a light on what's being done to create a more positive, supportive, healthy, and yes profitable world for all. And I reserve the right to go completely off topic, should it have a useful insight or lesson for you and I.

So, what's it going to be? I look forward to your thoughts, below.

Paul Smith is a sustainable business innovator, the founder of GreenSmith Consulting, blogs weekly on green start ups of note at Triple Pundit and has an MBA in Sustainable Management from Presidio Graduate School in San Francisco. He creates interest in, conversations about, and business for green (and greening) companies, via social media marketing.