Quick Help Needed on a Big Decision!

Advice please!

I've recently sourced some designs through 99designs.com of a new logo for Evolutionize It. The design brief asked for original designs that would convey positive, collaborative action in a changing world. The designers were also asked to include green in the color palette.

Over 100 designs were submitted - some were interesting, some were horrible. In consultation with the Evolutionize It Board, we've narrowed it down to 4 final design options. Now it's decision time, and I'd love some input in making the right one!

Option 1:
People Theme

square version | horizontal version

Option 2:
Evolution Theme

square version | horizontal version

Option 3:
Creative Theme

Green/blue version | Blue/green version

Option 4:

Invoke the money back guarantee, and find another designer to do something better/different than any of these.

So what do you think? If you had to pick one of the 4 options above, which would it be? I need to make a decision by early next week. Much appreciation in advance for your comments (and your eyes)!

Event planning project update

Things are heating up a bit for Evolutionize It. Plans to launch a 6-month global event series concept I've been working on with some allies since the first ned.com unconference are now starting to shift gears, toward making 4 launch events happen in July. As Matt Nathan from w1sd0m in Denver said this morning in a call we had at 5am my time, "The train is leaving the station, and it's a cool train to climb aboard, cuz we're all laying tracks as we go."

The webbed event series concept as it currently stands here has evolved (and is still evolving) through practical experimentation and conversation with Mark Grimes at Ned.com, Matt Nathan at w1sd0m , and Alex, Antoine and Simon of the HubBrussels team. As usual, Jean Russel at Thrivable has also been super helpful. The event name keeps changing, but the concept seems to be becoming increasingly clearer as I work to massage the feedback from each conversation into the concept framework.

I am now trying to pull these US and European voices together with contacts who've indicated an interest in holding events in China, Kenya, Uganda, Haiti and Brazil in a group call sometime within the next week. Feedback from them also needs massaging into the concept before I'll feel comfortable promoting the events worldwide as "global."

This evening I will meet with the Ashoka Support Network in Belgium and present this event series as the concrete project that I could use their focused expertise and support in. My 3 slide presentation to the ASN is here (excuse the formatting which may not have saved well in conversion to a google doc).

I'm reaching out with intent through this blog post to the Evolutionize It board and to some other really smart people who I hope will weigh in here with thoughts, feedback and advice :-) There's even an image sandbox if you'd like to play. The next big push will be to build a social media campaign infrastructure for the local events and finding all 20 event hosts. Exciting stuff! Here's hoping that it works well.

why #oxfordjam will sing in #socent #4change event memory

I've been thinking a lot lately about the role Evolutionize It can play in organizing events for social entrepreneurs, so when the invitation to participate in #oxfordjam came through my friend @amyrsward, I jumped at it. Before I knew it, I had 2 sessions to throw together - one of them a collaboration dinner that ended up being full of surprising lessons. This post isn't about what happened at my sessions, but about what happened as a result of @BenMetz's initiative to co-create an event with others. As you may have already guessed, I'm singing praises.

What I really loved most about the Oxford Jam event was that it brought together a wonderfully interesting mish-mash of event styles. Cliff Prior of Unltd. UK did a fabulous job of facilitating the sector skill swap, with physical movement in the room and brightly colored post-it's pasted on our clothes. Ethical Property created a game that gave us each monopoly money to invest in 5 very different kinds of social sector investments. The inspiring afternoon Ted style talks gave people doing amazing things the spotlight to tell others about what they were doing and invite discussions to learn more. Perhaps my favorite session was the Patient Opinion session on gift economies, where - for some reason I've yet to fully come to grips with - the hair on my neck stood up when we got to the bit about monetizing the part where the highest social value lies.

The patchwork of session styles, all designed by really smart people to push and pull at my brain, did just that. The "Let it all hang out" evening cabaret with Liam Black was surely a highlight, but it unfortunately came with a high price. My one regret is that my body is not accustomed to functioning on so little sleep. Being late to breakfasts with the social enterprise investment infrastructure people from the Skoll World Forum was really a bummer, in the end. Those are the discussions in which I had the most aha moments.

The cross-pollination between the Skoll World Forum and the Oxford Jam helped me to see that the kinds of investment vehicles the "investor" crowd are talking about creating are actually realistic for a very small, tiny subgroup of the social entrepreneurs I know. Not only do I wish this group would widen their view to study what kinds of investment vehicles social enterprises around the world actually need, but social entrepreneurs need to be groomed to be able to absorb the kinds of structured investment amounts and formats that the investors are talking about. "We need a Kiva for social enterprise" rolled off my tongue in a number of conversations at the Oxford Jam event. Those are the conversations I look most forward to continuing with folksat the Shine Unconference in London next month.

Amanda at @RedButtonDesign was kind enough to share a ton of insight into what worked and didn't work with the event's online strategy. I also learned a whole lot about better world video production (and synthesized many collaboration dinner lessons) with a sweetheart of a woman named Denise Kirtley who was there making a video of the event for the OxfordJam crew. I hope to write more about those lessons, and how I'm seeing them play out in my own imagineering in future posts here.

Since coming back, I have been in deep underground imagineering mode for an event concept that I've been nurturing in dialogue with others. OxfordJam's brilliant patchwork approach, the local burlesque flavor, old industrial architecture repurposed for the cross-pollination of ideas, opportunities for entrepreneurship and interpreneurship at Evolutionize It... all of these have me thinking about what makes an event sing in the memories of the people who attend. The first Oxford Jam will always sing through the video lens of my personal memory, with a great beat and an intellectually jazzy Oxford tempo that made me want to catch more of it.

Responding to some post event twitter buzz I'm seeing, please, YES! Let's make OxfordJam a thrivable yearly gathering place for showcasing the Social Enterprise building song. If @BenMetz and co-conspirators can pull it off again in 2011, I hereby pledge to SING at next year's OxfordJam cabaret (which, by the way, featured far too few of our sector's women with hidden talents this year!)