Blogroll Updates
December 19, 2008
In November, I mentioned my list of blogroll cuts. This month, I’ve added a few and removed a few – here are some explanations why:
Blogroll Adds:
-
Capital Ideas – A new blog on Social Edge by Kylie Charlton and Eric Savage, founders of Unitus Capital, that covers topics like the tradeoff between debt, equity, and grants for social entrepreneurs. I’m hoping their blog will help me draw insight into the NPO vs FPO question.
-
Christine’s World – A classmate and fellow Testimony alum who went the law school route and is getting married (reading her blog is helping me figure out whether or not law school is the right path for me). She probably doesn’t know I’m reading her blog..
-
Michael Skapinker – FT.com – I met Michael at the GRAMER conference I posted about earlier. Really funny, interesting, and articulate fellow who writes a column on business and society for the Financial Times.
-
GrammarBlog – Grammar has historically been my weakest subject – I moved from Texas to California and missed the grammar train (Texas teaches grammar in middle school whereas California teaches grammar in elementary school – when I took the PSAT I had a 490 on grammar and could only self-teach myself to a 690 for the SAT II Writing test – one of many experiences that reinforces my belief that nurture is often more important than nature in education and standardized testing). This blog blends humor and grammar in a nice RSS feed. Let’s hope I can improve my grammar for the Sentence Correction portion of the GMAT..
-
Increo on Ideas – A Stanford startup whose first product is backboard, a tool that makes collaborating on documents easier and more effective. I had a friend who was an engineer there and one of the co-founders, Kimber Lockhart, was involved with FUSION, one of several student groups at Stanford focused on social innovation. Their story’s a fun one to follow – and they have some really useful, honest advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.
-
Paul Brest – One of the most analytical and articulate thinkers in the world of philanthropy that really understands what’s going on. Oh, by the way, he’s also the President of the Hewlett Foundation and former Dean of the Stanford Law School. (Disclosure: Yes, I’ll probably be asking him for recommendation letters. No, I don’t say nice things about him just to kiss ass.)
-
Stanford MBA Admission Blog – I always thought MBA admissions at top business schools was this nebulous black box, where you could only get in if you had 1) connections or 2) worked at a major consulting firm or investment bank. I might still be right, though Professor Rakesh Khurana says the admissions process is changing at HBS for the better. Regardless of whether I’m right or wrong, the MBA admission blog seems to take away some of the mystery. So why am I considering an MBA program if I’m interested in social responsibility? Here’s why. Will I end up going to an MBA program? It’s too early to tell – another post for another time.
-
TechCrunch – One of the best sources of news on startups and venture capital. Now that I’m back in entrepreneur mode and sort of need to be for Blueprint’s sake, TechCrunch seems like a good way to get the innovation juices flowing again. And I’m serious about pursuing the Digg + SSRN + Foundations + Consulting Firms idea.. and I’d like to throw in elements of Google + Del.icio.us + OpenID.
-
Uncivil Society – Jeff Trexler, a professor of social entrepreneurship at Pace University, is surprisingly one of the most vocal critics of social enterprise. Though he can be humorously contrarian at times and politically incorrect in others, I find myself reading his blog because of his willingness to speak up against the crowd.
-
VitalWave Consulting – One of my friends is working at VitalWave Consulting, a consulting firm that specializes in emerging markets, and I interviewed with their Director of Marketing when she was still at HP, working on their e-Inclusion initiative (unfortunately for me, Mark Hurd had just replaced Carly Fiorina and everyone was about to get the boot, leaving me without a summer internship). Vital Wave’s blog is a good look at how companies think about emerging markets – though I think the key to helping the poor isn’t selling them more stuff, as a recent SSIR article emphasizes, but rather, it is giving them access to education and better jobs.
Blogroll Cuts:
-
Beneblog – Jim Fruchterman’s blog was on my unofficial blogroll for a couple weeks (I test out blogs before adding them to my blogroll sidebar here on WordPress) but I decided to ultimately nix it. I’ve met Jim a couple of times and he’s a really cool and insightful guy – but his blog reminds me of a corporate blog and fails the heuristic test on the topics and frequency metrics (see the original article by Forrester Research on company blogs).
-
The “Hostel” Venture Capitalist – I mentioned before that it was on the chopping block, and since then it hasn’t been updated. I really liked the stories, but sadly for me, and perhaps rightly so for him, the MBA program must be keeping him busy.
-
The Becker-Posner Blog – Becker and Posner are smart econ and law folk at the University of Chicago and my advisor (who I would love to see blog) had sent me a lot of relevant posts of theirs when I was writing my thesis, but their opinions are too long and their analysis, while valid, sometimes miss the bigger picture. (As I write this, I’m wondering if I should be more self-conscious about the length of my posts).
-
xigi.net – Xigi is a social network and news site founded by some of the big players in the social investment field, but the news items read like press releases and the content is not that interesting. I think there’s a bit of an incentive problem at xigi – many online communities that are focused on collaboration fail largely because of incentive problems, as many noted in a recent Social Edge discussion. Stay tuned for a later post on why the reasons collaborative communities succeed and fail (sponsored in part by the MacArthur Foundation – since they’re funding this research and are the reason why I have a paycheck).
