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Happy Memorial Day

Team Rubicon would like to take a moment to thank its military veterans who have decided to continue their selfless service by volunteering their time to render aid to those in need around the world.  While Team Rubicon is not made exclusively of military veterans, it recognizes the important virtues and skills that veterans bring to the organization and appreciates that they have decided to continue to serve.

Today we thank those who served and remember and honor those that gave the ultimate sacrifice.  To all our nation’s heroes, you may be gone, but you will never be forgotten.

LINK Conference Superstars

I promised you all bios on the wonderful people I met while at LINK.  Now that I’m actually sitting down to tackle that task, it appears quite daunting.  As I mentioned before, the people that surrounded me at LINK humbled me.  These are people that have made a substantive difference around the world- and continue to do so everyday.  So, in the interest of being fair, I have decided to write a quick 1-2 lines on each attendee, since giving full credit to their accomplishments would fill a book. (more…)

Update From Brother Jim Boynton

From Brother Jim via Facebook:

Jake,
thanks for your note. things here are going great guns. the reparation of the main building is almost finished. Ray Arana, who wanted to come with team rubicon, has been here for almost two months and did a great follow-up to the HEART 9/11 group. We are now back in the building and have running water etc.

the terrain accross the street is now a functioning technical school teaching masonry, carpentry, electricity, computers, and plumbing. We will also have a building there for volunteers fairly soon.

I’ve been involved in a couple of water projects in the country as well.

Conditions in the city are still very bad. more….

the conditions are still bad and there has been an upswing in violence. we can hear gun shots often during the night. there has also been some rioting in town. We had a scare with Francois the other day but it turned out to be a false alarm. The rumor mill is strange here, some guys came to our compound the other day to see me because they heard i was dying of typhoid. oh well.

by and large we are still doing great work, and i feel safe. safe enough to have groups of volunteers come down.

Hope you are well, and know you are not forgotten by at least on Jesuit who is becoming more comfortable here each day. your bro. jim

LINK Concludes

I am sitting here in the Lima Airport, flight delayed, contemplating on the past three days.  I must say that I am truly lucky to have been in the presence of so many amazing people.  I don’t have time now to sit here and fill you in on how each of these individuals is changing the world (and believe me, they are), but I promise you that at some point in the next few days I will get on here and tell you a story about a man named Oscar, who forever changed Columbia with his No More FARC Marches, or Austin, who has written software that will allow Iranians to publish content over the internet, bypassing government censorship, or Brian, who is responsible for removing gang violence in inner-city Los Angeles, or Stephanie, who organizes us all.  It will take me a long time to tell you these stories, but, I owe it to them, and I owe it to you.  You can expect them soon.

My presentation went well.  You can be absolutely certain that Team Rubicon now has a VERY strong presence in Peru.  Should the world’s next large disaster strike anywhere near this incredible country, TR will be poised to immediately come down and save lives.  Because that’s what we do; save lives.

In closing, I guess I’m just humbled and in awe  by the passion that I saw this weekend.  Tell me that my generation is apathetic, tell me my world is crumbling, and I will tell you to look at Rodrigo Diamante, at Chris Youngblood, or at Susan Gordon.  Tell me that for-profit corporations are evil and I will tell you to check the websites of SocialVibe and MeetUp, and then I will tell you to take the efforts of your criticisms and focus it on doing something yourself.

(Not that anyone in the TR Nation says these things!!!)

Continue to follow Team Rubicon and every other organization out there dedicated to changing the status quo, Thank You.

Air Force PhD Student Compares MSF and Team Rubicon

Doctors without (Virtual) Borders: Internet Effects on Epistemic Communities

Abstract: Epistemic communities existed long before the widespread adoption of Internet technology in the mid-1990s. However, the Internet offers an array of new opportunities for epistemic communities, particularly non-government organizations (NGOs). The purpose of this research design is to propose a method to compare the effects of Internet use between NGOs founded before widespread Internet adoption, or legacy NGOs, and NGOs founded post-adoption, or transformative NGOs. To build my argument, I first present NGOs and the Internet through the framework of constructivism. I contend that not only do epistemic communities reflect constructivist thought, but that Internet can also be viewed as a physical constructivist structure in both design and use. I then propose a qualitative content analysis research design to analyze two NGOs: Médecins Sans Frontières (legacy) and Team Rubicon (transformative). I expect to find differences between each case based on language content, which should indicate how epistemic communities adapt to the Internet. Download Fielder – Doctors without (Virtual) Borders

Visit Major Fielder’s site by clicking here.

Susan Gordon

Susan Gordon, Non Profit Coordinator for Causes, just got done discussing how her company (Causes, an application on Facebook) can help movements and organizations organize around the social media platform and connect users to a specific ’cause’.  Her presentation was amazing and TR Nation can expect a Facebook Cause in the near future!

The Telefonica Auditorium

Guest Speakers Arrive at Link

TR In Lima, Peru

Team Rubicon President Jake Wood has been invited to serve as a guest speaker at the LINK Conference taking place this weekend in Lima, Peru.  The LINK Conference’s goal is to empower Latin America’s youth to organize themselves and create positive social change.  The emphasis of the conference is on using new social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc) to promote problems, exchange ideas, increase awareness and create and implement solutions.

Jake will be discussing how Team Rubicon has utilized social media to revolutionize the disaster response world.  He will show how TR has taken what has traditionally been a linear relationship (Donor-NGO-Disaster) and created an enclosed, circular model that brings stories, photos and video of the disaster back to the donor; in essence taking the donor straight to the DZ.  This has been made possible through modern social networking technology.

Browse through Jake’s presentation in the slideshow below.

TR President Jake Wood arrives at Link Conference in Peru

Global Leaders Unite to Bring Technological Empowerment to Latin America

IN THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE, LINK COLLABORATES WITH TELEFONICA, USIL, AND CENTRUM TO EDUCATE & INSPIRE LATIN AMERICANS WITH SUCCESS STORIES, TOOLS & INSIGHTS TO ADVANCE POSITIVE CHANGE.

• In response to Link’s first successful International conference on social networks organized for college students in September 2009, this symposium will address social responsibility & effective methods used to expand awareness using connective technologies.
• Representatives of platforms like Facebook Causes, SocialVibe, MeetUp, Tehran Bureau and causes including Censorship Research Center, Un Millon Voces Fundacion, Viva Favela, To Write Love On Her Arms, Un Mundo Sin Mordaza, Mobilize, Invisible People, among others, will gather in Peru.

Lima, May 19, 2010 – On May 22, Peru’s capital city of Lima will host the second Link conference which aims to promote education and positive involvement using technology to advance development and social responsibility.

This groundbreaking event, sponsored by Telefonica del Peru and co-hosted by Centrum, will bring together highly regarded leaders from some of the most elite online platforms used to constructively influence civic engagement. They will be joined by cutting edge organizations effectively using technology to address censorship, promote the development of civil society, and issues plaguing people around the world.

Stephanie Rudat, co-founder of Alliance for Youth Movements and U.S. based social entrepreneur, amassed the dynamic collection of speakers and will moderate the conference. Rudat works to strategically advance the impact of causes and fellow activists by advising on the integrated use of ever-evolving technological tools and developing scalable infrastructures that generate awareness and support for human rights, freedom of speech, and civic engagement around the world.

This unique event features Susan Gordon, Senior Impact Coordinator for Facebook Causes, who will share how the Causes application, is to used assist, guide, and create online strategies with activists and more than 1,300 nonprofit partners, to build lasting social and political movements using the most popular social network in the world. Austin Heap, co-founder of Censorship Research Center and co-developer of the award winning software Haystack, will highlight the growing threat of artificial filtering imposed by oppressive governments and how, Haystack, is already helping Iranians communicate freely and anonymously. Scott Heiferman, co-founder of MeetUp.com and Fotolog, will share how his tools convene like-minded people and can be integrated into organizing the on-the-ground action needed to take movements beyond a virtual existence.

Rodrigo Diamante, co-founder and International Director of Un Mundo Sin Mordaza, will discuss the evolvement of their movement that opposes the closure of free media in Venezuela. Initial demonstrations began in June 2009 in over 30 cities around the world and continue today.

Joe Marchese and David Levy, co-founders of SocialVibe, a fundraising platform for charities that promotes corporate social responsibility will talk about the development of the dually beneficial program they created, how they identify partners, and provide insights on powerful collaboration models.

Using creative forms of digital journalism, Rodrigo Nogueira of Viva Favela, an award-winning project of Viva Rio in Brazil, and Mark Horvath of Invisible People will highlight their inventive approaches to addressing homelessness, cultural, economic, and social dimensions of the poor while shifting the standard portrayals featured in mainstream media.

Additional speakers on the agenda represent Opinion Actual, A Better LA, Mobilize, To Write Love On Her Arms, National Conference on Citizenship, Tehran Bureau, Facebook Causes, Participant Media, Success For Kids, One Million Voices Foundation, JuventudDes, and Team Rubicon.

For more information regarding registration, please visit www.linkeate.pe. The conference is being organized Link, CENTRUM and is sponsored in part by Telefonica.

TR Wharton Delivers Final Presentation

A few months ago the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania joined with Team Rubicon to develop a social media and fundraising strategy for TR. The final presentation is posted here. Special thanks to Jenn Chu, Efrain Guerrero, Mike Kramer, Stuart Zurn, Andrea Warnke and advisors Preston Cline and Pablo Lema. Over the next year, TR will be working to institutionalize the strategy outlined here.

TR Final Presentation – TWS

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