A call for a New Rules community platform centered on education and public schools
I wrote about the issue of Silicon Valley's terrible public schools earlier this year. I got some great responses on the subject. But Dan Gillmor berated me for berating Silicon Valley. "Berating doesn't work," he told me at a recent event.
Well, not berating Silicon Valley doesn't work either then, at least it makes me feel better, if nothing else.
But I also realized that there is a lot of work being done by leading Silicon Valley companies such as Cisco, Sun, HP and many others, around the subject of education. And they all seem worthy projects, yet the results of all that do-gooding are hard to find.
Here's my take for a "new rules" philanthropic education effort, (and it means we ditch the non-profit company approach, even if it means losing that tax deduction, I'll explain.)
And please, take the following and add to it, or change it, or whatever else needs to be done to change things, these are just a few ideas to maybe develop an open source business model that will make a big difference in our communities, and become a blueprint for other communities too. This is a work in progress:
New Rules Community Platform
-Let's combine most of the local educational efforts by tech companies into one organization, say call it SVFuture.
-The mission of SVFuture would be to enable public schools to use digital collaborative technologies to communicate with their local communities and to tap the many sorts of resources within those communities. The premise is that there is a tremendous amount of knowledge, material, and volunteer labor within each community, to enable every public school to become a center of educational excellence.
-SVFuture would use open standard open platform technologies.
-SVFuture is not a not for profit, it is schedule C or S or LLC--but the idea is not to be limited by the limits on not for profit companies.
-At SVFuture it is OK to make a profit because it means it becomes self sustaining, it does not require further handouts or distractions in begging for supporting funds.
-SVFuture is a "not for loss" company rather than "not for profit." It is an idea borrowed from Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank, a not for loss business that makes micro-loans and has created an enormous amount of value in the developing world.
-SVFuture's mission is to offer free collaborative and community building software to schools. I'd like to see a wiki in every school, for example. I've mentioned this to Ross Mayfield , CEO of SocialText, and Joe Kraus at JotSpot. They like the idea. And wikis are simple technologies that can help schools by drawing on the resources of the community.
-SVFuture would help build a type of "Craig's List" community around each school, plus a teacher/class blogging platform, plus a request for supplies or skills from classrooms, plus sharing of community resources both physical (e.g. projectors, meeting rooms) and people (teacher assistants, baby sitters, etc.) Schools would become the centers of their communities, because we know that more parent involvement in schools leads to better education.
-SVFuture would collect best practices, templates, etc, to share with other schools.
-SVFuture would offer a public wi-fi service to the community around each adopted school for a fee that covers costs. It would charge commercial and government establishments higher rates for this service.
-Because SVFuture is a normal commercial entity, the objections of Verizon or any other company to municipalities/public organizations offering public wi-fi at low rates would be removed. In fact, SVFuture rates might even be higher than from a competitor, but the social value returned would be recognized by its customers and they would willingly pay a premium.
-SVFuture revenues would also come from the community: local advertisers, ad postings, classes in computer skills, etc.
-SVFuture might experiment with different tech architectures, such as harvesting spare microprocessor cycles from the community. Wireless bandwidth could be shared more openly by each household, for example, (the way it once was.)
-SVFuture would be a commercial company in other ways too, it could pay competitive salaries for example. This would enable "not for loss" companies to attract larger numbers of talented people.
-SVFuture if it can be made to work, would help make wireless, and wired broadband a reality sooner, rather than later for many communities. That means the US builds its 21st century infrastructure faster, and more efficiently.
-SVFuture would show that doing good can be made profitable and sustainable.
But we need somebody to take it on and lead this new rules educational initiative, or something like it...anybody want to make history?
In the meantime, send me your ideas, let's compile an open source business model around education.
