Idealist.org Silicon Valley - Start-up Meeting Notes

category:Idealist
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==Human Rights and Law & Politics==
by Ginamarie H
In terms of opportunities for action, connection, and collaboration, where are we now? How easy is it for people in the community (or school or workplace) to connect around shared interests or concerns? What resources are available to help people who want to get involved but don't know where to start? What do people in the room see as the most urgent problems in the community?
* Currently, most of us are unemployed and found that it's hard to break into the nonprofit realm. Some options for getting our foot in the door includes: 
** Opportunities overseas
** Americorp - Public Allies, Citiyear, Bayac 
** Job fairs
** Conventions - most people like to meet face-to-face actively sharing what they're doing as opposed to online networking.
* Blending nonprofit and private sectors
** corporations such as Google are becoming more philanthropic ( google.org)
** volunteer sponsorships
* It might be effective to create a secular version of church by coming together once a week and fundraising. 
** it helps when the project is on-going, engaging, and highly-valued so that people can walk away with a marketable skill.
Some issues that we talked about that might be something we'd like to pursue as a group: 
* Immigration/diversity issues
* learning life skills, i.e. credit, taxes
** setting up a workshop to teach people about financial literacy
* going into high schools - youth are often ignored and should be empowered 
* rich, privileged communities and pulling people (even those not in the privileged communities) out of their safety corners 
What can we do to improve our community further?
* continue to meet and have dialogue
* also requesting that Idealist have a Myspace or Facebook-like component to stay in contact with others who have similar values, goals, passion (which, by the way, I've emailed a suggestion to Idealist.org tonight, asking them to make that a feature of the site). 
Some questions that I posed to our group in the email I sent out were: 
*Is there anything specific listed above that we might want to delve more into? 
*What are some other topics or issues that might be of interest that wasn't brought up at today's meeting?
*Is there a place for us online to continue our conversations? Do we even want to meet online to talk more or do we want to meet sooner than the next Silicon Valley Idealist meeting?
==Economic Development==
by Curt
The photo converted to text:
Economic Development
*Local + International
*Internet is a Tool... and a Challenge
**Things are different!
**Access
***Glut (of information)
***Language (gaps)
***Education level
*(we could really use some) Databases
** Knowledge
** Experts
*Local trust / contact (is critical to successful / effective projects)
*Concrete? Disappear (that is, when the discussion gets concrete, people evaporate)
*Alternative economic models: "Freebay"
*high tech risks losing the human touch. 
**As much as technology is helpful, we need to be sure to maintain the human connection; something the developing world may only know.
;Next steps:
*Consolidate ideas
*Strengthen connections
*Connect with other Idealist "BOFs" ("Birds of a Feather")
*meet again
;Those present:
*Brian
*Elaine
*Milton
*Jeremy
*Lynn
*Falguni
*Lakshmi
*Curt