Every so often Union Square Ventures brings together a small group for a day-long conversation about the interplay between technology and society. We call these conversations Union Square Sessions.
Yesterday, we hosted a conversation entitled "Hacking Philanthropy." Hacking is used here as a term of respect as in "The intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations." See the Jargon File.
Our idea was to bring together entrepreneurs who have exploited the capabilities of the web to disrupt markets with people working for positive social change in the non-profit sector to see if the same techniques could improve the efficiency and effectiveness of philanthropy and social action.
We would like to thank the great group of energetic and experienced entrepreneurs, technologists, investors, philanthropists, and analysts whose energy and ideas were an inspiration and will, we think, be a useful contribution to the effort to improve the effectiveness of philanthropy and social action.
We hired a stenographer who worked valiantly (desperately) to capture the rapid fire conversation between 40 high energy people. We will know how well Robert did when we get the transcript back in a few days. In any case we will post the transcript here and try to point out some of the ideas we found most compelling. Whether you were with us yesterday, or your first exposure to the conversation is the transcript we encourage you to highlight the points you found useful or important. If you choose to engage elsewhere on the web, you can make sure your contribution becomes part of the conversation by using the tag "usvsessions3".
You'll find more photos here.