Google – All about COMM 101

Social Entrepreneurship gets Google Involved

Google Headquarters

Randy Haykin, Founder and Partner of Gratitude Network is hosting a social entrepreneurship event at Google’s headquarters. His aim for this conference is to improve and create radical changes in education. Previously held at Pixar, this conference is populated by many influential people from the entertainment, entrepreneurship, science and technology industry. Entrance fees will go into the award pool for three social entrepreneurship’s up to a total of $30,000 – known as “crowdfunding”. The three main aspects that this conference will focus on regarding education change is: process, business model, and technology. He hopes that this will spark innovation and allow people to share their “passion for improving education”.

I believe that this conference will be able to help many schools that lack the funding to have proper technology to finally be able to utilize these new technologies. Not only that, this conference will inspire many other future social entrepreneurs to aim to create such a big and successful event. However, as I read this article, it raised a few concerns to me as to where the $30,000 grand award will be finally utilized. Perhaps many people with the right mind set attending this conference will pay for the admission fee – but the final allocation of these fundings will not be entirely to the right cause.

At the end of the day, Haykin describes this as “labour of love. All because we want to make a global impact starting with education”.

(Source: Social Entrepreneurship Event at Google HQ Aims to Catalyze Change in Education, Google Headquarters, Gratitude Network)

Google’s Official Blog (Comment on External Blog)

The blog that I found is Google’s Official Blog on Blogspot. The reason I chose this blog over other possible blogs such as Facebook, or The Homeless Man was because of the post that was most recently updated. The post was titled “Celebrating teachers who make a difference with Google” and talked about how our favourite teachers have impacted us in such a way that way that have changed our entire lives. Google then incorporates some technologies that they provide that try to enhance and improve education around the world. This post really captured my attention because it had such a heartwarming story and message at the beginning and lead onto interesting innovations that Google had created which I had no idea about.

This blog is effective because it not only provides a platform for Google to promote their new ideas, but also a way to connect with the general public on a different, more emotional level. Google attempts to talk about problems that all users may be experiencing and tries to speak to us in a friendly way – as if the person typing these blogs was just a regular old friend updating us on his projects. I throughly enjoyed looking through what Google had to offer in which I had no ideas of. This is truly a good blog for users to understand more about Google and by reading these blogs, you can understand and see what the people culture is like at Google. Friendly!

(Source: Official Google Blog, Google IMG)