While talking about poverty is all fine and good, it’s worthless if it doesn’t lead to action. The worst thing that could happen right now is if you read this post and then went along without responding. This is the call for justice – how are you going to respond?

Personally, I sponsor a child in Kenya through an incredible organization called Compassion International, (they also have an excellent blog) I also really admire the work that Kiva is doing to provide microfinancing for entrepreneurs in developing countries and hope to eventually support their work.

This is a start, but there is so much more that we all can do.

If you’re not sure where to begin, consider checking out the tools provided by the fine folks at Socialactions, which does an awesome job aggregate social change platforms.

And just like the film, this campaign is a call and response - how will you respond?

1. Be a thought leader: E.g. Charlene Li.
2. Generate more leads: E.g.HubSpot
3. Generate awareness in the market of your products / services / your personal brand: E.g. Chris Brogan
4. Get to know other thought leaders in the space: E.g.Don Dodge
5. Humanize your company or Give a personal face to your corporation:Lionel Menchaca
6. Get to network with other like-minded individuals: E.g. Paul Dunay
7. Communicate frequently to your audience – (customers, partners, employees, recruits, etc.): E.g. GM Fast lane
8. Generate a source of income from your writing: E.g. Darren Rowse
9. Obtain feedback from your audience (readers, customers etc.) on new products / services: E.g.Guy Kawasaki
10. Make sure you appear blog appears for specific terms on organic search (Search Engine Optimization): E.g. Aaron Wall
11. Find and share new information / content with your audience: E.g. Scobleizer
12. Give an avenue to your creative writing (hidden talent: E.g. Dooce
13. Be recognized as a source of breaking and exclusive news and information: E.g.TechCrunch
14. Keep in touch with friends, family and acquaintances: E.g.Balancing Motherhood blog) 
15. Win awards / recognition for your writing : E.g.Mashable
16. Make sure you let your customers and partners know what’s going on in a quicker fashion than press releases: E.g. Jonathan Schwartz
17. ) Increase engagement with your readers: E.g. A VC (Fred Wilson)
18. To get your point of view on topical trends, out to your audience: E.g. Mathew Ingram
19. To encourage ideas, conversation and dialog: E.g. Paul Graham
20.  To offer an alternative source of information for niche topics that get ignored by main stream media: E.g. Shai Agassi

Why, yes, I think I’ll shuffle right on through this recap of Web 2.0 this week.

To begin with, my participation at the conference was entirely fortuitous. Were it not for the incredible generosity of Connie Bensen offering her ticket up on Twitter last week, and my luck at being the first to respond, I would not have made it. Such as it is, hat tip to the wonderful Connie Bensen for providing a ticket to allow me to be a part of the Viget Labs crew at the Web 2.0.

While I stuck primarily to the Media & Marketing track, I did venture out to so of the more intriguing design, strategy and development session. Perhaps the most fascinating was Dan Saffer – formerly of Adaptive Path fame now heading up his shop, Kicker -  who gave a talk about designing for gestural interfaces.

Seffar shared two really cool quotes during his talk:

“We’re using bodies evolved for hunting, gathering, and gratuitous violence for information-age tasks like word processing and spreadsheet tweaking.” – David Liddle

“The best designs are those that ‘dissolve into behavior.’” – Naoto Fukasawa

As technology and our interaction with devices continues to evolve from simple keyboard and mouse to more immersive interfaces like the iPhone and Surface Sphere, our understanding of good user interface design has to change as well.

While several talks stand out, Lane Becker of Get Satisfaction presentation on “Customer Service is the New Marketing,” was easily the most impressive. Three big ideas in Becker’s talk:

1. Conversations are at the core of business.
2. Reduce your sphere of control.
3. Smash silos. 

A few other noteworthy talks were:

• The Partovi brothers at iLike hosted another great session, talking about the disruption of social tools in the music industry.
• Brian Solis gave a killer overview of how PR and marketing are experiencing a revolution in the shift brought on by social media.    
• And finally, a talk I had been looking forward to for quite a while, David Armano at Critical Mass presented, “Micro-interactions: How Brands Can Influence Consumers in a 2.0 World.’

Of course, it wouldn’t be a web conference in the Big Apple without some great times out on the town. Especially if the boys at Redmond were picking up the tab.  But more than an open bar courtesy of Microsoft (we’ll buy you drinks if you use IE8!), Thursday night’s Wine 2.0 with the one and only Gary Vaynerchuk was a sweet event. Cool venue, plenty of web and wine geeks plus Gary doing a live recording of Wine Library TVand you’ve got the ingredients for a lively night. And on a side note, Gary just continues to blow me away.The man just flat out hustles. It’s inspiring to watch him, and I hope that he is motivating others to find their passion the same way he has discovered his own.

[Update] Gary’s keynote from Web 2.0 is now available:

Friday’s session wrapped up with a cool talk from Jackson Wilkinson on “Design and User Experience in an Agile Process,” and then a closing marketing session on understanding Agency 2.0. Moderated by Rick Webb of the Barbarian Group, the panel wrestled with the growing pains in the industry, but provided hope that some agencies are realizing that it’s not about just specializing in fat media buys, but simply being creative problems solvers to help build brands.

Overall, I was really pleased with the quality of the content at Web 2.0, and may even try to submit a talk for next year. In the end, I walked away with the continued affirmation that conversations matter more than ever. And no matter what, you’ve got to hustle – even if it is on the Time Square Shuffle. 

However, it was interesting to note the example of Bill Marriott’s blog – CEO at Marriott International – which has led to more than $5 million in bookings using the reservations link placed on the blog. It’s a prime example of just one way a blog can be used as dynamic portal for inviting readers to a site through valuable content, connecting the blog to sales opportunities, and properly tracking the site’s usage through proper analytics. Good metrics need to be in place for any blogging or social media strategy – a tactic Viget also discussed in The Washbiz Blog.

You can check out the full article here.

The marketing team worked with MotiveQuest to research and measure what people were saying online about the car and Mini brand, and through their analysis, created the the Online Promoter Score in order “correlate the relationship between marketing and online brand advocacy to sales by measuring the net frequency of people recommending a brand online.”

Mini and MotiveQuest scoured more than 30 million online conversations to find 52,000 people who were talking about Mini. Listening to what online communities were saying about Mini helped shape how the car company works with bloggers, who are now treated as members of the press and are invite to be among the first to test drive new cars or even podcast from events.

But at the end of the day, it all comes down to sales. And how does Trudy Hardy, manager of marketing at Mini connect the online buzz with moving Minis off the lot?

“…while Ms. Hardy said the metric doesn’t “tie back directly” to sales, it correlates web traffic and online conversations to actual retail traffic.

“So we definitely see some correlation between online activity and how that affects showroom traffic,” she said. “We look at the spikes that are going on in conversations and see if it measures against an increased amount of traffic to our site, which ultimately leads to an increased amount of leads we send to our dealers.” (Via AdWeek)

Lenovo is launching a creative new initiative for this year’s games, fully embracing them as the Web 2.0 Olympics. Writes David Churbuck of Lenovo:

What is the Olympic ideal? The idea that propels the Games? In the end, in my opinion, it’s about the athletes. Some 12,000 extraordinarily talented and driven individuals and teams who are literally the best in the world. For me, the consummate athlete is not necessarily the champion who comes away with the gold, but the 11,000 athletes who won’t win a medal, the athletes who don’t have an agent, an endorsement deal, indeed, for some, even a glimmer of hope of standing on the podium hearing their national anthem. I want to know their story…What is the main event were the athletes themselves? What if, using Google’s Blogger platform and YouTube capabilities, Lenovo could offer any athlete a way to share their Olympic experience with their fans, family, friends, even the world?

This is a massive undertaking, but one that I am very excited about. The Olympics – while truly a phenomenal sporting event – can be distant and often feel unattainable. This makes it real. To chat with an Olympian online, see video of their life in the Olympic Village and even in just a small way, share in the Olympic experience.

To begin this project, Lenovo, in partnership with Ogilvy, are looking for 100 Olympic athletes from all over the world to start and maintain a blog through their Olympic experience. In exchange, Lenovo will provde the equipment and technical expertise necessary to get the athletes up and running during the Games. So if you happen to be an Olympic athlete, or know of one who would like to share their story, you can contact David or Rohit.

I think David has the right perspective on Lenovo’s role in working to create Olympics 2.0:

What I want for Lenovo out of all this is one simple piece of authentic, non-promotional recognition: “We were the PC supplier and sponsor to the Games who first enabled the connection between the fans and the athletes.”

I think this is the kind of healthy and genuine attitude that should extend to other brands as they consider their own approach to creating a branded social media initiative.

Certainly, more to come on this as the Olympics draw near.

1. What companies most impress you for maintaining their authentic personality? Not sure if I can pick on favourite, but in terms of scale and volume, Sun is a company that is particularly impressive in how they have managed to embrace having an authentic personality at all levels of their organization, from the top all the way down.

2. What are some creative ways organizations are co-creating their personality with their customers? I think that co-creation is a great trend that companies are using to demonstrate their personality – though I’m not sure it’s their personality that they are co-creating. If you look at some of the brands that use the Get Satisfaction solution, which allow customers to answer questions for each other … this is a great example where customers are co creating customer service with the brand. It is the use of the service that describes a component of the personality of the brand.

3. How can an organization rediscover their authenticity? Big loaded question – I spent all of Chapter 1 trying to answer this one. The short answer is, understand why you lost it in the first place and then you can start to take steps to gain it back. The most common first step is to lose the “employee silencing policy” – which means letting your employees be your brand ambassadors.

4. How is social media changing how a company cultivates their culture? Social media makes opinions more powerful because they can travel further, and also offers a more direct inside link to a brand. When it comes to a company cultivating their culture, social media offers a tool to help them engage in conversations both internally and externally, as well as more immediately share best practices between geographies.

5. What are some ways to convince in-house skeptics that nurturing a memorable company story is important? This is a very common question that I try to address in Chapter 5 of the book. In that chapter, I share that fear is the most common barrier, but that this breaks down into four key areas:

• Success – What we are doing is already working
• Uncertainty – We don’t know what will happen
• Tradition – We have always done it this way
• Precedent – No one else is doing it this way

Then I break down each situation into some actionable steps to help you get back that particular barrier. Thanks again to Rohit for the interview, and if you needed any more encouragement to order a copy of the book, purchasing through the Ultimate Marketing Bookstore will support DonorsChoose.org, an excellent charity that supports teachers.

But what about pure text?

Does copy deserve something more than a simple copy-paste?

That’s the question Anil Dash is asking:

But we’ve only been using this stuff for the most complicated parts of the web, like rich media. What about text?…But there seems to me to be something really interesting, some kind of potential, to including our posts (or parts of our posts) in other blogs that way, and while I’m no great coder, making the Movable Type templates to do this took about five minutes. I’m hoping something even more interesting comes from the world of compound objects or compound embeds, with a text post containing a video clip or image, and then being included on another page.

So: Has someone done this before? I’ve made blog templates that output widgets before, but what if we assume every blog post is a widget? How could we address the security issues? What does it mean that the included text and content can be updated remotely? What purpose does this serve, or is it just a really complicated way of copying and pasting text?

Ultimately, I’m not convinced that we need anything more than the tried-and-true method a simple copy-paste. But it’s good that he’s asking these questions, because we are learning each day that the content with the best distribution wins.

That’s why I want to embrace this freshly released outpouring of opinions, loves, hates, fears and desires under four pillars of discussion that are part of the DNA of my Company and myself: Social Rights, Hard Times, Well-being and Political Landscape.

However, as Liz Fuller writes, “The question is whether customers will accept a social-awareness site from a $500 million dollar commercial enterprise.”

While Cole’s blog seems to be a consistent extension of his personal beliefs, as a consumer I’d be more impressed if I knew the organization’s business practices were in line with the rhetoric espoused on the blog. Consumers are too savvy to associate the brand with a social cause if nothing but a slogan-filled blog connects the two. Hopefully this blog proves to be a vehicle that reveals Kenneth Cole as a company that practices what it preaches.