Awesome People: Tim Hwang
Tim and I caught up via soup and salad at the Stable Cafe. A skilled organizer, Tim has built a number of amazing projects (like this and that and this, too), and is a nice guy to boot. We discussed AF, BetterGrads, and old boys clubs.
My key takeaway on Awesome Foundation was that the foundation-part is hardly that. AF is an idea, an inspiration, not a bureaucratic morass: 10 people give $100 each month to award $1000 to awesome projects and ideas in their locale.
Whereas large grant-making foundations have significant overhead that limits their ability to make such small grants, the AF is a loose assemblage of people and chapters around the world, each operating with its own specific focus. The Institute on Higher Awesome Studies will provide a link between the foundational world and those small but significant projects who have received a bit of endorsement from an AF-chapter, and are now ready to take it to the next level. With the recent large grant from the Knight Foundation, an active constituency of Awesome Trustees around the world (I get Google Group emails 3-4 times a day), and Tim’s seductively simple vision, I expect the community around Awesome-ness and the number of chapters to grow significantly within the next 12 months.
That, of course, would be awes… cool.
In the world of BetterGrads, Tim emphasized the importance of beginning with a student-focused design for the website.At one time, alumni used high school alumni networks to reconnect and organize class reunions. No longer, thanks to a small little website that rhymes with “acebook.” Alumni don’t need to reconnect via alumni networks or classmates.com (still exists!), since they have never lost touch. Students have the largest incentive for their alumni networks to function: with professional inquiries, college-related questions, or invitations to alumni to give back to the school via a certain club, sport team, or event. Students’ direct and personal appeals are the best chance to bring alumni into the system and give them incentive to participate. We can learn what students want by asking: “what would you like to have the alumni do?”
Therefore, we need to determine what students would find useful in an alumni network.
(Source: kevinfadler)
