Since the founding of TakingITGlobal in 1999, I have been incredibly inspired by my interactions with thousands of young change makers from all around the world. Through my Masters Research on youth-led action in an international context along with exposure to other studies and international conferences examining the role of today's generation of youth as change agents, I have gained an important observation. My observation is that I have seen the emergence of Six Archetypes of Youth Change Makers, which provide a glance at the roles young people are taking on in the process of creating change.
The Dreamer
The Dreamer is the driver behind new ideas. Dreamers are often the first to articulate a long-term vision for the future and think big. It is the sense of aspiration, optimism and imagination of dreamers that drive progress, innovation and change.
The Megaphone
The Megaphone is a vocal advocate for change. Megaphones are very focused on delivering the message and will campaign tirelessly and work hard to lobby for a message to be heard. They inspire action through their words and help to shift priorities on the agenda.
The Spark Plug
The Spark Plug is a catalyst and has a gift for networking and connecting people. The Spark Plug is able to foster collaborations and bring many different organizations and individuals together in dialogue, convincing diverse interest groups to come together for a common goal.
The Task Master
The Task Master is often behind the scenes making things happen and is sometimes the under-rated player within a group or organization. Often, it is the Task Master who literally keeps things together by turning ideas into manageable tasks with actionable timelines. Task Masters are practical, objective-oriented individuals.
The Sherpa
The Sherpa serves as a guide who provides mentorship, insight and training through peer education. Sherpas are natural educators with a strong interest in learning and sharing knowledge. Sherpas value hands on experiences and are able to draw upon the expertise and resources of those they encounter.
The Storyteller
The Storyteller is often the documenter of an organization and its projects, preparing short stories, interviews, blogs, webcasts newsletters and more. Storytellers become a vehicle for spreading inspiration and sharing of best practices through identifying patterns and strengthening movements through recognizing exceptional individuals.
Remember National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) back in November? You all used the opportunity to take a swing at churning out a 50,000-word novel on your blogs in only one month — some with great success!
It’s an even more fitting occasion for posting regularly to your blog on the topics that interest you. And maybe the best part is that it starts whenever you want it to! The only objective is to post every day for a month. So why not begin with July? To make it official, sign up here. It’s open to anyone with a blog, anywhere in the world.
The NaBloPoMo team provides a theme for each month, which isn’t mandatory, but is a nice way to gain inspiration that can kick off your daily updates.
Not into that? Then we suggest sticking to the stuff you’ve been blogging about all along — the things you experience and love — with the added caveat of keeping it on the regular.
If you run out of steam, you can always find ways to blog about the dozens of weird celebrations and holidays that take place in July, in addition to Independence Day in the U.S. — like Ice Cream Soda Day, Video Games Day, or Bugs Bunny’s Birthday.
To plug the WordPress community into your endeavor, we suggest using NaBloPoMo09 as a tag on each post you publish to your blog. They’ll show up on the tag results page, which is also a great place to get inspired by your fellow bloggers.
A note: Please refrain from commenting with questions about NaBloPoMo in response to this post. It’s not a WordPress project. Instead, check out their FAQ to learn more about its objectives and requirements.
Last month we launched the Yahoo! App and 360 importer so you can migrate your content to WordPress.com quickly and easily. And we introduced the SocialVibe widget, which helps you earn donations for the charity of your choice. July will bring more feature updates, and more of the themes and customizations you’ve been asking for. We’re listening.
Here are the stats for June:
388,580 blogs were created.
5,845,417 posts were published.
411,540 new users joined.
5,800,941 file uploads.
3,633 gigabytes of new files.
810 terabytes of content transferred from our datacenters.
8,330,617 comments.
6,841,633 logins.
1,245,935,191 pageviews on WordPress.com, and another 1,245,882,985 on self-hosted blogs (2,491,818,176 total across all WordPress blogs we track).
2,153,176 active blogs where “active” means they got a human visitor.
The infolinks challenge is an online video contest about smart ways of making money online. So what are you waiting for? film your creative way of making money online and win the $5000 Challenge! ..
You spend a lot of time creating great content and attracting an audience for your blog. What if you could use that influence to make a positive social impact? Now you can.
We’ve teamed up with SocialVibe, and now by adding the SocialVibe widget to your blog, you are able to earn donations for the charity of your choice by getting sponsored by a brand that appeals to you.
Each time someone visits your blog and engages with your brand (by rating a video, for example), you’re making a difference. That impact is immediately visible on your badge, i..e., ‘My blog has provided 63 cups of clean water for people in need.’
The money donated comes from your brand, so you and your readers never have to pay a dime.
In addition to earning donations, you’ll also get feedback from your charity about the difference they’re making thanks to you. By clicking the charity logo in the badge, you can find information about your cause and view real-time goal progress.
Setup is easy and only takes a few clicks – just go to Appearance->Widgets in your dashboard, add the SocialVibe widget and pick a cause and a charity. For more details you can find documentation in our support area. If you change your mind about your sponsor or cause, you can easily make adjustments by visiting your widget dashboard.
If you are running a self-hosted WordPress blog, be sure to grab the SocialVibe plugin.
With SocialVibe, our community can pool our individual influences to create positive change in the world.
May was also the month for our largest-ever WordCamp San Francisco. Mission Bay Conference Center was a packed house, but (amazingly) everything ran on schedule, and nothing went wrong! A round of applause is due to our sponsors, speakers, and everyone who attended for helping to make WordCamp such a smooth success. Thanks for making it all possible.
WordCamp San Francisco had 739 pre-event registrations (a huge jump from 427 last year), and 789 actual attendees from 32 countries — plus 15 speakers, six sponsors, and lots of volunteers.
The first is that we’ve launched a Yahoo! 360 importer (listed in your admin screens under Tools → Import) to make migration from 360 to WordPress.com super easy. Just upload the Yahoo! 360 export ZIP file, and we’ll do the rest. Yahoo! will be shutting down their 360 service soon, so if you have any friends over there feel free to give them a little help and encouragement to head over to WordPress.com
Second is the release of our WordPress.com QuickPress Yahoo! Application. You can post posts and read and moderate your most recent comments straight from My Yahoo!. (Note to any self-hosted WordPress.org folks out there: the app currently only works on WordPress.com. We’re working on making it .com/.org universal.)
Thanks to Yahoo! for their help with their Yahoo! Application Platform, and thanks to all of you for the best blogs on the intertubes.
If you need help with either of these new toys (or anything else), please contact our support team.
