November 10 Guests

ANDY SMITH
Andy Smith is a principal of Vonavona Ventures, where he advises a variety of companies on marketing, customer strategy, and operations. Over the past twenty years, he has served as an executive leading teams at Dolby Labs, BIGWORDS, LiquidWit, Intel, Analysis Group, Polaroid, Integral Inc., and PriceWaterhouseCoopers.  As a guest lecturer at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, Andy speaks on social technology, engineering virality, and brand building, with a focus on applying technology to address real problems

He is a co-author of the new book THE DRAGONFLY EFFECT: Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways to Use Social Media to Drive Social Change. In the book, Andy and co-author Jennifer Aaker, a social psychologist and business school professor, show how to tap the power of social media in order to achieve social change and have a real impact on the world.  It is filled with examples of people and organizations that have successfully done so, whether the goal was finding an almost impossible bone marrow match for a friend, raising millions for cancer research, organizing a protest against the Revolutionary Armed Forces in Columbia, or electing the current president of the United States.  Based on Aaker’s popular course at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the book touches on diverse subjects, including:

the dark side of social technology

the mistake nonprofits make in their social media outreach

the concept of “emotional contagion,” and how it can be spread via social media

the importance of “design thinking” to social media campaigns

JOSEPH HURTADO
A recent performer at the Davis Beat and Jazz Festival, Joseph Hurtado is a Southside Hollywood-born poet, painter, and photographer. He has traveled the US extensively, and is currently preparing for an extensive trip as an artist to Colombia and Spain to attend poetry festivals and art schools in Medellin, Madrid and Barcelona. He is also in the process of going to print with his latest collection of prose and poetry, When Life Refuses to Give You Up.