I got an invitation from @rohanvim to join Social Good Day Colombo meet up, and since I was interested in networking with fellow Sri Lankans I attended the event yesterday. The event was held as a part of RefreshColombo, a monthly gathering of tech enthusiasts.
For me the highlight of the event was "Building an Effective Online Marketing Platform" presentation done by Niranka T. Perera of eMarketingEye. Since I'm also interested in online marketing there were some great points to take away from that presentation, and I will try to attend RefreshColombo meet ups as much as I can as well.
Up next was the presentation by Nandasiri Wanninnayake, founder of Horizon Lanka foundation. It was great how a rural village 50-60Km from Anuradhapura managed to overcome all the hardship thrown at them and build a effective Internet portal to the outside world. It is by no means just having Internet, student were thought English via Internet and it has grown to such an level that volunteers from other countries come and teach these rural village children. It is simply amazing how one man managed to do all this without much help from anyone.
Then there was a discussion about how we can use social media to improve the lives of others. It was kick started by Sanjana of GroundViews. I guess the simple message was act upon your tweets, tweeting about social good etc is easy but acting upon them is the hard part. There were some initiatives taken to start a social good movement. I'm looking forward to the ideas that will come up once the forum is set up.
As a whole it was a good experience and a well organized event. @cocoveranda was kind enough to produce some nice refreshments and any event that starts with refreshments is a good event ;)
