Tom Watson: The Entrepreneurs of #OccupyWallStreet A month into this, all became clear - and not just because Occupy Wall Street set up camp three blocks from where Jason Chervokas and I ran a small news operation that covered digital start-ups in the 90s (though it helped). Occupy Wall Street is a start-up. And it is deeply entrepreneurial. Indeed, if Silicon Alley venture capitalists like my friend Fred Wilson - who is publicly intrigued by the protests - are looking for proven talent in attracting a crowd online behind a product that is lithe, broad, and ripe for vast adoption, they could do worse than surf the crowd of social entrepreneurs sleeping under tarps in Zuccotti Park. Unlike the bankers and Wall Street firms, who rely on fixing the game in Washington and public bailout money to lock in their billions, the scraggly and gritty start-up team at Occupy Wall Street steers much closer to the idealistic self-improving America of Ralph Waldo Emerson - and even to the capitalist penny passion plays of Horatio Alger.
Occupy the Web: Hackers join worldwide protest Matt Ewing, founder of green tech company Rewire Labs, decided on Tuesday the Occupy Wall Street movement needed a technology boost. So he held a San Francisco Hackathon Friday night, aptly named “Occupy the Web, hacking for the 99 percent.” Occupy movements targeting corporate corruption have spread outside of the its Occupy Wall Street origins. Indeed, the day of Ewing’s hackathon over 4,000 people marched in San Francisco under the same Occupy flag. “We’re used to seeing manufactured politics — you have the RNC [Republican National Convention] saying, ‘Okay we’re going to have rallies with a clearly defined structure,’” said Ewing in an interview with VentureBeat. For Ewing, technology is both the roadblock and the savior of protesters in today’s age. “[Protesters] can move faster [because of technology], but they can easily look disjointed. Instead of disjointed, Ewing likes to call the movement “distributed,” which turned out to be true of the hackathon as well. Occupy the Hub
Wall Street Protesters Have Released An Official Newspaper As the Occupy Wall Street protest enters its third week, the protesters have released their official newspaper: Occupy Wall Street Journal. It’s a self-funded and self-published publication that features four, full-colored pages. The concept was realized after receiving support and funding from members on Kickstarter. From the site: The idea is to explain what the protest is about and profile different people who have joined and why they joined. The editors of Occupy Wall Street Journal, a group of journalist, support the grassroots movement and aim for an ambitious 50,000 print run. Business Insider Protests against Wall Street spread across US NEW YORK (AP) — Protests against Wall Street entered their 18th day Tuesday as demonstrators across the country show their anger over the wobbly economy and what they see as corporate greed by marching on Federal Reserve banks and camping out in parks from Los Angeles to Portland, Maine. Demonstrations are expected to continue throughout the week as more groups hold organizational meetings and air their concerns on websites and through streaming video. In Manhattan on Monday, hundreds of protesters dressed as corporate zombies in white face paint lurched past the New York Stock Exchange clutching fistfuls of fake money. A slice of America's discontented, from college students worried about their job prospects to middle-age workers who have been recently laid off, were galvanized after the arrests of 700 protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge over the weekend. About 100 demonstrators were arrested on Sept. 24 and some were pepper-sprayed. View gallery "We're down with these protesters.