"Viral ideas" were the concept that I caught during the last day of the SANGONeT conference. Michael Gilbert, a veteran consultant in the non-profit sector, held a workshop challenging NGO leaders to invest time in finding such "viral ideas" - ideas which catch on, which interest people to the extent that they tell other people about it.

However. the fly in the ointment, methinks, is that it's often the very ridiculous, silly and extreme that interests most people (though they'd never admit it) to the degree that they pass on information. And by definition, it seems, the work that NGOs do are anything but. Even if it is, they're (rightly) reluctant to portray it as such. Take the "virus" that Gilbert used to illustrate his point about creating "viruses".

It was a video sequence of cats doing silly things. They fell of off chairs, crashed into walls, hissed at their mirror reflections and ambitiously attacked dogs. With the canned laughter and goofy music, it was, admittedly classic e-mail forwarding material. Watching it, I personally, thought of a
more than ten people I could forward that particular mail to, and they with little doubt, would forward to many more. Sure enough, Gilbert says this mail has traveled the world over. It was without a doubt viral. Yet, was it helpful to the NGO cause? Not in the least.

Unless, you think of a clever way to link falling cats to Aids or domestic abuse. Not implausible, but probably offensive.

And this was the stumbling block that I felt was never quite acknowledged in another conference debate yesterday. This one, sparked by Sandra Roberts of the Media Monitoring Project, looked at ways to stop the media from portraying children in ways that attack their dignity. Don't give graphic
details about abuse and rape and don't use glib headlines like "Dog sex girl" - which was actually used in a story about a child who had been forced to have sex with a dog.

I would in no way defend calling a child "Dog sex girl". It's demeaning and humiliating. Yet, the sad truth is, people will remember those words far better than a more PC (politically correct) version. What that PC version would be, I cannot even begin to imagine – the question of whether it would
fit in a headline is even more dubious.

NGOs are generally regarded as the frontline against slurs and unfairness that corporate and government powers overlook. They don't just help and lend a voice to people that the world forgets, they defend the rights of those people, defend their image and help them defend themselves. How do you balance this idea of gentler values with a world where marketing is becoming a key force in making yourself heard. How do compete against the leagues of clever, funny, ridiculous (yet largely useless) information that people choose to consume - without painting a dire cause as dire and extreme?

Answer that, my friends, and the information age can indeed be harnessed for non-profit causes. Ignore it and we might never know...