A lot can be said about Sirgutz’s experiences as a band manager and his struggle to find himself in Gallatin, but what is the most interesting, especially for this class, is his role as a driver of social impact through media. Even before his role as Senior Vice President of Social Impact at the Huffington Post, he was a founding member of the company called Causecast. This company enables other businesses to manage their donations, community offerings, and other philanthropic practices through Causecast. In essence, Causecast acts as a hub, mainly for nonprofit organizations, to organize the way they give back to the world. This demonstrates a direct way in which technology can help social impact. Through technology, companies are able to streamline their efforts to build on their philanthropy.

This lead to his talk on the Huffington Post. Sirgutz managed many different groups within Huffington Post in order to create the social impact columns. Sirgutz explains that his particular columns are the ones that readers will often bring up in conversations to discuss and debate rather than the top news stories that seemingly overshadow them. Although it is still hard to quantify the effects of these columns, the Huffington Post is still able to see the impact, to some extent, of the social impact column by seeing if the column gets tweeted or spreads through other means. In the middle of his explanation of what he does, Sirgutz brought up his most powerful point. He raised his iphone and said that “with this, any civilian can be a journalist”. In an age where people can readily record videos, take pictures, and tweet about events around them, bystanders are able to become part of the machine that drives social impact awareness. Much of what he said during his visit relates to our class’s study of the media, but those words stuck out to me the most. With tools like the internet, cell phones and social media at our disposal, we can all become writers, photographers, and commentators.