Honolulu Weekly

Meet Song Choi. Oh, you already know him? The quick-witted, 34-year-old social chameleon runs in so many circles, the pulse of Honolulu would slow if he left. As H-town’s animated prince of marketing and master of the 30-second elevator pitch, Choi’s resume is impressively varied, from communications manager at The Contemporary Museum, to adjunct professor at Hawai’i Pacific University, to his current gig as director of communications for ChipIn, a local tech startup that, as a virtual calabash bowl of sorts, embraces the share-and-share-alike environment of Web 2.0.

While he’s the life of the party, Choi’s also the person you rely on to save you a seat. Call it pyramid networking or people leveraging–it’s a talent typically reserved for bartenders and con men–but Song uses it for good and not for evil. So it isn’t so surprising that the consummate scenester found himself on Kaho’olawe in 2003 with a handful of other young people committed to serving the public good. That gathering led to the beginning of Envision Hawai’i, which held its second annual conference last week at Kapi’olani Community College with panel discussions on grant-writing, land use and political action. Among the speakers were 3 Point Consulting’s James Koshiba, Sustain Hawai’i’s Ramsay Taum and Sen. Inouye’s chief of staff Jennifer Goto Sabas.

If yuppies were the prime movers in the ’80s and dot-commers led Gen X through the ’90s, then social entrepreneurs are the ‘it’ segment of the new millennium. They’re the ones who keep creating hope, seeking to empower communities that are disadvantaged or disregarded. What keeps them from shoving social responsibility aside? They’re driven by social justice, which is inextricably tied to a love for humanity. Their decisions are swayed more by social benefit than dollar signs, and in the end, they care about people, not things. As a member of the steering committee and a natural mover of the shakers, Choi talks to the Weekly about what’s on their agenda.

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OK, so tell me the truth. Is this Envision Hawai’i conference like a who’s who of Honolulu’s most eligible bachelors and bachelorettes?

Yes, it’s actually speed dating for social entrepreneurs. You sit down, and really quickly you’re asked what’s your cause, what’s your sign, boom, move on, just like that. (Laughs.)

What’s your role? Are you the pimp?

I’m, like, the chief operating pimp (laughs). Nah, I’m on the steering committee. In the beginning when we first started getting all these people in public service together, we noticed a trend that people felt very isolated, fighting for their own personal causes but no real connection to a larger industry. Envision Hawai’i creates a forum where they can share ideas, realize they’re not alone and find additional resources in one another.

But there’s neither money nor glamour in being a public servant or working for a nonprofit.

The thing that drew me in was the word ’social entrepreneurship.’ I came out of business school, so I only knew about entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is about money. It’s about being your own boss and making money. But so many people who are active in Envision Hawai’i are being their own bosses, but also supporting causes they believe in–creating businesses, creating business models that reflect that–and they’re very successful at it, because they have the skills for being a serial entrepreneur added to a passion for serving the greater good.

Do young people here face the same problems as young people on the mainland?

I think young people in Hawai’i don’t feel like they have as many alternatives, and in truth they’re right. How many successful industries are there here where they can find well-paying jobs where they can think about buying a home and raising a family? Unless you’re working in tourism, or possibly the Department of Defense, there really isn’t much here, aside from a handful of large companies. But even thenÖ

At the conference, you spoke about technology for social change. What are the tools for mobilization today? Is it all about the Internet?

The great thing about this Web 2.0 thing is that it supports online communications.

As opposed to Web 1.0?

Web 1.0 was just about broadcasting your message, like having an online brochure, right? This is what I have, send it out, people come and read your message and the interaction ends. Like reading a newspaper.

But now things are changing. People are finding a more active way to connect with one another, and that connection’s always on. Web 2.0 is all about supporting active conversations. So instead of just reading, now you can participate. And not just by posting a comment and having someone comment back to you, but also, like in the case of Wikipedia, there’s this collective intelligence or intelligence of groups. And then there’s technology that supports that–everything from RSS to SMS so that information is accessible instantly. Through an RSS reader, you can read hundreds of publications daily to draw information and then you can turn around and share that.

I sense a MySpace reference coming.

You can trivialize things like MySpace by saying it’s a hookup site, but if you look at the way the younger generation’s using it, they’re also using it as a tool for self-expression. Again, there’s an active communication–a conversation–that’s occurring there. I think that’s going to evolve eventually beyond just ‘Here’s a picture of me half-naked, do you wanna hook up?’ If you think about it, these are young people who are doing it, and that’s what’s on their minds. So, as they start expanding and thinking about other relevant social issues, how long is it before it starts leaking into online communities like MySpace?

So how do we move these efforts from a digital space to a physical space?

I think we’re already seeing it. It’s as easy as sending an email for everyone to go down to our Habitat for Humanity build. The first 20 people who came on to ChipIn–half of them were fundraisers. That’s where people’s heads are. Groups are coming together for a cause.

My question is how do you know every single person in Honolulu?

Oh, but that’s not true. There are at least three people out in Wai’anae–oh, wait, I met them last week. You’re right. (Laughs.) No, really, I’ve worn a lot of hats. I’ve worked on a lot of different jobs. And I really do feel that everyone’s opinion is valid. Not right–but valid–from their perspective, and I have to respect it and I always have. Being raised on this island and leaving and coming back, not knowing what to do, looking for opportunities and having opportunities present themselves, I just fell into this real love affair with Hawai’i. Well, not each person in Hawai’i (laughs)–I’m not like that. I don’t want to spread that kind of disease! But every time I leave, I think the same thing: I live in the friendliest place in the world. You know me–I’m such the townie I never use this word because I feel like I’m faking–but it’s so true, there’s so much aloha on the island.

What do people on the mainland think?

People always say the same thing: ‘Oh, you’re such a nice, polite person.’ (Smirks.) And I’m like, why? We’re all like this. Even when things are at their darkest, people are still looking at the bright side. I go to places where people are doing very well–San Francisco, New York–and I see my friends, and they look so exhausted. I come back to Hawai’i and I see my friend who’s working two or three jobs at a time, and he’s happier–because he has a support network here, he has relationships that really matter and relationships that he would miss if he left. And how many friends do we have who have left and miss those relationships and feel disconnected?

So networks–relationships between people–are a lot stronger here.

The unique thing about Hawai’i is that we’re all interconnected. If you’re from California, for example, and you meet someone else from California, you’d never expect that person to go, ‘Oh, do you know so-and-so and so-and-so?’

But Hawai’i? Totally different. Especially if you’re on the mainland. You see two people sitting in Boston: ‘Oh, I’m from Hawai’i.’ ‘You from Hawai’i?! Oh, so am I. Oh my God, where you grow up? Do you know so-and-so?’ Okay, there’s an assumption we’re connected. And you’ll sit there and you’ll try to find someone. Even if I were to say, ‘Oh, I went to Mid-Pac.’ ‘Oh, what year you graduate?’ ‘Eighty-nine.’ ‘Oh, my cousin graduated in ‘99.’ And maybe there’s a 10-year gap there, but you laugh and joke and you try to find someone, and then finally, it could be someone as obscure as, ‘Oh, I used to go fill my gas at Chevron.’ ‘Oh, so you know Junior Salud?’ ‘Oh, eh, that’s my cousin!’ As soon as that’s realized–as soon as you confirm that the connection is there, there’s like this, ‘Ahhh. Nice. Right on. We are brothers. We are sisters.’

What happens when things start to threaten this kind of intimacy?

You mean like being on the neighbor islands but not able to buy a home because everything’s being priced out about a million dollars too high and the people who come in are doing vacation rentalsÖ

Or they’re building walls and don’t care to know their neighbors. How do we prevent that?

I wish their was a soft answer. Like, well, if we just open up our community and try to make them feel welcome, they’ll become a part of who we are. That would be an easy, soft answer. But that’s won’t work. Not with the volume, the number of people who are coming over, and not when you subject the locals, the families who’ve been here for three or four generations, to live on the beach because they can’t afford a homeÖyou can’t expect that to occur.

What can you tell people who are jaded, who think it’s too late–the island’s going to hell in a handbasket so we might as well just go surfing, smoke a lot of pakalolo, pick up our garbage and not worry about everything else?

How do you change their attitudes? I think most importantly we have to give them reasons to hope. It’s really about hope. That the time they put in, something good, something better, something brighter is going to come of it. I really think that’s what’s missing here sometimes.