Tomorrow morning when I wake up and step out of the plane it will be warm and sunny.
Nice temperature.
Delhi, India. My first time in India.
Directly from the aiport I will go to the unbox festival, a festival which builds momentum around design thinking and interdisciplinary collaborations to drive sustainable innovation for businesses, society & culture in India.
Thanks to Britsh Council and Goethe Institute to get me in;-)
On Sunday I will attend TEDxDelhi and then I am off for a week – wondering if I find my landway all the way to Mumbai or it might as well be that I’ll be heading north to the foothills of the Himalaya … snow and cold again.
It was last year in September. I spent 10 days in Shanghai doing some research on global governance, social media and the open source movement. I wrote about here and here – and I did a couple of interviews – with David Li, Marc Chijs, Carsten Ullrich … This one here happened more or less by coinincidence in a bar named Ying Yang. Ying Yang is a lesser known venue in the French Concession district in Shanghai. Full of atmosphere. Posters of Chairman Mao adorning every available wall space, the musical background floats seamlessly from bossa nova to jazz, progressive psychedelic, and everything in between – as you can hear in the interview;-) – a favorite spot for both bohemian locals and expats in-the-know.
This entire “meeting” was set up via twitter and facebook. A friend of mine, Kate Ettinger, connected me with a bunch of “gangsters” – all of them members of we.makesense.org – a worldwide network of social entrepreneurs (I would highly recommend to check them out!). Habib Belaribi, Larry Vetea Tchiou, Clément Renaud and his girl friend Qu Hongyuan (most people call her Yuan – that’s also the way she introduces herself). Over some French red wine we were chatting about Shanghai, China, makesense and global governance.
In this second part they are talking about the impacts of technology on culture and the question if the internet is capable of “building” a new culture.
Last week I was part of a web 2.0 workshop at NATO. Together with the communication department of NATO I am working on the launch of the website we_NATO.org which doesn’t aim to replace the traditional NATO.int website but much more to become a valuable add-on.
The concept is easy and simply. Technical wise it will be a blog and a wiki.
Contentwise it will offer a more diverse perspective on NATO’s topics. We shall move away from the current practice sending out PR messages to a more conversational style. This will include formats such as
live video chats between NATO senior staff and people from outside NATO’s world such as Joi Ito, Peter Kruse, hopefully Don Tapscott and David Weinberger
(video) interviews with peers from outside NATO who can discuss more openly topics such as smart defence, missile defence
blogposts from activists from the Arab world discussing new partnerships with NATO
narratives from Afghan women who have been working with NATO to improve a better cultural understanding between the locals and the allies
online discussions brought up by people like you and me
connecting peers which usually don’t speak to each other
…
And these is a huge challenge. For the people working on it and for NATO the institution itsself. We are experiencing this in every step we make.
For the people itsself – especially NATO staff – the new platform is challenging because they have
to step out of their comfort zone
to question what they’ve been taking for granted for many years
to learn that “crisis” might be helpful to drive change
to learn that being disruptive can be inspring
to deal with a huge amount of scepticism among their colleagues
to learn that failing is an option
to become more open to what is new
to learn that sharing means loosing the gatekeeper authority
to realize that there are much better things than email to communicate
to adjust to the different speed in communication and operation on the web
to learn that small steps smartly made are much more efficient than running a master plan
to allow that agenda setting is (at least partially) coming from the outside world and that this can be a good thing
On the institutional level the challenges are even bigger – I think. Even though the team members are committed to the project – the institutional reality might not. NATO is a very very hierarchical system. They are only “special” people who are allowed to speak in public about NATO. Only a few can give NATO a voice. PR-polished voices, in many cases compromises, always with the goal to please everybody, to demonstrate agreement and not to hurt or contradict any allies’ position – always feeding their “masters”. Indeed our project is backed up by top management. But the big question is: is the system ready to adjust? Is the institution NATO able to shift between the hierarchy-modus to the network-modus – as presentetd in this video – if needed?
So to a huge degree the goal of the workshop was to give the team members a better understanding in which ways the project is challenging the current system NATO and then in a next step to gain greater support for the new formats and the way to move forward.
For the first part we invited Peter Kruse. His presentation (see below) clearly aimed for this better understanding. He pointed out 3 major challenges:
This one hour presentation really set ground for a much better understanding of what we are planning to do with we_NATO and it was an easy next step to gain support for the new formats and our step-by-step approach to proceed.
So why did I title this post: I am a “frustrated” optimist?
I am very optimistic that these new forms of communication and collaboration will succeed – but I am over and over again frustrated by the hurdles, restrictions and ignorance companies and institutions come up with – and I am not only talking about NATO – to resist change and NOT to adapt to the outside world.
I have to admit it’s been a while since we videotaped this conversation between Peter Kruse and David Weinberger on “data”. It was last year, late September at Petersberg. A very warm and sunny day. Actually 4 month before David’s book Too Big to Know was published.
For me, as an observer more or less, it was very interesting to see the different approaches both of them took when they were talking about data. Peter, who spent great parts of his life in the field of brain research, always in search for a higher order (pattern recognition, understanding) within all these networks; David, embracing the messiness of the web and open data, was arguing from the side that knowledge (data) itself is becoming the network.
So let me start with the very end. After a two hour converstaion we asked both of them to “squeeze” the most essential about data in a tweet – here is what they came up with:
In this first part of the conversation Peter and David are “warming up” and trying to find out what the other one is meaning when he talks about data, knowledge and understanding:
For many countries in the so-called developing world (I don’t like this expression at all, but don’t know which other one to use) western Europe and the USA are role models. I just heard it again last week during a 2 hour workshop with 130 teachers in Pakistan and at a conference in the Arab World. They think – because we are “wealthy” – it is a good idea to copy us. Especially our education systems. If they do have money – like Saudi Arabia and the Emirates – they build private schools, spent an awful lot of money to bring in the “best” profs from allover the world, focus strictly on management and economic growth – and repeat the same mistakes we’ve been making. If they have less money, new technologies are a great hope, but they are widely seen as tools and not as a new culture – an issue which we, in the west, are in the middle of experiencing it. For more information about this particular issue, check out discussions on educational leadership programs which will help you find classes in this field.
If you tell them – as I did last week – that the western education system isn’t build to suit 21st century needs, the look rather surprised.
They don’t know that there is a 30% drop out rate in public schools in the US.
They don’t know that many of us are working to revolutionize education.
They don’t know that we fail in focussing only on economic growth.
They don’t know that parts of our population become poorer and poorer.
They don’t know about the success story in Finnland.
They don’t know that private schools aren’t necessarily the best.
They don’t understand why the major goal of education is NOT to make the most money, but to live a happy and fullfilling life.
They understand technology as a tool.
…
When you look how they set up their educational systems, you immediately see the mistakes we’ve made for many years in the western world. They copy them!
We, in the western world are pretty much aware, that we have this role model.
I think we should help them (and us) to write the code for tomorrow!
We only win when everybody wins!
BTW: this is true for many other areas as well: environment, climate change …
It means to tell them that we are struggling as well.
So, give them the chance to catch up with us by NOT repeating our mistakes, but by building something better for all of us together!
In the field of education I see many examples and initiatives. I’ve listed a few here:
Daniela Silva and Pedro Markun work together in the House of Digital Culture in Sao Paulo, Brazil. It’s a co-working space – lovely set-up – where many young people meet and work in the fields of transparency, open innovation, digital culture and and the culture of hacking.
I like this interview a lot, because
it shows so much that these 2 young people really love the work they do
they are deeply convinced that the topics they are working on will have an impact on Brazlian society
they are really good in what they do and
they understood that they have to start with themselves first (“be the change you want to see”
they don’t live in a bubble
it gives pretty cool insights into the Brazilian Internet and hacker scene
as well as into Brazilian society
One of my favourite projects Daniela and Pedro are involved in, is the “Ônibus Hacker” – the Hacker Bus. The project was born from the Brazilian online community Transparência Hacker, ‘Hacker Transparency’. It was created in 2009 around a HackDay in São Paulo, and the group’s discussion list now counts over 700 members. As its name says, its focus is (h)activism in favor of public transparency and open data. Previous and ongoing projects include Otoridades, a portal where Brazilians can denunciate abuses of power, and Mapas Livres, which focuses on open mapping.
They participated in Rio de Janeiro’s Digital Culture Festival, Sao Paulo’s Campus Party was also on the agenda, as well as ConSocial. This government initiative was Brazil’s first National Conference on Transparency and Social Control. The most important part of the project will be its interaction with the general public. Hacker Transparency calls it ‘Hacker Invasions’: the group’s plan is to visit small towns, where they can have a stronger impact on local realities. It doesn’t mean they will come up with ready-made solutions; it will be a work in progress, in partnership with the local population. During one weekend, they listened to the inhabitants’ needs and helped them to develop answers with the help of to technology, from blogs to apps. In other terms, it was a local version of their HackDays.
Although these actions are local, Hacker Bus hopes to have a larger impact: thanks to webcams and 3G, anyone interested should be able to watch their progress in real time. Hacker Bus might even physically go beyond Brazil’s borders as the group has received an invitation to visit Uruguay. Quite impressive for a project which only started fundraising less than a year ago.
TEDxBG in Sofia was a very strange experience for me. Maybe because I just flew in the night before from Brazil and I only got 3 hours sleep. When I arrived at the venue, I didn’t had any schedule, I didn’t know what time my talk was – I didn’t know anything about the others topics and speakers. There was nothing available in English and the 3 organizers were too busy to give any translation. So I wasn’t able to get anything out of all these talks, except some questions I asked some people after the event. For this I really felt sorry. It was somehow a waste of time.
Except one thing – I’d really like to pick out: There was a young girl, Daniela, 11 years old, she sang on stage beautifully to Samba rythmns. I invited her spontaneously to come with us next time to Brazil and to join the volunteer team in the favelas. Besides theatre we will now add music to the program we are going to do there! Daniela seemed to be very happy …
And I was pleased to back up with Georgi Kamov, a young Bulgarian entrepreneur, who just launched his own company Nextdoor. I met him at a Transformation Thinker event a year ago. We enjoyed Bulgarian food and red wine with his wife and her 2 sisters. Lovely! Thanks for that!
The TEDxBG event was followed by a so called “volunteer-day”. Alek, one of the TEDx organizers described it as: “We are dividing the TEDX-audience in groups and sending them to different places where they can volunteer. It’s important, since Bulgaria is dead last in volunteering per capita. We’ll have a dog shelter; an urban transformation group, which will refurbish an underpass; a visit to a couple of children shelters; an annual bird count at a nearby lake and many other things …” A good initiative.
Other things I liked to mention:
the Betahaus, Bulgarian’s first co-working space just opened its doors, and yes, it is related with the Betahaus in Berlin
Air Bulgaria – not all a recommendation to fly with
the mountains surrounding Sofia looked really inviting for a ski tour
very good food and wine
smell of corruption is in many place
besides some shopping malls, IMAX cinemas and “western” company buildings, Sofia still has this “socialism” look and feel
taxi, food, drinks are really, really cheap
the young people at the TEDx event are excited as all the other young people I’ve met around the world. One of the participants said, that there aren’t too many people willing to drive change in BUlgaria. It’s only a small grope. I have no idea if this is true or not.
When Ken Robinson talks about “being in your element” for me he is talking exactly about the same thing as Joi Ito does when he refers to his friends, the people volunteering in networks such as Global Voices, Mozilla, Creative Commons, Wikipedia, Ubuntu, people involved in the revolutions all over the world to build something new and sustainable from the bottom-up. I would say these people are in their element. They love what they do, they do it well and their work ignites their passions. Since I do know quite a few of them, I know that this sense of commitment gives their lives direction and purpose. They have indeed found their element, the sweet spot in their life where the things they love to do and the things they are good at come together.
In other words they proof the “element-theory” in practice. This might not be rocket science, but it’s something completely human and – as a matter of fact – something very natural. And what it also proves is that when many people in their element come together they create an environment, a culture, in which new things can flourish and emerge. In such cases we are NOT talking about re-inventing an old system or reforming it – these cases represent totally new structures ready to face the challenges of the 21st century. They also show that growth doesn’t only mean growth calibrated in economic terms, by numbers, by ROI. Growth in these cases has a much broader basis – and that broader basis is society. Their endeavors help society to grow as a whole and help improve all our lives: in education, in government, in media, in politics, in enterprise.
I think it’s important that we connect these things and that Ken Robinson and Joi Ito connect and set new, concrete examples. Examples which others can follow. They do indeed have the capacity to do so … It’s about bringing two worlds together – the traditional teacher crowd and politicians (Ken Robinson’s crowd) and what I call the true believers (Joi’s crowd). Tie these connections and create something even better …
