Front Porch Discussions

the 5 collaboration games - kids presentation

Collaboration 5 - encouraging a no holds barred debate of where the most vital things we spend our money are spinning globally

After the collapse of wall street is there anyone here who seriously believes that any of :

banking
energy
healthcare
education
media
professions
government

are spinning sustainably as far as youth in main streets and local communities are concerned

if you are happy with the global market consequences of any of these why not say so and see if we can start an oxford union style debate - if nobody's happy that these vital sectors are spinning where our children need them to be going, then we need to move on to collaboration game 4 - how to intervene in future capitalism

download: draft 0 of discussion with grameen head office on their 5 biggest collaboration invitations a third of a century into hosting end poverty networks

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The Collaboration Games

download: draft 0 of discussion with grameen head office on their 5 biggest collaboration invitations a third of a century into hosting end poverty networks

At a recent meeting with Muhammad Yunus in Glasgow, I suggested that I try and draft a brochure of the 5 collaboration games that his alumni have open sourced around the world through their last 30 years of exciting work to end poverty. I find for some reason that people who specialise in one "collabortaion game" dont often talk to those who know how to do another - what a waste!

I am delighted to hear of collaboration games from other sources too. Dad http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nor man_Macrae and I have assumed since 1984 that if the internet is to help us make a better world it will be through its power as a collaboration media; and that if we want to sustain a community rising world then when we find a solution to a humanitarian crisis in one community we ought try and collaboratively replicate where it could fit another community

There is also the chance that the "yes we can" almuni of Obama will enjoy colaboration games. After all Obama's mum was one of the pioneers of microcredit in Indonesia and for the networks of womensworldbanking

First let's take a big breadth and see if this reframing of microcredit is fun to play with!

What is Microcredit? Designing the safest banking system so that the poorest are everywhere included in developing the world.

Microcredit multiplies hi-trust flows through sustainability investments geared to empowering the lifelong productivity potentials of the poorest. With caring peer to peer support, poor members of this cooperative banking system take out loans to maximise entrepreneurial actions connecting their own income generating capability and communal mapping of how to compound the end of poverty.

In 2006, approximately 6 million women and one man were awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. This came as true validation for 30 years of relentless service in building the safest sustainability investment bank. These peoples had started with less than nothing - when Bangladesh won independence as a nation, it did so at the terrifying price of flattened infrastructure and a famine that killed a million people. And amongst the poorest of the poor were women villagers who were culturally regarded as the world’s least productive people. Today, to join in open sourcing microcredit worldwide is a joyous invitation - the privilege of sharing the opportunity to action learn what is simply the best collaboration game that economists or social agents have ever played with each other.

Last comment added: Tue, 09 Dec 2008 14:28:21 PST

Boyd Conference Dec 6-7

John Boyd was an influential military strategist and Colonel in the United States Air Force.

Rob Paterson has organized the Boyd 2008 Conference/Colloquium happening this weekend. The theme of the conference Local Resiliency in the Context of a decaying Nation State.

I've been around the block enough times to know that my approach to things and general demeanor is very grating to military types. The great thing about military types putting stuff online is that I can read what they say without threat to bodily harm (at least if I keep my mouth shut). Actually I find the in your face style so common a bit grating, but it's easy enough to put aside when the ideas are so relevant and important.

Patterson has created a Ning site for conversation. And the blogroll at the conference blog provides links to very prominent bloggers who are sure to discuss the conference well afterwards.

Patterson writes about the conference:

It seems that, just as Boyd sought to restore the human in the military, our complex world demands that we restore the human everywhere. For it is becoming more and more clear that our top down and centralized machine like model can no longer cope with the challenges that we face.

Important ideas will be discussed at the conference, ideas I think deserve to be better understood by the public outside military circles. So I'm putting this up in the hopes that some Nedsters will be interested and will share their views here.

Last comment added: Thu, 11 Dec 2008 13:12:09 PST

Industrial Areas Foundation - Forming in Vancouver

Has anyone worked with the Industrial Areas Foundation? Do you have experience of their forming norms?

[edited: to correct link.]

Last comment added: Wed, 10 Dec 2008 21:17:18 PST

citibank nonsense

on charlie rose , citibank ceo said nobody could have predicted a property market would go down more than 15% - humbug!

doubtless citibank had to be saved, but the deal over the weekend was the worst yet in terms of how little the taxpayer got; heavens knows what Bush team is going to give away in its final 2 months of destruction

and it is not evident that we will ever be freed from the people who let ths mess happen in the first place

NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/2 5/opinion/25tue1.html?_r=2&r ef=opinion As treasury secretary in 2000, Mr. Summers championed the law that deregulated derivatives, the financial instruments — a k a toxic assets — that have spread the financial losses from reckless lending around the globe. He refused to heed the critics who warned of dangers to come. That law, still on the books, reinforced the false belief that markets would self-regulate. And it gave the Bush administration cover to ignore the ever-spiraling risks posed by derivatives and inadequate supervision.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/2 3/business/23citi.html more than $65 billion in losses, write-downs for troubled assets and charges to account for future losses. More than half of that amount stems from mortgage-related securities...While much of the damage inflicted on Citigroup and the broader economy was caused by errant, high-octane trading and lax oversight, critics say, blame also reaches into the highest levels at the bank. Earlier this year, the Federal Reserve took the bank to task for poor oversight and risk controls in a report it sent to Citigroup.

The bank’s downfall was years in the making and involved many in its hierarchy, particularly Mr. Prince and Robert E. Rubin, an influential director and senior adviser.

Citigroup insiders and analysts say that Mr. Prince and Mr. Rubin played pivotal roles in the bank’s current woes, by drafting and blessing a strategy that involved taking greater trading risks to expand its business and reap higher profits. Mr. Prince and Mr. Rubin both declined to comment for this article.

When he was Treasury secretary during the Clinton administration, Mr. Rubin helped loosen Depression-era banking regulations that made the creation of Citigroup possible by allowing banks to expand far beyond their traditional role as lenders and permitting them to profit from a variety of financial activities. During the same period he helped beat back tighter oversight of exotic financial products, a development he had previously said he was helpless to prevent.

And since joining Citigroup in 1999 as a trusted adviser to the bank’s senior executives, Mr. Rubin, who is an economic adviser on the transition team of President-elect Barack Obama, has sat atop a bank that has been roiled by one financial miscue after another.

The Reckoning - NY Times Series on The Most Inept & Arrogant Global managers the world has ever suffered? http://topics.nytimes.com/top/ne ws/business/series/the_reckoning /index.html

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Helping IT Responsibility.org on its working strategy.

Dear all, I would like to request feedback of many things that I´ve been facing since I started with the social organization. For the last two months I’ve been thinking about the correct strategy to promote the organization and its affiliate’s requests. During these months I had conversations with people working at non profits organizations with high exposure and I’ve been thinking of what to do. These were the main topics that capture my attention and I will love to hear your inputs and ideas:

1 - non profits are reluctant to be incorporated in a website if they don’t provide their acceptance:

Its clear for me that all the people want to provide their acceptance in order to be incorporated on a particular site, but its a little bit confusing what it is happening on the current situation… Let me explain why: robots.txt files rules the internet in terms of what content you would like - or not - to be indexed by other organizations - eg: google -. Most of these non profits websites display “allow” all context extraction with no restrictions on their websites. On the other hand, Social Organizations are reluctant to see their information in another website - even in a non profit directory -. It is confusing because in some way IT Responsibility could operate as a directory and our databases have the chance to incorporate millions of contact details… on the other hand if I incorporate those details, non profits could believe that our organization wants to use their details to enhance our database and consequently the importance of our website as a social organization.

For the moment I decided to incorporate only social organizations that I have been in touch and supporting their causes. I only decided to incorporate sustainablebolivia.org two months ago to the list, because they have a paypal account at their website and they were requesting an open support. Based on the fact that in our system social organizations can list their paypal and receive the money directly to their bank account, I believed that it could be a good decision. Additionally, I was surprised about the result of this idea… operating as a directory - in this case - was a surprising situation when I was contacted by a women living in Bolivia encouraging us to continue with our work two days after I uploaded the information. So as we can see, it’s hard to know which strategy we would have to incorporate to our organization. For sure I will continue to get in contact with social organizations one by one, but probably I will enhance the amount of social organizations indexed - following robots.txt protocols - and displaying their own paypal account.

2- IT Responsibility exposure on the internet and the media:

I accept that sometimes this decision is my problem. Despite that I created this website and the main idea, during these two years I never feel 100% comfortable of my situation. Let me explain why, during these two years I found that people - in my experience 100% of the people that I met - love to support other human beings. Each campaign that our organization started was supported by all of our friends giving sometimes more than what they could. Despite the fact that People love to help other human beings, many of them have lost their trust on traditional organizations - religious, government, etc- and they never found a new place to participate. Probably for people that live in small towns or suburbs it easier to find institutions to participate, they probably know a local priest, they have a small school near their houses, kids and adults at risk are well known by everyone so its easy for them to support others and conduct their help.

For people living in big cities, to conduct their participation it is a very difficult situation. In general, they have lost their trust in traditional institutions and they cannot find a space to participate. Consequently they don’t have the chance to meet people giving their lives to support other human beings, so when they meet someone that is supporting others from what they do - lawyers working for pro bono, some developer (in this case me) creating a website or professionals giving some hours of their work on a weekly basis for non profits - they believe that these are “the guys operating in the social arena” and let me say that it is a non comfortable situation when you receive those recognitions.

If I have to explain why it is not comfortable?, the main situation resides in the people that you have probably the chance to know and they are giving their whole lives devoted to others. In my case I met people like Soledad Beccar Varela operating an orphan institution paid by her family efforts, I met Graciela Dulcich from Escuela 34 “Guayaquil” and many others dealing day by day with very difficult situations - so its complicated to manage when someone believes that you - me in this case - are “the guy operating in the social arena” when your contribution was only to create a website. To put it clear, only a few times I deal directly with totally unsupported people - adults living in the street - and let me say that the experience surpassed my capacities. In my experience everyone can do it when it is needed, but it’s very hard to maintain that participation on a daily basis.

I will enhance this next idea in future entries but in the process that I faced with IT Responsibility tapping in the social arena, I was surprised to detected three well defined groups:

the first one, people that want to participate but they don’t know how.
the second group, people that want to participate and they find the way how by offering hours of their skills and knowledge for free to other people or social organizations.
Finally, the third group comprising people that live their whole lifes devoted to support others needs.

Generally the first group never meets the third one mainly because the third group of people lives in the same way than the people that they support - that is why IT Responsibility wants to promote the third group work through the exposure of its requests and Blogs-. Taking into consideration that people displaying money or resources to support the third group don’t know anyone living at unsupported areas, it’s hard for the first group to get in contact with the third one.

The second group - probably professionals or with a particular knowledge - usually establish contacts with both groups. They know how hard it is for the third group to operate and they usually hear that the first group wants to participate but they don’t know how. For the second group is hard to manage this situation mainly because they have the sensation that other people do more than what they do. If I have to explain the main doubts of this group, these are: “if I have to reach a certain amount of money in order to support other people’s causes, I will need to communicate what it is needed generating a high exposure - email marketing, mails to friends, friends of friends that receive the email and send their support, etc -… but if I do that, the high exposure in some cases will be for the process, in other cases will be for me, if the people get involved, that exposure will be for the social organization, and sometimes if the people get totally involved the exposure will be for all the participants… Of course if you don’t feel comfortable of that situation is because you don’t want it for you, but on the other hand if you don’t communicate to your contacts of what are you doing, it would be hard to establish relations between the first group and the third one… I believe that this was the main reason why I always supported more the English part of the website than the Spanish language part (= I live in Argentina), in some way it was easier to call people living abroad than to communicate to people surrounding me -

And what about the third group?: The third group is amazing. They have incredible hearts but they usually don’t know how to receive support. Sometimes they are contacted by people that want to use their social organization -mainly in developing countries- offering them the chance to receive a credit or similar, but paying like a toll - bribe - for it. Consequently their confidence is sometimes very low in the system. They usually live their lives operating in a particular community with no idea of the impact that their work is generating. To be honest my sensation was that their lives occur inside an area defined by 30 blocks surrounding the area were they operate. Consequently, they display limited chances to meet people that have the possibility support them with money and resources -the first group -. Additionally, they display limited knowledge of computer skills to create a website or an email campaign. They usually meet people in the second group; rarely do they meet people of the first one. In generally they are surprised about the people of the second group willing to support them. In general it takes many years - or many successful campaigns - to establish a relationship between people of both groups. In my experience mainly because the people of the third group don’t understand the motivations of the second group to support them - its hard to believe that good things could happen when you live every day surrounded by the worst situations on earth -.

In my case, that was the main reason why I maintained only three social organizations at a website with many possibilities to incorporate more. To be honest, it’s hard to find the way or correct path to follow in order operate. For sure I will have to manage the way how I work with it, but for sure it is hard to find the correct path.

I will continue in other entries writing about these brainstorming ideas and situations. I would love to hear your feedback providing me with ideas and suggestion of what to do.

hugs!, sebastian. web: http://www.itresponsibility.org community: http://www.itresponsibility.org/ community.php

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Sustainable Happiness

I just read this great new article by David Korten (When Corporations Rule the World, The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism and The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community).

The financial crisis has put to rest the myths that our economic institutions are sound and markets work best when deregulated. Our economic institutions have failed, not only financially, but also socially and environmentally. This, combined with the election of a new president with a mandate for change, creates an opportune moment to rethink and redesign.

There is a lot of meat in that article that deserves consideration and discussion.

Last comment added: Mon, 15 Dec 2008 19:44:34 PST

Charter For Compasion

Via Emeka Okafor comes news that TED Prize winner Karen Armstrong's campaign to create a Charter For Compassion is entering a phase calling for public participation.

Over the next four weeks, everyone is invited to help write the Charter for Compassion. Please choose the active phase below, read the description, be inspired by the sample text, and share your own words or suggestions for that section of the Charter.

LIVES OF COMPASSION Add your voice. Share your story.

The Charter for Compassion is the concrete document around which a grassroots movement will coalesce. Your personal stories are the life of this movement.

LOL of course this is the part I like very much. So it's worthwhile checking in on the Web site even if you don't plan to contribute jsut to see what people are offering.

I believe this is an important cause. As Armstrong says our task as a generation is to build a world community. That's exactly what we all in our own ways are trying to do.

Last comment added: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 04:21:39 PST

Life in Ubon - November/December

The new semester has started and this is where the tales of Ubon will continue.

The rainy season is supposed to be over. It is not. :-(

Last comment added: Sun, 28 Dec 2008 03:59:47 PST

Ning - how to use it

I would particularly welcome sharing tips with fellow Ning hosts

Paradoxically, I joined several nings over last year but felt disappointed. One of my frustrations being that it feels weird that however many Nings you join your profile pages etc are separate- one ning at a time. Then last saturday in an extrordinary series of urgent meetings on what could happen next now there are no global banks with new yorkers and for 8 weeks no real USA leadership, I got genned up by some thriving ning hosts such as Zahid http://businessfightspoverty.org Zahid helps elite deveopment agencies do experiemnts they cant officially do and connects several hundred of their employees at this space. His origin is Spannish-Bangladeshi ; his main offices in Barcelona and London; quite a collaborative poverty fighter!

Ning enables the host to chosse which of about 12 things to feature on the homepage and to drag them in almost any layout across 2 sidebars and 1 middle section. "Alomost" because the top of the right-hand sidebar is reserved for Ning's commercial advertisements (unless you pay monthly to be ad free).

Any thing (in Ning language feature) you choose also becomes a page of its own. You can click to any of tehse across the top bar that runs across the web page. On the main page where you get a little of each feature, the host makes various choices of what's displayed such as newest discussion, most active discussion.

The main features to choose from are: discussions videos photos notes blog

I assume those are easy to imagine but ask if not or take eg a look at my baby ning http://futurecapitalism.ning.com / about 4 days old at time of writing

Somewhat charactersitic features are: activity - which shows about 12 last things anyone added

chat which is what it says but of course would only be fun if you got a membership of hundreds - ie making it likely that there would be someone to chat to apart from youself when you visit!

groups- I personally dont like this feature though most mning hosts do- perhaps i dont know hos to use it; however when I have been in a ning hosted by someone else I have often formed a group without eralsiing that you can only really access it within the main destnation- so why would you start a baby ning within someone else's layout rather than your own parent ning. Perhaps if a team of hosts were all constructing a ning together groups comes back into play

anyhow that's my ning for 10 any questions?

Last comment added: Mon, 05 Jan 2009 03:01:12 PST