I have always loved Erik Satie. The French composer wrote beautiful modern music, tying much of his creativity to the explosion in avant garde modes of expression sweeping Europe in the early part of the last century.
This piece is called “Gnossiennes No. 1.” and the score has little verbal instructions for the pianist that are intended to guide one’s approach to the music: “Shining”, “Questioning”, “From the tip of the thought”, “Wonder about yourself”, “Step by step”, “On the tip of the tongue.”
Taken together, this short piece captures the process of the emergence and expression of a thought and all the internal voices at play between conception and the moment of speech.
mp3: Erik Satie – Gnossienne No. 1 (played by Joffrey Wallaart)
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Interesting stuff…Rykodisk has released a podcast (mp3) of Brian Eno talking about his new album, Another Day on Earth. The interview is accompanied by a rather nice little ten minute mix of most of the tracks from that album, all of which are songs. Some of the transitions are a little rough, but there is a nice overall feel. The album sounds great. You can see all the lyrics here. My favourite section is from “Caught Between” which captures some of the sense of what it’s like to facilitate a learning process with a group:
Reaching out
To still the sand
No light connects
The breaking moments
Drifting to another shore
There’s nothing here
That I could change at all
Nothing at all
To still the sand
No light connects
The breaking moments
Drifting to another shore
There’s nothing here
That I could change at all
Nothing at all
Forced to be
A broken line
Let to hold
What we could find
Then to learn
And go again
Nothing sorted out
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I’m just returning from Calgary where my partner Susan Neden and I have been doing some design and faiclitation work with the imagineCALGARY Roundtable. imagineCALGARY is a 100 year sustainability planning exercise, in the spirit of the Imagine Chicago process.
Last night we took the group through a short Cafe process about their engagment and reasons why the roundtable participants agreed to join the enterprise. In the midst of all the conversation a line stood out for me that rocked me very deeply. In going over the table notes afterwards Susan read out this zinger:
“Cities last longer than countries.”
So true. In 100 years, North America might not host Canada and the United States, but it will still host populations, and it’s more than likely that these populations will still be centered in most of the cities where they now reside. Look at Europe. In some places, people have lived in the same city all their lives, but have been ncitizens of several different countries in that time.
Countries are ideas and so no one does 100 year planning for countries. They depend for their existence on the success of their cities and citizens. Tip O’Neil once said that “all politcs is local” and so too is citizenship. When we ask questions about the future, we do so much more effectively if we can forget about the false and illusive notions of nations and countries and instead look at the concrete places where human beings gather to have their needs met.
It makes me wonder about long range planning for organizations too. Does it make sense to talk about the 50 year plan for XYZ Inc, or ABC Community Services organization? Or instead should we ask questions about what it is that the organizations do? In 50 or 100 years, where will people buy their food? How will they travel from place to place? How will they create culture?
There are real needs and there are illusory structures. We spend an awful lot of time coming up with strategies to prop up houses of cards instead of looking at how our temporary structures meet ongoing and universal human needs. It’s funny what we consider permanent. We think that our organizations will solve problems, that the human needs are temporary and that the organizations will last beyond them. In reality it is the opposite, and useful organizations are those that can grow and shift and be agile enough to continue to serve the constant needs (food, shelter, clohting, expression, community….etc) in an impermanant context.
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What if you lived in a country where something like 20% of the population had a phone, and waiting for a phone took 5-10 years?
What if you had pioneered a microlending scheme that enabled very poor women to buy cows and sell the milk?
What if cows=cell phones?
The Grameen Bank, well-known for their micro-credit loan circles has come up with another amazing scheme for building empowerment in poor countries using a distributed business model in which poor people are seen as assets instead of liabilities.
Ethan Zuckerman reports on a presentation by Iqbal Quadir, one of the founders of Grameen Phone, on the way his company has become the biggest in Bangladesh:
In Bangladesh, 1993, there were only 2 phones per 1000 people, and virtually none in rural areas. There was a $500 connection fee, and a 5-10 year waiting period. Most phones were analog, and many didn�t work. How much brainpower was being wasted by virtue of wasting productivity because of an absence of connectivity?
Iqbal found himself challenging some myths about economic development and the poor. Can shared costs overcome the problems of low individual buying power? Can the value of purchasing a productivity tool make it possible for people to �overinvest� in communication technologies, because these technologies can increase income?
What�s the real problem with digital divides in Bangladesh? The lack of other infrastructures. There are no credit checks, rpads for repairmen, banks to collect bills, schools for the children of workers. Grameen Bank looked like a solution to a lot of these infrastructural problems. Would it make sense to put GSM towers within Grameen offices?
Grameen had 1138 branches in Bangladesh, 2.3 million borrowers, 94% female, with $33 million lent per month. The core model – a woman borrows money from the bank, buys a cow, sells the milk and repays the loan. So why can�t a cellphone be a cow?
There was a great deal of skepticism about the idea, so Iqbal moved home and started a company. He eventually convinced Telenor – the Norwegian national telephone company – to help fund the project and provide technical expertise. With Grameen�s distribution and Telenor�s technology, the business has grown radically, and now covers the majority of the nation – it�s by far the largest company in Bangladesh. By 2004, 95,000 women are selling access to phones that they own in 50,000 villages. And Grameen Phone provides $200 million a year to the government in taxes. Net income in 2004 was $125 million. And each phone owner is making about $700 a year, which is an excellent income in Bangladesh.
Supported distributed networks. It seems to be the way stuff is getting done these days.
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I’ve been mulling this one over for a few days. At WorldChanging, Jeremy Faludi posted a set of six ideas on preserving change once you have it. In sum:
- Stricter rules and oversight
- Good public relations
- Networking progress, spreading the benefits through agents at the edges rather than central hubs
- Decentralizing administration and authority
- Self-sustaining financing (make it pay for itself)
This might be a good list to add to. Here are some things I can think of:
- Build learning and deliberation around the progress. Make the gain part of the public conversation around policy by hosting gatherings where citizens can learn more, contribute their thinking and experience the gain for themselves.
- Gather diversity to the cause. Progress will not succeed if it is not supported by a wide variety of people and organizations.
- Discern and work with urgency. Unless there is a compelling need for something, it will take hold in a slower fashion. Understanding why things are urgently needed helps invite commitment.
- Give away the answers. Anything developed to address the issue and support the progress should be freely given away to anyone who wants it, and anyone who can use it. This includes tools, products, marketing and ideas.
This is relevant to gains made in the field of sustainability, but I’m also thinking about issues like Aboriginal youth suicide, First Nations governance, the development of networked, community based service delivery models and other issues I am currently working with – anywhere we are making progress that needs support and long term viability. Relying on government, or a few big government like agencies or companies, is not sustainable.
Any other strategies out there?