Archive for the 'Society' Category
Jul 30, 2008, post by Randall
A little over 4 months ago we first wrote about an astonishing social enterprise, Jonathan Howard (see photo) and his Run The Dream (RTD).
Jonathan and Terry with Michael Chong, MP
To refresh your memory, take a look at our 22 March, 2008 post by clicking here: With amazing youthful enthusiasm, having Just turned 25 today, Jonathan Howard ran into Elora to a welcome by a Michael Chong, MP, Mayor Joanne Ross-Zuj, a number of parents who live daily with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and a good contingent of local supporters. It goes without saying people were inspired and he was very warmly greeted.
It’s really interesting how things that start slowly eventually snowball. There are always challenges and false starts in any truly entrepreneurial enterprise. The snowballing of viral propagation is famous in the world of web startups. Jonathan has witnessed a similar effect with Run The Dream. One shining example of that is Terry Robinson (see photo). Terry, a co-worker at Ontario Public Service and an accomplished two-time Para-Olympian (Seoul and Barcelona), was so inspired by Jonathan’s social vision to commit to a leave of absence from his job to accompany Jonathan by wheelchair from Ottawa to Winnipeg. That’s a 3 month and 3000 kms of dedicated trek. What a team they make as they average a marathon a day, day in, day out.
Jonathan and Terry should be an inspiration to us all. RTD is managed by a core team of about a dozen (effectively full time) volunteers, augmented by literally hundreds of local grassroots volunteers, with Jonathan being the notional CEO (or should I say, Chief Running Officer?). As a startup social enterprise, RTD has an impressive year one business plan. The two main CSFs:
- to raise awareness of ASD, and
- to raise $2.5 million in donations
are ambitious goals for any startup. How many technology startups come close to that in year one?
When we filter investment prospects at Verdexus, we like to think that 80% of the investment decision is centred around the team. As a result, we spend much time getting the measure of founding team entrepreneurs. For a social enterprise, the same is true, in spades. With a vision and an execution track record that Jonathan and Run The Dream has so far, have you any doubt that investors will back Jonathan and his team?
And, guess what? You can to. Help Jonathan and his team meet their goal by donating online at the Run The Dream website.
Sphere: Related Content
May 27, 2008, post by Randall
Last weekend, I attended Asphalt Jungle Shorts IV, a truly innovative and engaging theatre experience — one that you definitely shouldn’t miss. And, even better, AJS is performed right here in Waterloo Region. Downtown Kitchener, having weathered a down cycle and now in a major resurgence, has evolved an urban, hip, almost Manhattanesque kind of feel.
Multitalented Artistic Director Paddy Gillard-Bentley’s innovative use of site specific theatre builds on our unique urban environment in bold new ways. In her previous three installments, she allowed us to experience drama in such real world settings as a parking garage, a bar, City Hall, a store window, back alley, small parks and even a book store. Without giving too much away, I can say that Paddy has pulled out all the stops and presented a play in the most unlikely and crazy place I’ve ever seen. I’m sworn to secrecy, so you will have to attend to find out where.
Couple the intrigue of great locations with a globally selected talent pool and you’ll start to see what the AJS magic is all about. Although primarily directed and acted by best of the best from our local theatre scene, the plays are truly a reflection of the diversity of cyberspace, coming from Australia, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, Russia, United Kingdom (London), United States (Arkansas, California, Georgia, New York, Oregon, Washington,) and of course a few from closer to home in Canada. As the audience navigates through 13 plays in multiple locations, many boundaries are blurred. Is that a homeless person or and actor? Is the woman next to me an audience member or an actor? Is that a regular store patron, or …?
AJS rounds out other regional, multi-site arts events like the Open Ears Festival and CAFKA which, in turn, nicely complements a burgeoning convential arts scene, which tend to reside inside buildings like galleries, theatres, concert halls and museums. Collectively, these three festivals have significantly enriched our Third Place. The Waterloo area is renowned globally as an innovative community with several world class universities, a top technology cluster and newer world class think tanks such as Perimeter Institute and CIGI. It’s also pretty clear to me that, as our innovation capacity grows, so must the artistic capital grow hand in hand. Asphalt Jungle Shorts is a true gem in this growing artistic footprint for our region.
Scene from Asphalt Jungle Shorts
A point of disclosure, I’m a founding Board Member of Flush Ink Performing Arts which will propel Artistic Director Paddy Gillard’s already considerable achievements into a great new “Fringe Festival” called “Unhinged” and, in which should be no surprise, builds on her innovative delivery of site specific theatre. Like technology startups, the arts thrives and survives only on investment. I have been a sponsor of these activities from the beginning, both personally, and through Verdexus. I’m convinced that when you are initiated into AJS, you will want to be as well.
But, you’d better hurry as only four days of the run remain - 28, 29, 30 & 31 May, 2008. Reserve quickly at tickets@flushink.net or 1(519) 957 2228. More details at the Flush Ink Performing Arts website.
Sphere: Related Content
May 20, 2008, post by Randall
Big “boil the ocean” issues (with apologies for the corny metaphor) like Global Warming overwhelm many people with their scope, long time scale and difficulty to solve. Predictions that human activity, which has of late been increasingly generating Green House Gases (GHGs) which in turn accumulate in the atmosphere and, by changing the heat retention of the whole earth’s ecosystem, cause our average temperatures to warm up, are now almost universally accepted as fact rather than just scientific theory.
In response, socially responsible businesses and individuals have started to buy carbon offsets which seek to provide an alternative reduction elsewhere, equivalent to the actual carbon they the purchaser of the offset produces. While worthwhile, most offsets are, in fact, delivered via the CDM part of the Kyoto Protocol in the absence of more pervasive emissions trading schemes. CDM, short for Clean Development Mechanism, invests in programs in developing countries which reduce GHG emissions.
But, what about reducing our emissions here in Canada and the United States? I’d like to share a best kept secret, namely the Elora Centre for Environmental Excellence (ECEE), a charitable organization of which I am the Board Chair and co-founder. Without a lot of fanfare, this organization was an early innovator of home audits which were aimed at improving our residential housing stock and working to both educate and deliver greater energy efficiency for homes (as well as water and waste). Originally, we pioneered a “Green Home Visit” just for our small community of Elora, Ontario which our current Executive Director, Don Eaton had the vision develop into a nationwide home labelling system. Don’s vision was for all homes to receive simple label of energy efficiency, say on a scale of 0 (heating the outdoors) to 100 (heated only by the heat generated by the inhabitants) which would provide:
- an objective standard that would drive a market for energy efficiency,h
- a system endorsed by realtors and contribute to the relative value of the home,
- homeowners would be directly educated in energy efficiency issues on the spot during the process of home evaluation and label production,
- an auditable and objective benchmark that would allow homeowners to better select contractors for upgrades (e.g. draftproofing, insulation, furnace, windows, etc.)
In the late 1990’s, Don was one of a group of experts who put this dream into reality, in the context of a Canadian federal government programme, called EnerGuide for Houses. The name “EnerGuide” was borrowed from a pre-existing and well-known Canadian government appliance labelling standard. Don Eaton became an icon of this program, by providing much of the initial training for hundreds and hundreds of Certified Energy Advisors over the years, through a national-wide environmental service organization, Green Communities Canada, of which ECEE is a founding member. Such is the level of Don’s expertise, that he’s been called to provide expert help in developing programmes in places like the UK and US.
EnerGuide for Houses grew quietly until May 2006, when the Stephen Harper government killed the program in what was clearly a partisan, and ill conceived, move. It was reinstated, as EcoAction for Houses last year, but only after the collateral damage of hundreds of trained Certified Home Evaluators being forced out of the system by the over 12 month funding chasm. But, that’s a story for another day …
To make a long story short, home efficiency from EcoEnergy programmes conducted just by ECEE (in the service area of southwestern Ontario shown on the map below) so far delivers 8 000 tonnes of GHG reduction per year over the about 16 000 homes we’ve audited. Taking into account the Canada-wide results, and remembering that the reductions are, in effect, permanent so each and every year the savings continue and fewer GHGs are emitted into our atmosphere.
Remember too that this is still an early adopter programme. Because the homeowner pays a relatively nominal sum, although mitigated by government funded homeowner rewards for energy reductionss and other cross-subsidies, it is far from universal. The most advanced communities have an audit penetration of approximately 5% while many are far lower.
Studies in Canada and the US, show that residential energy is the source of just under one-quarter of our GHG production, with the rest being transportation, industry and agriculture. So, taking market penetration much higher, to 30% or 40%, would make a real difference as we see below.
It is instructive to correlate the above case study in real GHG reduction with an article in May 10, 2008 Economist, entitled The Elusive Negawatt, “If energy conservation both saves money and is good for the planet, why don’t people do more of it?” Some of the key points made in that article are:
- energy efficiency is really the “fifth fuel”, after coal, gas, oil and uranium, as a practical way to satisfy growing energy demand.
- this fifth fuel of reduction and efficiency, also called “negawatts“, reduces rather than produces Greenhouse Gases, and enhances wealth at the same time.
- McKinsey Global Institute suggests that energy efficiency could provide half of the savings needed to for the world to keep GHGs to below 550 ppm in the atmosphere, a level suggested that would reverse or stabilize climate change.
- Some studies suggest a payback of 30% for many energy efficiency programmes, which is remarkable in itself.
If energy efficiency programmes are all goodness and light why aren’t they more pervasive? How do we get the production of negawatts beyond its early adopter stage?
It’s pretty clear that we need the right combination of committed governments, utilities and private sector partners working with environmental service organizations like ECEE that are providing the “real down in the trenches” work right at the homeowners doorstep. With such a tantalizing prize beckoning, let’s not wait too long to seize it.
Sphere: Related Content
Apr 19, 2008, post by Randall
The Office Goes Home
Over a short span of years, I’ve witnessed work migrate from a highly structured office setting, to home offices via telecommuting and now into the “Third Place”, a term coined by Ray Oldenberg in his 1989 book The Great Good Place.
Back in the early 1980’s, I was a pioneer of telecommuting, between Waterloo and Chicago via a state of the art 1200 baud modem, pictured above, no less. There was intense interest in this at the time, because as an extremely early adopter (too early some might say) of the telecommuting paradigm, I felt a bit like a guinea pig. In retrospect this workstyle enabled extreme concentration and productivity. At the same time, the primitiveness of the communications technologies, from network speed to the software then available, necessitated a lot of travel for in-person meetings. And, tellingly, the home office can ultimately be a lonely workplace, leading to a decrease in social interaction and overall motivation.
In that early revolution over the last 25 years, telecommuting saw work slowly migrate, or more typically intermingle, between the second place (the office) and the first place (your home). Telecommuting has changed traffic patterns, social life and, on the whole, provided an improved work experience by increasing knowledge worker flexibility.
Enter the “Third Place”
As an early adopter, not to mention beta tester, of many cutting edge mobile technologies and as a long time road warrior working on a number of geographically dispersed projects, I’ve often explored a work style that the Economist has labelled “mobile nomadism”, in their richly insightful 12 April 2008 special section on “The New Nomadism”. Always a great read, the particular Economist feature stands out, especially for those interested in mobility for social, technological, political, artistic or economics reasons. Last week, Alec Saunders ran a great SquawkBox conference call on iotum, with the podcast available on his blog here.
In The Great Good Place, Ray Oldenburg characterizes the Third Place as:
“the place which is neither home nor work, where you spend comfortable time in easy association with friends and a few strangers.”
He celebrates the magic of the English Coffeehouse tradition and the seductive and widespread Viennese Cafe Culture as social gathering places that have often been scenes of political intrigue and even major business enterprise. Likely few are aware that in 1698, Jonathan’s Coffee-house in London started trading stocks and commodities, and eventually evolved into today’s London Stock Exchange. Ironically, Oldenburg was lamenting the decline of such third places.
Today’s revolution of being always connected, spawned by wiresless technologies, has dramatically reversed that decline. Version one of “on-demand” spaces is, of course, the humble WiFi enabled cafe. Locally in the Waterloo area, many establishments, beyond the ubiquitous Starbucks, have innovated in this genre, including:
- A Matter of Taste which is an amazing fusion of art, coffee and WiFi hotspot,
- Exhibit Cafe another melange of art and local, organic food right in the Children’s Museum,
- Williams Coffee Pubs, a local chain with food and long hours, popular with students doing late night assignments, hackers and even those working on offering memoranda, and
- C’est Bon Cafe, with its international flair and sinfully good Chocolate Fiesta Fire, and Refuge for village cocooning are great examples in bucolic Elora.
Initially, these cafes served as venues for meetings that were more informal, more conducive to creativity, and powered by wonderful Latte macchiato creations (pictured above). Eventually, I started to do small amounts of work there to increase productivity in the dead time between offsite meetings, including planning and brainstorming, reading briefing documents and eventually emails and, truth be told, writing this blog post. The environment is pleasant, a vibrant mix of people from a wide array of social backgrounds. It is worth noting that I always have the choice how much I wish to tune in or tune out those around me, just as I choose to go there to relax, work or both.
All new technology breakthroughs require adjustment. In this case, the major downside of nomadism is that the mix of real and virtual channels can lead to socially awkward situations. One is the issue of alienation, where people are more attuned to those they are in their virtual universe than those in the real world around them. While I may return to this topic at a later time, I would expect that society will eventually evolve a hybrid, multi-tasking communications style, learning to strike a reasonable balance between isolation and the global reach afforded by such virtual, always-on communications.
Instead I will focus on the opportunities. Beyond the obvious environmental benefits of reduced commuting, I strongly believe that the next generation of third places could serve to enrich our life as we build communities of the future. In Waterloo Region, there are signs that many are thinking about this challenge and building better third places that encompass peoples’ needs from business to the arts to entertainment and fun. In short, the building of vibrant, social spaces will create healthy cities of the future.
One aspect that is immediately apparent in the best of these first generation, third places listed above is the role of the arts in their mix. The simple coffee house is just the beginning. The impact of the arts is much more than art on the walls — it is a certain style and ambience you feel when you enter. Arts is an enormously creative endeavour, and I firmly believe, has a great affinity for the natural creativity inherent in the most innovative, knowledge-based companies of the 21st century. People like Alf Bogusky, Director General of KW Art Gallery have been developing a vision to reshape our urban spaces on a collaborative model based around the notion of third place. Historically, the arts institutions like art galleries, public libraries, theatres and concerts halls have been enclaves, walled off from the rest of the city. Alf and a group of leading thinkers have been mapping out a very different future, which exploits the natural synergies between all these stakeholders. Stay tuned …
In summary, we’ve witnessed a huge transaction through several generations of societal change from fixed offices to telecommuting and now rampant nomadism which is creating new spaces called the third place. I challenge all those who are beta testing the new mobile nomadism and who interact in these new third places, to please comment and share your experiences - we truly are building the city of the future in the context of the global village.
