Why Not : Any Networking Collaboration City

2009-07-20T08:06:00.000-07:00

the number 1 question we have researched in 33 years of brands and global media - is what would the world uniquely miss if this didnt exist? - this applies to cities and countries too

here are some hot tips for 09/10 and youth ambassador 5000 dialogues

without dhaka the world would miss anychance of rediscovering community sustainability http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8130130.stm

without kenya, its unlikely youth would have been involved in ending poverty in urban slums - this is the real story of slumdog millionnaire

without madrid, microcredit wouldnt have its longest royal supporter in queen sofia who is also the first world leader to sign up for hosting a microcreditsummit - spain invites the world in 2011 to a celebration of far more importance tp every generation than london's olympics the following year

which brings us to london - will the BBC learn to explore whjat the largest social business world service could be about?

around the world with grameen and yunus

2009-07-08T15:08:00.001-07:00

Epicentre, Dhaka Bangladesh http://yunuscentre.org http://yunusforum.net http://www.grameen.com http://grameensolutions.com http://www.gshakti.org http://grameentrust.org http://www.grameenhealthcare.com http://www.grameenkalyam.org

Europe
Berlin, Creative Lab http://grameencl.com
Glasgow Creative lab, Grameen bank , Glasgow Caledonian trains nurses for Grameen in Dhaka
Paris home of future capitalism - grameen danone, grameen veolia, grameen credit agricole (likely to open social business finds in 2010); HEC SMBA, YunusMovie
Monaco - Prince Albert Sustainability Fund
Madrid - Queen Sofia hosts the 2011 global microcerdit summit - local Grameen expert Nazrul Chowdhury
Oslo - Nobel Prize and Nobel Museum in Dhaka

Other Most influential fan networks
London Ashden Microenergy - Lord Sainsbury's daughter, Prince Charles, BBC Broadcaster Paul Rose

USA
Microcreditsummit - DC & Princeton

Grameen America Bank Branches:
New York Queens
Omaha

Outer Boston: Grameen America (HQ & health)
DC Grameen Foundation

LA The Green Children Pop Group
LA Cal State Channel Isles

New York - Social Business Course - St Johns Uni

Austin Texas WholePlanetFoundation

S.America
Grameeb Carlos Slims - Mexico
Colombia

East of balgladesh
Bangkok, AIT Yunus Centre
Japan:
Rikkyo University
Kobe University
Kyushu University

what have we omitted? - suggestions welcome

2009-07-07T11:27:00.000-07:00

Am just back from Dhaka and co-hosting 69th birthday dialogue with muhammad yunus- our british broadcasting reporter blogs here http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8130130.stm

our party from around the world made an unaimous vote for dhaka as the number 1 city in the world offering the most sustainability solutions; I dont think yiou have lived if you haven't been to dhaka and visited grameen or brac to understand how they are trailblazing 10 times more econo,oic systems from the bottom up whereas the west's big capitals now seem to be using macroeconomics to get ever less economical

I wll be trying to blog a special series on which cities are connecting most around bangladesh as the only true sustainability model that I have ever appaised as a mathematian - if you are in a rush you can see some europena connections at my fan web http://grameeneurope.com ; back in dhaka the newest web is http://www.yunuscentre.com

And so 8 years of white house game of blind man's buff ends

2009-01-17T09:41:00.000-08:00

Nobody whose prime time last thursday across the united states of Globally Burning Bush's America could miss the denoument

GENERAL POST -its all change my land of the brave and true: every city that compounded its greatest irreposnsibility to humanity is now free to bend the curve

let's start with new york - you gave the world 100 times to expensive banking now lets make amends - go to ObamaUni and do not pass go until the free market of ending poverty is what transparency of world trade honors

or read on if you want to read the celebration from UK's senior economist, village saint james 1 2

How to Avert A Great Depression Through the Hungry 2010s?
Answer, By Making All Banking Very Much Cheaper, By Norman Macrae
As a teenager, Norman began studying economics in (today’s) Bangladesh whilst waiting to navigate RAF airplanes in world war 2. His father-in-law was mentored for a quarter of a century by Gandhi, one Bar of London Barrister to another, on how to end Raj Imperialism. He went on to write over 2000 editorials from the microeconomics perspective of Free Markets & Entrepreneurial Revolution for The Economist, and in 1984 mapped what alternative futures micro versus macro economic worlds of the first networking generation will spin www.normanmacrae.com/netfuture.html http://erworld.tv/ -contact mailto:info@worldcitiozen.tv Washington DC bureau 301 881 1655

If banks in rich democracies had been truly competitive institutions, at least one of them somewhere would have seized the main opportunity created by the computer. This main opportunity was to make all deposit-banking vastly cheaper than ever before. By this cheapening it should make such banking hugely more profitable. Then further competition would search for the cheapest ways to guide all the world’s saving into the most profitable (or otherwise most desirable) forms of capital investment, thus enriching all mankind.

Instead, during 2008 the total losses of banks in rich democracies – in North America, West Europe and Japan – soared into trillions of dollars. Fearful for their solvency, these banks virtually stopped lending. The issuance of corporate bonds, commercial paper, and many other financial products largely ceased. Hedge and insurance firms also crashed. Mankind is thus threatened in the 2010s with its longest great depression since the hungry 1930s.

Why? The strange answer seems to be that other happy consequences of modern technology promised to make this cheapening even faster. Call centres in Bangalore vastly undercut the middle class salaries of Midland bank clerk who until the 1950s expensively answered clients’ questions in their branches in the City of London. Cheap mobile phones kept village ladies in once miserable Bangladesh as fully in touch with market prices as is the chief research officer of the First National Bank of Somewhere in California. His weekly salary is still 1000 times greater than the previous annual earnings of that village lady. The cost-effective way of running the old Midland or First National then seemed to be to cut its total salary cost by something like 99%. This did not please Western welfare governments, or the decent chief executives of the old Midland or First National bank.

Awaiting the sensation of a short sharp shock
From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block
– WS Gilbert in The Mikado - why it is uncomfortable to work in an industry which needs 99% redundancies.

Western welfare governments have long preferred to run their banks in high cost cartels, and even invented reasons why this seems to be moral. Their deposit-banks have usually kept in cash only 10% of the total amount deposited with them. If 11% of depositors suddenly feared that their banks might go bust, this could accelerate a run that would send them bust indeed. Governments therefore thought that depositors would be less fearful if they were assured that the banks were officially and tightly regulated. Actually, this mainly meant that the banks had to hire ever more expensive lawyers so as to escape any crippling consequences from this regulation. The attached quote shows that Samuel Pepys understood this fact of life in his Diaries of July 21, 1662.

I see it is impossible for the King to have things done so cheaply as do other men
– Samuel Pepys on discovering an important commercial fact of life in his Diary, 21 July, 1662

The decent bosses of the deposit banks felt that the best way of avoiding sacking nine tenths of their staffs was by competing with a very different sort of financing called merchant banking whose earnings and bonuses were far more generous than those given to their own staff. These merchant banks were of peculiarly differing pedigree. In London, it was assumed that they could best be run by families like Barings who had done the job for over 200 years. In the 1990s, Barings went totally bust because one of its hired traders bet much of its money on a hunch that a bad earthquake in Japan meant that the shares of Japanese banks and insurance companies would become more profitable. In Zurich, merchant banks felt it most moral to keep the accounts of their depositors totally secret, especially if these accounts were being used to defraud their own countries’ tax authorities. In 2008 those secretive banks were then defrauded. In Wall Street, Goldman Sachs and Lehman Bros bid up their annual bonuses to millions of dollars for each partner. In 2008 even Goldman Sachs made a loss and Lehman Bros went bust.

A former chairman of the Federal Reserve argues that “fearful investors clearly require a far larger capital cushion to lend unsecured to any financial intermediary now”. He therefore thinks that taxpayers money should be ladled into them to make those investors less fearful. This seems far more likely to make depositors intermittently more terrified and cause any depression into the 2010s to linger on and on.

In the 1930s, the chief economic adviser to the government of Siam was called Prince Damrong. I try always to remember it
– quote from former director of International Monetary Fund.

One of the few big banks to make a profit in 2008 was the Grameen Bank (which means Village Bank) in that once basket-case country called Bangladesh. The sole staff in a branch serving several villages was once a woman student. It is now more usually someone who has learnt to use the computer in the right way.

The rest of this report will examine how this marvellously cost-cutting operation works. Perhaps the most relevant and terrifying analogy is to commercial airlines. In 1945, there were only a tiny number of passenger airmiles flown on them. In each successive year these increased hugely and in this slumptime 2009 there will be billions of passenger airmiles flown. In the late 1940s most governments therefore created national airlines and were confident they would flourish in this boom industry, with official regulation assuring they would be safe. Instead all proceeded to lose money, and later privatised but large airlines also did. The present trend is to cost cutting airlines like Ryan Air.

The same will happen to banks. Large banks mislending to the rich have run into losses that have created the slump. Politicians, thinking they are saving the world, are mislending huge sums to these mislenders and will eventually make the slump worst.

How to create cost-cutting banks? Begin the story with the crosshead below, peculiar as it may seem.

START IN A STARVING VILLAGE
The Nobel peace prize for 2006 was controversially awarded, in Oslo, to a “banker for the poor” in usually unfashionable Bangladesh. Since the microcredit system pioneered by this Dr Muhammad Yunus really has lifted record millions of Bangladeshi women from the world’s direst poverty, some of the world’s toughest tycoons have thrilled to his stated aim to “harness the powers of the free market to solve the problems of poverty”.

To his fans’ delight and astonishment, he is achieving exactly that. In the past quarter of a century, his Grameen Bank has lent (without collateral or lawyers) increasing billions of dollars to millions of poor women in the previously starving villages of Bangladesh, and got an extraordinary 99% repayment back. His often illiterate customers have started millions of successful small businesses in unimagined fields like mobile telephone ladies and saleswomen of the world’s cheapest yogurt. All these successes have been won by keeping costs incredibly low. A banking operation that would cost Goldman Sachs $100 in New York or London would cost Grameen in Bangladesh well under 100 cents.

This is a huge development in human history. Money can now be directly channelled into productive use by the world’s poorest people, while unsuccessful lending to the rich has caused a world slump. How do we switch custom to cost-cutting banks?

During Bangladeshi’s terrible famine year of 1974, Dr Yunus ( who had won his doctorate in economics in a free market American university, which most founders of banks have not done) came back to his 1940 birthplace of Chittagong, as professor of economics at the university there. He started lecturing on his republic’s 5 year plan, which like most 5 year plans was economic nonsense. In search of reality he took a field party of his students to one of the nearby famine threatened villages. His group analysed that all 42 of the village’s small businesses (such as tiny farm plots and market stalls) were indeed going bust unless they could borrow a tiny total $27 on reasonable terms.

The first thought was to give the $27 as charity. But Yunus lectured that a social business dollar, which had to be paid back after careful use in an income generating activity was much more effective than a charity dollar, which might be used only once and frittered away. The careful use of loans in very small quantities, says Yunus “means that you bring in a business model, you become concerned about the costs, the revenue, how to bring more efficiency, new technology, how to redesign, every year you review the whole thing. Charity doesn’t bring that whole package”.

Mercifully, all those first 42 tiny loans were fully repaid, and lent back. After 9 years of further experiments, Yunus in 1983 founded his Grameen Bank. Its priority was to make loans that were desperately needed by those of the poor that did repay them. Indeed, he argues that “access to credit is a human right so long as that credit is repaid”. This is the reverse of the usual banking priority, which is first (and in credit crunches only) to make the safest loans those to the rich that can provide collateral.

In these last 25 years, Grameen has provided increasing $billions of loans to poor people with that astonishing 99% repayment rate. In 2006, it had 7 million borrowing customers, 97% of them women, in 140,000 villages of Bangladesh. Microcredit had by then reached 80% of Bangladesh’s poorest rural families. Over half of Grameen’s own borrowers had successful small businesses. The women borrowers predominated because they usually are the poorest people in rural Islam and proved best in paying back.

When a Grameen bank manager goes to a new village, he has entrepreneurially to seek for poor but viable borrowers. He earns a star if he achieves 100% repayment of loans, and other stars if his customers are fulfilling most of the 16 guarantees that all customers are asked to pledge, ranging from intensive vegetable growing, through sending all their children to school, to renouncing dowries. A branch with no stars would be in danger of closing, so borrowers rally round with suggestions, such as which unreliable repayers to exclude. Borrowers from the bank who do repay are called owners of the bank and receive incentives such as opportunities for insurance, and for winning university scholarships for their children.

An early income generator was the profession of telephone ladies. They borrowed enough to buy a cheap mobile phone from a Grameen subsidiary. They draw fees for phoning to see if more profitable prices for crops are available in a neighbouring village, and from anybody who wants to hire the phone to contact the outside world. This is a job that could only become important in a microcredit setting. The owner of a mobile phone in richer suburbia would not find many customers to hire her set.

One special desire of Yunus was to improve the nutrition of poor children in Bangladesh , and he formed a social business with the largest French food multinational. This Grameen-Danone test marketed to find what sorts of fortified yogurt Bangladeshi children would like. Although Danone at first wanted large plants with refrigerated systems, Grameen won the debate to make them small plants which bought local milk. It hired very cheap local distributors who knew which families had children who might buy the yogurt at a few cents a cup. To keep the price that low, Danone had to agree not to pay any dividend from the sales of the yogurt in Bangladesh. but its $1 million investment remains returnable and it has learnt a lot about sales of a new product in poor countries.

A French water company is forming a similar social business with Grameen to remove arsenic from Bangladesh’s rural water supply. Some American computer tycoons (including Bill Gates) may help to find the best way to establish computer centres in remote villages. The telephone ladies will then face competition, but constant competition in new technology is one name of this game.

Nobody is suggesting that Goldman Sachs, when it recovers, should operate precisely in Yunus’ mode. But some competition in sharply cutting costs in most banks will have to be part of the world’s new banking system.

Microcredit will play a part in solving some problems that statesmen won’t yet believe. http://bankabillion.org/

Microcredit could also best move poor Afghans off growing 93% of the world’s present supplies of heroin, while international aid to understandably corrupt governments in Kabul do the opposite. At present international drug barons buy the heroin from Afghan farmers at a few pence per gram, then sell that gram in Mayfair or East Glasgow for around £60 per gram. This is not a distribution system with the needed cheapness and efficiency at which microcredit excels. A Yunus-type of bank might set Afghans, like Bangladeshi, more profitably at selling yogurt instead. Before Helemand province specialised in heroin its main product was fruit; microcredit could lure it back to that. Dive-bombing Taliban, who guard the poppy fields has been a vulgar commercial mistake.

Yunus’ winning ways with Islamic women can be turned into exciting community exponentials in ending poverty in Africa. But at present Africa is held back from banking for the poor because so many of its children are dying with malaria and its adults with aids.

A large number of US congressmen of both parties are asking the World Bank for a flexible grant facility of $200 million per year to build the capacity to find what systems of microcredit work where. This could best be combined with Dr Yunus’ proposal that an investigator of poverty should study in which districts poverty is falling and in which it is increasing. The banks or other bodies working in the successful areas should then be copied in the unsuccessful ones. When banking in the rich world recovers, a similar investigator might well be asked to report on what new systems of lending are working there too, and to discontinue the sort of banking whose losses have landed us in world slump.

2008-08-25T11:41:00.000-07:00

Blog year2008 in october is about ending poverty http://events.takingitglobal.org/20255 so we hope this week's syndication to 100 blogs will exponentialise to tens of thousands of blogs by then, with a little help from friends like you

sustainability club http://sustainabilityclub.com

social business club http://www.socialbusinessclub.net

collaboration cafe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9nL_a0K97I

yunus 10000 http://yunus10000.com collaboration coordinators for youth dialogues in that city and between cities together with invitations to action specific to each video good news story - eg if you want microcredit to beat off big banks why not help any school try out micro credit with the world's simplest program small change, big changes - a microloanfoundation franchise

Peers across hemispheres and I are far more interested in ensuring that each of these intercity movements vetoes any uses of 20th c failing system methods that the majority of club coordinators -or where elected an honorary board - vote against, than prescribing revenue models.

OPEN SOURCING THE CLUBS
Obviously we should want coordinators to make a living out of work input whlst at the same time recognising that being a club coordinator is probably worth more than having many a professional qualification - or needs to become so if this world is to be sustainable. Equally where profits are repeatedly generated I assume we can find a way iof agreeing some sliding scale that should be contributed either to your favourite grassroots organsiation in bangladesh or to a small list of other potential grassroots partners of future capitalism which should probably need at least 75 of members refendum to confirm

I am very happy if people will negotiate what other rules they would need to want to participate as well as to clarify where they want diferent contant at the mother webs. The main web system I use costs $35 a year per web so its not difficult to imagine that major cties will also want to set up their own branch web or of course a free blog - either of which we will happily linmk from the top of the mother web.

Obviously some of our constitution needs double checking with for example the 100000 bangladeshi's and other Gandhians who are the main practical exemplar of the values we seek to network worldwide so that the future sustains 7 billion brilliant jobs and goodwill multiplying across all women, children and even men.

We wish to learn from each city's most successful ways of mobilising and cross-cultural celebration, as well as metods for ensuring that any action network actually reaches to those in most desperate need of its service. This is one of the big lessons of bangladeshi experience -reiterated by every micro-system designer in bangladesh we have interviewed - once a networks starts empowering the entrepreneur inside it will never get deeper than the deepest needsholders it begins with. This is a lesson that many global NGOs seem never to have begun to grade.

chris macrae http://worldentrepreneur.net
washington dc inquiries desk usa 301 881 1655 info@worldcitizen.tv
y10000 at facebook http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=22045349892

aprils' collaboration city highlights - do tell us yours

2008-04-09T15:27:00.000-07:00

april's round the world of collaboration cities

DC perhaps the greatest ever attempt to unite western women's networks -see the case for investing in women and girls http://wfd-alliance.org/AUthecase.htm ; this is theme we wish to continue in any space - eg facebook http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=18188015069- do tell us if there's a virtual community you'd want this conversation extended to ;

media change is one of those lifelong issues for world entrepreneurs and me - at the internet level the prospects of 10000 village telecentres quizzin the web on vital knowledge http://egrameen.com/ is perhaps the best news for the planet I have heard since berners lee invented the www; on mass media we continue to plug away at this tome of year in the face off between american idol and http://africanidol.tv/ and all year round at http://universityofstars.tv/ and http://cidaworld.tv/ in the campaigns for real heroes for youth and the training of youth entrepreneurs. LA's green children kindly gave me a plug recently http://thegreenchildren.org/tgcf/news/macrae.php

back at Dhaka in january when we met Dr Yunus and discussed what agendas 1000 bookclub should link round in 2008 findin the way to unite the voices of the big demographic groups such as women and youth who have less decision making power but so much to do in sustaining community was one of the top 12 connections we promised to keep trying to make - the picture shows the other 12 ; these are linked in more getail at http://smbaworld.com/

New York hosts the next collaboration cafe http://thecooperation.tv/ around dr yunus on april 15 at pete's tavern - if you are interested in coming ask info@worldcitizen.tv before april 14. Ta!

2007-10-13T14:15:00.001-07:00

Dr Yunus of Grameen and microcredit and Nobel peace 2006 is setting cities and citiens around the world an interesting challenge. If he is passing through your city would you be able to find 1000 people who all wanted to collaborate with each other as well as him in empowering a good global world instead of the bad one currently compoundingSynonyms for good are win-win-win, sustainable, empowering every community up, one where hi-trust people transparently win over low-trustSo 2 questions:if Yunus was passing through Africa cities, which do you think would produce the most collaborative impactsif you are a twin national

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2516276605 - eg living in a rich city but with family roots back in Africa - how ready is your big rich city to represent Africa interests when Yunus hosts his Forum 1000 there.My friends are particularly working on London and New York as 2 test cities; partly because a London University student spent the summer interning in Dhaka on this project. One intercity collaboration idea is collaboration cafe - see those we have already hosted and tell us at info@worldcitizen.tv if you want to replay one in your city or virtually http://worldcitizen.tv/_wsn/page4.html

Another collaboration idea is can we produce a good global idea to heroes, their projects and networks for humanity. Why do people all over the world know the top 10 sporstmen for 50 different sports but not top 10s for different vital issues of human sustainability? http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5475184122

http://worldcitizen.tv/_wsn/page2.html

But the best truth about collaboration knowledge cities http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%2Bknowledge+%2Bcollaboration+%2Bcity&btnG=Google+Search in the 5 years that I have been searching the peoples and communities that weave them is that if any city does a great job in turning round a beter Global with Yunus we can all learn from what it did and work out how to invite the 1000 most relevant citizens when Yunus passes your way. http://grameen.tv/

2006-12-31T17:32:00.000-08:00

We have transferred biggest crisis issues that cities and global citizens play a lead role in reconcilig to Club Of City.

Here is a recent mail submitted to this space by Future of London

As someone who has been mentored for 50 years by the UK's number 1 Future-History Systems inquirer and writer of obver 2000 leadership editorial between 1950s-1980s, these belifes may be worth sharing, at least questioning openly:

The future is always compounding somewhere - so ask yourself what futures are compounding around you that you have an urgent right and capability to intervene in

We would say that the future London is compounding today is the test of the sustainability of all rich multi-cultural cities -so we invite citizens and deep cultural envois to debate what interventions Londoners need to make and all open cities of diversity concerened with sustaining equitable world trades with true love for the most discvonnected localities. We call this open movement "collaboration knowledge city" which you can google by adding your own city or share views at our companion blog clubofcity. Now getting real we believe in cafe formats, and open spaces, and hi-trust architecture of meta-networks (1 2 3 4 5) and any transparent conflict resolution methods you can mentor us is.

SUMMER 05
These are not very easy times personally or communally, but we have a 21 year learning curve of knowing where we are coming from to today's networking age:

networks change all systems by multiplying through boundaries of what was previously separate especially democratic and financial constitutions:

eg national politics need to go interlocal -ref 1,, 2,, 3

trasformation is needed to economics and the transparency all valuation professions 1 2, ideally by 2005 if ever greater risks to people are not to compound

That's about all we know. We are ready to connect and waiting to communicate if this is a compass that is relevant to you and trust in the sustainability of your future exponentials

Chris Macrae, wcbn007@easynet.co.uk

Connections we need to systemise for 6 billion beings & the globe's localities

2006-12-30T08:32:00.000-08:00

Across which networks must people in cities FIRST open up relationship permissions if we are to make the worldwide a sustainable enough place for 6 billion people to enjoy lifetimes

Please look at this picture until you see past its ugliness or choice of words because we believe it embeds the following 5 interconnecting truths about identity economics now networks interconnect us all:

1 Sustain N**10 There are probably 10 vital service Networks - of which Water researches to be the most obvious according to votes across collaboration and simpol city members - that need to be organsied as human rights for all 6 billion beings. By which we mean that they have a minimum quantity of quality access at no cost from day 1 however poor- how extra amounts are charged isnt the same issue as ensuring we all agree worldiwde on minimum rights. As well as working out how to deliver this at every locality of the globe, we need to open up conversations to involve every living person in communally clarifying the ten identifying rights of being.

2 Collaboration Cities, places - knowledge and brand people need to help involve everyone with every communications tool so that wherever people are located they can choose work etc that which will appreciate as they appreciate it. This is very context driven and there should be accessible activities for entrepreneurs to access and evolve compound growth with wherever they are located; there should be enough diverse ways to make as being's own greatest difference by linking in collboratively that everyone has a fair chance to see the world changing for the better for thier communities. Places are the organsiational system that everyone has a right to be transparently mapped, at least if our understanding of democracy, openness, trust, golden "relationship reciprocity" rule of all major religions is to be connected.

3 email, blog and other virtual mnodes; together with open space, cafes and other large global village real meetings need to be facilitated so everyone has experience of how they can work for people who are connected by common communal contexts and innovation opportunities (even if these arise as conflicts to pass through)

4 In many of the most prosperous and big places, neither law nor maths (audint performance) is currently uptodate to ensure that organisations compound goodwill instead of vicious impacts. This is out of control in at least some examples of each major organsiational form: corporation, governement, media, profession, activist networketc. The logical corrections exist in open source form but experts need to obey the hippocratic oath in guiding us all in implementing these transfromations, and open accountability must apply on all sides

5 We will need the mother of all benchmaking (and local mentoring programs so that big leaders are also caring people faciliutators) if the world's 100 biggest organisational and economic powers are to systemise the most valuable relationships for all they impact over time

We know that we haven't descrtibed every paragraph above optimally in minutia, but do you have any questions on the big picture? Is it clear why all these networks will need to flow harmoniously if we are to compound a hi-trist age as well as servioce economies where people matter in all their relationship roles and knowledge working producers and stakeholders with value demands? If so we can get on with which cities wish to collaborate in which first priorities as there is a lot of relatiionship system work to be piloted and then open sourced if we are to help the billion in our owrld who are currently without the mist whilst not causing any other hi-trust person to lose what they and theirs have already communally accomplished.

2006-12-25T08:03:00.000-08:00

Exemplary Cities in Networking Humanity's Hi-Trust Demands include:
Brand & knowledge & diversity intercity collaboration :all whynot cities! , & London, Boston, Medinge & Lund (Sweden), Barcelona

N**10	Goodwill Leadership	Social lawyers	Simpol & Collaboration Cafes	Weblogs & Clued Nets	Twin Action Projects for Sustainability
London	Mountain View	Toronto	Cambridge	Stanford	Vaxjo
Melbourne	London	Tenesee	London	London	London
DC region (ie Potomac, MD)

Key:
N**10 home of one of the 10 most collaborative networks for humanity so far mapped - nominations welcome at wcbn007@easynet.co.uk

Goodwill Leadership - city either provides a leadership mentoring program that includes intangibles/goodwill valuation or includes a benchmark corporation worth goodwill touring

Simpol & Colaboration Cafes- Hubs of Simultaneous policy or cafes designed around networks actioned around causes supporting 6 billion people's rights

Social lawyers - hub of social lawyers concerened with changing corporate licences back from man's most extremely unsustainable form to a sustainable one

Weblogs & Clued Nets - home of leading linkers of clued nets and open web societies

Home of open source projects twinning sustainability of rich and developing peoples and places

wcbn007@easynet.co.uk welcomes nominations for other columns classifications of our family of hundreds of whynotcities, whynotvillages, whynotspaces

International Social Innovations Day

2004-10-13T05:00:00.000-07:00

1-2-3 of ISID

1) I know the temptation is to say not another big name day. But this misses out a key social map. This day will link through google hundreds of communities and webs who were up for participating. Imagine what could happen if we could cross boundaries between all those networks, or even some of them. If people across 50 cities cannot show 1000 groups how to connect such a map, they catography's had a bad hair day

2) What if you connected your own city's views of ISID. If google shows that there are 1000 webs trying - presumably some of those are coordinated out of a city near you. Why not report your own city's linkins to collaborative Innovation. Here's a clue : try changing the 4 letters city in the bookmark you are browsing to your own city's name - if that doesnt work RSVP to me at wcbn007@easynet.co.uk so we can linkin your city to the other 50 already connecting views.

3) It would cheer some of us up a lot, if one of the candidates for what could do is the 30000 actionable ideas for resolving poverty. Or something of equal connecting magnitude!

10 Billion $ Meetups

2004-10-05T05:05:00.000-07:00

10 Billion $ Cartographers are trying to linkin 2 things HERE- how does one successfully connect meet-up; what are the biggest social issues people from every democracy should be mapping together

Do you have any tips on meet-up? Is there a global responsibility issue that gets to you above all others? Let's start to play!

Technical note: learning games are great becuase they can take place across parallel tables like a whist drive where afterwards each table debriefs you on how the same inputs resulted in different comversational maps and socres; similarly each game can be banked for extra insights, and a virtual community thtread could be used so that everyone could see all that). Another world class learning game if you'd prefer to meetup over that is DEMOCS

Started in Boston, Fast Company Friends with 100+ City Cells

2004-10-04T08:36:00.000-07:00

City cells vary in activity from meeting more than once a month to irregularly. The format usually mixes a guest speaker (eg Steve Denning on KM Storytelling) with the opportunity to network over some takeaway food. What makes or breaks this format's value in different cities?

Could there be more to it - eg ways of sharing action projects or practice communities across cities?
example - without Steve Denning's superb storytelling talk at 'Friends' we wouldnt have started this timeless blog

What are your experiences of making this or similar formats most timeworthy for all that linkin, and enrichening worldwide as well as local action learnings?

Please tell us of any inspirational formats you see tested in any city

2004-10-04T01:06:00.000-07:00

What's your favourite observation?

1) I loved Barcelona's hosting of university students entrepreneurial project competition from around the world

2) I love the new libraries (1) and trade fairs of knowledge(1 that seem to be linked by Pieror Formica across such places as Estonia and Latvia and...

Peter's Lewis's Offer to Share Learnings on Leadership Mentoring with any city from Bologna to Beijing

2004-10-03T08:56:00.000-07:00

For years now Peter Lewis and a team of coaches have been experimenting with what sorts of mentoring clubs leaders like through supporting institutions such as London's Institute of Directors. From 2005, Peter is assembling teams to offer year round leadership menoring spaces -such as the Discover Program at Cass Business School where one day a month is put aside for leaders to meet, commune what questions they want to study next and benchmark progress. We invite submission of a few practice maps: where we hope to communally pin course modules on to see if all involved define progress similarly. Externally, this navigational exercised is being rehearsed with Cabinet and other offices in an attempt to see the best of Londoner's productivities, cultural diversity and energising visions on what collaborative innovation skills we have that can be of greatest world service.
Each member of the Discover Faculty of 2005 is trying to build intercity connections- eg I try in my role as part of the editorial board (publishing on) assembled by Piero Formica at Bologna which connects London through Bologna to European Cities and others like Tartu, Beijing, Abu Dhabi...Also having visited 30 countries to manage in-depth surveys of what local societies want from global corporations, it seems to me that the Global University's matrix is a useful tool for leadership and brand architectures, now more than ever

Collaboration Cafe format,of London #1 Collaboration Knowledge City

2004-10-03T04:10:00.000-07:00

London is the world's open source franchise centre for the Collaboration Cafe Format. Ask here if you want to know how this format helps network any city's change leaders. To date collaboration cafe mentors have included:

George Por on practising Collective Intelligence
Andrius K on how to access some of the world's most diverse innovation projects
Bridget Peake on how to convene open space to sustain miraculous communal or networking impacts
Franklin Frederick, Brazilian Founder of International Free Water Academy on why water matters locally to poor people more than can be imagined by global Multinationals like Coca-Cola or Nestle; and how European (London 04) & World Social Forums are networking to ensure people's lives are not evaporated away

Naturally the connecting benefit of co-producing this cafe series is to inter-link networks across all the cafes' deepest action learnings. More details on this cafe format here.

From Canada's Hamilton (near Toronto) & Open Space Alumni

2004-10-02T01:54:00.000-07:00

Round open space world Chile's First 40,,Asia,,UK's 100 practitioners,,US- the spiritual home...

Re: November 21 - 23, 2004 Open Space Symposium; Theme: Issues and Opportunities for a National Culture of Peace Program in Canada -- Canadian Peace Initiative

As a result of discussions among many peacebuilders and peace educators in Canada, Senator (retired) Douglas Roche and the Canadian Centres for Teaching Peace will be hosting an Open Space Conference with a theme: "Issues and Opportunities for a National Culture of Peace Program in Canada -- Canadian Peace Initiative ("CPI")". We will be following the principles of the United Nations Culture of Peace and Non-violence Program.

The Symposium will commence at 4:00 pm Sunday November 21, 2004 with Guest Speaker David Adams (past director of UNESCO/UN International Year for the Culture of Peace) and continue to 5:00 pm Tuesday November 23, at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. We will be utilizing an Open Space Technology, to encourage the particular participation of key stakeholders (institutions and individuals) whose mandate and passions impinge upon peace and non-violence in our families, communities and world. We are inviting representatives from Federal Ministries, Provincial Governments, Education,
Religious Organizations, NGOs, business, unions, etc. The simplicity and
creativity of Open Space Technology is briefly described at:
http://ponoconsultants.com/management/what_is_ost.html and an Open Space
Technology conference is discussed in http://www.ponoconsultants.com/management/what_is_an_ost_conference.html . The professional facilitator for this event is Judith Richardson of Halifax.

I would like to take this opportunity to invite you and/or your delegate to participate in our Symposium. The Agenda and background information is available at the web site http://www.peace.ca/nationalcultureofpeace2004.htm
. The Earlybird Fee prior to October 31 is $200.00 for the 2.5 days ($250.00 after; Registration Form at http://www.peace.ca/registrationformCPI.htm ; reduced rates for students and retirees). The Fee is designed to cover our costs, and any surplus will be contributed to the Canadian Peace Education Foundation. Coffee and juice will be provided during the morning and afternoon.

You may also be interested to know that we are hosting two other major concurrent events at McMaster University:

(1) Peace and Leadership 3-day workshop November 15 - 17, 2004

http://www.peace.ca/leadershipworkshop.htm

(2) Third Annual Peace Education Conference in Canada November 18 - 21, 2004
http://www.peace.ca/CanadianAgenda2004.htm
You may wish to take some or all of these into account in your planning to visit Hamilton. Our conferences and symposium are a rare chance for Canadians from all across the country to high-light peace education, research and a Culture of Peace in Canada. Origin Judi Richardson, Open Space Alumni

Timeless Blogs seconding this format include: War on Poverty ,10 Billion $ Mapmaking,Collaboration Knowledge Cities,Action Projects 30000,Global University,water angels Journalists for Humanity

Special Section= Death of nations as main economic control system of the networked age

2004-01-31T06:26:00.000-08:00

This is a BIG! subject

Let's use this first thread to not some of the cracks that will cost people dear if they cling to national power as the only economic system interacting in an age of worldwide networks and deep local communal competences

We can always start particular threads for specialist debates- but where do we see the cracks in ways that people as the braodest participants in democracy need to start questioning

Currency- for the foreseeable future America's looks weak because it is so much in debt as a nation; Germany's whilst hidden inside the Euro is causing a lot of pent up frustrations for German workers that they don't need

Global Corporations are paying less and less tax to their headquartered countries; leaving people in societies to pick up the tax bill as well as the systemic risks of all the short-cuts sectors are taking - see volatility club

The most promising exchanges -ecause they are hi-trust and hi-motivating for the working people and societies involved- seem to be happening between people communities - twinning cities, villages, clusters in ways that microfinance economies from the grassroots up, and fly below the radar of national boundaries

Of course China is the most bizarre example of all. A rapidly developing if not so free country insiode its borders financed by the third richest race on earth- the expatriate Chinese.

Network competences which people of 2005 would need, seen from 1984

2003-12-25T06:51:00.000-08:00

Most of this month will share extracts from a 20 year old book on why networks were going to prove the globally most testing revolution human beings have so far discovered, at least as co-author I hoped so as the bad scenario was that Orwell's 84 vision of technology in a power-greedy few would turn out correct (just 40 years out as a timeline)

To give two specific examples of where the book hoped we would be now:
Debating 30000 projects to end global poverty
Teaching 12th grade email as the the networking age's "way ahead" to find your own 10 best mentors through life and help others do the same

As writers and journalists whose families had been in the British Raj and in one case tried to help constitutionally ease its passage to better futures for all peoples, we also held some strong views, salient to bring to the table now:

SAD NEWS
We must design transparent networks where all 6 billion people trust that none of us is as strong as all of us. Our families note from direct historical experinces of governments that the British Empire ended with mistakes that have compounded corruption in many poor places. We hope that the 21st Century will grow up from its first years with people everywhere asking isnt it time to quench evil and opaque structures before they quench more than a billion beings whose abject poverty involves being without enough food or water?

GLAD NEWS
Rejoice: the world's most powerful searcher has declared interdependence 30 billion dollar 'do no evil' leader of organisations, and we ask that journalists and stars for humanity try to get the BBC's World Service to rediscover a similar DNA. Google & BBC can start a global media revolution promoting reality before imagery, trust relationships before speculative greed.

Feb 03= Citizens, which is your city's favourite global network

2003-02-28T01:06:00.000-08:00

Examples:

Global Londoners - the ecademy
From Global Glasgow/Edingurgh we hear nominations of GlobalScot
Global Boston -Fast Company's Circle of Friends
Global Budapest - Club of Budapest

If you have a nomination please post in this thread or send more detailed explanations to wcbn007@easynet.co.uk

Jan 03= Global Londoners favourite network is ecademy...why, because of experiments with social networks

2003-01-31T01:09:00.000-08:00

Go here if you want to add your city's nomination of favourite global network

At the ecademy, two main types of attractions designed to develop social networks are:
-conveneing a meeting in a city that starts up a big inquiry & network of practice (example in this pos)
-virtual clubs (example in next post)

>ecademy.com is the largest professional network offering free membership for basic networking options with over 20000 members. London's real meetings provided the original groundwork for this worldwide space launch. In joyful recognition of valuetrue community's 2004 Year of Transparency, here's a note just recieved from one of ecademy's most linkedin beings: Canadian Transparency guru Don Tapscott's Ecademy lecture was definitely the most popular with Ecademy's management team and was voted one of the best of all time.For those of you who couldn't attend here's the video... of The Don

Clubs @ ecademy

2003-01-29T01:13:00.001-08:00

To access most of the ecademy's bookmarks, you may need to quickly register for basic membership (20000+ members, 100+ countries) which is free. Currently the basic membership permits joining up to 3 Clubs- these are virtual forums on a particular topic

Ones that I am currently in are (why not post yours if you find an interesting collection):

A Collaboration Cafe-A junction between 2 main issues - how to practive collaborative knowledge management and connect real & virtual modes of using our time in colectively intelligent ways; how a city like London keeps ahead with cafe and other meeting formats in pursuing the vision of being First Collaboration Knowledge City

B Sustainable Prosperity - a club hosted out of Pakistan on how can we sustainably lift up rural and other communities currently experiencing global poverty

C Unification - to tell you the truth, I dont know the difference between B&C and will try and ask Sadiq to merge these one day, but meanwhile the futurists circles I have networked in to since 1984 have nominated 2005 as year of poverty resolution, so I better participate in both clubs as leading influencers of grassrots curricula development at Global University where < a href="http://waterangels.blogspot.com/">Water's Humanity & developing an international climate of cooperation around Russia are currently our 2 hottest study areas.

If you have questions about clubs at ecademy, why not post them to meet at wcbn007@easynet.co.uk - I don't claim to have answers myself but expect I can find someone who does (Londoners like me and London First Collaboration knowledge city gratefully acknowledge the ecademy's founding as the premier Global London network)

2001-09-11T07:13:00.000-07:00

Leonardo Di Caprio has a sustainability crisis film out The Eleventh Hour

Since 2005, Londoners at http://thecooperation.tv/ have been asking the 11th year question - what grassroots up systems for sustainability must we turn round for sustainability by end of 2011 if there is any joy at all in watching olympics

Here are a few of our social action collaboration answers emerging from over 100 collaboration cafes and with the help of 1000 readers of the same book of social ABC futures http://www.smbaworld.com/id8.html

we'd love to hear yours below or in any way you like linking humanity's celebrations, chris macrae us tel 301 881 1655 chris macrae, info@worldcitizen.tv

London's 2011 Social Action Listing includes:

internet for the poor :
http://egrameen.com/ help ensure 10000 village telecentres being launched as Grameen Solutions and internet companies social business collaborations find it easy to access 6 maps: e-agriculture including clean water and energy solutions, e-health ,e-edu , e-gov, e-finance (microcredit), e-consumer good

join 1000 practitioners of yunus future capitalism book http://thecooperation.tv http://brand.blogspot.com/

make sure that there are more young smba's than mba's http://www.smbaworld.com/id8.html

smash conventional wisdom on the head until whole circle is bigger http://worldentrepreneur.net/

boycott our own olympics unless BBC spends as much time on sustainability debates for and by the people as it does on spectator sports http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/TrustPeoplePower/

celebrate humanity's greatest cross-cultural replication experiments in ending poverty http://wholeplanet.tv/

collaboration city yuNus http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&pwst=1&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=%2Bcollaboration+%2Bcity+%2Byunus&spell=1

Beyond Wallet:
to shape sustanability of future & capitalism, what's in your daily-click? http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&q=%2Bcapitalism+%2Bgates+OR+yunus&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wn

what ways can we think of to raise your city's social actions for sustainability so that by the end of 2011 people power http://peoplepower.jp/ is no longer just another nice speech at the United Nations but a world citizen service connecting
the 3 billion poorest ,
the 1 billion richest who live in NW cities
and netizens of every culture stuck in the middle often extremely youthful, innovative and caring but with no Gandhian or truth practice connecting heroes on mass broadcast tv http://universityofstars.tv/ http://brand.blogspot.com/ http://africanidol.tv/ http://hi-trust.tv/ http://grameen.tv/ http://egrameen.com/ http://www.valuetrue.com/home/gallery.cfm