Speed Futuring - planning in no time

Here is the plan and notes from the Social Creator network's Speed Futuring workshop on November 28, 2012.

Attendees: Tony, Wolfgang, Susan, David H, Shea, Dorit, Nick, Andrew.

There were eight options for topics to be used for developing a plan during the evening.  We would use a combination of whole brain thinking of the whole situation (Mind-Mapping) and fore brain thinking (stages proposed within Self-organization of communities.)

Here they are, together with vote counts:

In-house facilities that distinguish condo buildings – 0
YouTube channel for a neighbourhood - 1
Clean technologies – 2
3D Printing - 3
Education - 4
Vertical farming up outside of high-rises - 4
Customized stays for visitors to Toronto - 4

The winner was:
Social development through community education - 6

Social development in response to crime, threats, bullying is a challenge that requires holistic methods. 

Who can be against something that would address these problems?
Why not use a breathing wall created by Wolfgang (an ecology of plants and animals and placed on an indoor wall,) as an experiential teaching method for holistic learning based on the study of ecologies.  This would engage youth and seniors particularly and could help participants look at local communities as social ecologies.

Strategy: Take Social Creator to a Finch and Jane community centre where people are thirsty for change.  They would probably like a YouTube Channel for the neighbourhood. 

Canadian Human Rights Orgn and Northwood Community Centre could be our initial local lead organizations.

With a lot of help from David H who works in a social agency at Jane and Finch, we first identified some pieces of the puzzle of self-sustaining social development.  See diagram below:

Then we developed the following stages of implementation as interdependent and integrated.  Later stages depend, and build on earlier stages.

The three developmental stages are:

1. Inspire a community –

·       Get neighbours to imagine / visualize (rather than stating some benefits)

·       Build a high-profile mini version of project that you almost have to walk over / believable 3D rendering / diorama  

2. Engage a community –

·       Lead partners must already have trust of the community

·       The 3D rendering is revealed to be evolving over time – delight

·       Educational information about the project is graduated in stages responding to feedback, as with education

·       Deliver persistent and consistent yet evolving messages

·       Means of giving anonymous responses at the rendering location

·       Appeal to youth

·       Facebook and Twitter

·       You Tube

·       Petition

·       On-line funding site mechanism where people vote and donate to initiatives

·       Speaker events or conference

3. Neighbourhood education, coaching and enrichment -

·       Community centre as a partner that facilitates setting up a school operated totally by kid participants (as with a government program in Costa Rica)

·       Lead kids record findings, and teach what’s been learned to following classes and in other schools

·       Focus on international collaborations amongst kids

·       Focus on breathing walls and society as ecologies

·       Similar programming for seniors

·       Inter-generational programming

Lectures from Wolfgang. 
Community coaching sessions. 
Free wikis for on-line storage of findings from classes

As an introduction to the planning segment we had the following "insights into the future":

·     
Apprenticeship movement will grow - Learning trades from elders who want to leave a legacy - as selected by the community centre, free of charge, candidates willing to work for free.

·       Souls will come in that have worked out much more of their karmas.

·       People will be together more. 

·       Lots more computerized on-line facilities from a young age.  Elimination of schools with traditional teachers and teaching methods.  We now see children in very different ways than we have in the past.  Some kids will be educating themselves.  We ask kids what they have an affinity for. 

·       Access to a world knowledge bank – material or spiritual storage.

·       Ineffective government and massive social turmoil leads to slowest thing becoming the fastest at bringing wealth as we thoroughly engage in them.

·       Wealth and abundance is created through addressing reality which has synergies where and 1 + 1 = 3 or more.  It creates massive engagement of people which brings happiness through helping one another.

·       Putting ideas in people’s heads (with marketing included) rather than have people ‘wasting time’ reading books.

·       Thought-controllable machines are going mainstream.  Wider recognition of danger with biofeedback because the brain becomes unbalanced. 

·       High, connecting bridges between high buildings.  Objects floating due to telekinesis.  Self-sustaining buildings reliant on solar power, kinetic energy derived from movement of inhabitants.

·       3D printers in every home.  Everyone doing 3D pictures at home. CNC machines (since 1990’s) computer controlled shaping machines that cut and shape wood go mainstream. 

·       Interactive walls that shape to what we want.  ‘Whole ceiling’ lights.

·       Food will grow in our houses as parts of our houses.

·       Photosynthesis by humans to get around eating.

·       New forms of personal transportation.

Our Income Model as Neighbourhoods

A self-sustained network of Neighbourhood Campuses will extend wherever a demand exists. We will offer educational opportunities for mutual fulfillment – “What you need, near where you live.”

People have asked me - 

HOW DO WE BECOME SELF-SUSTAINING BY OFFERING COURSES?

How could offering courses make enough money to pay people and still generate sufficient funds for introducing more ambitious changes to the neighbourhood?

The courses are there purely to promote the spread of creativity, self-awareness, mutual fulfillment and fun - while course facilitators and school directors share the marketing costs incurred when promoting what they offer.

Even a plant starts by sending down roots to sustain itself.  Similarly the courses are dedicated to intake of participants from the neighbourhoods.  You don’t make money out of the nutrition that sustains you, so why would we expect the initial stage of offering courses to make money? 

However, the second developmental stage includes academies and guilds.  These are where people learn marketable skills, develop plans, and find collaborators.  Academies and guilds are places for the executives and entrepreneurs amongst us to explore how to adapt and transition to become more fun-loving, creative, and self-sustainable people.  

At one academy we learn about disruptive technologies, like CleanTech, that exhibit exponential business growth and change our old ways of thinking.  We explore where, as individuals, we experience discomfort with change and movement forward.  We discover who we want to collaborate with, and form powerful business alliances.

These are benefits that make Neighbourhood Campuses different from universities and business schools.

We’ll make money, especially by reaching out to executives.  Again we’ll share the marketing costs incurred.

Production departments linking across neighbourhoods are the third developmental stage. Production departments exist for entrepreneurs and activists to make money as subcontractors on bigger, more complex projects than a single entrepreneur could take on by working alone. 

Production departments have existed to supply film companies for decades.  Departments known as wardrobe, script writing, props, cameras, lighting, etc. come together to meet a film producer’s needs.  Then, after a production ‘wraps,’ the production department framework quickly dissolves only to reconfigure again to fulfill the needs of the next film producer.

Production departments will engage students and entrepreneurs in solving real corporate challenges for short amounts of their time during the day.  The rest of the student’s day is devoted to reconfiguring departments for media or creative event production such as activist projects and joint actions. 

Making money while still a student makes us very different from a university or school. This not only provides part-time income, and experience.  It also provides 'light at the end of the tunnel' in terms of education.  How many people graduate from university with a large debt load only to find there is no employment in their field?

Our QUEEN EAST Agency (see sidebar to right) offers our corporate clients what's called 'crowdsourcing' or outsourcing of services to a network of lifelong students.  Crowdsourcing service companies already offer access to networks of engineers.  No-one has effectively offered access to networks of arts-based professionals - artists, entrepreneurs and activists, while helping their network learn and advance.

The production departments will handle customization of executive visits to Toronto, and enrichment courses on cruise ships.

OMNI-DIMENSIONAL ALLIANCE, (OA)

The Agency and production departments also save our clients time and resources by facilitating how corporations collaborate as an alliance. We are starting with outreach to 

• hospitality and tourism, 
• learning institutions, 
• hospitals, 
• condominium developers, and 
• film producers. 

In order to stay in business members within these industry sectors have already grasped the importance of human values (abundance, sharing, a healthy and life supporting ecology,) compared to corporate values (scarcity, optimized return for investors, minimum responsibility for clean-up when accessing natural resources.)

Coordination of companies and entrepreneurs by neighbourhood is the final development stage of the Neighbourhood Campus.  We start to bring entrepreneurs and companies together across a neighbourhood so as to benefit from bulk purchasing discounts.   

Toronto hospitals are corporations that already coordinate their activities so as to buy specific supplies on the same day. Charging a minor service fee for coordination services allows us to make huge amounts of money.

Bulk purchasing across a neighbourhood becomes possible because people will use on-line software to register within the alliance.  They will specify what they want to buy, when they want to buy, and who to contact in the company regarding each type of purchase.

  

The sense of prosperity we proactively generate as shared enterprises for mutual fulfillment within a neighbourhood must increase our strength to act as an enterprise of neighbourhoods (coordination.)  Prosperity also requires respect for freedom of expression (diversity.)  

So we create a space for corporations to benefit enormously, and for communities to flourish in ways unlimited by corporate values.

WHO WE ARE…

The Neighbourhood Campus movement is currently a volunteer-run group of local residents and others who take action for change - committed to preserving and strengthening the distinctive vitality and quality of life in the Toronto-Centre area. 

Our community partners will provide courses as well as income to local entrepreneurs through securing outsourced services needed by corporations locally.  

We aim to make lifelong learning, starting a business, and activism more self-sustainable.

WHAT’S HAPPENED SO FAR?

The Neighbourhood Campus sprang to life in March 2012.  It is a way to face the educational challenge of learning how to organize to benefit everyone. 

For example, we face an educational challenge if neighbours don’t already know how to best fulfill the local neighbourhood’s mission and vision as in the case of the Bay Cloverhill Community Association, BCCA. 

BCCA’s Mission:

To build a great urban neighbourhood in active partnership with those who live and work here.

BCCA’s Vision:

A green and clean community recognized for its exceptional quality of life.

Values that inform BCCA’s Actions:8

Balance -- we strive to balance sustainable urban growth with respect for the natural and human environment.

Collaboration -- we seek to collaborate with community partners for positive and meaningful change.

Commitment -- we are committed to being responsive, transparent, and accountable to our members.

Advocacy -- we advocate for our community with passion and perseverance.

WHY DO THIS?

Ontario is no longer the economic engine of Canada.  The manufacturing era finished in the nineteen nineties.  It is crucial that the education we have available builds on what we learn in school and helps cities to transfer out of a past reliance on manufacturing. 

Education must be relevant to today’s economic realities in an international society where more than ever, moving forward depends on our capacities to collaborate in departments to get things done, and our individual capacities for creativity and innovation.

We had moved almost totally out of manufacturing in Ontario by 2003.  This was a finding of the Organization for Economic and Cultural Development, (OECD.)

Governments assure us that we need to learn how to do more with less, while offering few alternatives for moving forward other than austerity measures. 

However we see the importance of collaboration, creativity and self-awareness to get things done in today’s world.  These were not taught in school during the manufacturing era and are still not taught today.

Another reason for doing this is that we want to work on cruise ships, and need excuses to hold conferences in the Caribbean.  Neighbourhoods have failed to offer us such opportunities, until now!

CONTRIBUTIONS NEEDED TO MOVE FORWARD

Our goals include having a complete curriculum of courses that tie in with skills, attitudes and understanding needed to participate fully in the new economies.  We need to hear from facilitators and also gather input from people who want to transition from old-style business to more sustainable economic activity that is based on his or her individual values.

We are putting together an Advisory Counsel to Universe City with representation from each neighbourhood.  We need to hear from leaders who have the capacity and commitment to gain from contributing to specific outcomes beneficial to their neighbourhood.

To ‘be the change’ that we desire, (or even be a small part of that change,) we must look at where we need to go both as a society and in terms of today’s economies. 

Neighbourhood Campuses update

We had the first of our pre-launch parties for the Neighbourhood Campuses on October 18. 

It was a special salon with socializing, food, fun, sharing of ideas and news of gestating the trillion-dollar holistic framework I developed for neighbourhoods over the years - starting at Yonge-Wellesley in downtown Toronto.  I presented a comparison of old-style business based on project management, and business that includes flow - Ecstatic Business Practices - or EBP.

Fellow originators of the Yonge-Wellesley campus, Miss Suzette and Ava Goodman gave us a taste of what a more creative and fulfilling neighbourhoods will be like. 
There were very soulful live musical numbers by the incomparable Ethelrida Zabala-Laxa of WISER International.

An enthusiastic, Norman Waite of the local neighbourhood association (Bay Cloverhill Community Association, or BCCA) welcomed everyone and shared some local news of breakthroughs regarding a local park on publicly-held land.  He promised to be our biggest fan and to promote awareness of the Neighbourhood Campus Norman also offered us a table at the neighbourhood's annual general meeting on November 14, 2012.  This event, held at the YMCA, will attract over 100 of our local movers-and-shakers.

A huge thank you to our gracious volunteers, Adam, Alfredo, Diane, Marie, and Paul for video, greeting, registration, dishes, food service, photography, clean-up.  You name it, and they were able to deliver.

Thank you to 6 St. Joseph House for providing the venue and refreshments.  Our other local business partners, Biryani House and Freshslice Pizza, received a rousing applause when we thanked them for the food. 

Outcomes:
We now have proposals for courses for children and adults, in computer assembly kits (Arduino,) and robotics, stop-motion animation for cinema, plus offers for sessions in creative writing, drawing and sculpture.

We announced offers by participants that evening who wanted to supply venues for upcoming courses free of charge.  In this way we can present the salon in new neighbourhoods - Yorkville-St Jamestown, and Lawrence-Dufferin. 

We have been referred to someone at the University of Toronto who may book us into additional venues for upcoming courses. 

And representatives from other neighbourhoods who attended are excited and will be getting back to us with opportunities in their areas.

We don't know how things could have gone any better, but we will try at our upcoming salons in November and December.

Something new and exciting for neighbourhoods

Fall 2012 is here and it’s time to learn something new, meet some new friends – and you will be able do it all either in your building, or in your neighbourhood, if you live within the area of the Yonge-Wellesley Neighbourhood Campus in downtown Toronto.

It's not a grade school or a university.  It’s more like a vocational school that includes an enterprise for the production of goods and services in a local economy. 

Together we will increase our imaginations, collaboration, self-awareness, and use of on-line tools.  And at our free public sessions we are looking to see what each of us wants to contribute.

We aim to make the neighbourhood more resilient during times of economic uncertainty.  We’re building the strength and resources needed so that it’s easier for participants to be fulfilled in whatever they choose to do. 

Each month we will be offering a range of practical and exciting paid courses designed to expand people's choices and horizons starting with arts-based career options.  We will award educational credits in return for work to bring about positive social change.

We’re also the go-to place to find suppliers or other entrepreneurs to collaborate with. We’ll save participants money on purchasing supplies and decrease their time on commuting and business travel.  

And there will be inspirational and engaging events that enrich life in the neighbourhood. 

Have you noticed that no-one in your neighbourhood seems to know what other entrepreneurs and organizations are doing?  Well, maybe a magazine could help address that.  

We’re already using the Social Creator blog to give updates and information on local organizing.  Our marketing department will use the magazine to promote the campus.  The magazine will also provide campus participants with a means of expression and connection.  

Our school enterprise organizes amongst neighbourhoods based on film and TV production departments - catering, acting, singing, script writing, props design, set design, cinematography, sound engineering, video editing, marketing, promotions, events logistics – you name it!  To keep up to date on developments the magazine will feature columns by each department head.  

We will be asking local retailers how they would like to see our neighbourhoods promoted – this will lead to growth of the client-base services that participants will offer citywide.

I am looking forward to collaborating, learning, and having fun in the neighbourhood, and wishing you were here too.

What is a Community, now and in future?

Have you ever wondered what community is?  Its an interesting topic.

It is a topic that has become increasingly important now that we are running out of resources which sets limits on growth.  The old economic ideas are just falling away.

The first ten minutes of this video challenges the basis of today's economic philosophy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8ZJCtL6bPs

Professor Al Bartlett makes a strong case for the end of capitalism two minutes into this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNN9BvNUsIU&feature=related

A community can be a location such as a neighbourhood.  Members of a community can share a common sense of identity such as coming from Bermuda, or the Caribbean, or the West.

 
A community can also be people linked by-

A common set of practices. See medical associations, acting guilds, or knitters

Or shared interests. See physicists, book clubs

Or similar values and shared intentions. See ecologists; or the Intentional Communities movement – http://www.ic.org/

So identity, practices, interests, values and intentions attract people together. They bring a level of organization to society.

Ultimately life seems to be about coming together to resolve our differences of identity, practices, opinions, values, intentions - and do this in as conscious ways as possible.

Today, with the internet to assist us, life could be about coming together to find mutual fulfillment and strength through collaboration.

I believe the internet is here to help neighbourhood communities advance beyond old ways of doing things.  I believe these communities will continue to reorganize internationally around the internet.

Why do I think this?  The biggest losers in globalization were national governments.  National leaders have given away much of their power to unelected officials within international agencies.  This has been a trend since about 1995.  And this is exactly when the internet started to catch on.

So it's time for change.  Let's use the internet to spread solutions internationally.  And let's organize locally where we can have an immediate effect on how things get done.

Leadership for Innovation in Society

For the first time in a Social Creator network event the discussion focused mostly on developments in neighbourhoods, on June 12, 2012.

The Toronto neighbourhood of Roncesvalles has become a great example of, "If the grassroots leads, then organizations will follow." 

A simple thing, like dealing with cigarette butts left on the sidewalk outside of bars, can be too controversial for a local business organization to handle. 

Perhaps it is the diverse membership of organizations that makes directors more conservative, not wanting to do things that may conceivably upset the membership.  Sometimes directors have to get member consensus.  

Hence we see little in the way of innovation coming from organizations.

The subject of this post is not ciggy butts.  It's about organizations holding up innovation.  It's also about no-one's vision being too big or too small to be taken into account and acted on.

Don't think that big visions are all that count in this world. 

If one person has a vision of a butt-free neighbourhood, then let's support them in that.
A grassroots group put in place a solution for the cigarette butts situation in Roncesvalles. Next they will be conducting a questionnaire about the solution, listening to the business owners in the area, anticipating a positive response.  This grassroots action will 'make it safe' for the local business organizations in the area to act, without 'ruffling feathers'.

Check out: Butting in to butt out

Often business owners do not live in the neighbourhoods where their stores are located.  They worry about anything that may interfere with sales during the times when their stores are open.  Once the store closes for the evening the owners can be in another part of town or another part of the world.

Local business organizations tend to focus on their main street.  There is much less interest in residential side streets, or the rest of the neighbourhood.

We really need innovation in society.  We need to respond to huge changes in the economy.  I believe it probably won't come from existing institutions.  It usually comes as a result of collaboration at the grassroots, and coordination with existing organizations.

As we look after the smaller changes, the bigger changes will also eventually come about.