http://www.flickr.com/photos/23368962@N00/503069237

We came across the BBC2 Documentary about Detroit recently, and today I sat down and watched it again and made some notes.

There is a section in the film where we are told that at one point the Packard plant became the backdrop to some big rave parties, and one track is dedicated to that time and that place called ‘Packard’ by Architeq.

so have a listen.

My notes, the film is a cautionary tale for the industrialised world, a pioneers map into the future, where the big 3 car makers in Detroit siphoned off cash for for their own fiefdoms, this was not thinking in human terms. Add in a policy from the very start of apartheid, so Detroit was dealing with a very potent mix of trouble.

In 1929 it was all going great 5.6 million cars produced, but due the Depression by 1932 that figure had dropped to 1.4 million. The fight for the unionisation of the car plants led to mass riots and the gunning down of union protestors.

In the desire to connect people in Detroit to the suburbs entire communities were ripped up, and became dislocated – GM played a primary role in dismantling the street railway system to make way for the freeways that started in the very heart of Detroit.

When the Edsel Ford (I-94) Expressway was under construction during the early 1950's initial plans called for the construction of four stairways to be built from Woodward Ave., leading to the Ford Expressway below. These stairways were part of a rapid transit plan where passengers could board DSR buses from expressway level bus boarding stations. Unfortunately, the end result became a "Stairway to Nowhere!

Returning to white vs. black tensions in a city racially divided, one observer makes the point “The police was like a white occupying army”. Whilst the Klu Klux Clan, made there presence felt, with mass demonstrations, and shall we say intimidation.

Kicking out the Jams

MC5 are described as protopunk – A Detroit band, as Wikipedia describes them, While “Ramblin’ Rose” and “Motor City is Burning” open with inflammatory rhetoric, it was the opening line to the title track that stirred up the most controversy. Vocalist Rob Tyner shouted, “And right now… right now… right now it’s time to… KICK OUT THE JAMS, MOTHERFUCKERS!” A clip shown in the BBC film, a prelude to what came next.

Police watch as chaos spills into the intersection of 12th and Clairmount in Detroit following a predawn police raid on a blind pig – an illegal drinking establishment. It is Sunday, July 23, 1967. When the violence ended five days later, 43 people had died. The racial unrest became known as the nation's worst.

In 1967 it all kicked off, “here on the corner of 12th and Clairmount, this is where it happened”. It being, the explosion of violence and rioting that brought national guard troops and tanks into Detroit and its Freeways – almost ironic you could say – ‘tanks on the freeway’. On guy remembers his experience as a child, ” I saw the National Guard going down the streets, buildings were burning and I thought it was the end of the world”.

The result of that rioting saw a division made between city and suburbs, as great as that of the great wall of china. Blacks in the city, whites in the suburbs. One guy asks the question of where the real war is happening – you can see his point.

We watch Detroit fall apart, a city built for 2 million people now has 800,000 living in it. And witness the first person stories of people that were born and raised in Detroit, taking us on their own personal journeys of remembrance. Many remember the blowing up of the Hudson Department store, as a day which will forever live in their collective memories.

Is there hope for a city left abandoned? We are left with hope, one of the biggest movements in the US today says the BBC programme is called Urban Pioneers. Detroit in this link, (well worth reading the post) seems to inspire people to come and reinvent the city,

It’s not just farmers, intellectuals and artists of various types are drawn to Detroit, both to study it and pursue ideas about the remaking of the city:
Detroit has achieved something unique. It has become the test case for all sorts of theories on urban decay and all sorts of promising ideas about reviving shrinking cities.

Urban Farming in Detroit

And

the city offers a much greater attraction for artists than $100 houses. Detroit right now is just this vast, enormous canvas where anything imaginable can be accomplished. From Tyree Guyton’s Heidelberg Project (think of a neighborhood covered in shoes and stuffed animals and you’re close) to Matthew Barney’s “Ancient Evenings” project (think Egyptian gods reincarnated as Ford Mustangs and you’re kind of close), local and international artists are already leveraging Detroit’s complex textures and landscapes to their own surreal ends.

In a way, a strange, new American dream can be found here, amid the crumbling, semi-majestic ruins of a half-century’s industrial decline. The good news is that, almost magically, dreamers are already showing up. Mitch and Gina have already been approached by some Germans who want to build a giant two-story-tall beehive. Mitch thinks he knows just the spot for it.

The crowd has the potential to be a larger funding source than anyone of us ever expected

Argues Paul Kedrosky in The Venture Capital Journal July 2010. The Journal tells the story of a start up called Diaspora, which seeking to raise $10k, produced a cheeky video on kickstarter that promoted their, “privacy-aware, personally controlled” social network that allows users to share data on their own terms. This is a key and growing area of debate – the data topic is indeed something I have a perspective on having sat on the board of a data analytics company for 3 years and co-authored a book on the subject.

When Facebook announced plans to change its policy on privacy – Diaspora, partly because it was connected up to the networked went vertical in its fundraising with equates to $200,000 from some 6,400 backer in a few weeks.

Beware the network for those that think only in Straight Lines is my advice. The Journal writes

For VCs and other professional investors who had previously dismissed crowd funding as a gimmick, Diaspora served as a wake-up call

And of course, the power is in the lowering of the barriers to participation – something that a Mr Obama recognised when he raised his mighty campaign war-chest not from the $2000 minimum that some candidates asked as the base price of admission, but the $5’s and the $10’s and the $20’s.

The article also mentions Profounder, which is a friends and family tight knit community funding business, founded by Jessica Jackley of Kiva. My interest was piqued by the presence of GrowVC – a company that I am personally involved with as an advisor, and was pleased to see has about 3,000 registered members who have committed more than $13 million to some 800 startups looking to raise between $10,000 and $1 million.

The power of the network means this, yesterday, an entrepreneur from Australia and a member of GrowVC reached out and I was happily advising his company to connect with others somewhere else in the world as I could see the benefit in the connection. I did not ask what is in it for me – I was just very happy to help.

And this is where we see the crisis of existing venture capital and funding. In the UK 6% of the UK population cannot access a bank account, as the banks will not touch these pariahs. Faisel Rahman who is not part of the crowdfunding story per se, but is in terms of grassroots,microfinancing has enabled through his company Fair Finance to Business 150 companies to get off the ground. I see a pattern, and as Jouko Ahvenainen argues that when you get poor deal flow, you stifle innovation, creativity and the opportunity for people to take control of their own lives.

Are people to be trusted?

It is a question that is explored in the article and this is where some see the wheels coming off – which ever way you look at this however, I have to ask the question, what exactly are we protecting? The biggest culprits of economic mis-mangement exist inside corporations, not on the pavement (sidewalk) asking for some spare change, or trying to make ends meet by doing 3 jobs, or having a dream that requires the type of funding some might leave as a ’small tip’ at a swanky restaurant.

The rules of microfinancing, and the way in which people bond themselves to things through narrative is important here – what our mass consumer world did to people was to teach them, they were not accountable to each other, and therefore there was no reason to behave accordingly. Whereas, when we are part of creating the story of something, here the raising of a new barn for business, we put something of ourselves into that barn, and consequently we become accountable to each other. We write trust into the fabric of the contract, and with greater transparency via the nature of how networks operate, when that trust is transgressed it will be clear to all.

The rise of these companies once again places great pressure on the legal frameworks that have been painstakingly built over a long period of time. In the same way that Napster and the whole file sharing thing placed great pressure on the legal frameworks of copyright. Once you see legal frameworks creak, you know things have changed.

And in the same way that Rupert Murdoch now rails against the networked world like a character in a Shakespearean tragedy, we will see I am sure something similar in the banking and finance industries – pooh-poohing the ridiculous nature of crowdfounding. I pity them.

And a tip for any chancellor, want to save money? Empower people to take control of their lives – from the likes of GrowVC, Fair Finance to Business, Kiva and profounder there are real lessons to be had.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7577137@N04/2923238790

The economist Herbert Simon, once wrote,

What information consumes is rather obvious. It consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention… The only factor becoming scarce in a world of abundance is human attention.

May I have your attention please? – Linda Stone – SIME 09 from Ayman van Bregt on Vimeo.

Someone comments on Linda’s presentation,

Technology sets me free and enslaves me. Look at us. You read this message and I get your partial attention. But don’t blame yourself. I wrote this message with partial attention too. My phone was ringing, the music was playing, my neighbor was commemorating a soccer game his team won. I guess. Another message. Tomorrow we have two meetings and some of my colleagues will be during the meeting answering mobile messages and emails. It is normal, and they don’t think it is disrespectful at all. Do you? I watch this video with my partial attention. A minute, a colleague is calling via MSN. Oh, shit, my mother is writing a blog and I can’t keep up with it. My friends are throwing a movie and food party next weekend. Another message. And my partial attention. That moment, our moment, and your partial attention. What is personal? What is private? What is intimate? When everything matters nothing matters anymore. Do you connect with me? Do I connect with you? Hey, you only add me and I add you back in a list of noise. We live in a really noisy world and we are trying to stay in the top of it, like a bunch of hyper-alert anxious multi-taskers who are constantly over stimulated. What is next? This noise is overwhelming. Can you keep up with it? Am I a better person? Are you?

What would be good she says, is “engaged attention”…

Do Tent in the background aka Ted in a tent

Last year I had the privilege to speak at The Do Lectures (my review here) (more Do stuff), and though I will not be able to make it this year, I wanted to share my enthusiasm for the 2010 event. There is a great speaker line up - which is designed to do what it says on the tin – to inspire people to go and do something with their lives.

Also I might add – The Do Lectures is an event that is cross disciplinary, and brings in my view an alternative view of how we make business, art, love and life in this networked world. And it is this diversity that makes the experience so rich and rewarding. It is the rule of No Straight Lines vs. the straight line one. As Proust said, the real voyage of discovery is not to seek new landscapes but to look upon the world with fresh eyes.

So from the future of publishing presented by Craig Mod, to John ‘Jay” Burton Rogers from Local Motors, Maggie Doyne building schools in Nepal – these are people as Ivan Illich says are leading a life of action. So unlike other events, if you want inspiration, and hang out with some great people, where speakers sit and have breakfast with you, lunch with you and dinner with you and chat, where you talk to others that have asked the question, ‘why?’ what comes next? What is the alternative, where you will be moved – then Do is the place for you. You can by tickets here. Don’t just stand there, Do something.

http://thedolectures.co.uk

Most government agencies are missing out on a core ingredient with their contests. Sunlight had a not-so-secret sauce in its contest strategy that ought to be shared

For us at Sunlight, the not-so-big secret was that it was never about the apps. While it worked out great that there were apps like Filibusted and Know-Thy-Congressman, the production of the apps were never our desired end results. A win for us wasn’t the awesomeness that is GovPulse.us, a great app built for Apps for America 2. It wasn’t even getting exposure to the technology community through the talks I got to give at places like Web2 Expo, and OSCon.

A win for our contest program was Jim Gilliam. Jim participated in our first apps contest with “Hello, Congress” that is now GuvLuv.org. Jim entered that contest, became an avid member of the Sunlight Labs Google Group got inspired, and built act.ly not out of any apps incentive, but because he was inspired. Jim’s now building a business around that work.

See— the purpose of our contests weren’t to generate apps, but to build community. It’s to create a sustainable community of support and connection for the people who are eager to help out. The contests were an incentive model to build a long-term community of developers.

Via Clay Johnson quoted from his blog and frequently tweeted @ #gov20

Enabling and empowering, not service deliverology with targets! It’s embedded sociability not social media. Its a bit like the Bill Bailey principle, Bill the comedian is asked how he comes up with his jokes – “I start with a laugh and work backwards, what do I need to do to create that amunt of laughter?” Exactamondo. This also got me thinking about the Dewey Winburne Awards – where people everyday people go the extra mile to help others via technology – I went to the awards and was deeply moved whilst I was in Austin Texas. If we expand on that, for me enabling is giving people the tools to do things they are passionate about. The idea that we have, and we have, professionalised all the services a community needs, but removes the community from, if they want to, engage, help, advise etc., as now all services are run by professional administrators – perhaps inevitable in complex mobile societies – but we have lost something along the way and we need to claim it back. When we remove people from creating everyday things we also remove context, when we remove context, we remove meaning, without meaning we are unable to engage. Its why so much modern politics leaves us cold and disinterested. But that said, as Richard Sennett wrote in his book The Craftsman, we want to re-engage with the spirit of the Enlightenment but on the terms that are relevant to our age. Thank you Dominic Campbell of FutureGov for giving me the heads up on this #gov20 event – fascinating

It was said that Alan Moore sounded like a character from a Guy Ritchie movie at his SXSW keynote. Skyping in from Over, England (a village outside Cambridge), Suz and Alan talk about our collective responsibility to leverage open social systems, global connectivity, consciousness and lightweight (green) business practices to the way we strategically create companies in the future. More on No Straight Lines. My SXSW presentation. Do Lecture (Video)

The thought sprang to mind when reading about the challenges governments face, not only with slow growth, but also as the Economist points out large deficits and unsustainable debts.

In the same Economist article John Kao founder of the Institute for Large Scale Innovation, argues that Innovation “holds out the tantalising prospect of sustaining economic growth on the cheap”.

The article continues,

The OECD encourages governments to rethink their policies in the light of globalisation and the information economy. It notes that ‘intangibles’ such as knowledge networks and open business models now make up much of the value of firms in rich countries and that many companies produce profitable innovations with little or no research in-house.

Over the last couple of years, whereas before I was interested in networked thinking, co-creation, the nature of human beings, the role of communication networks etc., from a purely marketing perspective – what has become apparent is that there is something more profound that is happening and is on offer as alternative solutions to how organisations are created and how they operate in the world. Something that John Seely Brown touches on in this lecture, and something I explore in my post about publishing and media in the 21st Century. Here David Rosenberg talks about sustainable construction innovation tools and technologies. There are a number of examples that are emergent which now demonstrate the possibility of this reconfiguration – which on the one hand come from such different industries, regions, countries but on the other shows a pattern, a language, which forms a wireframe, that could be useful to companies seeking to make sense of the networked world. Something I explained at this years sxsw conference and also at the Do Lectures, MIT and INSEAD. Working what comes next, what is Next Generation Enterprise is something that cannot be overlooked.

In Communities Dominate Brands, we always said the future of business was in the 4C’s of: [1] Commerce, [2] Culture, [3] Community, [4] Connectivity – connecting people up to, and, across eachother.

In Natural Capitalism, (a book that has a great deal going for it) the authors write,

Capitalism, as practised is a financially profitable, nonsustainable aberration in human development. What might be called “industrial capitalism” does not fully conform to its own accounting principals. It liquidates its capital and calls it income. It neglects to assign any value to the largest stocks of capital it employs – the natural resources and living systems, as well as the social and cultural systems that are the basis of human capital.

I give you Detroit…