A Motif of Open Social Transformation

I heard it first in 1998, from Meg Wheatley. And it’s really simple: “Participate, react, create, connect.”

Now twelve years later Meg writes, “I hold in my heart the vision of what’s possible if we could stop screaming accusations across our huge divides, if we could quiet down long enough to realize that, with the Gulf tragedy, nobody knows what to do, we’re in new territory, we’re lost.”

With closing concern, “I don’t think we have a choice here. We have to come together to find what’s needed for the Gulf, its people, and all its living beings. But will we make this choice? I have no idea.”

So then, a Sparking Agent: Geoff Livingston

From that simple motif–participate, react, create, connect–comes an idea, “As a society, we continue to experience great anger about this situation. While BP has taken responsibility, it’s clear they cannot resolve the matter. We cannot wait for corporations or the government to act. It’s been almost two months and the crisis is deepening.

“We will create a Citizen Effect: Find local charities to pair with a national fundraising drive and help fishermen to find a sustainable, environmentally friendly future. This would be the best outcome from the oil spill.”

Participate, react, create, connect: What to Expect on Our Gulf Mission

From Fractal Brand, to Scale: TEDxOilSpill

We have the template. We have the technology. Geoff and colleagues Beth Kanter and Kami Watson Huyse at Zoetica, masters of socionetics, use social technology for social good, appropriately leveraging personal networks, building capacity to scale. If Geoff, working with Citizen Effect’s May Yu and Dan Morrison is one brand of open leadership, who might become another? And, to what scale?

Of the thought leaders speaking at TEDxOilSpill on Monday, l ask:

How can we – ordinary people, citizen scientists, citizen journalists – participate, react, create, and connect in meaningful ways to mitigate the crisis in the Gulf, and to explore alternative energy futures?

Open leadership. It’s here, now. Choose an idea :)

Narrowcasting: One fish at a time

In the context of social media, social community,

What’s your Measure of Effectiveness?

For example, consider this gentleman’s agreement, “We’re always supposed to judge ourselves by the quality of the conversations we have, rather than the sheer volume of our reach.”

Hmmm… Politically correct and a wonderful romantic notion. Works for me. I can appreciate large samples of data for critical applications. But when I’m evaluating the effectiveness of my social strategy, I’m one of those folks who decouples quality from quantity.

It’s easier for me to be social in a small group, rather than a large one; discover real identities, build real relationships. As Jeff Jarvis knows, one feeds the other.

Like the fisherman in the photo, I’m one guy. I can’t fish the whole stream. But I know where to cast. Actionable data and how to make use of it: When I catch a fish, that moment teaches me how to catch another.

My dumbwaiter pitch, the one word describing my social media reach? Fishing ;)

The bread of life, matrix

2006, recalling context from the Annual High Performance Computing and Communications Conference:
Main Street Supercomputing: The Convergence of HPC and Grid Computing

Cloud computing…

High performance computing, grid computing…

Grid of grids, a matrix.

Contextualizing conversation. Coming soon.

Grid

High performance computing: the grid, or perhaps a grid of grids; a matrix, running in the cloud.

The matrix, coming soon.

Connecting Counterpartners

Doctors Without Borders

Haiti: HOWTO set up a plug-and-play hospital – Doctors Without Border

Exit Strategy

JACMEL, Haiti — Haiti has approved plans for more than a dozen sprawling tent cities in and around Port-au-Prince, the first step in an epic relocation effort that could reshape the country as up to one million people displaced by the earthquake find new places to live.

Full text

Responsibility Grid for Haiti

It was an earthquake. A really big one. Turns out the reaction and response reaches every corner of the globe. Perturbative, this event has challenged the dimensions of security, of rules sets, of money, of infrastructure, and of resources; and the world is challenged to provide strategic flows of security, aid, money, the energy to run the country, the resettling of people.

Last week I felt that “What the world community does now, defines the dominant logic and emotion of “globalization.” At the very least “the world community response will be illustrative of the nature of the huge complex process of globalization.”

The affirmative burden of responsibility

In Haiti, I believe we are witnessing a full spectrum response, working across domains and layers of responsibility. We are prepared; but we come on the fly, as well, strategically self-organizing. Yet, as good as we do now, the questions are coming: Who should do what? And when? And how?

Going forward, What will be the dominant logic and emotion of mutually assured dependence? Where and with whom will we locate the affirmative burden of responsibility?

The following excerpts illustrate my observations of the last week. Each is linked to a full text post.

Thursday, January 14, 2010, at 5:40

Triage in Haiti

… What’s next?

To what will you commit?

For how long?

Just saying.

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Friday, January 15, 2010, at 9:30 pm

Layers

Perturbating the order of civilization

Doctors are on the way

After the aid rushes in

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Saturday, January 16, 2010, at 6:25 pm

Pocket Aces

Why why we make mistakes and the power of regret:

“If we are going to err at something, we would rather err by failing to act.”

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Sunday, January 17, 2010, at 3:06 pm

collaborate

The Crisis in Haiti

Initial Response

Sense and Structure

Global is Local, Strategically Speaking

Resilience, Revitalization

Social Networking: Enabling Resilience

Participate, React, Create, Connect

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Tuesday, January 19, 2010, at 4:04 am

Unintended Consequences by disownedlight

Earthquakes make bad laws

Immigrants and refugees: Who gets chosen?

A difficult question

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Tuesday, January 19, 2010, at 4:02 pm

Holocaust Memorial in Berlin

Let history show

When lessons are learned

The value of retrospect

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Tuesday, January 19, 2010, at 6:57 pm

Earthquake activity 13-19 January 2010

Who knew?

Earthquakes TW3: That was the week that was

Who you gonna call?

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Wednesday, January 20, 2010, at 10:40 pm

Disaster Accountability Project

Observers “R” Us

How to participate

Connect via Twitter and Facebook

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Thursday, January 21, 2010, at 9:53 am

An app for that

Regeneration

The poetic hymn

Underneath the hood

Code name: The Enterra

An app for that

The poetic hymn

“There’s an app for that.”

Underneath the hood

[black box matrix] + [secret sauce] = [recombinator], par excellence)

Code name: The Enterra

Prior art: An iPhone app, social networking recombinator.

Earthquake activity 13-19 January 2010

Like so many who live in the popular culture and subcultures called America, unless network news, blogging journalists, or my Twitter stream calls attention, I’m unlikely to know of ground shaking events beyond shout outs from The Algorithmic Authority. However, once I know what I’m looking for–let’s say, “earthquake reports global“–then Google’s pretty handy.

Earthquakes TW3: That was the week that was

Turns out, Port-au-Prince, Haiti is not the only place experiencing seismic activity. Check out Edinburgh Earth Observatory’s Earthquake Locator: Mapping Interface. Evidently, there may be more coming to the disaster management and humanitarian relief efforts, sooner than we appreciate.

Who you gonna call?

Me? May I suggest the folks at the Center for Excellence, Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance?

collaborate

“When disaster strikes the second disaster that looms is the efficiency and impact of the three R’s – Response, Recovery and Reconstruction. As seen by the poor response by FEMA after Hurricane Katrina, lives are lost when a coordinated effort is not conducted. In a developing country like Haiti the biggest danger is the effects of bad post disaster planning and construction.” – Cameron Sinclair, Haiti Quake: What Next?

Initial Response

“President Obama dispatched military relief vessels and warships to stand off the Haitian coast, pledging “the deep condolences and unwavering support of the American people.” Capitals from Brasilia to Beijing quickly put together aid packages and organized search missions in Haiti, where thousands of foreign residents remained unaccounted for. Within a fearful Haitian diaspora following the tragedy through grim television images, relatives scoured the Internet and taxed the already weak communications links to the country in search of information about their loved ones.” -Mary Beth Sheridan, William Branigin and Scott Wilson, Washington Post

Sense and Structure

“As with most every other similar event, the most important thing is sense and structure in the recovery. Clearly building codes are inadequate – get some Bay Area, and/or Japanese (or similar Quake Prone Zone) Architects and construction people in there, asap. to help guide at least the reconstruction of core infrastructure (hospitals etc).” – Peter Quodling, comment to “Another job for the SysAdmin”

Global is Local, Strategically Speaking

“[ ] perhaps the most inspiring dimension to the delivery of humanitarian assistance relates to the ever-widening sense of ownership by stakeholders. Everyone has the right to be involved in humanitarian response, irrespective of where it takes place: the individual donor, our neighbors, colleagues and friends. Their ability to identify and give to a philanthropic agency, a country, or a program has been widely enhanced in recent years through the proliferation of agencies and access to information.
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“The lessons we have applied have resulted in more effective humanitarian responses, but priority areas of concern must still be addressed. This final section will examine some of those and pose critical questions. Above all, we need to consider how to absorb diverse actors working together. We are all fond and capable of working in our own environments, but how good are we at actually collaborating, listening to each other, and finding ways to learn from each other?
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“A central issue in today’s emergencies is a consideration of an integrated approach, which combines political, military, social and economic activities. Undoubtedly, such approaches have, at face value, a much stronger chance of being effective as all interventions can be linked and reinforce each other.”

- Geoff Loane, The Evolving Humanitarianism

Resilience, Revitalization

Start with this question, “When you look at Haiti, and after the triage is done, and the people who need immediate medical aid get whatever they can, what ought we to do down there?

“[ ] it’s really getting beyond just the immediate recovery, and thinking about what’s going to make that place resilient, able to handle this kind of disruption again and again, because Port-au-Prince sits right along that fault line. We know it’s going to happen.
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“[Resilience], you’ve got to understand what that kind of revitalization is. You’re not rebuilding what was there before. You’re not restoring it back to whatever pristine quality it had before the disaster. You’re creating in effect social revolution, because you’re going to connect them up to the outside world and make the place attractive enough that people are going to come there with money and create connectivity.
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“The whole key is getting past the State Department, getting past USAID, getting past the non-governmentals, private voluntaries, the aid groups, getting to the point where people want to bring money there. And in some ways, you know, the tabula rasa sort of environment that Port-Au-Prince now faces does give them some opportunities amidst this horrific tragedy. I mean, there’s going to have to be everything rebuilt. So if you have that chance to rebuild, why not rebuild it in a way that makes it more resilient, and makes it attractive to outside investors.
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The question is asked,

“[ ] is there a person [ ] who, you know, if the President was looking around for someone to talk to, someone that stands up in your mind?

“TPMB: Absolutely, [ John F. Goodman, the Director of the Center for Excellence in Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance (COE) ]. General Goodman, a retired three-star, does a lot of work, does a lot of appearances. I just spent the last couple of days with him in Washington discussing this subject, because they’re trying to move on it as quickly as possible.” – snips from Thomas P.M. Barnett’s long view of how to revitalize Haiti

Social Networking: Enabling Resilience

Globalization. Humanitarianism. SysAdmin. Social Networking. The New Humanity. I don’t know what to call it, but, as Stella Terrill Mann muses, “Whatever God’s dream about man may be, it seems certain it cannot come true unless humanity cooperates.”

“As the horror of the earthquake in Haiti reverberates around the world, a number of intrepid locals, foreign reporters, and aid workers are tweeting from on the ground. Some are working to gather aid and funds, while others are simply trying to show the world what’s happening in Haiti. Still others are reporting on incidents in specific locations, in the hopes of assuaging the concerns of loved ones abroad (as of yet, very little information on those injured and dead has been released online).” – Jillian C. York, Haiti: Tweets from the ground

“Perturbating the order of civilization

“Beneath Nature’s ground, an earthquake in Haiti.
One so devastating, it shocks Culture into chaos;
local Governance has no assembly.
With its Infrastructure crushed,
there is no capacity for Commerce;
and Fashion has no market.

“Doctors are on the way, as is food and water. But who will administer the system? Who will provide physical security so medics can perform, food can be distributed? Who will provide governance, transparent rules, influencing this society to be civil? Who will provide money, for emergency funding and what comes after? Who will put together an infrastructure, supporting all that it takes for Haiti to manage and sustain its resources?

“After the aid rushes in, after the relief effort stabilizes, who will be the SysAdmin for Haiti, then? Time and responsibility: It’s so much more than the U.S. Marines and rinse, lather, repeat.” – Haiti: If not (long)now, then when?

Participate, React, Create, Connect

The earthquake in Haiti is an extraordinary challenge, and opportunity as well, for the global community. As I wondered on Twitter, earlier in the week, #Haiti: exodus or genesis? What the world community does now, defines the dominant logic and emotion of “globalization.”

The best action to take now is to bring forth sense and structure to the work in Haiti. That starts by asking, “How can we help?” – reply from @ZoeticaMedia