Interdisciplinary Collaboration and the Economics of Change Project

(The following is a guest post from UW grad student, Kate Bonaparte, regarding The Economics of Change research project which seeks to map and measure the monetary benefits of ecosystem services for real estate investment in high performance green buildings. posted 4/23/12)


Why can’t we all just get along?
After five years of studying architecture at the University of Miami I learned the art of hand and computer drafting, design, methods of rendering and graphic communication, and even how to write with the stereotypical architectural block lettering. But the most surprising revelation I encountered upon my matriculation was that I had also learned to talk like an architect.

Progressive Self Destruction (Repost)

The following is an excerpt from my personal blog at endithinks.blogspot.com.

Progressive Self Destruction

A friend of mine over at Cognitive Policy Works is doing fantastic work around getting Progressives to have a unified strategic plan on how to bring about the change that is needed in our modern day politics. The problem that has been holding him and fellow Progressive organizations back has been a shocking amount of selfishness and close sightedness from fellow Progressives and an overwhelming sense of ownership of missions that deny other organizations that are closely related to find any purchase.

Progressives are good people who wish for social justice, equality and equal access to services and opportunities for all those who wish it. However, the organizations that claim this mission are often not practicing what they say is their beliefs. Numerous organizations still have an "us vs. them" attitude even towards fellow organizations whose missions align with their own. The ownership of missions almost always comes with a sense of exclusivity. The mission needs to be accomplished in this particular way by us and no other.

Read further at endithinks.blogspot.com

The Future We Deserve

Talk of "the future" often means speculation about future technologies. A lot of these are tremendously exciting—imagine what we could do with genuinely cheap energy!—but they won't be what brings us the wonderful future we surely all want. Everything we need for that is already out in the world, and while much of it was invented relatively recently, it's all been successfully piloted somewhere.

Brazil[1] and China[2] have shown us two radically different methods for bringing millions of people out of poverty. Finland, Korea and Japan know how to give every child an education that lets all have a chance to fully participate in society[3]. Costa Rica has shown how to stop deforestation[4], and China how to start replacing lost forests[5]. Germany has proven that places with no natural advantages can generate electricity without pollution[6], and build houses that barely need heating[7]. Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Tokyo and New York City all allow people to move around without destructive dependence on cars. Milwaukee is the home of a revolutionary farming technique[8] that grows incredible quantities of vegetables and fish from tiny plots of land, with minimal energy, year-round in a harsh climate.

I am bullish the technology we already have.

Yet I am quite pessimistic about what the future has in store for us, because we don't deserve the future we want. While the unfairness of life to individuals is a truism, as a species we'll get exactly the future we deserve because we will have made it for ourselves.

Consider a small example. This morning I stepped in dogshit on the way to work, because one of my neighbours couldn't be bothered to clean up after their precious poodle. As if the antisociality of this weren't obvious enough, round here we've been bombarded by messages[9] reminding us how destructive pet faeces are to the universally loved local waterway and its charismatic megafauna. Yet my neighbour couldn't even spare the few seconds to deal with it.

Dog turd is not the most important issue facing the world today, but it is a symptom. As a global society we know how to make the world better for all of us, instead of continuing to step in each others' dogs' shit, but doing so involves decision after decision in which individuals must concede a little self-interest for a greater externalised benefit. And if we can't persuade our neighbours to scoop poop, how will we ever persuade enough people to accept paying to educate the kids across town, or taking a little longer to get to work so people downwind don't have to breathe our cars' exhaust? Never mind the bigger problems that need action co-ordinated between countries that have never trusted each other....

When it becomes unthinkable to let our neighbours step in our dogs' shit; when we finally accept that we are our brothers' keepers; then we will deserve the future we want and we'll find we already know how to get it. We don't need a technological revolution. What we need is a moral revolution.

The above is a draft submission for The Future We Deserve, a collaboratively-written book about the future.  Feedback is very welcome.

Notes from Seattle Foundation Town Hall meeting – the rich get richer even in the nonprofit sector

Sustainable Seattle followed a face book invitation to The Seattle Foundation’s (SF) town hall meeting tonight. The foundation’s goals include doubling the amount given two fold by 2013, to expand the audience, and to share their knowledge. SF funds organizations, not projects. If you missed the meeting tonight, there are 3 workshops coming up- just check The Seattle Foundation website. But if you are small, new and have diverse funding- well the news is not so good.

Here are some of the changes: the grant making program changes include: reviewing applications by element with annual guidelines for each element; there are now staff element (one staff member for each of the 7 elements of the community framework- check the new website for who) with element committees (filled first by donors), no more 2 year eligibility rule, the review timeline is now longer, and the way SF works with donors and the types of grant- collaborative work, work that supports sectors.

What is not changing: the Healthy Community Framework created in 2006, addressing disparities, and guidance by the 7 elements and 3 strategies within each element.

Low priority grants include capital campaigns, emerging organizations (looking to tapping into what is already happening), small organizations with diverse revenue streams.

Really? This seems pretty outrageous that an organization with the objective of Healthy Communities will favor large single-source nonprofits. Are they looking to create the Coke and Pepsi of non-profits? Is this really healthy? Is this really funding for creating and sustaining community?

Compassionate Network: A Saturday dedicated to follow through on the Dali Lama’s call

The day began with Eric Liu announcing the adoption of the Seattle Compassionate City Proclamation. We were given handouts of the proclamation with the Seattle City council and Mayor McGinn’s signatures at the bottom. This puts Seattle on the map as the first, but by far nor last, city in the US to adopt this proclamation.

Rabbi Ted Falcon, Jamel Rahman, and Pastor Don Mackenzie spoke to spirituality’s transcendent force: awareness of our interconnected natures with the tremendous diversity that allows us to learn about others; a sense of deeper meaning and purpose from within and something bigger than the self, and connection and love for and from all - compassion.

Jon Remer, Executive Director of the Compassionate Action Network and Lora-Ellen McKinney, CAN communications director kicked on a 10-year campaign for the Compassionate Action Network. He cited Karen Armstrong as the visionary who began CAN with her wish for all cities in the world to live by the golden rule. He called on individuals to take action in their personals lives, as community members to contribute towards creating compassion in our city, and as leaders in other cities to start a compassionate Action network in their city. Richard Conlin and Marcelas Owens joined them to celebrate and read from the Seattle Compassionate City Proclamation.

Karen Armstrong , the creator of the Compassionate City Proclamation, congratulated Seattle for being the first city in the US to adopt the proclamation. Karen spoke of work as a religious historian and frustration in the lack of building a global community based on the golden rule. She remembered her wish made at TED for all to live by the golden rule. Her travels across the planet uncovered the same desire for compassionate. A compassionate city must look out- it is not enough to have compassion for just your city. Karen tells us, from her work with leaders across the globe hat other cities are watching Seattle, seeking to learn and to do as we do. She talked about the positive and the negative aspect of the golden rule. Always treat others as you would like them to treat you. Do not onto others what you would not like them to do unto you. Only if people take action in their own lives, will we arrive at a compassionate global community. Look into your own heart; discover what gives you pain, and refuse to inflict this pain on another. Creating a compassionate city starts at home& requires practice all-day and everyday: first as an individual, then as a community.

Seattle Should Be That City

Seattle is at a crossroads. Will Seattle rise to global prominence or lag behind other cities?

Last Saturday, March 13th, a group of Seattle residents put on a Building Day to address this question. The goal being to start building the tools needed to make Seattle a carbon neutral city. Over 70 members of the Seattle community participated, from government, nonprofits, entrepreneurs, business owners and many other groups.

The answer to the question depends upon our ability to stimulate innovation and promote cross-sector collaboration. Building day started the discussion about how to create innovation engines and tool building for a vibrant regional economy.

The "unconference" is part of a bigger project, called "Seattle's Innovation Engine" and is the brain child of Sustainable Seattle Board Member Joe Brewer. I along with a host of Seattle residents are involved with making "Seattle Innovators" a success.

Last Saturday's event was just the beginning. I want to share the details of the event, what's happening next and show you how to get involved.

Why a Building Day?

We called this event Building Day because we feel that Seattle has done enough planning and talking. We want to start making, doing, building, and inventing. In one word innovating towards neutral.

Our main purpose of this event is to start building the infrastructure needed to even think about making Seattle carbon neutral. Thus, this day was a chance to start thinking about what tools, systems and structures we need in place to start down the path of carbon neutrality.

Our outlook is this: we can do more together than we can do on our own. All the tools that were brainstormed and articulated by participants were at the core related to strengthening our ability to collaborate with one another. A movement map, that shows what projects are being undertaken and what people have skill sets useful to other is an example of one such tool being designed.

Here's a link to a detailed description of Building Day.

Taking It To The Next Level

Obviously one event and one day of tool building is not going to be enough to meet our goals. Building Day was just the first step. It's a catalyst to take collaboration to the next level.

Currently we are doing several things to harness the momentum of building day:

• Creating a web of online forums to build tools for collaboration;


• Writing an in-depth case study about Building Day to further develop our idea and strategy;


• Expanding our network to include an even broader set of skills and perspectives.

The forums will be useful for people that attended the event to continue collaboration, and be an opportunity for others to add much-needed input. We will continue to seek individuals from all sectors of our community to be involved with Seattle Innovators. This project needs as many diverse opinions as possible to succeed.

We Need You

We do not have all the answers and will never pretend to. Collaboration is what we believe in, which is why we want your knowledge and expertise. This project is just starting out and we are open to new ideas, new points of view and new criticism. If any of this fires you up or if you think you can lend a hand in any way please reach out.

We are looking for builders first of all. For example if you have experience starting businesses, building brand-new software, designing new systems or just enjoy making things from scratch, then you are a perfect fit.

You can get more information here

What We Learned

Learning is everything. Here are a couple things we learned from putting on this event.

Lessons learned:

1. Set a date and work towards it. Joe picked the date of March 13th before we knew exactly every detail of putting on such an event, or what exactly we wanted to accomplish. The time constraint forced the team to come together quickly and initiated action. We were forced to learn and figure things out. We did not have a luxury of large amounts of time, thus eliminating laziness.

2. Get attendees involved. Our event was not a typical conference. No speakers (except less than an hour dispersed through out the day by Joe and others), no panel discussions. We actively engaged attendees and discouraged passive participation. This was the key to the success of the day and energized participants, because they were actually participating.

3. Lack of resources is not an excuse. Do not let yourself or your organization trick yourselves into thinking that you lack resources to do a similar event. If you have the passion and will, take what you got and make something great.

What if we give it away?

I recently read a fascinating article about the Secret Society for Creative Philanthropy. You should read the whole article yourself, but in short it's a foundation in San Francisco that gives grantees $100, on the condition that they use it to do nice things for strangers. It made me wonder about a few things:

It can be surprisingly hard to give away money.
I suppose I shouldn't have been shocked by this--after all, the film based on this premise has been made at least 4 times (1921, 1935, 1945 & 1985)--but the reasons behind it are rather sad. It's all about trust and the complete lack of it between strangers in a city. Perhaps the people turning down free umbrellas in the rain really didn't want one, but I can't think of any other explanation bar suspicion for the people turning down dollar bills that were just being handed to them. It's understandable how this happens, when we live in a society where hardly anything is ever given without hope of something in return, and where almost everyone who approaches strangers in the street does want something, whether its signatures for a petition or money for their next meal. It becomes easier to just ignore everybody and retreat into a little bubble. No-one is a bad person because they do this, but as a whole the community of the city loses something when we get so stuck in mistrust. I always appreciate attempts to break this down a little, like the free hugs people or the Creative Philanthropy group.

Could we replicate this in Seattle?
$100 at a time is not a prohibitive budget - are there people in Seattle who might want to put a counterpart of this society together? If you think this is a great idea, why not try it yourself? And if someone gave you $100 to do nice things for strangers with, what would you do? I'd love to see some creative ideas in the comments.

What can Sustainable Seattle give away?
Unfortunately we have no spare money whatsoever. In fact we're entirely volunteer run while we try to secure stable funding, so one thing that the individuals who make up our organization have been giving away is our time and skills: 1500 hours so far this year. But as an organization, we do have some resources - we have a reputation, a website, a mailing list and a network of contacts. The great thing about resources like this is that we can give of them without diminishing them in any way, so we can keep doing it (a very simple kind of sustainability) and here are some of the ways we do that:

• Featuring other groups' work on this blog (please contact us if you'd like to be featured!)
• Adding other groups' listings to our advertising materials; for instance the STARs program mailshot that's going out tomorrow will include links to some interesting classes at Southside Commons.
• Referring people to the right place; for instance a prospective volunteer came to our office today, and when he described his interests it became clear that Northwest SEED are a much better fit, so we sent him their way (conveniently, up a few stories in the same building).

And finally, what can you give away?
Very few people have spare money these days, but if you think about everything you do have--time, contacts, skills, ideas--I bet every single person who reads this post has something they can give away, at almost no cost to yourself but great benefit to someone else. Take up the challenge, and let us know what you gave away in the comments.

Dynamic Governance Training

Located in the heart of Fremont, Dragonfly Holistic Healing's goal is to provide a space where community medicine takes place to foster creative and holistic approaches to individual and community wellness.

What is Dynamic Governance?

Dynamic Governance, also known as Sociocracy, is a cutting edge system of running organizations that uses systems theory and self-organizing principles from chaos theory.

Dynamic Governance maximizes efficiency and equality. It has been adopted by many communities, businesses and non-profits. Developed in Holland, spreading globally, it is in use in organizations in Europe, Brazil, India, Australia, U.S., and Canada.

Organizations and communities using this model are flexible, efficient, resilient, and sustainable.

Feb 27-28 Facilitation Workshop

with John Buck

John Buck is the author of 'We the People: Consenting to a Deeper Democracy' and the foremost U.S. expert on DG.

In this weekend workshop you will learn how to creatively structure and lead your business, organization or community with the following innovative techniques:

• Inspire participation through equality, inclusion, effectiveness and fun
• Achieve complete "Buy-in" through the process of consent
• Proven governance method providing an alternative to "majority rule"
• Groups attending together will have the opportunity on the second day to apply these techniques to their own topics.

Where and When


Dragonfly Holistic Healing
760 N 34th Street
Seattle, Washington 98103

To Register:
www.governancealive.com
contact@governancealive.com
800-870-2092

Journalism that Matters part three

On Saturday the conference was in full swing and the sessions that were offered were varied and relevant to journalism and to sustainability. The session I choose was not even a choice, but a directive. The session hosted by Michell Ferrier was on the connections and opportunities between local food and journalism. Anything that has food in the title sure is persuasive.

The group was diverse with journalists, professors, new media entrepreneurs, self described citizens, students and techies. The conversation veered from the local food industry into the heart of journalism and its connection to a well informed and healthy public.

The local food phenomenon has made many people aware of the positive benefits to eating local. The cost of transportation, inefficient packaging and the damage to the health and taste of food transported from all corners of the earth have brought the idea of sustainable living from the theoretical to the dinner plate. Local food not only benefits the minds and bodies of those who eat it, but also helps the local community become more strengthened as money stays in the community instead of flowing out of town, or out of state.

The session focused on the use of food and local producers of food and the concept of engagement in the community. Food as a gathering apparatus is well known, and no major human event takes place without someone snacking on pretzels in the background. The session touched upon the need for communities to have their stories told and the need for media to cover what is happening on the local level.

One suggestion that was given was to use Festivals that celebrated the local community's speciality. Festivals could be used as a gathering of social import as well as a celebration of all things local. One participant gave the idea of using Salmon as the focal point for Pacific Northwest Festivals.

After the session was over I stayed to talk about what Sustainable Seattle is planning for this year and I was even interviewed for the Journalism that Matters live stream about how journalism and healthy communities are inextricably linked. Sustainable Seattle also made some connections to local media sources and possible collaborative efforts may be the fruit of this labor.

Journalism that Matters, part two

Notes from the Journalism that Matters Conference breakout hosted by The Daily of University of Washington.

Eeeek. It was so hard to pick a session. The sessions were created by attendees who had a desire to host sessions, so totally on-topic…..and so desirable! Sustainable Seattle attended the session focusing on respect in communications. We attended with Ashoka/Youth Venture (an organization that creates continuous chain of empathy for youth 12-20, empathy in action, and a change maker campus program, and changemakers.com where there is a local and global) and WA Farm worker Housing Trust (a nonprofit that does policy and advocacy to ensure farm workers have a safe place by working with all the stakeholders to find common ground, a strategy that is working with state legislature!).

Our session host, Kristin Millis, posed the notion if journalists listen and respect the public, readers, and those we write stories about, news and media entities would be more trusted and would stay in business.

• · All stories are newsworthy: What ever anyone has to say, has value to them, so that individual should be treated with respect. If you can’t provide them coverage, offer them resources.
• · There is always a story: There is always truth in a story: Stop, listen, ask, find out more, take the time to find out more. Take the time to listen.

With a journalist at the table with three nonprofit representatives, we adapted these lessons to our efforts: Nonprofits tell stories too- we need to ensure the stories we tell are accurate to our community, and we can do this by listening, and by telling the stories that fulfill our goals and provide information for better decisions (by nourishing people and encouraging action) and that provide a context – the good, the norm and the bad – not just the bad. Nonprofits also are conduits for changing behavior. Collaborating with others in getting the message out is a great way to get the message out, and is cost effective- in many ways! Collaborating in communicating also allow the nonprofit and all to get a better idea of the story.

Journalism is funded by advertisers. So- we asked about the proof in the pudding: As the UW Daily focused on respect, it took leaps and bounds in national advertising and has done well comparatively in the economic times, with drops about half as much as others. Local advertising composition changed, with overall growth in local advertising. New room costs dropped because staff became more effective at their jobs.

Tips for non-profits -How to sell a story: Come into a newsroom and talk to someone. Don’t make an appointment and show up in the mornings or early afternoons. Try to find a reporter and build rapport. When you send a press release, don’t make it look like a press release- use real working, from the heart. Give the journalist something to write about. Tell the journalist what the nutgraph is (what is the heart of it? What is the story about? What is the most important thing) Give the journalist a list people and their contact information and why that person is a good person to talk to. Send photos that connect the journalist to the story. Give the other side of the story- even a hint – of who and what that story is. Who have you talked to? Let us know who.