(How) can Web 2.0 help save the human race?

Via YouTube, via Twitter, via WordPress… to you.

Participation culture, creativity & social change – by Prof David Gauntlett (Age: 37), Professor of Media and Communications, at University of Westminster, UK.

Reduce carbon emissions by 90% by 2030 (or sooner)? How are we going to do that!!? David Gauntlett says, through encouraging more creativity in education and everyday life.

By moving from a “sit back and be told culture” (ie. school) to a “making and doing / connection” culture (assisted by web 2.0 participation and mass creativity).

Ivan Illich is yet again quoted (why do I so love defrocked catholic priests) and our friends at School of Everything will already know David I’m sure.

Richard Sennett’s wonderful book The Craftsman is also referenced.

I’m with them all the way…

But will we have the guts to offer our Bea (8) the South Down’s Learning Centre rather than mainstream factory-style high school, or maybe the local high is not as bad as it might seem…

Ahh – the personal and the political. But back to packing… we’ve got some carbon to burn (sigh). Train next time…

More from David Gauntlett here and here.

More great resources for non profits

Check out the Non-profit Blog Exchange.

See previous resources detailed here.

You Think, I Think, We Think (Better) Together

Been reading reviews about Charles Leadbetter’s book We Think all over the place. Got to get my hands on a copy sooon (come on Rosie, hand it over).

If anyone is trying to get their heads around Web 2.0, social media, new paradigm thinking and all that claptrap – get a look at this. Lovely simple animation. I’m going to use it at the beginning of all my courses. Free event coming up soon to give people a taste of it all. Watch this space.

Guardian review here (including Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky) which also looks reeal good.

Shame The Big Issue review isn’t available online. A different and very valid take on things.

No wonder most journalist’s I meet are annoyed with blogging and What’s Going On with we-think.

No wonder I am compelled to work in and support this space.

So glad Rosie Sherry is in it with me (thanks for the video).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiP79vYsfbo&hl=en]

Brighton Posse Serving Healthy Greens – But Will It Be In Time?

What a great group of people there were at the Striding Out Ethical Pitch event last night, out at the end of the bitterly cold Brighton Pier.

After a brief catch up with Thea Allison from B&H Business Community Partnerships, I was co-opted onto the panel at the last minute to help four passionate organisations sharpen their focus. Without wanting to sound too much like a beauty queen, I honestly felt I had as much to learn from everyone there as they did from me. Humbling to say the least.

Some highlights….

Ethical Weddings – impressed with the potential of their niche politically and culturally. The environmental impact of the average wedding can be huge. The opportunity to have a couple and their friends ritualise their commitment to core human/eco values and each other is a catalyst for great things to happen. I’m a great believer in weddings, and was thoroughly chuffed by how well they are weaving their magic and owning their niche. Ranking extremely well with Google (the blog and dot com would be helping). Great to hear they will be doing more to bring their community together and help them help each other. Let’s see if Ning works for them.

Farm Fresh Express – again, great knowledge about the ethical complexity of their sector. No green wash here. Looking forward to seeing if they can develop a franchise model and start embracing the power of blogging to attract funders, customers and stimulate vibrant conversations about food miles, purity, sovereignty, community resilience, slow food and all the issues that matter. Whichever climate scenario you subscribe to, how we eat and what we eat is a core issue to be dealing with.

Magpie / Shabitat - for their anarchic, shambolic, no-compromise, co-operative cool. Let’s see if they can hang on to it, and take their octopus to the next level.

EcoEvents – Dear Sam. What a woman. Like weddings and eating together, events are another time we come together and share conversations, hopefully positive ones. Plus the consumption of energy to get people their, feed, water and entertain them is massive. Want to see EcoEvents do really well. They have everything it takes. Come the rebranding and refocus onto great events first (which they no doubt can do – can’t wait to refer people to them), green BS8901 standard stuff second – they will be flying. Another dot com ranking well for key search. Well done on that front too.

Main thing is, we can’t shop our way out of global warming. Wish I had kept my big mouth shut and let brainy young futurist Hugh Knowles from Forum for the Future talk more from the panel. Wish he had spelt out in no uncertain terms that their ain’t no time for weighing up the benefits of frilly organic knickers – bleached or unbleached right now.

During a sideways conversation his call to arms hit home and I’m off to start reading Climate Code Red. Hugh reckons the IPCC (Nobel Laureatte Al Gore and Co) are being conservative.

Sadly, I think I agree with him.

Climate Emergency

- Raise the Alarm

Maybe the most important thing for ethical enterprises to be doing right now – other than being fully future aware in how they operate and contribute – is to raise the alarm among their sensitized stakeholders by blogging up the Code Red conversation. We wouldn’t want them to be shunned by those wanting to hide in the bunker. They need to read the signs and focus on the positives, helping us see ourselves as capable of taking on the enormous challenges we are all facing right now in coming back from the brink of destruction.

It needs to be handled sensitively. But without a livable climate, there might not be weddings or enough food to go around. We might not even be here.

Don’t shoot the messenger, bury your head in the sand or blame someone else. Got informed, and start raising the alarm.

“There is an urgent need to reconceive the issue we face as a sustainability emergency, that takes us beyond the politics of failure-inducing compromise. The feasibility of rapid transitions is well established historically.

“We now need to “think the unthinkable”, because the sustainability emergency is now not so much a radical idea as simply an indispensable course of action if we are to return to a safe-climate planet.”

More at… Climate Code Red.

More at Al Gore’s site here.

And here.

Where’s Winston when we need him.