Robert Paterson's Weblog

Voice of good sense from Michigan - Bigger is not better

They cannot save us - only we can save ourselves - how refreshing to hear a politician say this

Signs of the newly engaged citizen - public TV shows the way

Just as President Elect Obama prepares to access his network to help him engage the nation directly, and by the way get around the lobby owned "Hill", I see this statement of intent by Nebraska Public TV - NET.

NET is setting up a whole new approach to programming - programming that is directly attuned to how the citizens of Nebraska live. If the new President is building his citizen network - so is Public TV. I can see how these might connect to each other as well and how each State might connect to the other states.

For the issues are both intensely local while at the same time statewide and national. In fact they are global. It's ironic, that the more we look local, the more we see the larger picture of the planet.

I am so excited, the new community world is coming into view and into reality so quickly.

This will be a context for the Boyd PEI Conference Here is the NET statement in full - it's worth seeing:

N ET comprises NET Television, NET Radio, NET Foundations, Learning Services and Technology Services. The overall mission of NET is to connect Nebraska with stories and events that challenge and inspire every Nebraskan. Corporate support is vital for local programming initiatives. Along with performing a valuable community service, NET Television program underwriters enjoy effective television media exposure.

WHAT IS NEBRASKA CONNECTS?

Families, individuals, businesses and communities are challenged. Rural and urban areas face economic and social change. Important national and international events have far-reaching local consequences. While there are countless information sources, nowhere is there an accessible forum to develop public discourse, relate crucial information and encourage community involvement specifically for Nebraskans.

Until now.

NET is creating an exciting, new series of programs and events to address a wide range of public service topics. This is inspired programming made by Nebraskans, for Nebraskans, about Nebraskans. NET, with its established statewide networks, is uniquely positioned to provide leadership in engaging audiences on these important topics.

In this first year of Nebraska Connects production, NET plans to produce new television and radio programs each month. Programming will originate from Nebraska communities through our remote production facilities and in our Lincoln studios.

Citizens will become engaged through a variety of interactive means: telephone, internet, and face-to-face.

• Expert panelists will be brought together for live call-in shows.
• Town hall meetings will offer a forum for a free exchange of ideas among a group of people.
• Through NET's Web site, referral links will lead the audience to information resources and help and enable the audience to participate by submitting questions and comments via email.

Programs will relate an issue and its effect on Nebraska and its citizens. Programs currently in development include:

Personal finances Aging population Homeland security Family violence Foreign trade

Personal taxes Water resource conflicts Planning for college Crime and justice Immigration

National PBS programs relevant to the Nebraska Connects topics will also serve to enhance local programming and offer a national perspective.

Hyperlocal - Saving the world

One of the powerful trends that I am witnessing is the growing recognition in Public radio and TV that There is a huge opportunity for public media to secure a viable future by serving the hyper local community. I will post more later about what I have seen and heard about how this can be done for very little money. Please take it on faith for now that the how is now known.

The big idea is that in a hyper linked global world - the hyper local becomes the most important place. If the 20th century was about nationalism and the nation statee. The 21st will have to be about a shift in power back to the small local community.

I had a coffee with John Robb yesterday and had an aha moment about why this might be true.

As the world becomes more connected, it becomes more unstable and more vulnerable to even small shocks. Bird flu can sweep the world. Taking down part of the grid can turn off all the lights. Ecoli in spinach affects all spinach etc. In a global world, the planet becomes like and ocean to a hurricane. It is so flat that the hurricane builds in force.

It is only resilient community that can provide enougth friction to slow the gale force winds down.

What I learned from John was that in this hyper linked world, the only dampener can be a resilient small community. New Orleans is an example of a community that is not resilient. It looks outside for help. There is no help outside.

A resilient copmmunity looks to itself as does a resilient person. A resilient person does not blame others. She owns her own life. So too a community. Communities have given up control and their taxes to organizations that cannot care or help.   

Resilience is achieved by taking these important things back. On PEI, we can develop local food security, local energy, we can set up barriers to movement. We can focus on our own kids and our own health and so on. For is health really about drugs or is it about a more connected life? Is education all bout schools or is it about a more connected family and community? Is politics all about the money needed to buy spots on the mass media or can it be about allowing the public to have a voice.

So how can communities become resilient?

Resilient communities need help to take their power back. They have been conditioned to be helpless and to rely on institutions that serve only themselves.

Public radio and TV can be the vital force in this context to help small communities work together to restore this resilience.

So by saving the hyper local community, we begin to save the world

Hope is not lost - Radio and TV and Everything

Hope is not lost - I felt a huge movement yesterday afternoon.

The CEO part of the IMA 2007 conference closed last evening with a remarkably frank discussion of what we all have to do to make progress. I am now much more hopeful that the "System" will organize to do the work.

There was solid agreement in the room that progress was too slow and that only if a group of people were taken off their day job and given the task of leading the work, would Public Media keep its relevance, survive and most importantly - thrive.

I felt an implicit contract being signed in public as all the key leaders in the system in effect made a promise in public to change up the gears and to organize for success.

I was especially moved by a some who spoke who talked about their own personal motives. Their hope that their children could live in a free, democratic and healthy place. Their commitment to civic society and to democracy. Their commitment to having their people's story told.

For me, motive and hope is the key to change. As Alan Deutschman shows us in Change or Die, being told you are going to die - the substance of much of what we heard in the last 2 days - is not the great activator for change that we think it may be. 90% of seriously at risk patients do not act on their doctor's advice.

So why don't we change, even if we know that if we don't we will die? To make a big change - to think web versus terrestrial, to think collaboration versus me alone -  often means to change our identity. If our identity and our personal story is attached to these things, then in 90% of the time we would rather die than change the identity that we had come to rely on.  We martyr ourselves for this identity. This is what is the real barrier.

What Alan reminds us, is that to make deep change - to acknowledge that the web will supplant all the work of our lives - that we are not under attack from our peers that we have to work with each other in public media - we have to have Hope.

We have to have a process that works with this fear of changing our identity. Such a process has to have the following elements. We have to have a mission that pulls us forward. We have to to have peers that believe in us - even when at first we don't believe ourselves. Think AA. We have to experience the early wins so that we can feel that the new is better than the old. Not read about why it should be better but feel why it is and early. We have to keep experiencing the new way of experiencing the world for years. For at least 3 years. Only then can we re frame our identity.

Ideas do not change us. Only experience changes us. Changing experience has to be deep and repetitive to change the habits of a career.

This is what I see as the mission of the group when it is formed. It will have to provide

• A compelling mission - hope and a call that activates our hearts and our courage and that calls millions of Americans to help not just of us in the system. My sense is that we know what this  and I will post later on what I think it must be
• Changing positive action - people is the system have to see parts of the new that are better and then they have to experience this for themselves
• Support - people have to have the support of their peers - constant and loving support of others who have made and are making the same struggle
• The process has to take time - we are changing habits. Only a new habit can change an old one. It will take about 3 years to ingrain the new
• Only then can we inhabit a new word.

More later on the mission and the pull

Relationships - Where do we live?

Here is a wonder producing show that reveals the relationships that we have with everything

Steve Ballmer on Community

In today's Times - an interview with Steve Ballmer that ended like this: -

Q. What do you see as the most significant changes in how people use software?

I think one pervasive change is the increasing importance of community. That will come in different forms, with different age groups of people and it will change as the technology evolves. But the notion of multiple people interacting on things — that will forever continue. That’s different today, and we’re going to see those differences build. You see it in a variety of ways now, in social networking sites, in the way people collaborate at work, and in ad hoc collaboration over the Internet. You see it in things like Xbox Live, the way we let people come together and have community entertainment experiences. And you’ll see that in TV and video. It’s not like the future of entertainment has been determined. But it’s a big deal.

Community is not a feature of where we are going it is a centrality. All the growth will come from design that takes this new reality to heart. Community is also not ranting on message boards but happens best inside a Trusted Space where there an ecosystem for good behaviour.

Google - You Tube - Why?

From the New York Times today -

“YouTube figured out what Google and Yahoo and Microsoft and all the others in the marketplace didn’t,” she said. “It’s not about the video. It’s about creating a community around the video.”

Complexity - Why Heroes can't cut it

Can we rely on heroic leadership to get us into the future?

Do you know what will happen to Public Radio or TV in 2 years? What about 5 years. Hey what about 6 months?

Of course you don't and nor do I - knowing what will happen when all the givens have been removed and a new system has not fully evolved is impossible. Why because the situation is Complex. There are too many items in motion. The future is unknowable. Much of life was knowable until recently.

If you were the head of a major network in 1985 could you have looked ahead into the future with some certainty ? I think so. While the future was Complicated - you could apply your engineering skills to find a way. Much of what was your environment was stable and was only changing by degree. Most of what you had to deal with lived inside a known framework where interactions were predictable. You could see cause and effect. Everything was cast in engineering terms.

If you are a programmer and you have a show to put on tonight are you really concerned about how you will do this? I doubt it. While for a newbie it like me it would be impossible, for an experienced person like yourself it would be Simple. Even your problems are known and predictable.

Where am I going? I want to show you that it is not smart to use skills honed for the Simple and for the Complicated to find answers to Complex problems.

Our problem in making sense of today when all is complex is that for many of us, these are the only skills we have. Our entire education is confined to the Simple and the Complicated. That is after all how School is designed - the teacher looks for the right answer and there always is a right answer in that framework. At work, we also mainly have lived in stable environments where there was a lot of predictability and where doing better was a process of optimization of known rules and known outcomes. We could use engineering precepts to plan. Above all we sought to find the right answer and we tested it against the knowns of cause and effect.

But now - everything is up in the air. The web has bumped every aspect of life into the unknown and into the unknowable. It has done this by collapsing time, cost and space for all types of relationships. In Complex systems there are no simple linkages between Cause and Effect. In the new science of Complexity, the rules are the rules of Nature and not the Rules of Engineering.

When the engineer confronts nature - guess who wins? We see this in war - look at the trouble the US and all conventional forces are when confronted by a networked foe. We see this particularly in the media with print falling first. There are huge rumblings in education and in health. No one is spared - even lawyers and accountants!

In this new world of Complexity, the competitive edge will go to those that grasp, accept, understand and deploy the rules of Nature earliest and best.

You don't believe me? OK look at this.  Let's look a little deeper using a chart from the brilliant new book called "Getting to Maybe  -How the World Is Changed" - that was published this week. (I will review it this weekend on Amazon)

See why school doesn't work any more? See why health care doesn't work? See why governments cannot help us? See why bureaucracies of all types have to fail?

We have to take this new reality to heart ourselves. What this chart shows me (click for a full view) is that it is impossible to find how Public Radio will work in the future except by using the rules of Complexity.

It also shows me that if raising a child is complex - running any kind of team, organization or company in today's rapidly changing environment is also complex and that is why organizations that rely on rigid rules find coping with complexity all but impossible.

So how do you navigate in Complexity? You have to search for "Emergence" - as we started to do in New Realities - we have to talk a lot more. Most importantly we have to find the best Questions. The Questions have to come first. In coping with Complex issues - the right Question is the key to the kingdom. You also have to tap into the Wisdom of Crowds for Emergence is a Pattern and you can only see a Pattern with a lot of data.

This is what Emergence looks like. It is the result of a power but simple equation being recursed many many times. In effect it is like having a powerful question conversed about many many time. The question and the recursion deliver a new form that has Emerged.

This is why Community is going to be the organization of the future where the Many talk to the Many.

Conversation between the Many and the Many is the Darwinian Creative Process that delivers Emergence. For the right Conversations to happen - you need a Trusted Space. A Trusted Space must be Peer to Peer. Extreme power differences prevent conversation and hence emergence. Hence traditional bureaucracies have profound challenges in coping unless they find ways of opening up the space safely inside to allow for peer to peer.

The problems that face America and the world today are all Complex. That is why our traditional organizations keep making them worse as they try and solve them. They use the rules of the Simple or the Complicated. The traditional leading organizations, that have the resources, have a huge power imbalance as well and therefore cannot have a conversation with a real person. Have you ever had a real conversation with your local school, government official or the phone company?

That is why I think Public Radio has such an opportunity - You are peers. You can hold the space for the conversations that will enable your neighbors to solve the Complex problems that confront us.

If you do this - you have then solved your business problem which itself is of course a complex one. In providing this Attractor for your community to solve its problems - you become essential. Somewhere in there is the question that will lead you to the answer that we all seek.

This weekend I will expand on this in my review.

The Price of Community Success

Here Dave Winer talks about the stresses at Facebook - where the community is in revolt. Scoble adds more.  Here is the Facebook apology. Would you have the balls to do this? What alternative might you have if you ran a community?

As UFIT are finding to their benefit - if your business has at its centre the facilitating of community - you get all the support of community when you feel attacked. This is what happened in the early years at eBay. The emerging community identified so closely with eBay that they defended it from potential competitors.

But as Facebook is finding out - and eBay knows very well - Once your community has decided that it is you - it is very challenging to make any changes without consulting first. Remember the Six Apart MT pricing crisis?

The hardest task of all in our new world is Yielding Control

See my next post on why this is good for you - Coping with Complexity