Robert Paterson's Weblog

The New Org Model is here

Some times material is too good merely to link to. here in full is a recent article from Fortune Magazine.

Now I am impressed - a great conversation on the new organizational structure that is emerging.

If you don't go here you are sunk!
BRAINSTORM 2004

Will Every Company Be Like eBay?
Five tech leaders weigh in on what developing technology means for corporations and workers.
Jul 30 2004
By David Kirkpatrick
Fortune.com

At Brainstorm, the annual conference jointly run by FORTUNE and the Aspen Institute, many of our proceedings are panels. Rather than report to you on miscellaneous news that came out of this year's conference, which concluded two weeks ago, I want to share the flavor of the event. The following excerpts are from a panel entitled, "Technology and the Modern Corporation: How Different Will It Become?" It was a room-wide conversation, as is the aim at Brainstorm, though there were five official panelists: Tom Malone, professor at MIT's Sloan School and author of the newly published book The Future of Work; Tony Scott, chief technology officer at General Motors; Vivek Paul, CEO of Indian software firm Wipro; Jonathan Schwartz, president of Sun Microsystems; and Mark Anderson, publisher of the influential Strategic News Service technology newsletter. I served as moderator.

As always, each panelist came at the topic from his own point of view. Wipro's Paul talked about how companies were virtualizing—becoming focused on their core competence and outsourcing the rest (to companies like Wipro, of course). Malone talked about his belief, reported here not long ago, that the balance of power in business is shifting from management to the employee. GM's Scott made some surprising remarks about how the new balance of power was manifested at the carmaker. That company really does seem to be moving toward becoming virtual. Schwartz of Sun explained how his company is concretely reacting to the breakdown in the hierarchy of business—everybody there is now blogging, including him. That means secrets just aren't what they used to be. Anderson threw in some cautionary words urging everybody else to avoid becoming too utopian. And finally, from the floor came surprising voices—CEO Meg Whitman explaining how she governs eBay, everybody's favorite example of today's paradigmatic company; and Wal-Mart board member Jim Breyer on the challenges of adapting to the new world of empowerment while simultaneously operating in an increasingly regulated environment.

Malone: We're in the early stages of a change toward more human freedom in business. It may in the long run be as important as the change to democracy was for government. Information technology is reducing the cost of communication. It's now possible for far more people to have enough information to make decisions for themselves, instead of just following orders from somebody who supposedly knows more than they do. Now in some ways eBay is like a democracy. Or W. L. Gore-you don't get to be a manager there unless a bunch of people say they want to work for you. They essentially elect their managers.

Jim Barksdale (speaks out from audience): That's also been true at Federal Express for the past 15 years. [He was CIO there, and later served as CEO of Netscape.]

Scott: At GM, instead of the traditional top-down hierarchy, what we have today is a process-oriented architecture. In 1996 our engineering process was 48 months long, in what is essentially a fashion business. Technology enabled us to link all those already-automated processes together but do it globally. So now we design a car in one place, manufacture it in nine places, and sell it in 60 or 70 countries around the world. Technology enables a small group of engineers to collaborate with a much broader set of people in this whole community. I don't know if you call that democracy but it certainly changed the character of how we think about designing and building new cars.

Paul: Technology enables a reduction in transaction costs. It's changing the way people collaborate across companies and across continents. In the past what corporations did internally were those things that had higher transaction costs than doing it externally. Now that dynamic has changed. And to follow that one more step, over the next few years it is going to be really critical for a corporation to understand what it is. What does a company need to be doing itself? Now its transaction costs have come down, so the ability to collaborate across regions and across continents has increased.

The transaction cost reduction has also enabled more efficient markets. eBay is a classic example. These extremely dynamic markets can in some sense govern themselves. So it is no longer a matter of your trying to figure out what the market wants as much as staying on top of this runaway horse.

Me: Does that mean every company is becoming a little more like eBay?

Paul: Absolutely. Somebody mentioned that we may be seeing the end of command-and-control types of business. What's going to end up happening is that even the brightest, most charismatic and dynamic individual will not be able to tell everybody what to do….

Schwartz: We had a pretty interesting change in our HR strategies at Sun recently. We allowed blogging for 100% of the workforce. If you're not familiar with blogging it's when you basically keep your diary online and talk to the world perpetually. There is no more distinction anymore between the Intranet and the Extranet. It's just the Net. Traditionally, the people who spoke to the marketplace were the folks in communications or the key executives who were in power at the top. Now it's the 32,000 employees of Sun.

Ultimately you have to govern by policy. We have to have a policy that says at Sun this is what's appropriate to say on a blog versus this.

So I started my own blog. Now, think about Reg FD [a recent SEC rule requiring full and open disclosure of corporate data]. I had a long discussion with our general counsel. Either Reg FD mandates that I must have a blog, or it prohibits me from having a blog.

But if you're no longer allowed to have private discussions of material issues, then at some point we're all going to have to use a blog as a means of communicating and of managing. That changes the role of the senior executive. You're not just a guy making decisions all day long; you're now a part of the ecosystem in a community.

Malone: I have a slogan for that. We need to change our thinking from "command and control" to "coordinate and cultivate." Command and control won't go away completely. But there'll be a lot more times than in the past when being very decentralized, very bottom-up, and very empowered will be the right thing.

Anderson: I'd like to be a little less cheery. We all have our handheld devices. I don't call this freedom. We talk about how free we are to go to the beach. You see all these guys at the beach with cellphones doing transactions on Wall Street. The fact is they don't get a vacation. We don't even count all the hours that we work. We're working harder than our parents or our grandparents. Technology is running amok. We're not really in charge.

Another thought, about globalization: The super trend is that corporations trump nations. It's not necessarily in the corporation's interest to have all the jobs in one country. It's tough on America. But corporations don't have those issues. So what's the future in 50 years? If corporations trump nations, what happens?

Malone: How many people actually make their living selling on eBay?

Meg Whitman [eBay CEO, from audience]: It's hard to know exactly, but about 430,000 people.

Malone: Is that a company, or is it a town, or what? eBay is a community of 41-plus million people and Meg is like the mayor.

Scott: People have an image of GM as a really big company. But we're really a thin layer at the top. Then we're a whole bunch of suppliers and a global supply team held together, and a lot of parts are flying through the air at once. You're going to see more of the GM model where there's a thin layer of stuff at the top that provides the big rules, the government, the policy, the coordination. But the real work is done by lots of other folks.

GM spends about $3 billion a year on technology. The company has $190 billion in sales. We have a total of 1700 IT employees globally doing business in 19 countries.

Several in audience: Seventeen hundred or seventeen thousand?

Scott: Seventeen hundred. We're 100% outsourced. Our people manage all of IT in GM by contract.

Jim Breyer [a venture capitalist from Accel Partners, from audience]: My comment is related to my role as board member at Wal-Mart. Even if decentralization and localization is the right business ethic and strategy, corporate boards and CEOs need to sign off on financial statements. Sarbanes-Oxley [the congressional act that requires companies to document their actions much more carefully] has pushed it the other way. It forces boards and CEOs to take much more of a command-and-control perspective, when in fact a decentralized perspective is the right way to build a business.

Whitman: I play two roles in eBay. One is sort of an elected political role of the marketplace. The marketplace is very democratized and self-organizing. It is the R&D lab. We have a phrase regarding the marketplace: "Enable, don't direct." But the company itself is not as democratized.

Google, on the other hand, is a self-organizing company, to a large degree. We're gonna see how well that works. I would be somewhat concerned, with the scale of eBay, whether we could actually run the company like we run the marketplace. The values that run the marketplace and the company are the same. But to Jim's point, it's not completely self-organized internally as yet.

Questions? Comments? E-mail them to me at [email protected].
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Parking - Can Whistler help us find a better way in Charlottetown?

How do we revitalize the downtown? Even at the height of summer Charlottetown has seemed dead this year.

Whistler has closed its downtown to traffic and has set up free car parks on the perimeter. Its downtown is exceptionally vibrant. People walking attract other people. So here is the challenge - can we give up the parking revenue to make downtown Charlottetown a walker's paradise?

Instead we get this - Thanks to the Guardian

New era coming for parking in capital city 

By Wayne Thibodeau, The Guardian

Paying to park in Charlottetown’s downtown core is about to undergo a radical change.

The capital city is about to remove over 400 parking meters and replace them with new pay-and-display parking kiosks.

The changes will go into effect starting next month and if successful, it will be the first step in replacing the city’s entire contingent of 800 parking meters.

Charlottetown Mayor Clifford Lee said the pay-and-display system will save the city money at the end the day and will also improve the look of the downtown as well as make it easier for snow removal.

“It’s becoming more and more difficult to get replacement parts for the meters we have now,” Lee said in an interview with The Guardian.

“This is the way most communities are going.”

Toronto and Surrey, B.C., have already launched the new pay-and-display parking system in parts of their cities.

Beginning early next month, the city of Charlottetown will be constructing parking kiosks on each block in the core of the city.

The kiosk will include a pay station much like what is current in use at the W.A. Murphy Student Centre at UPEI.

Motorists will use coins or credit cards to purchase parking time at the machine.

In return, motorists will receive a slip of paper that will have to be displayed along the front window of their vehicles.

But the new system comes with a cost.

Each pay-and-display machine costs $10,000.

The city has already purchased 34 units from a subsidiary of U.S.-based Coin-O-Matic at a total cost of $340,000. The old silver and grey meters each cost $375.

The Kazemi case and Lord Palmerston

Canadians live in a very dangerous world today. The Kazemi case tells us that we can trust little in our government to protect us.

There is surely a major issue involved. If tyrannies can treat murder or torture Canadians and have no consequences, then all of us are ever more at risk. The safety of Canadians takes precedent over trade. After all if we are not safe, we cannot trade anyway.

Lord Palmerston understood this and took Britain to the edge of war with France over the mistreatment of Don Pacifico,

"Conflict between Britain and Greece that originated when the home of David Pacifico (known as Don Pacifico), a British subject living in Athens, was burned down in an anti-Semitic riot.

In support of his demand for compensation, Viscount Palmerston sent a naval squadron to blockade the Greek coast. Palmerston's policy drew protests from France and Russia as well as Britain's House of Lords, but he won the support of the Commons after arguing that Britain should protect its subjects from injustice wherever they might live" Enc Brit

He understood that threats to a man who had never been to Britain but who was a British subject represented a threat to all Britons.

He drew on the precedent of Rome in the defense of this policy.

"I therefore fearlessly challenge the verdict which this House, as representing a political, a commercial, a constitutional country, is to give on the question now brought before it; whether the principles on which the foreign policy of Her Majesty's Government has been conducted, and the sense of duty which has led us to think ourselves bound to afford protection to our fellow subjects abroad, are proper and fitting guides for those who are charged with the Government of England; and whether, as the Roman, in days of old, held himself free from indignity, when he could say Civis Romanus sum; so also a British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England, will protect him against injustice and wrong"

I see this not as bluster but as essential to keep our nationals safe in a very dangerous world. We do not have to send a gunboat but we can and should pursue cases like this relentlessly in the international courts.

Magic Numbers - School and Learning Engagment

I promised to write more about how I think Magic Numbers, or the natural social organization of humans, affects education and learning. So here goes.

I am 54. When I talk to my contemporaries on PEI who were educated in one room schools, I hear a very different story about the school experience than what i hear when I talk to many of their children today.

Robert Harris - One Room School House, Canoe Cove 1881 (Confederation Library)

None of these schools had more than 50 students. Most had closer to 30. They had a wide range of ages and abilities. In practice, the teacher acted as a learning facilitator. Much of the teaching was done by the older students who helped the younger ones. So while the teacher was an authority figure, she was not the sole talker. Most of the teaching was in the form of a series of conversations between the students themselves. She did not claim to know everything either and called on the wider resources and knowledge in the community to help if needed or pointed the child to the library.

School was integrated into the full life of the community. All the students lived in their community and walked to school. The teacher lived in the community. Marion Reid had retired from teaching when she started her family. A group of parents came to her house one day and made her a deal - they would bay sit her younger children if she would return to teaching their children.

School was augmented by work and life in the community. Children were not excluded from work or their full responsibility for the community in which they lived. All the children had work to do at home or on the farm and learned a great deal of practical things about how the world worked from all the other adults in the community. They were not apart from the work of their families or the community. While there were always naughty kids - they were naughty in the context of a community that had their eye upon them and where the consequences of doing the wrong thing were immediate and powerful.

Very clever kids found that the community got behind them in their efforts to do well - this is part of the story of Anne and Gilbert of Green Gables.

But you say - this was not a very effective school. That is why we needed to consolidate. The kids need the physical resources that come with scale. Not effective?

The kids were fully engaged in their learning and in their full community. Literacy was very high. Now nearly 40% of Islanders cannot read efectivelly. Next time you watch Ken Burns' film on the US Civil War, think of the literacy of the private soldiers whose letters are featured. I am sure there was bullying of a sort at times but not what we see so often today. It is inconceivable that a community would suffer the mindless vandalism that we see so often today. By walking to school and by participating in the work of the community, kids were in much better shape than today.

So what has all of this to do with Magic Numbers?

The one room school house was an "Emergent Design" that fitted naturally the formal learning needed by children into the life of their community. Being emergent, the design, like a good local fishing boat, emerged over time to best suit the real conditions. Being emergent, it had a scale that fitted the Magic Numbers of our natural organization. By fitting into that scale, it created by design the optimal social conditions for learning and social engagement. It was also very inexpensive and depended on few outside resources. By linking so tightly physically to the community, it also reduced the real childcare issues and cost that face every family through all the ages. As with Marion Reid, the community could organize to deal with these issues.

We have replaced this system with an industrial model that violates most of the conditions of natural organization. It is no wonder for me now that learning engagement is low and that we see kids estranged from their families and their community.

A typical PEI school breaches the overall size needed to have as the basis of a community that polices itself - 150. There are no subunits of 8 - 15 or 35 that could reduce the stress of an organization that breaches this condition. So gangs emerge instead. Gangs are the feature of a society with low social capital. Without a formal structure, theses self defense structures emerge and prey on the weak and the different. You see this in prison, in the Soviet Union and in Sicily. they are a product of an authoritarian response to poor community. Bullying is endemic. Learning is reduced to speeches and bribery.

Bussing kids all over the Island will soon not be affordable as oil prices will make this process too expensive.

We have isolated our children from a social environment where learning happens as a result of conversation. We have isolated them from those other children who are both younger and older than them. We have isolated them socially from their families and from their communities. We have isolated them from the work of their households and their communities. We have isolated them from adult life. We have isolated them from their bodies. And this is better?

Could we not experiment with a few new/old one room schools again. Imagine what they could be like - especially in an internet world.

With a shrinking population of children, the pressure will be the opposite. The pressure will be to consolidate even further. Yet in our heart we know that smaller and more local is better. If we look at this more carefully, I bet that we will find that lots of very small local schools will be both better and cheaper.

Why not try a few? After all - we know that they work and they could not be worse that what we have now.

Customer Feedback - The power of Blogging

Wired has recently published an excellent article on the power of blogging to get you the feedback that you need - even if at times it is painful to hear.

Steve Garrity has been banned

Hey Steve what have you been writing about?

Magic Numbers and Robin Dunbar. Blogging = Grooming = Tribes

Here is the definitive link to the core of RB's work. The paper is a unique, for science, mix of the technical and the breathtaking read.

I will be posting later on what I feel are some of the key implications for this. I will be looking at organizational dysfunction in schools; in the healthcare system; in cities and in most organizations.

Some snips - I have bolded the bits that I feel are directly related to the emergence of Tribes in the blogosphere

It is generally accepted that the cohesion of primate groups is maintained through time by social grooming (see Dunbar 1988). Social grooming is used both to establish and to service those friendships and coalitions that give primate groups their unique structure. As might be anticipated, the amount of time devoted to social grooming correlates well with group size, notably among the catarrhine primates (Old World monkeys and apes) (Dunbar 1991).

However, the relationship between group size and time devoted to grooming appears to be a consequence of the intensity with which a small number of key "friendships" (the primary network) is serviced rather than to the total number of individuals in the group (Dunbar 1991; Kudo et al, in preparation). These primary networks function as coalitions whose primary purpose is to buffer their members against harassment by the other members of the group. The larger the group, the more harassment and stress an individual faces (see for example Dunbar 1988) and the more important those coalitions are. It seems that a coalition's effectiveness (in the sense of its members' willingness to come to each other's aid) is directly related to the amount of time its members spend grooming each other (see Cheney & Seyfarth 1984, Dunbar 1984). Hence, the larger the group, the more time individuals devote to grooming with the members of their coalitionary clique.

The mean size of the primary network is, however, related to the mean group size for the species. This suggests that groups are built up by welding together sets of smaller primary networks (see also Cheney 1992) and that the total size of the group is ultimately limited not by the number of networks that can be welded together but rather by the size of the networks themselves.

In this paper, I ask what implications these two sets of results have for modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens). If we extrapolate from the nonhuman primate regression, what group size would we predict for anatomically modern humans, given our current neocortex size? I then ask whether there are any observed human group sizes that correspond to this predicted value. Since the relationships that maintain group cohesion among nonhuman primates are serviced by social grooming, I use the regression equation for primates to determine how much time humans would have to spend grooming each other if they were to maintain group cohesion in this way for groups of the size predicted from neocortex size. Finally, I ask what implications this might have had for the evolution of language.

It is generally accepted that human cultural evolution has proceeded at a very much faster pace than our anatomical evolution during the past few millenia. Given that our brain size has its origins in the later stages of human evolution some 250,000 years ago (Martin 1983, Aiello & Dean 1990), we may assume that our current brain size reflects the kinds of groups then prevalent and not those now found among technologically advanced cultures. The closest we can get to this is to examine those modern humans whose way of life is thought to be most similar to that of our late Pleistocene ancestors. These are generally presumed to be the hunter-gatherers (Service 1962, Sahlins 1972)............

In addition, it turns out that most organised (i.e. professional) armies have a basic unit of about 150 men (Table 3). This was as true of the Roman Army (both before and after the reforms of 104BC) as of modern armies since the sixteenth century. In the Roman Army of the classical period (350-100 BC), the basic unit was the maniple (or "double-century") which normally consisted of 120-130 men; following the reforms instituted by Marius in 104BC, the army was re-organised into legions, each of which contained a number of semi-independent centuries of 100 men each (Haverfield 1955, Montross 1975). The smallest independent unit in modern armies (the company) invariably contains 100-200 men (normallly three or four rifle platoons of 30-40 men each, plus a headquarters unit, sometimes with an additional heavy weapons unit) (Table 3). Although its origins date back to the German mercenary Landsknechts groups of the sixteenth century, the modern company really derives from the military reforms of the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus in the 1620s. Despite subsequent increases in size to accomodate new developments in weaponry and tactics, the company in all modern armies has remained within the 95% confident limits of the predicted size for human groups. The mean size of 179.6 for the twentieth century armies listed in Table 3 does not differ significantly from the 147.8 predicted by equation (1) (z=0.913, P=0.361 2-tailed).

This fact has particular significance in the context of the present argument. Military units have to function very efficiently in coordinating men's behaviour on the battlefield: the price of failing to do so is extremely high and military commanders cannot afford to miscalculate. Given that the fighting power of a unit is a function of its size, we might expect there to be considerable selection pressure in favour of units that are as large as possible. That the smallest independent unit should turn out to have a maximum size of about 200 even in modern armies (where technology presumably facilitates the coordination of planning) suggests that this upper limit is set by the number of individuals who can work effectively together as a coordinated team. Military planners have presumably arrived at this figure as a result of trial and error over the centuries.

Given that primate groups are held together by social grooming, time budget constraints on group size become an important consideration (Dunbar 1992b). Even if a species has the cognitive capacity to manage all the relationships involved in large groups, there may be circumstances under which the animals simply do not have the time available to devote to servicing those relationships through social grooming. Relationships that are not serviced in this way will cease to function effectively; as a result, the group will tend to disperse and the population will settle at a new lower equilibrium group size (Dunbar 1992b).

A comparative analysis of the determinants of time spent grooming by primates has demonstrated that grooming time is a linear function of group size, at least within the catarrhine primates (Dunbar 1991). The distribution of the data suggests that grooming does not necessarily function in such a way that each individual grooms with every other group member: rather, as noted earlier (p.000), it suggests that the intensity of grooming with a small number of "special friends" (or coalition partners) increases in proportion to increasing group size. Irrespective of precisely how grooming functions to integrate large primate groups, we can use the relationship between group size and grooming time to predict the grooming time required to maintain cohesion in groups of the size predicted for modern humans.

Modern humans do, however, possess a form of social communication that overcomes both of these limitations very effectively: not only can speech be combined with almost every other activity (we can forage and talk at the same time), but it can also be used to address several different individuals simultaneously. Thus, language introduces major savings by allowing an individual to do two different things at once. My suggestion, then, is that language evolved as a "cheap" form of social grooming, so enabling the ancestral humans to maintain the cohesion of the unusually large groups demanded by the particular conditions they faced at the time. (Blogging as a form of grooming?)

How might language function as a mechanism for social bonding? There would appear to be at least two possibilities. One is by allowing individuals to spend time with their preferred social partners, thereby enabling them to acquire information about each other's behaviour by direct observation. This appears to be one way in which social grooming itself might work (Dunbar 1988). That the intellectual content of human conversations is often trivial (and, indeed, many conversations are highly formulaic and ritualised) lends some support to this argument. The second possibility is that language permits the acquisition of information about third party social relationships, thereby enabling an individual to acquire knowledge of the behavioural characteristics of other group members without actually having to observe them in action. (I am grateful to R.W.Byrne for pointing this out to me.) This would have the effect of considerably widening an individual's sphere of social knowledge relative to what would be possible from direct personal observation. This suggestion meshes well with the social intelligence hypothesis, and is given some support by the extent to which humans seem to be fascinated by gossip about other people's behaviour. (Blogging fits both of these)

The essence of my argument has been that there is a cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships, that this limit is a direct function of relative neocortex size, and that this in turn limits group size. The predicted group size for humans is relatively large (compared to those for nonhuman primates), and is close to observed sizes of certain rather distinctive types of groups found in contemporary and historical human societies. These groups are invariably ones that depend on extensive personal knowledge based on face-to-face interaction for their stability and coherence through time. I argued that the need to increase group size at some point during the course of human evolution precipitated the evolution of language because a more efficient process was required for servicing these relationships than was possible with the conventional nonhuman primate bonding mechanism (namely, social grooming). These arguments appear to mesh well with the social intelligence hypothesis for the evolution of brain size and cognitive skills in primates.

Food Safety Upside Down - The problem with factory food

More and more expensive food safety regulation is pushing small slaughter houses, small dairies, in fact small anything out of business in the mistaken belief that it is poor hygiene that causes illness. "Now Rob must be mad to say that" you are already thinking.

Bear with me - it is the conditions in which animals live and die that set up the pathway to pathogens.

Paradoxically it is the ever larger and more concentrated system that is the root cause of problems. You don't believe me? Have you been to a food market in Thailand? Not much hygiene there but very little illness. The difference is that most food in Thailand is sourced from small holdings.

So what is the picture here?

Just this week there was news that the BC chicken industry is now restocking. Here is the key statement that accompanies this move:

Avian Influenza - Recovery Phase

The initial phase of the avian influenza response, which focused on containing the spread of the virus, has concluded. The CFIA depopulated all premises on which highly pathogenic avian influenza was found and those in the surrounding three kilometre areas.

The response then entered the recovery phase. The re-introduction of birds into the Fraser Valley area will include four elements: movement controls, surveillance, cleaning and disinfection, and restocking.

Why is there so little - none - comment about the issue that it is overcrowding that drives the health risk in the first place? The only way the chickens don't all die all the time is that they are medicated all the time. But as a population they are very stressed - hence they are ready for flue. No amount of disinfecting changes the conditions that set up the exposure.

Nor only do we raise animals in barbaric conditions but we kill them badly as well.

This week PETA released video of KFC's supplier of the year where employes had been routinely torturing for laughs chickens. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) said the tape showed workers at a West Virginia Pilgrim's Pride plant ripping off birds' beaks, spitting tobacco into their mouths and eyes, stomping and kicking live chickens, and squeezing them with such force "that the birds expelled feces."

The result is that we are increasingly at risk from a health perspective. And that our approach to Food Safety, that encourages ever larger concentrations, increases our systemic risk. This link to the CFIA shows that they do not look at the conditions under which animals are raised or killed. They miss the forest for the trees.

Today a woman died of Ecoli in her hamburger. This type of thing is happening more and more often.

Why is this so difficult to see?

The Natural Step and PEI - Meeting on Monday 26th July

As mentioned below, the Natural Step is coming to town

There will be a public meeting on Monday 26th July as follows.

What can we learn from others to help make Charlottetown more sustainable?
A Lunch Time Public Meeting At 84 Fitzroy (map) at 12 noon - 2.0 pm Monday July 26

How best to ensure that Charlottetown is a thriving and sustainable community is a question that many of us are trying to solve.

The Natural Step for Canada has been given a major grant from the McConnell Foundation to help communities become more sustainable in Canada. The leaders of the Natural Step, Chad Park and Pong Leung, will be visiting Charlottetown and silverorange at 84 Fitzroy have kindly offered their premises between 12 noon and 2pm for a a light lunch where you will be welcome to hear a short talk about how they can help us link up with other sustainable communities, and so help each other make progress.

We will serve a light lunch and Chad and Pong will describe what other cities are doing, what appears to work best and they will show us how we can get connected. From then on the meeting will be open to general discussion.

The Natural Step has had a wealth of experience in this field in the country of its origin Sweden. The best model in Canada now is Whistler.

"Evidently, if you can look beyond the SUV-choked parking lots, the groomed hotel ashtrays and some of the most garish displays of conspicuous consumption seen since the decline of the Roman Empire, something remarkable is going on at Whistler. In fact, Whistler now ranks as one of the most environmentally sustainable municipalities on earth.

Naturally, embracing sustainability didn't happen by accident here but falls out of the Whistler Environmental Strategy, crafted several years ago. Like the other examples, the WES was inspired by The Natural Step, and now guides municipal legislation. Addressing pollution reduction, landscape design, water use, environmental conservation, bear management and other issues, Whistler municipal practices are increasingly recognized as among the most progressive worldwide."

Please drop a comment if you can come so that Hope can get a fix on the numbers for Lunch
Coronation Chicken
Smoked Salmon
Salad from a friend's garden and home baked bread

Work tribes - More than association

More by Etienne Wenger on the difference between a tribe that is BOTH A SOCIAL AND an ECONOMIC UNIT and an Association which is a group of people that share a common interest.

“It is not that the issue of identity is disappearing. On the contrary, it is becoming more intense a concern than in the past. But what serves people’s identity is no longer simply providing affiliation and information. … Information is now a commodity.

To be a source of information does not provide something unique.

What provides something really unique is the ability to interact with interesting groups of people that mean a lot to you. People do not want to have the identity of an association. They want to experience their identity as professionals engaged in meaningful learning, alive in knowledge creation.”

For me, the clouds are clearing.