Robert Paterson's Weblog

The Vet College opens it walls - Learn about wild life May 22

The Atlantic Vet College is starting to open its walls. The plan is to make more and more of what it does available to the public online. 

We start on May 22 with a livestream of a popular workshop on how best to interact with wildlife. On PEI we all have foxes and coyotes close to us. We all have birds and skunks. How do we coexist best with these neighbours?

As we learn how best to do this - we will expand our online outreach. You can find out more about hoew to get connected by joining the AVC Friewnds and Family Community - it's free and organizes a lot of cool events such as Vet Camp and the ever popular Open House where all kids who love animals have a whirl.

Here is the info:

People and wild animals are increasingly crossing paths, which can result in human-wildlife conflicts. AVC will present a community workshop entitled “Living with Wildlife” on May 22, from 7-9:30 p.m. in Room 287N, The McCain Foundation Learning Commons at AVC.

A team of wildlife experts will provide information and answer questions about the “do’s and don’ts” of dealing with wild animals. The speakers include Dr. Marion Desmarchelier, AVC Zoo, Exotic Animal and Wildlife Service; Dr. Heather Fenton, AVC Wildlife Pathology Resident; Chuck Gallison, PEI Department of Fish and Wildlife; and Jody Kocsis, Technician, AVC Zoo, Exotic Animal and Wildlife Service.

Admission is free, and everyone is welcome. The workshop is part of AVC’s award-winning Community Workshop Series and is sponsored by AVC Friends & Family.

People who are not able to attend the workshop in person are invited to view it live at a link that will be added towww.upei.ca/avc/friendsand family on the evening of May 22.

How can a choir become a Social Object?

This is a story about using "Story". The challenge was this. A small team of Alumni and from WDAV a Public Radio station in Charlotte NC had organized a tour for the Choir of the Cathedral from my old college at Oxford, Christ Church. We of course wanted full houses. We did  not have the money to do PR in the old way. How then could we use the web instead?

How could we make the choir into a "Social Object"?

This is how we pulled this off with the help of Tom King our wonderful web guru and ex chorister himself. 

The web is more than the tools and technology. We love stories about people. We love to have our say. We love to go behind the scenes. The community knows more than any expert. An engaged community can do far more than the hardest working individual. The web can unlock these forces. 

Using this context, we set out to use the web to tell a story and so engage a community. For we knew that more than 60 million people sing or have sung in a choir in America. Could we tap into this? Could they do the work?

At the outset we set the context. Before the tour began, we produced a deep background series on the Choir itself. Here is one of the videos about the choir. What was our history, who were the people and what was their life like. Here is an amazing interview with 2 choristers.  Here is a piece on the Choristers.

 

We did the same for the music. We have to care about that too before we hear it. Here is Christ Church rehearsing in Toronto with their Host Choir from Grace Church. 

We have to care also about the places. Every host had their own space too where we made it easy for their local community to know what would happen and how to get tickets. Here at Grace Church on the Hill in Toronto is how we supported every venue. 

By the time the choir boarded the plane, the world of the tour had been vividly drawn and a community of support had been brought to life. 

We then set up a process and the rules for how all those who were directly involved in the tour could tell their own story. Singers, radio stations, hosts, parents, friends and family took up their cameras and pens and covered every moment of the tour. We used facebook and people also sent Tom and I material that we put onto the site daily. Here we are in New York. The story unfolded like a Dickens book in daily chapters that were as novel to the author as to the reader. So all was fresh and exciting.

We got what we wanted - full houses and standing ovations all the way.

And as a result, we saw something new and unexpected. Firstly, we could see that the Cathedral is no longer bounded by its walls. We can implant the cathedral in the hearts of people. Secondly, we could see that we at the centre do not have to do all the work. We are no longer constrained by our own limited resources. With the right invitation, the community will do the work. 

We know now that the future of the choir is now tied into the web in this way. Is it not for you too?

The full web story is here.

True Health - Part 4 - The Push Back to Paleo and what it means

First they ignore you - then they laugh at you - then they fight you - then you win.

Today I am going to explore how we are about to experience all of this as we see the power of the Corporate World - more powerful than the Empire in India - go down. We see it now in media but we will see the final battle in the arena of health and food.

It is going to be in this area where the public will awake and discover how they and their children have been betrayed. I will show you today how betrayal is the key flash point of revolution that spreads the meme beyond the initiating cadre to the mass. 

All Imperialists from Rome to Britain and the Institutional/Corporate World have had the best of intentions. For after all Rome did actually do a lot good things. But the price of Empire is loss of freedom. And in the end this is what we all want. Espcially if Empire can no longer offer good roads, peace and justice etc.

The road to Freedom often starts with a funny man in a dhoti. How the Titans of the Empire laughed at Gandhi then. 

This process of ignoring - laughing - fighting and losing is what happens to the establishment in any paradigm shift. Who in 1935 could imagine the British Empire leaving India?

Who can imagine the Corporate Titans of our own time losing control of us?

Today time speeds by - what took decades now takes years. The Mad idea of working with nature and using her models, is very new. Maybe only 20 years old. In terms of a coherent way of eating and its relation to food maybe a decade. Blogging about this began in 2005!

In less than 6 years, millions are involved. The time of "Ignoring" has past.

The old system's immune system has been alerted. And the laughing and the attacks have begun.

"Paleo" is being talked about by the mainstream media as a joke - the Caveman Diet. Just another fad. Ignoring the point that this is not a diet but part of a larger context of health - that of aligning how we live to our evolutionary past.

Expect more "Jokes".

The "Attack" is all about Food Safety.

We are seeing concerted attacks on people who raise animals in a truly safe way - small egg flocks - people growing veggies in their front yard. They tell the mainstream that this food is not safe. Ignoring that the factory systems food is at the centre of our long term chronic health crisis.

Expect more attacks designed to raise the fear of the public and fear among the pioneers.

They will "burn" them as heretics. In modern terms they will humiliate us and take away our livliehood. And do it all in the context of keeping the rest of us safe from heresy. 

The establishment are powerful not just because they have a few Titans at the top but because there are so many functionaries below them. People who make their living and have their power as a result of being in the system. 

But the smart revolutionary does not attack this group. They depend utterly on the Titan. When he goes they go too. The News of the World staff get fired and cannot be rehired. The Mubarak inner circle and support melt away when their man falls.

But they cannot be ignored - they will be the ones who attack the new. Not the Titan himself.

You cannot win by attacking this system directly. They will crush you.

You win by allowing them to commit an outrage on you! It's very Zen!

The Titans destroy themselves by going too far in their attacks. At some point they outrage the sleeping people. 

In India, the innocents were killed at Armritsar. 

Look at what is going on in England now. The entire political class in the UK now has to step back from Murdoch. His henchmen/women have gone too far.

The people did not mind the Hugh Grants of the world or the Royals being hacked. But they cannot tolerate the families of war dead, of murdered children being the targets. And now that Gordon Brown has been seen as being defiled by the Titan, all can see that the only way ahead now to to sweep Murdoch away.

The people move when THEY feel the injustice and the betrayal.

So now to us. What will be the moment?

I see two tracks tnat interact. The power of social media and the increase in awareness that we are all being betrayed by the system.

The power of social media means that the secrets of the Titans can no longer be hidden. The big betrayals are amplified by social media. The power of social media means that dictators can no longer oppress their people without the world looking on. The more they assault their own people - such as in Libya and Syria - the more inevitable it is that they lose.

So what about us in the west. The scale of the deception and so betrayal builds every day.

• The War in Iraq was based on a lie
• We have also lost in Afghanistan trying to support the unsupportable
• The press is being shown to be mainly in the pockets of its owners - it has done its best to hide the truth
• Wall Street owns the recovery and the people are bereft - there is no growth in employment
• The young in Europe and the old are shut out
• The Euro zone and America's credit are on the knife edge but we were told that we have to pay back the bankers

Meanwhile the old contract is being destroyed

• The pensions that boughtv our obediance when we worked for them are going
• The schools and roads that we paid for are in ruins
• The justice system is being gamed
• Even our water system is for sale
• We don't own our homes annymore
• Our children did all we asked and there are no jobs
• We are told that we are not safe and our liberties are removed

You can add to this list - the reasons for consent are melting.

All of this is coming out of the New Media and the stories get bigger and get more traction every day - the Titans are shown not to care about us. They are shown to be cynical manipluators.

And now we come to the big lie - that our health and old age will be looked after by a Ponzi scheme of the transfer payments. 

This demographic and fiscal crisis will be the battle ground where the revolt will take place.

Rising oil and food prices and the debt crisis will all come together and the people will have nothing to lose by taking the risk of leaving the system. 

The entire basis of the western deal with its people will unravel and the people will be betrayed just when they are the most vulnerable.

So what to do? What do you and I do? Not easy question to answer but just as there are patterns of history that show us how true paradigm revolts take place, there are patterns that can help us see our best choices and what will happen in a pattern sense as the revolt gets under way.

Check back in a couple of days.

 

True Health - Part 3 - The Rules of the New World#2 - The revolution of our time

This post is written in July of 2011 - The Murdoch New Empire, the Police in the UK and the Tories in the UK are being rocked.

I think that we are living through a period where the Network is destroying the Hierarchical power of the establishment.

We can see now that this revolution began in the Arab world but now, this July, we are seeing that the Network is a real threat to the most powerful in the west as well.

I think that history will show that power is shifting from the Machine Institution to the Network.

This will be a real revolution unlike 1917 that merely replaced one top down regime for another. 

This is more like 10,000 years ago when a new food system changed everything about how humans lived and their place in the world. 

I think that the forces that will take us there are now in motion. Not the least that millions of people have been cast out by the old system. That many of these millions are well educated and have the personal power to act. These are the kind of people that drove the French and the American Revolutions that in their own day also cast down the old power system.

They are likely people just like you my dear readers. We are the immigrants in the brand new world that we will make for ourselves  - not in a new place but in a new "Space" that we create ourselves.

Without knowing it, you have just left Ellis Island and you are in this strange New World.

How strange this all is. 

Fortunately the pioneers have been here for some time and this post will show you what the new rules are and how best to get around in this new place and to realize its potential. 

In essence - people here in the New New World - or New World#2 - live the lives of the Hunter Gatherers - they live lives much like all hominids and Humans have lived for millions of years. But with a difference, now we know how all of this works. We know the science and we have tools that empower us to be this old way anew.

So let's wander around NW#2 and see how they live and work. Let's see the models they use. 

And by the way - all of this exists for real today - just in a very small and scattered form. It just needs organization to come to life.

Home and Work - Home is that old fashioned Home where we all live and work.

For in NW#2 we mainly work from home for ourselves or in tribal groups - some partners are next door but some are the other side of the world. 

We don't just do one thing either - the bigger cash generating deals are like a hunter bringing home an elk and get paid in cash by the larger system. But we do a lot of gathering for no money. We trade services with each other - I do some work on your site, you give me veggies. We offer up our place for rent and move in with our sister who lives down the road and we split the money.  

We don't just sell services either. With our network of 3D printers and jigs we can make almost anything locally. Hey we even make cars using the Wiki Car Company - an open source design for cars that uses a series of chassis's that we then adapt to create unique one off cars. For less cost than a mega car plant - we don't have their fixed costs.

More than 50% of the things we need - we make locally. All are built using Open Source designs.

The result is that there is work here for all. 

What were hobbies become "Livings". Your weaving, your knitting, your soap making, your talent for music or knowledge of astronomy, your mechanical genius, your coding, your cooking, your green thumb, your strong back, your relationship with children - your real skills - the real you.

No one gets super rich but all can be very comfortable and secure. Secure because no outsider can take away your living. For we are so interconnected. The gap between producer and consumer has been closed. We are always both.

Our children grow up in the middle of all of this. They see what their parents do to make a Living. They participate early too - either to help the family or to play their own role. Many children have their own Living. The gap between helpless child hood and being a participant is tiny. 

For the kids too are not shunted off into a world separate from life called school or youth.

Nor are our babies and infants given away to strangers. In our physical community we help each other a lot with the little kids. We spend very little money on daycare or nannies. We have family close, we have other families in the same boat - we have a good system. The kids also have access to tremendous resources from all over the world. They have lots of mums and dads - as kids always used to have. There are lots of Eyes on the Street in our place.

Our teachers are very different too. They are not "professionals". They are largely us.

Our older kids meet in study groups and use materials from the web. If they have a question that they cannot solve themselves - they can access the local learning network for advice. This local Network extends all over the world. Our kids can talk to the best teachers in the world and they do. 

We used to pay a lot of money to educate our kids for not very good results. We now pay a fraction of this and our kids have learned to learn and they mix with really talented people. They don't need a piece of paper to show what they have learned. They have a reputation that has been earned.

Food

So where did all the teachers go? Where did all the people with non jobs go?

In the old country almost no one did any work to get or prepare food. In the NW#2 food and energy is where most of the work is done. Everybody contributes here. In 2000, less than 5% of people worked to produce food and most of them were no more than slaves.

Now 85% of us participate in one way or another in food and energy.

About 30% of the food we eat is grown locally - and we are in Montreal. There are gardens on roofs - front yards - back yards in public spaces. Small animals too - chickens are everywhere and there are goats and sheep in town.

Nearly everyone spends time on growing and preparing food - we grow a lot on our own or in local groups in the community and we also help out in the country.

The rail service to the surrounding farm land is working well again and 50% of our food comes in from the direct hinterland. Many also go out there and help work for food. We help with the cultivating and harvest - for the Community Ag Model that we use, integrates the customer into the producer. That way we we keep the costs down for all. No immigrant slaves here - we belong to farm groups as helper/consumers. CSA on steroids.

Consequently, we pay very little money for food. But food growers do well. We all benefit from the Network Effect.

Farming itself is very different too. We also work WITH nature and not against her. She does more and more of the work as a result.

Farms tend to be small - about 100 acres and worked by a family and by the neigbours.

Those growing veggies mainly use Permaculture that needs no external inputs and that has yields that rise every year and where the work also falls. In many of these mini farms, the main work of the year is harvest.

Almost no machines are required. Almost no external inputs and certainly no agri chemicals.

Those with animals use a pasture system made famous by Polyface farms where grass and woodland provide the base and we rotate animals on the grass thus building up the base year by year.

In our food system, vitality grows every year. The natural capital increases and our need for external energy reduces.

We used to have no time and so had to pay cash for everything - now we have time we don't need as much cash. THIS is the central big idea in New World#2.

Like Open Source Software we trade goods and services a lot for no money - we do have an exchange now - so the Ledger can be converted into currency of needed. This was how the old country store used to operate. 

Energy/Travel - You cannot replace oil as a convenient source of energy - but oil is very expensive in the New World#2. So how do we still have a great life? We have redesigned how we live to reduce the need for oil.

This is why the home and the local community has become the centre. We had to go far away every day to work and school and to get anything. Now most of those routine trips in the car are not essential any more. The need to drive everywhere has been designed out of the system.

Some of us do go to face to face distant meetings now and then - it is always vital to meet face to face. But these occasions tend to be rare and are often largely social - the point is to bond again.

When we travel we mainly take some time and we tend to stay with each other or rent a place from a person. Co Working places are ubiquitous. Few have offices that are exclusively theirs except at home. Why would you pay to have an office all for yourself?

The Global Co Working Network also allows you to have an office in any town, city our country. 

Energy/Climate

Heat in the winter up north and cooling in the summer in the south demand significant energy. Here design has helped too.

Much of the sunbelt, short of water and boiling hot has lost much of its population. Those that remain have gone back to building design that fits this climate. Adobe is common again. Even here permaculture works and, as was tested in the desert in Israel, is able to produce food and this practice is gaining ground on the desert itself.

Here up north in Montreal, the typical co-housing of Montreal East was designed with winter in mind. With neighbours alongside and above and below, heating demand has been reduced further by insulation.

Community heat and stoves using waste fibre are common.

Large scale and long Distance Energy

The truck is no longer the centre of the system. Most things are made locally - much is recycled locally - even steel. We trade things we can't grow or make.

As back in time - water is the way that really heavy goods are carried. The seaboards and river and canal systems are the new/old highways for heavy goods. 

We have time now so we too use the trains and ships. 

Health

Big Industrial food no longer makes sense with very expensive oil. In the old country we used to spend a fortune on health. But now we eat so much better, we are so much more active, so much less stressed, we are naturally mainly very healthy and fit.

Grains depend on factory farms, serfs or slaves. Oil is too expensive and no one wants to be a slave anymore. So very little grain is grown anymore. We eat meat, that is grass fed, veggies fruit and nuts. This was and is our ideal diet.

So Big Pharma has little place here either. We are all working hard at breeding better animals and seeds that fit our local enviroment.  We share this knowledge around the world. Big Ag has no place in this vast cooperative effort - for if we fail here, we starve. The IP issue has gone away for the system that could enforce it has collapsed.

Most research now uses an Open Source Model - for we all benefit.

So what about the  Medical professionals?

Of course, if you have an accident, we use the Dr's. Specialists operate all over the world too. Even a small community hospital can have a world class surgeon operate - for she is in her community and telemedicine is the norm now.

But there are not that many doctors - and the ones we have are oustanding. But we don't need a lot of them, because so few of us are ill. 

The frontline healthcare system is now run by Health Facilitors who help us in groups work out how to get control of our health back. We pay them to keep us healthy. Health is all about matching our lives to our design.

Media

We get our news and information from each other. The old highly centralized media system was show to be what is was a shill for ther old system. They were largely made irrelevant as their role was exposed. And then their costs brought them down.

Most people have a voice now. A profound shift in human consciousness.

There is still an entertainment business but it is more of an aggregator. We don't need as much distraction as we used to. With a more full real life, we need to depend less on a fantasy life.

So how did we get here?

No social engineering brought this about. Much of the pioneer work was done in the 1990's. But it will be desparation that takes us here. Cities that can go no lower such as Detroit are along the path now. 

We will get here because the people who were cleared by the landlords will have no choice. We have to eat. We have to have work. We have to raise our kids. We have to have our health. In the old world all of these things are provided by the institutions. They are shutting us out. We either cannot afford them - such as healthcare or what they offer - such as public school - is rotten.

So we will do what we have to and create an alternative world alongside the old world.

In this new world, by using the network effect and open systems we will dramatically undercut the sunk costs and rigidities of the old world. We will drive them out of existence.

This weekend as I write this - we can see this process in action. The Bastille has been stormed. It's early days but we can feel our power and sense the weakness of the regime.

BUT they will not go quietly and the attacks we see on local food systems and the massive effort to protect IP in things such as seeds is a sign of their fear.

In my next post - The Inquisition and how to defeat it.

New York Times - Measuring the impact of Social Media on their content

via niemanlab.org

Better measurement is coming - I really liked this video that shows how the NYT is looking at how their content is shared.

It offers of course an "organic" perspective - reinforcing for me that new reality that is based on the model of nature rather than on the mechanics of a machine.

Already it is showing the importance of influence nodes - we see this is the spread of disease as well - the Typhoid Mary issue. Understanding this then enables us to understand where the systemic leverage comes from.

This I think takes us back to the math of Magic Numbers - a very few people count a lot. Their influence and how they get this is then central - that brings us back to the work of Klout.

We are getting there.

Attention - the new wealth - what it is & how to measure it

In the old economy that still lingers you could buy “Attention”. A large advertising budget could force you into the minds of others. But we are becoming numb to this assault. Increasingly we only trust people that we know. “Attention” is shifting from the Institution with the budget to the “Person” with personal reputation or “Clout”.

This transition from the Institution to the Personal is surely one of the most paradigm shifting aspects of the time we live in?

Here is the “Godfather” of the idea of the Attention Economy – Michael Goldhaber back in 1997 explaining this shift from Attention that you could buy to Attention that you could only Earn!

“.. money now flows along with attention, or, to put this in more general terms, when there is a transition between economies, the old kind of wealth easily flows to the holders of the new. Thus, when the market-based, proto-industrial economy first began to replace the feudal system of Western Europe, in which the prime form of wealth was aristocratic lineage and inheritance of land, both the noble titles and the lands that went with them soon ended up disproportionately in the hands of those who were good at obtaining what was then the new kind of wealth, namely money.

With considerable ease, the rising merchant and industrialist class could buy old titles, induce governments to grant them brand new ones, or marry into the old impoverished gentry. The parallel today, again, is that possessors of today’s rising kind of wealth, which is attention, and whom we label stars of every sort, have an easy time getting money.

But now let me point out that the other way round doesn’t work nearly as easily. Contrary to what you are sometimes urged to believe, money cannot reliably buy attention. Suppose it did work that way. Then you could have been paid to sit here and listen closely even if I were to read you something as boring as the phone book or an unabridged dictionary. Presumably it wouldn’t even matter if I kept repeating the same few syllables over and over. If money could reliably buy attention, all I would have to do is pay you the required amount and you would keep listening carefully through all that, not falling asleep en masse, nor allowing your minds to wander. In truth, even if you had been paid a huge sum, this would be most difficult, and if you did it, it would be a testament more to your own deep sense of principle than to a general condition in which another roomful of similar people could be expected to do equally well.

Someone who wants your attention just can’t rely on paying you money to get it, but has to do more, has to be interesting, that is must offer you illusory attention, in just about the same amounts as they would if you had instead been paying money to listen to them — which by the way is closer to the case here. Money flows to attention, and much less well does attention flow to money.”

Attention that people will trust – about an idea, a product, a service, a politician, will come from “Trusted” people in your life and in your network.

Defining and measuring Personal Clout will therefore be very important in the future.

That is why I wanted to speak to the CEO of Klout, Joe Fernandez who very kindly spent time with me on the phone yesterday talking about “Attention” what it is now – how it builds from Robin Dunbar’s research. We also touched on how today’s kids may be having their brains rewired to be able to use a much larger network than was possible face to face.

Here are some of the ideas that we batted around:

• It’s all about how you are as a person - Many newbies still think of Social Media as a big megaphone – they still shout out to the crowd – “look at me” aren’t I great!!!!” – But they most important aspect of the new world is what “Others say about you” and who those others are and how large your and their network is. To get their attention demands that you have something good to say and that you have also won their trust. This then is not easy environment. There can be no instant success.
• It’s all about how you are related in network terms – This is why Klout have set up their algorithms to measure True Reach or the value of your content -  Amplification Probability or how we you are related to the people in your network – how large and diverse is your network – do they find you interesting, safe, or a bore  - and Network Influence or do you influence people with influence. This makes a lot of sense to me. I think that Klout is trying to get a handle on the playing field. I also liked it that Joe kept reminding me that they are at the start of a voyage of discovery. That they may be ahead of others but know that there is so much to discover.
• The online world is likely larger than the personal world - Klout will fond out how much larger. The Dunbar numbers still operate in the personal world and for adults my age I think. But Joe made a case based on observation that he is seeing online Trusted Networks maxing out at about 500 (144 is the max Dunbar number) His own floats between 150 – 350 but he still relies on about 150. The really interesting point he made is that he is seeing a new world emerge with kids.
• Kids have a new social reality – they never lose a friend! – When I was a boy, we moved a lot. So at every move to a new place, a new school etc, I lost touch with 98% of the then friends. Over time they faded from memory. But now, a kid moves or changes school and stays in touch with most of  her friends. Even now as an adult, I am regaining touch with old friends long lost. Joe and I thought that decades of staying connected must have an effect on the wiring of the brain. After all print had that effect by making the left hand side more powerful. The brain is very plastic and can change very quickly as we see with say stroke victims. It is very likely that a child of 5 today who is a keen user of social media, will have a very different brain than I do when they are 25.

This new world is literally unfolding before us. Joe thinks that Klout now is about where Google was in 1997 – the key algorithms are in their infancy but are already able to tell us interesting things. Much more will be possible over time – especially when there is more data to observe.

But 2 things are clear to me – understanding how Clout works is core to the new economy. And that measuring Clout as Klout is doing is going to be very important.

Your reputation is your capital. You and not the institution will have the power.

via fastforwardblog.com

You now are seeing and hearing the future - Sleep!

via youtube.com

2052 people singing alone and together - now imagine work like this - imagine school like this - this is the future!

Broadcasters want to kill Netflix

The owners of Canada’s English-language broadcasters are on their way to Gatineau, Que., this week to ask the federal regulator to renew their TV licences, but the conversation is likely to turn to a new kind of broadcaster that requires no licence at all: Netflix.

TV stations such as CTV and Global are only allowed to broadcast in Canada with licences from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission that mandate spending on Canadian broadcast content and set rules meant to protect Canadian culture. Some of these companies are likely to complain to the CRTC this week that Netflix is allowed to operate in Canada without such costly rules; since it airs its TV shows and movies over an Internet connection to computers, Web-connected TV sets and gaming consoles.

via theglobeandmail.com

We have ditched our cable months ago and watch Netflix using an Apple TV. We see what we want and when we want with not ads. It's bliss. And it's easy to do.

Film makers are also starting to see the benefit. Normally they have to rely on a film making its money back in the first 6 weeks. Also a TV show that can have a cult but not a wide audience has to get cancelled early.

A service like Netflix enables such films and shows to build an audience over time. An entirely new idea.

But of course in Canada all of this will be under threat from an industry that has been allowed to integrate vertically - always a no no - and that wants to keep the walls up. They work entirely against the interests of the content producer and us the audience.

So once again we have to ask - whom does the CRTC serve - them or us?

NPR still ahead - Challenge to the Stations! #pubmedia

What kind of shape is NPR in?

Back in 2005/6 NPR and its stations went through an Imagining Process (Called New Realities) where all the leadership in the entire system and 200 plus staff, the executive and the board of NPR - worked from this slide to imagine what life would be like in 2009/10.

Of course we have all been overwhelmed by the politcal aspects of NPR recently but how have they done in solving the paradox set for them above? How is NPR doing in both expanding its traditional audience and also being a factor on the web?

Here is the answer:

"Amid all that creative destruction, there was a one large traditional news organization that added audience, reporters and revenue. That unlikely juggernaut was NPR.

According to the State of the Media report, NPR’s overall audience grew 3 percent in 2010, to 27.2 million weekly listeners, up 58 percent overall since 2000. In the last year, total staff grew 8 percent, and its Web site, npr.org, drew an average of 15.7 million unique monthly visitors, up more than five million visitors. Its foreign bureaus and global footprint continue to grow while other broadcasters slink home.

And while NPR receives a small portion of its operating budget through government money, millions of people also think that its journalism is worthy enough to pay for through contributions, a trick that the rest of news media have had trouble figuring out, to say the least."

As we expected the web was goingto the the place to win or lose in by 2009. NPR are there and also stand out in the Social Media aspect.

"In a survey of more than 10,000 respondents, NPR found that its Twitter followers are younger, more connected to the social web, and more likely to access content through digital platforms such as NPR’s website, podcasts, mobile apps and more.

NPR has more than one Twitter account; its survey found that most respondents followed between two and five NPR accounts, including topical account, show-specific accounts and on-air staff accounts.

The data on age is hardly surprising. The median age of an NPR Twitter follower is 35 — around 15 years younger than the average NPR radio listener. This lines up with data we recently found about other traditional news media; the average Facebook user reading and “liking” content on a news website is two decades younger than the average print newspaper subscriber.

Not to put too fine a point on it, the future of news media lies in successful integration of social media to get the attention (and click-throughs) of a younger generation — a generation whose news needs are vastly different than those of the generations that preceded it.

Of NPR’s Twitter followers, the majority (67%) still do listen to NPR on the radio. But the other ways they access NPR’s content are indicative of a growing trend:"

 

Here is the relative position:

 

This is surely a strong base?

When we did the groundwork back in 2005/6 that created the conditions for this shift, we did all talk about the "Elephant in the Room" - the relationship between NPR and the Stations.

As the folks from the 300 stations went through the process - one thing became clear. They could not continue merely to be a repeater for the big magazines. They had to discover a local value that was distinct from relying on NPR.

In the public TV world, KETC has been working assiduously to do this. KETC is defining for many what "Putting the Public into Public TV" will be as NPR is doing for radio. 

BUT have the bulk of the stations done the same in the last 5 years? Have they also made the break in culture and in operations to offer their community vital value?

You judge?

My intuition tells me that the public funding that the local stations rely on will be cut. There is so much momentum. 

I think that NPR will in the end be fine - because they have built the direct bridge. They have realized the dream of the New Realities process - NPR have created the "Have it Your Way" reality.

They had to do this and all the stations have known this. The "Secret Plan" has been no secret. (Here are some station folks singing "Have it your way" in front of Ken Stern in St Louis in 2006.)

The tools that we could not have imagined back in 2005/6 that can aggregate and curate content from the public are all here now. Look at how the events in North Africa and Japan are being covered using these tools!

Time for the local stations to think about how this approach, these tools, and this culture can radically change their role, impact and costs.

Preventing the defunding of Pub Media - get Real Folks - A Polemic

Those that wish to defund us do not see us as neutral. They see us as the enemy.

They could not care about how little we cost. They care not what we do that is good. They see only that we are the heretic.

To plead relevance and value in the face of this hatred is naive in the extreme. It is to be a Jew in Germany in 1932 who thinks that simply because you had the Iron Cross in the last war and had been German for hundreds of years was going to save you. We will not win this by facts, good arguments or by appeasement. 

This is a fight to the death. We have to be clever at how we fight. Plan to fight a guerilla war. A war that we can win. 

We look to me now like the Brits and the French in 1939 and 1940. We have won the previous engagments so we think we can coast along, bomb with leaflets and we will win this one. I don't think so.

I think that France will fall and we will be grievously wonded. We must also be prepared to be hurt and to find a way of being effective and of serving the community even if we are wounded badly.

There is no time to be lost in taking out much of our own costs.

What Andy has done in global news is an example of how even with tiny resources but with the brand we can have power.

We have to plan to fight back. No with ranting but how all successful popular wars are won. We must do the one thing we can do that they never can or will - we must serve the people.

Our future is not in showing Nova. 

Our future is in mobilizing people to solve their own problems. Who else can help people find their way to a new economy? Who else can find another way we can be healthy that does not rely on the system? Who else can help us get to grips with the mess that is our education? Who else can take on Big Food or Big Pharma and all the other "Bigs"?

Please have faith in your selves. This is one fight where the good can win.

You have real power. Use it. Get Real. Get on the right side of history.

The picture above is of Horatius defending Rome with two companions while the bridge was cut down behind them - thus saving Rome from a massive force. MacAulay writes this is how Horatius took up the challenge:

Then out spake brave Horatius,
          The Captain of the Gate:
     "To every man upon this earth
          Death cometh soon or late.
     And how can man die better
          Than facing fearful odds,
     For the ashes of his fathers,
          And the temples of his gods