I don't believe in hell but I might be changing my mind thanks to Westfield Stratford City

I don't believe in a place called hell but having experienced Westfield Stratford City, Europe's largest shopping complex, I am re-evaluating my position.  

Shopping malls don't appeal to me at the best of times and I know December is an especially bad time of year to go anywhere near one.  So, I should have known better.  I do now. 

I needed to get something checked out on my MacBook Pro and decided to go to the new Apple Store in Stratford - 2 tube stops away.  What seemed like a quick, convenient trip, turned into an adventure into the underworld.  

Westfield is amazing for its huge, clean, bright and buzzing atmosphere.  It is a modern cathedral of capitalism.  On one hand, I admire the ingenuity of creating such a structure and appreciate it's an engine for east London regeneration.  On the other hand, I see a spectacle of mass consumption and consumerism - a soulless compound that lures people in with promises of a better life and sells them crap instead.  

Why I hate shopping malls in 3 rants...

1) People who walk really slowly or block busy pedestrian thoroughfares annoy me.  There are way too many of them there (Get out of my way...I'm trying to get in and out of here).  

2) I saw the funniest (i.e. stupidest) thing.  Shoppers were waiting in line at the Hollister store as if going to a club (see picture).  First of all, I grew up near Hollister, the town in California.  It's a hole.  Second of all, the clothes are ridiculous. These people were waiting in line.  Morons.

3) Hallelujah should be sung by either Leonard Cohen or Jeff Buckley...never, ever by Mariah Carey. Thanks to the piped in Christmas music, I still can't get it out of my head.  I feel dirty.     

I'm obviously a grumpy middle aged git.  I just think somehow we humans can do better to celebrate life than through the medium of shopping for its own sake.  I'm not interested in everyone having a possession-less life (I like my MacBook Pro), but, we have gone too far.  

So what's better?  The Slow Food movement and going to concerts and drinking with friends all seem better somehow.  Oh yeah, excercise.  That's a good one too.  

As fancy as it is, Westfield Stratford City represents a form of hell...on a personal level and in terms of living on a planet with natural limits.  There has to be something better...

==

For more articulate views on what I'm getting at, check out videos of The Story of Stuff and Tim Jackson's TED Talk below.  

The Story of Stuff 

Tim Jackson's economic reality check - TED Talk 

 

 

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Until next time,

 

Jason 

 

 

Notes from NESTA's Neighbourhood Challenge launch today #nchall

Brief and incomplete notes from NESTA’s Neighbourhood Challenge launch today

Philip Colligan, Executive Director – The Public Service Lab

On the Neighbourhood Challenge...

·         Will identify areas of low social capital

·         Need to have capacity and capability to deliver

·         Work with 10 projects – 1) looking for impact and 2) must be up for learning and sharing

·         Method: lower barriers to entry, let lots of people in – work ideas up – communities assess ideas and select

Nick Hurd MP

On Big Society...

1.       Decentralised

2.       Reform public services

3.       Social action – support and strengthen

·         Community organisers - Government will identify and support 5000 community organisers

·         Community grant programme - will attract matched funding from local philanthropists

·         Big Society Bank – get ideas up and running

Lynne Berry, WRVS

·         Importance of intergenerational services - when older people feel safe in communities, the whole community feels safe. 

Alan Rosenblatt

·         Importance of online and offline connections (online = free, social media, scale; offline = human interaction and experience)

·         Link different worlds – fluidity between online and offline

·         What are you asking your audience to do?

My perspective...

·         Developing confidence and leadership skills will be important for the Neighbourhood Challenge, especially when working with people from areas of low social capital

·         Meaningful cross sector collaboration also key to success if projects are going to last – develop networks: citizens, business and government – local, regional and national

·         Scale – not all community groups plan or want to go to scale...rather deepen their impact where they are located.  Distinguish between dissemination of ideas, “franchise models” and centralised scaling up – 3 very different approaches

New Post: Social Profit or Social Revenue? #socent

Some common sense business thinking thanks to Deborah Meaden on Dragon's Den tonight.  She said something that struck a chord about the distinction between making a profit and generating revenue:  

"There are some people in life that don't know how to make a profit 

and people misunderstand being in business and generating revenue 

with this instinct that true entrepreneurs have to make money.  

I have a horrible feeling that you don't know how to make a profit..."

Succinct and brilliant!  The successful entrepreneur works to make sure that revenue exceeds costs.  This has me thinking about social profit and social revenue and environmental profit and environmental revenue.  

Unless social enterprise managers measure social and environmental impacts and know what break even and surplus look like and how to get there then they might end up being good intentioned and busy but not making real progress.  And no one wants that...

---

Follow Dragon's Den on Twitter: @BBCDragonsDen

Next 20 Years Will Be the Age of the Eco-efficient Economy

From the paper "The emergence of the eco-efficient economy" by IBM Institute for Business Value

Executive summary here: ftp://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/en/gbe03300usen/GBE03300USEN.PDF

Three core conclusions emerged from the collaborative discussion:

• Eco-efficiency is poised to become the biggest economic game-changer for organizations over the next 20 years.

• Direct and collaborative action from a range of stakeholders will be needed to address the challenges and opportunities posed by ecoefficiency.

• There is a strong imperative for stakeholders to advance the ecoefficient economy.

Best practice recommendations

1) Leverage innovation to deliver “green” infrastructures that are highly efficient and overlay the physical infrastructure with digital intelligence

2) Implement sustainable solutions that promote resource efficiency and reduce the environmental and social impact of operations

3) Embrace intelligent systems that use open standards to provide near realtime information for better management of the infrastructure, water quantities, or, even, entire transportation systems.

---

My question: What are the opportunities for social entrepreneurs and social enterprises in the eco-efficiency economy?  

Please respond with your ideas...

Is the east end becoming the social enterprise Silicon Valley?

My article in Social Enterprise...

http://www.socialenterpriselive.com/section/comment/people/20100824/the-east-end-becoming-the-social-enterprise-silicon-valley

OpenIDEO.com and the Design Quotient

Thanks to Hugh at Forum for the Future's Gatecrashing the Energy Sector scheme (http://www.forumforthefuture.org/projects/gatecrashing-the-energy-sector), I learned about the OpenIDEO.com platform "Where people design better, together" (http://openideo.com/).  

I just checked it out and encourage you to do the same.  It seems like a good way to create and test ideas.  In particular, I like their Design Quotient of inspiration, concepting, collaboration and evaluation.  Enjoy...

<p>Introduction to OpenIDEO / OpenIDEO.com from IDEO on Vimeo.</p>

URL: 

Cheers! 

Thought for the Day: The Personal Trainer

Tonight I did a lot of sweating...tiredness spreads throughout my body...and I bet moving in a fluid fashion will not happen tomorrow.  My initial session with a personal trainer went well, I think.  

In an hour I got up to...

 

• Cardio - running on the treadmill...several hills and sprints
• Strength - pull ups, dips, medicine ball, barbell
• Core + boxing combo - abs, jabs, cross punch, bag work
• Stretches 

It was tough and I wanted to leave about half way through.  

Lesson from the experience: 

• Challenge - my trainer pushed me harder than I push myself alone and for that I'm grateful (not at the time of the workout, though)
• Vanity - I attempted to do what he suggested over and over to avoid looking bad even though I would have preferred to go to the pub
• Expertize* - The trainer knows how to put together an effective and efficient routine and gained my respect as a result
• An outside, critical perspective helps - a coach, trainer, friend or colleague can make a big difference to performance in a short space of time.  Unfortunately, I believe this nonsense enough to go back for at least a couple more sessions in the next 2 weeks.  

I'm off to bed.  I need some sleep.

(*To my British friends, I'm American and rarely get the opportunity to write in American.  This is my blog and I'm going to enjoy using lots of z's (that's zee, not zed, by the way) and other such American-isms.)