Bookstack is a simple, self-hosted, easy-to-use platform for organising & storing information (free wiki app).
cchound.com is a curation of CC licensed music from various artists and genres for you to use, however you like with correct attribution, in your creative projects.
For many, battling the debilitating monotone internal narrative is too hard to even start: that nasty voice in your head reducing you down, limiting your potential, constraining your joy, crushing your confidence, opening the doors to anxiety, igniting your loathing of self / life, feeding the dangerous black dog.
And due to the direct link from mind to heart, cultivating strategies for dealing with the bastard brain needs to be prioritised to experience fully this living experience. Unlearning where our precious attention goes is the key to unlocking the melodies which rounds off positive aspects of existence.
For most of my life this wicked voice held the reigns and defined the journey, complimented by the learned repression of any verbalised ’emotional’ state.
I’m starting to relearn the roots of my operating system and in doing so, rerouting many of its commanding protocols, releasing the energy for a more rounder me.
Recently, I sent the following to a friend who was asking how I was:
My heart is a beautiful mess of things, like an Hieronymus Bosch painting: full of magic and weird characters plus brilliance and terror!
Sheety, which turns Google spreadsheets into powerful APIs to rapidly develop prototypes, websites, apps & more.
This open-source software license that developers can use to prohibit the use of their code by applications or companies that threaten to accelerate climate change through fossil fuel extraction.
Wellington needs to become a capital city which leads through bold action.
Recently, I was approached to consider taking over an established annual event which gives a platform for ideas to shape the future of the city. I’ve been involved in the past both as a speaker for one event and voluntary organiser for two others, so know the people and format very well.
My response was:
“…bring those with power together and have them outline clearly and transparently what powers / resources they have (and don’t have) THEN what they are prepared to devolve / make available along with the processes for access. Only then, invite the wider community to impact on those areas as then you’re proposing / designing from the actual rather than perceived.”
Like most cities in the world, much of the power and resources are held by traditional institutions with established processes which aren’t very accessible and / or transparent. Revealing this and spending time *’sharpening the axe’ enables the citizenry to assist in directly shaping the priorities plus collaborate in the action needed.
So here are half a dozen ideas, in no particular order, which I’ve been thinking about for years (stretching back to my Collider days), and which could provide a starting point if some humans had the time / the money / the energy, to start an ‘action lab’ for the city (half of which can be easily achieved with a few grand, educated souls and the space in ones diaries)—feel free to steal, go off and start to actualise them out:
1. Central City Calendar
An event and activity listings for the city in one online portal. Developed through a reverse data-capture process which pulls in details from other places, this takes no extra collaboration or permission from anyone and would create a one-stop-shop for the vibrancy of activities in the city. With email subscriptions available and sorting by categories (like sport or art in a particular region) and an available RSS plus an open API for others to remix as well. In the background, these events would be analysed to illustrate what communities / topics are being served (and more importantly who / what are not – see ‘2. Capital Dashboard’).
A simple adoption of the doughnut economy framework into all the governing councils activities and plotting the activities via an online dashboard which tracks, records and displays visually the ‘health’ of the city. This would include data on such things as:
carbon emissions
traffic / public transport use
house prices / commercial rates
councils and other agencies budgets and where it’s going
building projects and their state
amount of green spaces vs urban
recycling / waste
weather and ocean data
police recordings of incidents
listings of new companies in the region by topic (pulled from companies house) etc
Over time the data will reveal trends which can inform policies and decisions. It also becomes a visual connective point for the civic understanding / education on interconnected topics.
A map of publicly owned spaces / venues in the city with overlaying data of past / current / future use along with hireage costs, where this money goes plus processes of access and limitations (meaning conditions of use like only allowed to use certain ticketing, audio & visual and catering suppliers). This would again over time uncover insights on gaps / opportunities, types of use, who accesses, financial transparency of operations etc. and would create a blueprint for a community activation plan.
4. Beautify / Rewild
A open invitation for artistic collaborations to radically beautify the urban landscape through nature and / or art. The city has become grey or any new builds just full of glass and steel. We need more colour and beauty. Any new capital-builds will have to adhere to a new artistic policy before gaining permits to break ground plus demonstrate commitment to carbon zero / regenerative approaches (see #2). All this would be again transparently known, shared, tracked becoming another differentiating point of the city.
Addendum: Imagine commissioning ten local artists at $10,000 each to chose a letter of “Wellington” to make in their own style (they would get a further $2,000 in material costs with $10,000 left for it’s installation / upkeep). The resulting work would be hung off the ground on a public wall such as the side of Te Papa to celebrate the creative breadth of the city. Resident artists are remunerated for their time and talent, their work would be on permanent display to extend their brand and connection with the public plus the city would get a unique installation for interested parties to stand under, individually or in groups, and take funky shots from all angles for sharing on the socials (rather than this which cost the same amount of money).
Wellington is the windiest capital in the world with a rugby team with an associated nickname, so imagine an annual festival exploring through art, clean energy, installations, discussions, sport powered by and in celebration of this wondrous gift of nature we have here, and stop fricking complaining about it!
Introduce radical legislation to address ownership disparity and free up access to homes, not properties (such as to hinder things like 3rd, 4th, 5th etc. property owners). This is about local and regional government legally ensuring all new construction include social housing considerations and also introducing laws to impact on owners of rental properties to set a certain criteria of health and well being. If this can’t be done at a city / regional governance level then prioritise community initiatives to support and amplify up to national policy changes.
However, there’s certainly enough talent in this city to divert it from the current trajectory. There just needs an honest and brave attempt to uncover what I advocated for in the above quote. Then the citizens and supportive bodies can amplify this as an opportunity to ignite a more city-level collaborations through radical experimentation and positive action.
Go, Wellington!
*Abraham Lincoln once said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
The purpose of this unconventional endeavour is driven by the desire to produce something beautiful and intimate—exploring through conversation, the emerging intersections of interest with two people who have never met before—done by pausing the melee of life and intentionally crafting a space to be human through stories and in time.
“I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
Visually, there’s nothing like it on the planet.
The completed twenty discussions featuring forty intriguing humans equate to 1943minutes / over 32hours, and in terms of the metrics of watches / listens: don’t know, don’t care*. That’s not the reason I started this (see above).
It’s also a wholly commercial free venture and costs time and money in the chunky pre-production investment organising the people, the space, the camera / lighting / mics, hosting of content plus post-production commitment to editing, audio podcast formation, uploading everything, posting online and crafting the subtitle snippets.
But when something so pleasing and unique manifests the effort is justified.
More episodes will follow, although for now we’ll take a break for a couple of months. Feel free to explore the growing back catalogue here plus subscribe in the way most pertinent to you.
Epilogue
This simply wouldn’t have been achieved if it wasn’t for:
David Hamilton at Flashdog Studios, who provides an amazing studio space to host the experiences, and also;
Alex Matthews who hosted us at Xequals for the first 10 episodes and enabled us to start.
I recently organised an exclusive gathering just for those who have participated in the project to celebrate and connect them i further conversation with the growing community:
*Postcript: Back in 2006 I started the MediaSnackers podcast. In 5 years I produced about 200 podcasts (which included a few dozen for other clients at the time). The stats were in the high hundreds per episode and it drove traffic to the website into the thousands per month. 15 years later, what success looks like is very different.
Go for a digital adventure by following some / all of the links below which I tweeted last month.
READ
Venezuela exodus reaches record levels: “More than 5.6 million have left the country since 2015, when it had a population of 30 million, escaping political, economic and social hardships.”
What you don’t decide to do is as important as what you do do.
Scott Belsky (Adobe’s Chief Product Officer and Executive Vice President, Creative Cloud plus co-founder of Behance) gives a stunningly insightful talk which I revisited recently. It challenges us all to think about how to design / assess businesses and / or understanding our own business potential based on using a differentiating what we decide to do / don’t do:
“Self-awareness is the only sustainable competitive advantage you can find.”
Am hoping Mr Belsky won’t mind that I took the model discussed and made it available for download below as a blank template (just right click and ‘save as’)—it certainly helped me in some of my thinking about new service offerings:
Watching a Shirky talk always means leaving with a huge amount of pearls, but check out the above plus the quote below and tell me it doesn’t resonate with any creative endeavours you have been involved with:
“…they don’t care that they saw it in practice because they already knew it couldn’t work in theory.”
If you work with a client or in a corporation / organisation which doesn’t get what you’re trying to do even though you have showed them the solution, forget changing minds, time to change the company you keep!
Then surround yourself with people who take care plus improve each others output.
