Tag

innovation

#SaveBmore – Why You’re Only Hearing About Income Inequality Now

By | #SaveBmore, Tinted Lens | 6 Comments

Income inequality is rattling around the collective consciousness of late on the backs of President Obama’s remarks and Pope Francis’ denunciation of trickle-down economics in the first lengthy writing of his papacy. The gap between the poor and the super-rich in the United States has been steadily widening for decades but only recently has it risen to the top of the agenda for the media, citizens and politicians.

Why? Why only now? Why has this issue been largely ignored for so long?

Because the effects of the wealth gap for the past several decades have mostly been felt by people of color.

Here is where I could trot out the numbers highlighting how the middle class has shrunk since the 1960’s, the map of the U.S. if land were distributed by wealth, the comparison of CEO pay ratios, or the number of hours of minimum wage earning it takes to afford an apartment. But I’ll leave that for others.

According to the 2008 census, in Baltimore City, half of all African-American households earned less than $35,000 per year, while only one-third of white households fell under this low-income threshold. The prevalence of poverty among black city residents is almost double that for whites. While the Black middle class makes up 40 percent of the African-American population, this has always lagged behind the number of middle-class whites. This smaller number of middle class citizens is attributable to the wealth gap between blacks and whites. In 1984 there was an $85,000 difference in the wealth of white households over their black counterparts determined by an Institute on Assets and Social Policy (IASP) study; over the following 25 years, it ballooned to $236,500. That’s a $151,500 increase!

IASP attributed the national wealth gap to home ownership, household income, unemployment, and financial support/inheritance while writings on Baltimore have highlighted education, pathways to careers and discriminatory hiring practices as our major obstacles. In a city that is 70 percent black, this level of poverty and inequality drags the entire city down.

How do we save our sinking city? Well, according to the Baltimore Ethical Society, we can overcome our apathy and get mad about it. Spread the YouTube video on inequality; if you’re in a position to hire, re-examine how you’re evaluating candidates of color; mentor disadvantaged youth, or better yet, give them apprenticeship opportunities if you work in a trade. Consider cooperatives as your next start-up business model and utilize Community Wealth by looking to and building on a neighborhood’s existing assets.

The shocking thing is, what will #SaveBmore is already here (as my fellow ChangeEngine blogger Robyn Stegman argues). We have the population, we have the innovators, and we have the entrepreneurial spirit. What we need is for the two Baltimores to talk to one another and we’ll set the world on fire.

Educating for a Chaotic World

By | Social Enterprise, The Thagomizer | 3 Comments

With unemployment remaining a serious issue in the United States, many students are returning to school in hope that it will give them a leg up in the workforce. Formalized education is supposed to confer upon students a higher status that allows for greater opportunities, yet sadly this is not always the case.

Growing up in Michigan, you would always hear people lament of the days when you could graduate high school and go over and get a decent job at the auto plant with a wage large enough to support your family and a decent pension. In fact my high school was strategically located just across the street from a GM plant so young students could graduate and get their union card on the same day. Unfortunately as G. Asenath Andrews, the principal of Catherine Fergueson Academy points out now, “If you don’t finish high school, you can get a job at McDonalds, and if you finish high school, you can get a job at McDonalds.” What’s the incentive for education then, if after twelve years you still find yourself with the same options?

So the question, then, is how do you create an education system that expands a student’s economic options? Perhaps the most direct solution to this problem is job training. For example Youth Build employs low-income youth to build affordable housing in their communities while getting their GED or high school diploma. The youth in the program get on-the-job training and leadership development in the program that prepares them to enter the workforce. At my own high school, General Motors offered full scholarships for students in engineering as long as they promised to work for the company for two years after they finished their schooling. Colleges around the country are also working with industries to create professional programs that help train students for available jobs.

But what happens when the economy shifts again, and the skills you have are no longer applicable? How do you train students not only for the jobs available now but the jobs in the future? That’s where 21st Century Learning comes in, a framework for teaching students the skills they need to succeed in our new economy. Instead of focusing solely on knowledge (i.e. reading and math test scores), they focus on giving students the tools they need to find out and apply information to real world problems.The 21st Century Framework focuses on the 4Cs – Critical thinking and problem solving, Communication, Collaboration, and Creativity and innovation. It shifts the role of a teacher from being a sage on the stage, imparting knowledge to students, to being a guide on the side who helps students find the information for themselves. In this way they are preparing students for the lifetime of learning necessary to succeed in this economy.

One example of 21st Century Learning in action is the Dewitt Creativity Group, which re-imagines a school as a center of creativity for the community. As founders Jason LaFay and Jeff Croley state, “This is an economy that requires people to develop and exercise skills and forms of knowledge such as: critical thinking, technological proficiency, willingness to accept the differences of others, networking, constant reinvention of the self, and the ability to design and implement innovative concepts/practices. Without these skills and forms of knowledge individuals, communities, and countries will fail to prosper.”

To train students for the new economy they’ve turned their classroom into a center of creativity where students work on initiatives such as the Adopt-A-Business program, where students gain real work world experiences by providing creative services to businesses. In this program, students are presented with real-life problems. They have to research, propose, and implement solutions, teaching them how to apply their education to business needs.

While I was working in Detroit, I got to work with Catherine Fergueson Academy, a school for young pregnant women and mothers committed to providing a relevant education that prepares them to succeed. Their school puts their students in real-world work places and engages in discourse and dialogue on setting and reaching their educational goals. One of the first things you’ll notice about the school is they have a working farm in the back where students are trained in how to grow their own food and agribusinesses, how to make a profit selling the products of their harvest. Students take care of bees, an orchard of fruit trees, vegetables, and even goats and rabbits.  The farm teaches them a new way of thinking about the planet and consumption, how to take care of themselves and their family, and how to make money.

In order to become successful in this chaotic economy we need to train our students to become part of what Fast Company calls Generation Flux. “What defines GenFlux is a mind-set that embraces instability, that tolerates–and even enjoys–recalibrating careers, business models, and assumptions.” From the earliest age, young people are asked to identify what “they want to be when they grow up” but what happens if the world no longer needs automobile workers or firefighters? Members of Generation Flux need to be able to pick up new skills quickly, solve problems, and make connections to constantly create new opportunities. In order to train this new generation we need schools to become hacker spaces, labs, and incubators where students can experiment, collaborate, research, and apply what they’ve learned.

Today much of my career has been built on working with social media. But when I graduated high school, Facebook was still exclusive to college students and Twitter hadn’t been invented yet. There were no classes on social media in college but I was able to build the knowledge of the new technology on my own and apply what I had learned about best practices in communications to this new medium. To succeed in today’s economy a student needs to be a detective to figure out how to learn whatever skill is relevant to the day’s realites and connect the dots between what is already known. We need new systems of education that are focused on building skills for the modern workplace and once again providing an education that opens doors for new economic opportunities.

IMAGE CREDIT: Courtesy of Bill Owen

Beyond the Band Aid

By | The Good Plan | No Comments

Become Obsolete. In the fall of 2011 I heard Jay Parkinson of Hello Health speak at TedXMidAtlantic on the integration of technology and healthcare access. The entire talk was engaging, but those two words struck me: “become obsolete.”

That’s it. Engage in a way so that you aren’t needed anymore. Heal the source of the problem instead of sticking a band-aid on the wound. The difficult part is that our society often caters to the band aid approach. For if we’re no longer needed, how will we pay the rent? It’s a challenge we need the courage to tackle.

The key to becoming obsolete is identifying the problem, and then identifying its root. In the field of community development, problem identification often revolves around need, which in turn breaks down to perceived versus actual need. The difference between these needs is crucial to placemaking and community development.

Perhaps as an outsider, you’re frustrated by the lack of street signs and navigation in an area. You perceive the need as signage, to facilitate clear routes and to make the place easier for outsiders to visit. The residents, however, do not drive. They don’t need street signs — they know where they’re going and how to get from point A to B on foot or via public transit. What they need, in fact, are streetscapes that make walking safer and sheltered bus stops. The actual need is to make their pedestrian and public transit-heavy way of life safer and more convenient. This actual need is the solution to a sustainable and strong neighborhood, rather than a quick fix to attract the occasional passer-by.

I think of perceived and actual need in direct relation to the latest spike in Baltimore’s crime statistics. Every morning I check my twitter feed and my heart breaks a little bit. Today it was the recap of three overnight shootings. The morning updates of death and violence continue to pop up, and can be explained as simply as, something, somewhere, is broken. From what I understand, police are all over the western district right now, as their presence is expected to deter crime from taking place. While I have only headlines and crime maps to inform me of these trends in violence, my assumption is that their presence isn’t working. If it were, my Twitter feed would be silent. Their presence would, in fact, become obsolete. Maybe the perceived need for a police presence isn’t meeting the actual need, which may be something else entirley.

In graduate school I learned of the concept of infinite regress — the idea that we can always blame one more person for a perceived fault. For example, perhaps it’s not you fault there’s a hole in your shirt, it’s probably the fault of the manufacturer for using low grade fabric. Or maybe it’s the fault of the workers who produce the shirt for the manufacturer. Or it’s the fault of the boss who directs the workers who… you catch my drift. We have an innate need to point a figure and direct blame — primarily, I would assume, because we feel a need to fix the broken piece. In all of our professions, our job is to identify the problem so we can fix it. We exist, I would hope, to make things better.

This past week at Ignite Baltimore, a city employee stood up and expressed the desire to be innovative, but the inability to do so. Again, I was crushed. The constraints institutions put on employees to maintain the status quo doesn’t foster the development of new ideas or the ability to solve old problems. One of my favorite stories came out of Victoria, British Columbia two years ago, when officers began to carry lollipops in order to placate rowdy bar-goers or loiterers. Not only is it difficult to yell with a lollipop in your mouth, but fewer words led to fewer altercations, the sugar was calming, and the ‘pacifier effect’ seemed to steady those who may have been riled up.

We need the infrastructure to try new things and the courage to not be needed anymore. Doing more of the same, like increasing police presence, won’t ever be a long-term solution to crime. If you always do what you always do, you’ll always get what you’ve always got, and what we’ve currently got is far from optimal.

IMAGE CREDIT. Hasdai Westbrook

When the Music was Missing

By | The Good Plan | One Comment

During the opening forum at the recent innovation “un-conference” Create Baltimore, we ran through the usual suspects of interest for potential sessions: transportation, urban farming, and education. There was a quick minute where we entertained the idea of ‘music.’ Unfortunately, there were no strong advocates for this topic. Where were the representatives from the music industry?

“They’re still sleeping,” a participant yelled over the crowd, and there was a murmur of amusement.

But where were they? Where were the innovators of music, and why weren’t they there?

I sought help from Jordan Goodman of BeatWell Baltimore and Patrick Lundberg, an editor at Vibe To This  to discern why there wasn’t a stronger music industry representation when it came to cross-collaboration. It seems almost all of us – technologists, designers, artists, educators – are expanding our professional practice in order to facilitate change and community betterment. But where are the industry changemakers for music, and why aren’t they part of the discussion? Music is one of the few arenas that’s accessible to everyone — an international industry crossing all colors and cultures and boundaries. Did musicians feel they were beyond the need to evolve?

Both Pat and Jordan spoke about the evolution of the music business. While many musicians have changed their approaches to profitability, a greater number refuse to accept the demands of the new industry. Pat spoke of how tight-knit the local music community is, and explained that since so much of the industry has moved onto the internet, playing to 15-20 people in a boutique venue is more important than a bunch of people buying music on iTunes and never leaving the house to listen to it with others. Both Jordan and Pat used the word ‘insular’ more than once.

The term community came up quite a bit, and Pat reinforced the importance of organizations like WTMD – the Towson University radio station which promotes, supports, and encourages Baltimore bands and reaches out to the community through competitions, air time, and “First Thursday” free concerts.

Jordan spoke from the experience of his days on stage and explained, “In an era of Facebook and Twitter and self-promotion, people want to dance and be the stars with their friends instead of going to see stars on stage.” Immersion sells more tickets, and is therefore more desirable for venue owners. “We used to play for people who listened and didn’t just take pictures on their cell phones… People used to pay to see Kurt Cobain — a mythical person on a pedestal. Now people pay to see Skrillex.”

We talked about local venues like The Recher and Sonar — former Baltimore concert establishments turned into clubs. Jordan helped outline that music has become a business of the establishments. Owners focus on how to sell the most tickets, and the music business becomes an issue of preserving community, or selling out — without much chance for the middle ground.

I struggled to understand how musicians were expected to balance their craft with the demand for immersion and the reality of online sales. It turns out there are cross-pollinating business models. Jordan uses music to facilitate education, therapy, stress reduction, and team-building through BeatWell. BandHappy provides online music lessons, with ‘your favorite performer,’ allowing registered musicians to make extra money without compromising musical style or business values. GameChanger World, set to launch this spring, is a video gaming platform created by John D of the Skate & Surf Festival. This video game will push music through virtual incentives and awards. Think of playing your favorite videogame and redeeming points for discounted concert tickets or merchandise. The Baltimore Rock Opera Society (BROS) partners music with theater, producing performance and art you can’t simply download from the internet. These approaches continue to create tiers of affordability, letting musicians play and audiences choose how much, and to what financial level, they can participate.

As some musicians have become more creative and partnered with less traditionally defined fields, they have made their music more accessible. New methods of service delivery attract a greater audience. BROS, for example, sells out productions to those interested in music, theater, rock, and drama. Perhaps GameChanger World will receive downloads from people who aren’t interested in music, but really like video games.

As I learned more about the changing of service provision, I couldn’t help but equate the lot of musicians to a kind of gentrification; A group of artists once steady  and predictable in the way they went about service delivery was now challenged and pushed aside by new methods of attraction and retention. To aid in the survival of the corner bar band and the late night Cat’s Eye Pub talent, musicians must continue to build an emotional attachment to the customer. In a world run by technology and convenience, a partnership is an inescapable approach to strengthening your fan base — your music community — and is achievable without compromising the sound you create on stage.

 

IMAGE CREDIT. Wikimedia Commons.

Creative Arithmetic

By | ChangeEngine | 2 Comments

It’s funny what can emerge from a conversation. That, as a matter of fact, is a central premise of CreateBaltimore – the free-form conclave of Baltimore’s creative minds that seeks to go beyond pontification and spark powerful action. (Hmm, must have the pope on my mind.) ChangeEngine‘s own bard of Love & Concrete, Scott Burkholder, is both a co-creator and driving force behind the annual event, which had its most recent incarnation last Saturday, and naturally we want to use our platform to both cover and catalyze the process. But how do you capture the dizzying energy of those few short hours for those who created it, and convey that energy to those who weren’t there? And how do you start to quantify the impact of an “Un-Conference”? What are the metrics of imagination and passion?

Scott came to us with some intriguing figures. They lay a little flat as simple lines of text but got us excited enough to create this infographic. “That’s great,” said Scott. “But could we show how ninety percent of the sponsors were also participants.” And so we created another.

From words to vision to action – the CreateBaltimore way. Here’s to keeping the creative pistons firing…

CreateBaltimoreCreativeArithmetic - ChangingMedia

CreateBaltimoreDonutChart - ChangingMedia

You Are the Next Steve Jobs

By | Social Enterprise, The Thagomizer | One Comment

What do you think of when you hear the word “innovation”? What comes to mind when you hear that buzz word of all buzz words? Do you reminisce about Steve Jobs in his turtle neck? Do you conjure images of Thomas Edison slaving over the light bulb? Do you imagine the Wright Brothers doing the unthinkable at Kitty Hawk? Or do you think of yourself and a community of people like you working together to change the world?

Innovation is usually described as the product of geniuses. It is something that is created for us, not by us. When we tell the story of invention we often ignore the important contributions of others and focus on “eureka” moments by solo inventors. Our patent system is built on this concept. So when we come face to face with some of the world’s most intractable problems we often look to visionaries to come up with the solution that we buy or replicate.

Yet, what if we all became inventors? Collaborative open innovation takes development out of the hands of one inventor playing with filaments in his laboratory and harnesses a worldwide community of inventors, testers, and tweakers. A perfect example is the mountain bike.  Mountain bikes were not created by a company but a group of users who were frustrated by the limitations of road bikes and the lack of options for off-road biking. Users modified heavy cruiser bikes with better brakes, racing gears, and fat tires to create a new type of bike called a klunker. Eventually companies picked up on the trend and began producing models of their own.

Charles Leadbeater uses this example to describe how users can create new products that companies would never have thought of. He points out that we often think of innovation as special people in special places creating the ideas that are transported down the pipeline to passive consumers. However more and more we are seeing innovations go in reverse, where users create and define products.

Britta Riley of Windowfarms.org refers to open innovation as R&DIY, Research and Develop it Yourself. She has created an online community that is working on a system of hanging gardens that would allow apartment dwellers to grow their own food with just a little bit of window space. Using her website over 39,000 urban micro-farmers develop and test improvements for an indoor vertical hydroponic food growing system. Windowfarms is an exceptional example of the power of open collaborative innovation for social change. Instead of waiting for “experts” to fix our food system or plugging away at the problem herself, Riley invited a whole score of co-developers to work with her to create innovations that could allow apartment dwellers to grow their own salads right at home. Imagine what other problems we could solve together.

In order to form a new economy, we need radical ideas and companies aren’t going to create them for us. We need a new pool of collaborative open source innovators who share, create, and improve each others work to create new and better ways of meeting our community needs.

Innovation is collaborative and cumulative. Ideas need places to meet, mingle, and mate into something great. Luckily for Charm City residents, there is an event coming up that will give you the opportunity to do just that. Next week community change agents from all walks of life will come together for the third edition of Create Baltimore, an unconference for new ideas and actions to improve the city. Instead of waiting for Apple’s next big announcement or a Nobel laureate to come up with a cure for everything, let’s come together and collaboratively create our own products and models to improve our community.

IMAGE CREDIT. Courtesy of hackNY

Baltimore Startup Weekend Edu

By | Art & Social Change, Design, Education, Social Enterprise | No Comments

Last weekend was the first Baltimore StartupWeekend Edu, a 54-hour entrepreneurship competition. StartupWeekends take place every weekend in 90 countries and 300 cities around the world. StartupWeekend Edu is an offshoot of the original Startup Weekend program with a specific focus on innovative technology related to education. Both brands share a similar structure and goal:  pitch ideas, form teams, and launch a startup in just 54 hours before presenting the final pitch to a panel of judges.

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