Notes from a Sustainopreneur | on Sustainability Entrepreneurship

[coverage] We-think, We are Smarter than Me, The Long Tail - about Collaborative Book-writing

I see snippets of a huge sea-change come in to play, where the concept of "Book" is about to be socially deconstructed, delearnt, relearnt, and reconstructed. Imagine such an intro to a book, would you put down the book immediately and say - "oh, my, that was a heavy digest - too deep - demands too much of me in my reading - I am too lazy/too buzy/too fixed in my world-view/too whatever to read more".

Maybe I have lost you - as a reader! - already now.

Maybe you don't read books at all, anymore.

Maybe just Harry Potter is a bestseller of huge event-marketed proportion at release.

Maybe.

Or Maybe NOT.

Because - in a time of alot of "maybe's" there are some modes of the process of book writing turned upside down.

• Pioneering experiments - where I participated, Seth Godin's Crowdsourced "What Shall Google Do?".

• The Long tail - Chris Anderson writing a book through a blog, sourcing input from his readers before the first (needless to say, bestselling) print.

• We are Smarter than Me - a book written through a Wiki about how business can approach new social media forms emerging from the CCI @ MIT as a research experiment.

• We-think, on Wikia - with an igniting intro by Charles Leadbeater (who are one of the pioneering authors in the Literature Review in my Master Thesis on the emergence of the concept sustianopreneurship with his book the Rise of the Social Entrepreneur) - through @alheri • Lilly Evans :).

And, of course, the King of Kings, the Queen of Queens - Wikipedia with all the siblings, daugthers, sons and distant relatives in the whole Wikimedia Family, proximate and distant projects hosted on the MediaWiki platform, and complimentary Wikifying of all domains of human (inter)action on all Wiki-platforms. And the rest of eco/biosphere, cosmos and beyond...

We need a new conceptual framework on the process of authoring "books" of these collaborative kinds, but it already happened in a sense with the sixties "happening" - the Audience is on the Stage.

I shut up here, and encourage you all to make yourself able to say - "I am not reading books. I write them" ;).

Punch-line, ad lib, fade:

Feel free to join the "Chris Anderson Model" of book-blogging, which I tentatively have called "Pro-Active Crowdsourcing", in a response to Jimmy Wales, the King of Wikipedistan, and his critique of the concept crowdsourcing, where I add pro-active, in the write-up of "Sustainopreneurship - Business with a Cause. The Whys, Whats and Hows of Entrepreneuring for Sustainability" - but the proactive peer2peer crowdsourcing of that book already have changed the sub-title from the original "The Why, What, How of Creative Organizing for Sustainability". And it can be changed once, twice or maybe three times more. Or a Gazillion :). 11 people have joined the potential process of adding their input to it in the Group at the Sustainopreneurship Community. Three have used their sphere of influence already. Thus, the change!

I set example by deeds, not words.

Go to the Book Peer2Peer Review Group on Sustainpreneur's Café to see the evolvement!

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Post Scriptum: Time to reveal my motive for the categories bracketed in the subject lines, introduced on this blog just some weeks ago - they correspond to Book Parts, where the outline already is out, uncommented, on the Book Group ;). I will return here with a post blogging away the semi-final results when the convo over at the group have made their input at next stage - the Outline leading to a Synopsis, leading to a re-visiting to Older Texts, re-edit, recycling, revolving, revolutioning and ...reconstructing them into a new context, in which also a new context is introduced, new content is created, new concepts are constructed and new cases are crowd-sourced - pro-actively.

Thus will this text form some/any part of the Part Zero: Part 0. The Coverage. An intended kind-of intro chapter, where I believe this will be the chapter that is authored and putting final touch to latest in the process before the book goes in print...

[contemplations] Some Thoughts on the (Potential) Power of Blog Memes

Blog memes are usually quite pointless, as concluded in my last post.

But - when it comes to one aspect of the potential full power of Blog Memes, we see the Power of We in living vibrancy here. There are much to add here of insight from the phenomenon as such, but I will keep that for the Essay Blogs in the analytical and conversational part for my book to come (see sidebar), blogged away later, since I elaborate in my latest publication on researching sustainopreneurship (a book chapter that will be separately blogged soon in relation to a Conceptual Campaign started beyond the Wikipedia article on Sustainopreneurship), a contribution on the power of social media to "collapse the degrees of separation" in between sustainopreneurs specifically, also applicable for change agents for a sustainable world in a more general sense as well.

About half of the top ten of the world's most popular sites are all social, and all in the top ten do have deep social dimensions, or have direct social web affiliations as parts of their brands! Memetic power environments, right?

So, do get out and socialize in the new media spheres - you never know what happens :). Especially if you want to change the world for the better! The Key Element on that, to make it a lasting experience that changes 'us', I believe is to blog yourself - both your 'self' and blogging on your own, in conversations with others - all the way, ongoing. And now, with microblogging, you don't even have the barrier of locking your up in keyboard anxiety of the Writer's Block. You can write an SMS, can't you? Then you can at least Microblog!

This brings me to the reposting and reediting of the #changeblogger meme as such, to continue my direct participatory and inclusive interactive ("enactive") research on Phenomena That Matter. Separately posted, to give it respect :). And adding key elements of events changing the path towards a more detailed level, with even more clarity.

I firmly believe we have not reached the full potential of Blog Memes. I will soon play around and create my own for the Conceptual Campaign I have initiated, that presently only is aired out through Facebook and my Twitter account as a part of this "enaction", on a meta-level a big experiment on Conceptual Diffusion (or Perpetual Confusion ha ha :). See the Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed streams on the sidebar here for that!

I will blog about this Conceptual Campaign soon, to collect some initial experiences of that! And happily concluding, that this blog post now is below 500 words :). "It's getting better" as Lennon/McCartney wrote up in their lyrics ;).

[chronicles] The #Changeblogger Meme - RE:VISITED

Soon two months ago, I went astray to tell a story of many inter-twined stories, in need of editing and wrapping up in my Future Book, that will be blogged here.

It was my RESPONSE to the STIMULI of a MEANINGFUL BLOG MEME with QUESTIONS THAT MATTER.

It is time to make that maxi version and mash-up of many inter-related events thrown into that long story, into the short, edited version (similar to the Dance Version with two minute intro and two minute outro with six minutes of beats and melodies signifying the tune in eight minutes you have on the dancefloor when DJing Live, and the Radio Edit in four minutes flat for Radio and MTV...).

So I will give you the Short Edit. I will begin by Copy&Paste, and meeting the Aim - 500 words or less for the full post... ;).

With some Background and On-Issue thoughts of Blogging as a Tool for Change in general, copied and re-edited, from last post, as well.

The definition of "Changeblogger" is dead simple. A Changeblogger is:

"A member of the blogging community who is using their blog, podcast or vlog to raise awareness, build community, and/or facilitate readers/listeners/viewers' taking action to make the world a better place."

(posted in the original Britt Bravo post, "Changebloggers. Using Social Media to create Social Change").

Beyond email, I coin blogging to be one of the most simple and most straightforward of all internet-traveling media and communication formats. Just get you out there, share, in all transparency beyond your little mail inbox to the big, big world.

So, why not use the media in itself to transform and accelerate the change in the McLuhan spirit of 'the medium being the message'? Now in the days we really experience the Global Village: in order to unite and connect, in order to create peace, in order to gain momentum of the movement towards a Sustainable World - why not use a follow up of the original changeblogging post, where the action creates meaning in itself, and where the concept of changeblogging is lived and done 'being the *change* we want to see' through a blog meme? That was the initial response that fired my soul on this.

Usually blog memes are quite pointless, and just seems to be a simple way to generate traffic and reconfirm blogrolls to each other, where you get tagged with ego questions like what you had for breakfast and what you plan to do tomorrow. See the Blogging 101 chronicle on Blog Memes with a full tutorial to even create your own.

But, as the Changeblogger Meme starter Qui Diaz pointed out when launching the Changeblogger Meme (my bold);

"The ChangeBlogging meme has arrived. On a meta level - not just the three question blog-a-long at the end of this post. Eyes are shifting from the internal “me” meme to a season of “we” and “us.” The winds of change are welcome - and overdue."

This was the reason for my Spirit to be Ignited on this Blog Meme in the first place. And, now disciplining myself towards keeping below 500 words or less per post, which I got beyond one more time, helpless me - aiming for 350 at large future-wise, promise! - I shut up and rewrite my response in a new version, in a Radio Edit Length post :).

[chronicle] Sustainopreneurship - Now on Wikipedia!

I spent the afternoon yesterday, making the final edit for the since-long-way-back intended Wikipedia Entry on 'Sustainopreneurship'. In some ways possible to do ever since I got published with my contribution to the VHU conference proceedings published 2006, making it formally researched and peer-reviewed by senior researchers in that volume. But I awaited two authoring rounds more, before firmly finding it able to publish to meet the rightfully high standards of Wikipedia - especially on new concepts (as some referred to as neologisms before entering mainstream vocabulary). The tentative definition in the VHU publication was tried-and-tested through the Master Thesis in 2007 using the Enactive Research approach, and then followed by a conference article on prospective future research on Sustainopreneurship. This last article went into the loop of post-editing and peer review to finally be published in a book, printed and delivered September 15, 2008 (that will be blog covered separately).

This last event was the turning point for me - now I had a firm foundation of three rigorly scrutinized academic publications, feeling comfortable enough to defend the article, and activate my account on Wikipedia. As expected, a quick note from a seasoned Wikipedian beyond the publishing (those citizens who contribute to the living dynamic community-authored encyclopedia) tagged it with the "original research" stamp, since a quick read of the article make the Master Thesis an all too dominant part of the core content on the conceptual development, making it look like I want to popularize the Master Thesis. No, that was not the case, and I objected on the talk page, stating 1. The term was not coined by me. 2. There are two ISBN-catalogued and peer-reviewed books containing my contribution meeting academic standards. Beyond the editing (I shortened the notes on the Thesis to make it more proportional in the chronology of events in the development section, and I replaced the direct link to the Master Thesis with the Google Scholar Search on Sustainopreneurship, and added ISBN numbers together with direct links showcasing the two books), I took away the template and tagging of the article.

Beyond this, it has been untouched and not questioned, and I hope it will stay that way. Now, 24 hours later, it has been viewed 54 times.

At the publishing moment, I was listening to the end of the first hour of Markus Schulz Internet radio show Global DJ Broadcast from October 9 [tracklist - download], Deadmau5's version of the Title Music from A Clockwork Orange movie by Stanley Kubrick, originally the Funeral Music of Queen Mary II by composer Henry Purcell. Aptly titled "Clockwork" [YouTube].

The drama of that song, and the Anthony Burgess original dystopia with the term Ultra Violence coined, made a great illustrative turning point to the historical moment, where the "hive mind truth" and common sense meanings of the world we have been trying to understand the last 200 000 years as Homo Sapiens reflected by Wikipedia recieved my donation to the knowledge of humanity. Where I want to turn the state of Ultra Violence towards ourselves and our planet to Ultra Peace.

Beyond the adding of the knowledge to the hive mind, announced through a Tweet stating it as my Gift to Humanity on World Poverty Day, four minutes after the publishing, and adding my instant defense of the article at the Wikipedia Talk Page, I was resting and listening to the news. To my surprise, I saw a news flash from the Traditional Circle of Elders meeting at Flathead Lake, Montana from Swedish TV4 - and I realized when looking at the website today that they were the only TV Broadcasting Company allowed to be there [report here - swedish narration, but interviews with chiefs and leaders in english]. Traditionally, these annual meetings of all the tribe and spiritual leaders of the Native Americans dating back over thirty years, have been closed for "the White Brother Man" as they say, but some years ago they decided to open up and share. The increasing concern with Global Warming and the nature catastrophes increasing in intensity and numbers of later years made them decide to share their message with the world and the white man. Oren Lyons was there [interview, longer and in English, with Oren Lyons from TV4 and the meeting], who I had the honor to meet at the big Envisions conference in Västerås 2002. Back then he ended the whole 500+ peeps conference with the words "Action Speaks Louder Than Words".

And that wraps up my posting on the story on my Wikipedia Entry. It started out as action without words by the turn of the millennium early 2000, then I stumbled upon a concept illustrating my deeds in 2003, and now, 2008 beyond three crucial publications, it is time to take this word even further in proliferation. Not focus on the talk in the spirit of the word, but to actually shut up and do something. A concept is a concept, and an idea is an idea, and nothing is as practical as a good theory. But what matters is how we apply it. Also, what I have learned, is that it is by hands-on application and action we can learn a lot more about the concept.

Now walking my talk, by exactly shutting up, and end with a link.

You know which ;).

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NOTE: This post a part of the Book Blogging, see sidebar. Intended to be included in Part I of the book, outline and synopsis of the book to be published separately. Categorized accordingly.

[chronicle] Spreading the #Changeblogger meme - and how things, ideas, projects and people can spread and connect

Britt Bravo - the 'Have Fun * Do Good' blogger - with a very appropriate multiplier in the title - fun and doing good are an exponential positive feedback loop, the more fun you have doing good, the more good you will be doing because you are having fun! - and yes, btw, that is her name! Last name she got from her husband ;) - is one of my fellow/follow twitters. From the beginning, we actually coincided to be posted in the same blog update introducing 'new 2kbloggers' in a now dead project about democratizing and broadening the attention scope of the blog-o-sphere beyond the A-list. [Thank you the Web Alexandria of web.archives.org for making it possible retrieving posts from a nowadays domain-for-sale!].

That's how we made contact - a project that actually spread my blog 'reality avatar' called 'face' included in the 2000 blogger face collage all the way to China...! Then, in the beginning of August 2008 I had a very broad blast to almost all emails who had entered my the part of virtual sphere called 'mail'. Some four-figure address blast of spreading the Handshake for Tibet Avaaz call, at the day of kicking off the olympics, crying out for a peaceful change in the Tibet situation. Now adding beyond 200 000 handshakes that began with Dalai Lama in London targeting 500 000 in the campaign, returned some few respondents with comments - a powerful reconnector vehicle, indeed! Britt was one of them, with a simple "thanks for sharing this"! Yes, shaking hands, stretching out in peace. And, in another association here, one of the other 2kbloggers, by the way, was Jack Yan (and that is how I found the project of 2kbloggers as well, through his web, responding to and joining the call!) - proud member of the Yan dynasty moving to NZ in early childhood, from the Guangdong province.

 
Coming this far in the post, tags line up in context a general mash-up of connected net-flows one-thing-leading-to-another. Democracy. Spreading virally. China. Change. And, yes - Connect. I decided to add Britt to my Twitter feed after re-connecting and re-visiting her blog. And, the other day I received a tweet from her, with the concept of 'changeblogging' from Britt's tweetstream.

This background brings me to topic. And illustrates it very good too.

Linking around, it showed out that Britt coined the term 'changeblogging' some months back, the original post is here - from May.

But it was not until three days ago the changeblogging meme kicked off things started to happen - and now, in a few days, have moved to a Facebook Group, a Ning Community, a Twitter ID, an official #hashtag twitter meme tracker, beyond the Wiki created earlier. And this explosion happened after the blog meme was started. Vibrant!

So what is this all about?

The definition is dead simple. A Changeblogger is:

"A member of the blogging community who is using their blog, podcast or vlog to raise awareness, build community, and/or facilitate readers/listeners/viewers' taking action to make the world a better place."

(posted in the original Britt Bravo post, "Changebloggers. Using Social Media to create Social Change").

Beyond email, I coin blogging to be one of the most simple and most straightforward of all internet-traveling media and communication formats. Just get you out there, share, in all transparency beyond your little mail inbox to the big, big world. So, why not use the media in itself to transform and accelerate the change in the McLuhan spirit of 'the medium being the message'? Now in the days we really experience the Global Village: in order to unite, in order to create peace, in order to gain momentum of the movement towards a Sustainable World - why not use a follow up the original changeblogging post, where the action creates meaning in itself, and where the concept of changeblogging is lived and done 'being the *change* we want to see' through a blog meme?

Usually blog memes are quite pointless, and just seems to be a simple way to generate traffic and reconfirm blogrolls to each other, where you get tagged with ego questions like what you had for breakfast and what you plan to do tomorrow. I got tagged in the 'swedish blogger meme' from the mentioned 'honorary Swede' Jack Yan (having late jazz Swedish singer Monica Zetterlund as one of his favorite artists by the way, to add to the type of trivia usually showing up as results of these memes, if the hypothetical would question was 'what swedish artist do you think is the best?' ;). And that's about the only time I jumped on one of these blog memes.

But, as the Changeblogger Meme starter Qui Diaz pointed out;

"The ChangeBlogging meme has arrived. On a meta level - not just the three question blog-a-long at the end of this post. Eyes are shifting from the internal “me” meme to a season of “we” and “us.” The winds of change are welcome - and overdue."

We see the Power of We in living, vibrant here. There are much to add here of insight from the phenomenon as such, but I will keep that for a more esoteric and analytical posting on the Sustainopreneurship Research Blog beyond the publishing of my book chapter on researching sustainopreneurship, since I elaborate in that contribution on the power of social media to "collapse the degrees of separation" in between sustainopreneurs specifically, also applicable for change agents for a sustainable world in a more general sense as well. Eventually, getting to IRL community building with offline events really gets it going in the localities, such as the first Changeblogger meetup in D. C. Let's hope for a similar development trajectory as with the Social Media Club with a common, global phenomenon and shared community of practice and interest, with local chapters spreading to explore, network and connect, more, and deeper.

After all, about half of the top ten of the world's most popular sites are all social, and all in the top ten do have deep social dimensions, or have direct social web affiliations as parts of their brands, so there is certainly many overlapping interests here!

Concluded - get out and socialize in the new media spheres - you never know what happens :). Especially if you want to change the world for the better!

So, 'nuff for the general intro stuff and my adding to the conversation and reflections - let's take the Quiz and the 'Changeblogger Mantra', as coined by Alexandra Rampy, the Social Butterfly and Changeblogger Wiki Wizard - the three-question meme, answered :). So, here I go!

What is one change - big or small, local or global - you want to see in your lifetime?

Given the topic of my blogging, it would naturally be seeing more entrepreneurship and innovation for sustainability, both big and small, both local and global (and motivating strongly why I embraced the meme :). Sustainopreneurship is ALL about change to make the world a better place. The agenda is big enough to create millions of businesses for the benefit of the billions of people - and planet - to turning the world's biggest problems to even greater business opportunities. If I need to prioritize within what areas, I would refer to my SEEDS Model - Strengthening of Health, Education, Entrepreneurship, Digital Unification and Sustainable Distributed Energy and Mobility. Poverty, climate change, water and food security, HIV/AIDS, clean production and consumption - you name it. Solutions are captured within these SEEDS areas.

Who is already working this issue that you think others should support?

I am all living, breathing, dreaming, acting, networking, branding, creating, enacting, empowering, entrusting, enjoying, exploring, experiencing, proliferating, facilitating, writing, doing, making, living this issue 24/7/365.

So support me ;).

An that is not shameless self-promotion, rather the work I do to make leverage to the sustainopreneurial movement at large, e. g. things I focus and point to with those making a change - change makers I find along the way and blog about. Help them out. Blog their work. Use your sphere of influence to give them a helping hand. For some inspirational case stories, see the SEEDS Innovation Fund web.

How are you going to use your Web/tech/marcom skills to further this cause? (Or, what are you already doing that works?)

I have defined five action areas with ventures rolling out in part parallel, part serial process, with my own practical down-to-earth contribution. The first two to get moving fully and established next in the curve, both in parallel built up -

to have the research venture ÆREAS ("Association for Enactive Research, Education and Application of Sustainopreneurship") constituted finding 150 Founding Members, with http://interim.aereas.nu, http://blog.aereas.nu and http://community.aereas.nu as three destinations for the web, blog and community for the interim association, and 

to get the primary SLICE Service and Publishing (my freelancing brand) project focused reaching success - the virtual freelancing Ki-Work Category Marketplace Social Enterprise empowered with 75 Category Experts working with empowering the  Sustainability Businesses Movement at large with web-workers offering their services through that platform. For more details on this task, see the presentation of that Ki-Project here. (SLICE stands for "Sustainopreneurial Lecturing, Inspiration, Consultancy and Events".)

Besides that, getting even more leverage, spread and power for the two SLICE-Published blogs; Notes from a Sustainopreneur - the blog you're reading now - covering the 'What?' aspect of Sustainopreneurship, and 43 Tools covering the 'How?' dimension with popular blogging (where the more research oriented iÆREAS blog above covers both dimensions of idea and practice from a more academic point of departure).

That's it!

Now, tagging! Karin Johansson, Naima Benali, Jack Yan, Chris Heuer, Johnnie Moore, Tim Kitchin, John Caswell, Chris Macrae, Mostofa Zaman, Sofia Bustamante, Sadiq Baig, Ed Daniel, John Dierckx, AainaA Ridtz A-R, Lilly Evans, Don the Idea Guy, Ben Koot, Jozefa Fawcett, Richard Gatarski, Simon Warrick, Fabian Pattberg, George Pór, Vincent Wright, Steve Purkiss, Anna Dani, Ed Mitchell, DK, Scott Allen, Tav Espians, Tracy Ann Sheridan, Yvette Dubel, Takuya Misawa, Dennis Barker, Daniel Westergren, Kerry Santo, Josef Davies-Coates, Margaret G Orem, Linda Pierre, Karl Goldfield, Frauke Godat, Patrick Moore, Tom Ball, Johan Thomas, Tim Sandgren, Nick Clayton,  Niclas Ihrén, Christian Conrad, Zach Lane, Cristina Andersson, Curt Rosengren, Paul Arthur Smith, Ahmadou M. Sall, Therese Weel, Inger-Mette Stenseth, Marcus Berneström, Dave Hampton, Simon Sharp, Richard Nelson, Steve Brant, Celine Ruben-Salama, Christine Crowstaff, Annie Berger, David Bowman, Curt Beckmann,