Posted via email from martinbrown’s posterous
morning light
Leave a reply
Author Archives: martin brown
“Architecture of Change: 8 Real-World Examples” Slideshow from Fast Company
via fastcompany.com
In Gestalten’s upcoming book Architecture of Change 2, editors Kristen and Lukas Feireiss take a look at architecture projects around the world that combine creativity, technical knowledge, and scientific expertise to take on environmental challenges.
Earth Days: 1979 President Carter installed solar panels at White House: 1986 Ronald Reagan took them down.
via guardian.co.uk
This mind-bogglingly idiotic reversal is chronicled in Robert Stone’s new documentary Earth Days, about the history of the environmental movement.
Thoughts On My Bike, a film by Andrea Dofman, … simple … brilliant…
via youtube.com
Love this simple yet powerful film, thanks to @carboncoach for sharing via twitter.
It is amazing what thoughts pass through when you cycle …
Crowd sourcing in action – the new benchmarking?
Looking at the excellent directory of crowdsource 'sources' got me thinking….
During the days of good old Total Quality Management, EFQM and Process Improvement if you wanted to improve an aspect or process within your organisation the accepted (and workshop-ed to death) approach was to identify the best practice within your organisaiton and ensure that was adopted across the patch.
To achieve further improvements you looked outside your organisation at those in your sector, identified better practice and adapted your processes and approaches accordingly. To become best in class and earn an excellence tag, you then looked outside your sector for inspiration and best practice. The classic being Airways learning from Formula One pit stops for turn around times.
All these approaches necessitated the skills the practices and the art of Benchmarking.
Now with ease of access to mass 'thought' through crowdsourcing, as illustrate for example in We Think and indeed through the questions and answers within Linkedin, the use of twitter, it is now possible for anyone to ask the question what is the best practice in X and get a considered response.
Maybe crowdsourcing isn't about to replace Benchmarking, but rather Benchmarking adopt crowdsourcing as a viable tool, ensuring that the Benchmarking Code and practice is maintained.
But importantly principles and art of benchmarking are still essential to help understand the results of crowdsourcing and how to apply the same into the organisation
Visual Carbons
Design is the first strategy that should be used to reduce the need for fossil-fuel energy
From the excellent Architecture 2030 site http://www.architecture2030.org/regional_solutions/homeowners.html
what a web we weave
wow, great example of connectivity through twitter
Conversation Prism: the art of listening, learning and sharing (via @subutcher)
Su Butcher posted this up on her Posterous, and whilst the illustration is impressive, I love the title in the centre: Conversation = the art of listening, learning and sharing.
Could also see using this format, blank, to get groups or organisations to think through how they communicate, and then reveal what is out there. (A new voice of the customer?)
on snow leopard zen connections
‘If the snow leopard should manifest itself, then I am ready to see the snow leopard. If not, then somehow (and I don’t understand this instinct, even now) I am not ready to perceive it, in the same way that I am not ready to resolve my koan(*); and in the not-seeing, I am content. I think I must be disappointed, having come so far, and yet I do not feel that way. I am disappointed, and also, I am not disappointed. That the snow leopard is, that it is there, that its frosty eyes watch us from the mountain—that is enough.’ Peter Mattiessen, Snow Leopard
Installing Snow Leopoard onto the MacBook, brought back memories of reading The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen, one of those all time great travel books whoose ‘feel and spirit’ lives with you.
It was back in early 80’s, in what would now be called a gap year that we trekked through Nepal. It was before trekking organisations had really became established, so it was a DIY affair, with map, tent and staying in very remote villages in the higher Langtang Hemlubu and Ganesh areas to the north of Katmandu.
The Snow Leopard, along with Midnights Children were the cult books of the moment that were being exchanged passed around, often falling apart, often in sections as the fours of us shared the reading.
Reading the book in the country and landscapes that matthiessen desribed brought the book alive, and instilled the sense of his Zen approach.
Matthiessen describes a journey with George Schaller through Nepal in search of the Snow Leopard and Himalayan blawal (bue)sheep, as the journey was taken shortly after the death of his wife, the book is Matthiessen’s journey, a metaphor, reflecting, through Zen, on much broader matters of life, death and existence itself.
So whilst Snow Leopard was being installed, I rummaged through the loft and found the very ear-torn and battered copy to reread… and out fell some map sections with notes I made….
*Koan = A Zen teaching riddle, koans are attractive paradoxes to be meditated on; their purpose is to help one to enlightenment, for example what is the sound of one hand clapping
Fairsnape 