We Think

Did you know 2.0

The KaosPilots.NL is recruiting NOW!

Imagine a school, where on the first day, you will not be registered with a number, but instead be given a business card with your name on, and a key to the building seconded by the remark: “It is all yours 24/7.. make the best of it!”

Last September, 17 individuals from 8 different countries gathered in Rotterdam to form the first ever KaosPilots.NL team! They are now recruiting Team 2! 20-35 young entrepreneurs with a head for business and a heart for the global society will be offered the opportunity to join Team 2. In the program you will develop your creative, innovative and entrepreneurial talents to enable you to take on the future that you choose! The question is always: “What will be your contribution to the world… what is your impossible dream… and are you risk taker enough to make it happen…?!”

Check out www.kaospilots.nl for info on the school, stories from students and info on the application procedure. Or contact our Welcoming Team at apply@kaospilots.nl.

There will be an info meet on Saturday, April 26^th. Deadline for application: May 19^th, 2008.

P.S.: Ursel from IMAGINE 2007 is on Team 1. I am sure, she is happy to answer your questions…

What if …

A series of improbable events

By Alex Beam, International Herald Tribune

Thursday, April 3, 2008

What if there was one day a year when people all over the world decided to behave in a manner worthy of the species? What would they call that day?

Suppose business people decided to cap their annual earnings at $100 million a year?

“Enough is enough,” Blackstone’s Steve Schwarzman ($5.3 billion in 2007) and the retired ExxonMobil chairman Lee Raymond ($400 million retirement package) would say in a letter cosigned by the former United Healthcare chairman and options fiddler William McGuire ($1.6 billion).

“No one is going to starve with a hundred large in their pocket.”

What if there was a day when the presidents of every NCAA college agreed that varsity sportsmen and women would have to demonstrate a 10th-grade reading level, proficiency in long division, and pass the elementary civics test administered to prospective U.S. citizens (Sample question: What are the colors of the U.S. flag?) in order to play a sport?

What day would it be when Senator John McCain woke up and said, “I’m old, and my body is broken, through no fault of my own. If I win the presidency, I’ll agree to serve only one term. We had an incapacitated president for most of the 1980s, and it was bad for the country. I won’t put the American people through that again.”

What day would it be when the Chinese Politburo granted sovereignty to Tibet? “Eastern Europe never worked out for the Soviets,” President Hu Jintao would tell a news conference. “Tibet just doesn’t want to be ruled by China.”

Can you imagine a day when people said to themselves, “You know, television is totally passive. You sit there, you never think. I’m going to read a book.”

Let them read “Beginner’s Greek,” by James Collins, because it is clever, romantic, and fun.

Could there be a day when the governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, woke up and realized: “Maybe my time would be better spent running the Commonwealth than writing a self-aggrandizing book. At the end of the day . . . I’m no Obama.”

Suppose one day President George W. Bush asked himself, “What did those 4,000 young Americans die for in Iraq? Thank heavens I’m not a public figure in Japan. I might have to apologize. Or worse.”

It’s bracing to imagine the day when the video-game manufacturer Rockstar announces: “We don’t want to make money off a game that encourages elementary school students to kill ‘hos’ and assassinate grand jury witnesses. We’re taking Grand Theft Auto off the market.”

Conjure up one day when the print, broadcast, and Internet media conspire not to write about some pathetic celebrity entering rehab, or profile gossamer entities like the Beckhams, “American Idol” contestants, and other popcult jetsam. Or a day when newspaper columnists admit they really didn’t know how the elections would turn out, or much at all about international geopolitics, so they will stop writing until they come up with an original idea.

How to name the day when companies like British Petroleum and Chevrolet issue a press release saying, “We’re spending tens of millions of dollars in glitzy magazine and TV ads telling everyone how ‘green’ we are. Instead, we’re going to spend that money on manufacturing efficient cars, and reducing energy consumption, something we struggled against for most of the past century.”

What day would that be, when Hillary Clinton admits that George W. Bush ran for president to vindicate his father’s reputation and that she, too, was running to clear her (married) family name. “Al Gore found an exit strategy,” Clinton might say to herself. “Maybe I’ll give him a call.”

On this imaginary day, France’s first lady ad interim, Carla Bruni, would declare, “That was fun! I’ve milked this relationship for enough publicity. Now I’ll go back to making records and taking off my clothes - my first loves.”

What if there were one day a year when everyone behaved in a manner worthy of the species? What would they call that day? They would call it April Fools’ Day.

uinternacional08

The results of the forth edition of the ‚Uinternacional’ regarding the topics of climate change, energy efficency and renewable energies are ready.

Therefore an invitation to all of you to have a look at the spots (some in Spanish, some in German, none in English – sorry for that) at: http://uinternacional2008.wordpress.com/

The Hub in Brussels at the Art of Hosting

Last week, I have been in Belgium to visit the Hub in Brussels and to be part of the Art of Hosting. Over 50 people gathered at the Heerlijckyt to celebrate diversity, complexity, and collective intelligence through conversations that matter.

 

I had to go to Brussels to meet Mushin from Berlin who wrote about the Art of Hosting afterwards: “Art of Hosting is not a method, even though it uses state-of-the-art (post-)modern social technologies that make a lot of sense and help turn that sense into effective action - if that is what the participants wish.”

Using the Hub vision document to present the Hub concept at the Art of Hosting in the Hub in Brussels last Tuesday, Simone and me discovered the chaordic stepping stones inside:

Simone is the initiator of the Hub in Brussels.

And this is how her week looks like:

Web 2.0 meets social innovators

What happens when you get a bunch of software developers and social innovators together, give them a set of social problems and only 48 hours to solve them?

What happens, if you put together the IT specialists with the NGO sector in the selfHUB in Berlin?

Two interesting “unconferences” are coming up in London (April 04-06, 200 and in Berlin (June 14-15, 200 .

Imagine is rippeling out

Shortly after IMAGINE 2008, AIESEC in Austria organized SOLUTION in Vienna, where my colleague Wiebke went. Here are her reflections:

“From 14 to 17 February 2008 AIESEC in Austria and Emersense together with a variety of reputable partner organizations, guests and speakers hosted Solution – a learning platform for sustainable leadership. Building on Theory U – an MIT developed concept for personal and social transformation – this year’s conference aims to enable and empower young people from across the world to take initiative and provide leadership for a meaningful and sustainable development of themselves and their communities. Throughout the four-day conference, about 100 selected participants engaged in an intense experience – marked by the integration of latest learning methods with arts and formal education – to build clarity, confidence, capability and courage to contribute to a sustainable future. “

Read further here. 

Are you living your dream?

The Davos 2008 question