Tag Archives: cool links

Articles I'm Digesting 24/4/2009

Here are some pieces from around the web that I’ve been digesting this week.

Why the bluster has given way to bland by Patrick Brethour in the Globe and Mail

This excellent article summarizes what I think is the most exciting trend in BC right now – the race for the pragmatic centre in our politics. Those from outside BC often fail to understand its politics (if I’d got a nickel in college for every time I was asked: how can the same people vote for the NDP provincials and The Reform Party federally???). This piece goes some way in explaining the province’s political history to those not from here.

Also of note… despite the claims of some reformers, British Columbia has already experiment with a Single Transferable Vote (STV). In twice in 1952 (the first election generated an unstable government that lasted 9 months) with the Social Credit Party winning out both times. This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t discuss electoral reform, but let us not pretend that it is something untried and completely novel.

Clinton says US shares responsibility for Mexico’s drug violence by By Warren P. Strobel in the Christian Science Monitor

This isn’t a fancy or insightful piece – but it is important. For the first time in memory a senior figure in the US administration has said what everybody has long known, that:

“Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade. Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians,”

The war on drugs is now so deeply a part of the American political way of life I have little hopes of seeing a dramatic shift anytime soon (no matter how good or accurate the movie Traffic was). Nonetheless, this is a critical step. More importantly, it starts the US down a path where discussions around address addiction as well as curbing and managing demand become more plausible strategies.

As many of you know, I’m sadly confident we are never going to “win” the war on drugs and drug violence, especially by curbing supply – indeed, as I wrote the other week, not even the RCMP believes this anymore. This is what makes strategies like Harm Reduction, and places like the Insite injection site so important. They don’t replace policing and prevention, but as the last 40 years have helped demonstrate, progress will be impossible if harm reduction is not part of the mix.

hbus, the transit day tripper by Holly Gordon in The Coast

He’s a great little story about a scrappy programmer in Halifax who is trying to build a parallel – and better – transit route planner on line. Cities should be begging for people like William Lachance – the create of hbus.ca beta – which “scrapes” bus information from the official site and repackages it in a more helpful and useful way. Imagine that – a citizen helping the city deliver a service more effectively!

Sadly, the City of Halifax doesn’t see it that way:

“We can’t give our information out for somebody else to put up and run their own Metro Transit trip planning because we ultimately are accountable for it,” she explains.

This concern is of course, nonsense. By her logic, she should be preventing someone from calling a friend and asking them to look at the bus schedule and telling them when the next bus will come because… well now that friend “controls” the data and not the City of Halifax. This really is 19th century thinking run amok.

Of course ask William what responses he gets and you hear a slightly different answer:

“You get one of two responses,” says Lachance of Metro Transit’s replies to his friend’s—and later his own—requests. “One is just ‘no.’ The other one is that they give you their policy on the dissemination of geographical data, something on the order of ‘give us a lot of money and we’ll give you the information you can basically only use for personal use.'”

While both responses sound different, they are functionally the same. “We, the city, will not give you data your taxes paid to create.” Why? Because we don’t want to, or… because we think we can extract still more money from you. This despite the fact that most local governments actually lose money trying to sell their data. Heavens forbid that actual citizens try to make their city easier to navigate.

The No-Stats All-Star by Michael Lewis in the New York Times Magazine

This is one of these delightfully insightful pieces about how really digging into the numbers can reveal truths that often go unseen. Here is the story of Shane Battier, an NBA player who is relatively unknown and whose basics stats suggest is an ordinary player. And yet… dig a little deeper and it is reveal that when he is playing the stats of players on his team are better, and those of players on opposing teams are worse.

Battier clearly has some basketball styled “soft” skills that make him effective, but that would likely be ignored or remain unseen to the majority of sport’s scouts and observers.

I’ll admit, one reason I really enjoyed this story is that I think there is a little bit of Battier in all of us, and in certain special people around us. There are people in my life who are like Shane Battier, I perform better, react faster, think more clearly, when they are around me. In addition, I’d like to think that there are boards I’m on, people I work with that, while no one can say “yeah, David is excellent at doing that” that nonetheless I help the group work more effectively… Indeed, I often fear this is most of what my professional life is like – that I help everywhere, but in a way that is to hard to pin down in manner that is tangible or recognizable.

It's a brave man who advocates against R2P at the U of O…

…and my friend Matteo Legrenzi – assistant professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs of the University of Ottawa – appears to be just the guy. Remember, this is the University at which Allan Rock is president.

Recently Matteo penned this critical piece on R2P in the Ottawa Citizen. In his trademark style it has some notable harsh lines including:

Occasionally calls to mobilize Canada’s diplomatic network in support of such notions reverberate through Ottawa. The current government is perceived as not incisive enough in the promotion of these “emerging” norms in international relations.

Admittedly, these calls more often than not come from retired politicians who are not in charge of Canada’s foreign policy, let alone world affairs. They are part of that wider syndrome that affects many individuals involved in policy-making after they retire: We are sorry we did not save the world while we were in charge, but let us tell you exactly how to go about it now that we are out of office.

and, because he is an expert on Middle Eastern issues, this quote:

In many Muslim-majority countries such as Egypt, opposition to R2P is the only thing that unites the government and the Islamist opposition.

Matteo and I don’t always agree but I do always enjoy his blunt assessments of Canada’s foreign policy. There is a strain of thinking in Canadian foreign policy that is more obsessed with pursuing the perfect ideal than pragmatically finding solution that works. This is something I’ve occasionally tried to write about. Matteo’s assessments is far tougher, and is the type of piece few Canadians are willing to voice and fewer still like to hear (especially in Ottawa).

What makes Matteo tough is that there is truth to his assessment. Contrary to what some politicians preach R2P is unpopular in many parts of the world and it is not established international norm. George Bush spent 8 years believing that the world could become a certain way if he simply believed and acted that it was as such… it was a dangerous strategy that had devastating results. A similar strategy, even if motivated by what we believe are more noble intentions, will also be fraught with danger.

I know not everyone will agree with Matteo’s analysis, but even those who disagree with his prescription should at least take away that one lesson: reality may bite, but we can never ignore it.

Why voting is like eating ice cream

In the past I’ve posted about how I believe that voting should be more convenient, and that this could help start a virtuous loop that might lead more young people to vote. Specifically, I’ve lamented that we have a voting system that concentrates voting stations in community centres, churches and schools – places that are out of the way and/or not on common commuting paths for many young people.

People can complain that young people are lazy. Maybe they are – but so what? In an era where things are available at the click of a mouse young people are accustomed to a different level of convenience. You might wish they were willing to walk through the snow for a kilometer or two to vote, but by and large they aren’t. Does this mean that I don’t think we should try to encourage people to care about voting more – absolutely not, I’m a huge fan of groups like Student Vote. But I believe that there may be some quick – more readily achieved – and cheaper wins in designing voting systems for lazy people. This would certainly be easier than trying to make people less lazy.

I’ve recently started following the blog by the authors of Nudge, since I’m a big fan of figuring out how we can passively design systems to that encourage people to adopt “good” behaviours. Recently they pointed to a food/diet blog that outlined the conclusions of the following (sadly uncited) experiment:

“One cafeteria tested (how much effort people will go to to eat ice cream) by leaving the lid of an ice cream cooler closed on some days and open on other days. The ice cream cooler was in the exact same location, and people could always see the ice cream. All that varied was whether they had to go through the effort of opening the lid in order to get it. Even that was too much work for many people. If the lid was closed, only 14% of the diners decided it was worth the modest effort to open it. If the lid was open, 30% decided it was ice cream time.”

Essentially, this tiny shift doubled the number of people who chose ice cream. Rather than designing new (complicated) ways of voting, this is where I’d like to start. What are the small things we can do around voting to make it easier, to “nudge” people to make the civically minded choice? Voting booths in more places – and nicer places, say the local coffee shop? In the mall? Or how about on the street corner? And then of course, there is the postal voting (that actually comes on time and works) and the holy grail of on-line voting (with all of its dangerous identity implications).

Either way, let’s think about how we can re-engineer voting and make it easier for those of us born in the 20th (not to mention 21st) century. We could castigate and hate ourselves for being lazy – or we can design an easier way to vote, one that will nudge us towards a behaviour people seem to think is good. I know I’d rather spend my energy on the latter.

Articles I'm digesting 6/2/2009

The Quiet Unravelling of Canadian Democracy by James Travers

This poignant piece by James Travers is long overdue. The concentration of power in the Prime Minister’s Office – which started with Trudeau and has continued with each successive Prime Minister – along with the decline of cabinet and of parliamentary committees, is corroding our governing institutions. Travers sums it all up succinctly and frighteningly.

My sense is that – while no one would articulate it this way – people may be disengaged from politics because we expect so little from our MPs, so little from the system itself. Our governing system has – I believe – been durable because it relies less on hard rules and more on conventions and norms. This has given it flexibility but also demands a certain degree of self-restraint and self-managed code of conduct among its participants.What makes the corrosion hard to point at specifically is that there is rarely a single, specific triggering event – no moment when a “rule” is broken, but rather a slow process where conventions and norms are abandoned. Take the recent Conservative Party tactic of engaging in personal attacks during member statements. No “rules” were broken, but another norm, one that tried to help elevate the level of discussion in the house, was weakened.

I’m less interested in radical changes – such as new ways to elect members – since it is unclear to me why or how these would change things (and the unanticipated consequences are more troubling still). Instead, there are small steps that could have dramatic results. Giving MPs real money for research and policy staff (like their counterparts in the US) would be one area where I think a small change could – over time – shift some (admittedly not all) power back to MPs. But in the mean time let us get better aware of the problem – so if you can, take a look at Travers piece.

“Einstein, Franklin, and the Role of Creativity in Today’s World” (a lecture) by Walter Isaacson (via David B)

After listening to this beautiful lecture Saturday morning I realized that I’d read (or listened to, to be precise) Isaacson’s book Benjamin Franklin: An American Life. The lecture tries to tease out what made Einstein and Franklin great men – it wasn’t enough that they were intelligent (lots of people are intelligent) but what is it that made them creative? In short, it is to do what is important to you and to maintain the capacity to challenge – to be intolerant of assumptions, institutional inertia and lazy thinking – while remaining hyper-tolerant of others, their thinking and their perspectives.

If you don’t have the patience to listen to the whole talk (which is 44 minutes, there are 25 minutes of Q&A) then consider fast forwarding to the 37th minute of talk where he talks of both men’s final moments. The way they are at humble, aware of their sins and successes, inspiring to those around them but, most of all, consistently dedicated to the values and tasks they love, well, honestly, it left me teary. Consider Franklin’s funeral in 1790 where:

“All 35 Ministers, Preachers and Priests of Philadelphia link arms with the Rabbi of the Jews to march with him to the grave. It is that type of creativity of tolerance, of looking for new ways of doing things that they were fighting for back in Franklin’s time and I really do think that’s a struggle we are fighting for both at home and in the world today.”

The lecture reminded me of why Isaacson’s book transformed Franklin into a hero to me.

The Quiet Coup by Simon Johnson

This article has been circulating around for a couple of weeks now and it is the most damning admonition of both the financial collapse and both Bush’s and Obama’s response that I have read.

But there’s a deeper and more disturbing similarity [between the US and the financial collapses in South Korea, Malaysia, Russia and Argentina]: elite business interests—financiers, in the case of the U.S.—played a central role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the economy out of its nosedive. The government seems helpless, or unwilling, to act against them.

It gets worse.

But these various policies—lightweight regulation, cheap money, the unwritten Chinese-American economic alliance, the promotion of homeownership—had something in common. Even though some are traditionally associated with Democrats and some with Republicans, they all benefited the financial sector. Policy changes that might have forestalled the crisis but would have limited the financial sector’s profits—such as Brooksley Born’s now-famous attempts to regulate credit-default swaps at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, in 1998—were ignored or swept aside.

The biggest danger? The crises gets somewhat resolved… and nothing changes. This is why I’m such a big fan of Umair Haque’s blog.

Is Charest ready to pounce? by Rheal Seguin

A while back I predicted that, after the Conservatives bungled the budget and the coalition was struck that Layton, Dion and Harper would all lose their jobs before the end of 2009. I stand by the claim (and now have money riding on it with some good people out there). It would appear that the press is increasingly smelling blood in the water around Harper…

I am well prepared for the apocalypse

A little comedic interlude from all the serious talk of public policy, journalism and government.

With the financial system collapsing, the newspapers folding (and this democracy ending) and all things generally going poorly I am pleased to know that the hours I logged playing Doom in college will – contrary to my RAs admonitions – serve me well.

Are Violent Video Games Adequately Preparing Children For The Apocalypse?

Journalism in an Open Era (follow up link)

Been getting a number of great comments and emails from people on the post on Journalism in an Open Era.

Another blogger I meant to link to he’s ideas on the future of organizations I find smart, edgy and thoughtful is Umair Haque, the Director of the Havas Media Lab who blogs for the Harvard Business Review.

In a piece entitled How to Build a Next-Generation Business Now, Haque’s concludes that the problem that dragged down wall street is in part, the same one that is killing (or transforming to be nicer) journalism. My journalism in an open era piece is set, in part, on the belief that the gut wrenching changes we are experiencing economically are part of a transition to a new rule-set, one that will favour, and possibility require, more “open” institutions and business models. This will require – in part – a new journalism but also real leadership in the private, public and non-profit sector (the type Henry Mintzberg raged about in his excellent oped in the Globe and Mail).

Here’s Haque (bold and italic text is mine) on the subject:

The first step in building next-generation businesses is to recognize the real problem boardrooms face – that we’ve moved beyond strategy decay. Building next-gen businesses depends on recognizing that they are not about new business models or even new strategies.

The stunningly total meltdown we just witnessed in the investment banking sector – the end of Wall St as we know it – was something far darker and more remarkable. It wasn’t simple business model obsolescence – an old business model being superseded by a more efficient or productive one. The problem the investment banks had wasn’t at the level of business models – it had little to do with revenue streams, customer segmentation, or value propositions.

And neither was it what Gary Hamel has termed “strategy decay” – imitation and commoditization eroding the returns to a once-defensible strategic position, scarce resource, or painstakingly built core competence.

It was something bigger and more vital: institutional decay. Investment banks failed not just as businesses, but as financial institutions that were supposedly built to last. It was ultimately how they were organized and managed as economic institutions – poor incentives, near-total opacity, zero responsibility, absolute myopia – that was the problem. The rot was in their DNA, in their institutional makeup, not in their strategies or business models.

The point is this: the central challenge 21st century boardrooms must face is not reinventing strategies, or business models, but reinventing businesses as institutions.

Old stuff is breaking fast. The rot is in the DNA – we may, in may circumstances, need a new institutional make up. And the new rule sets need to be understood quickly. Are we coming into an Open Era? I don’t know, but I think open and/or transparent organizations are going to have a leg up.

friends of eaves.ca now online

A couple of friends and colleagues have recently made the transition online and I wanted to point readers in their direction:

For foreign policy fiends Daryl Copeland – who has always had a thoughtful and forwarding looking view of foreign policy – has a new blog up in anticipation of the release of his new book Guerrilla Diplomacy. I like Daryl cause he’s smart, outspoken and has been a supporter of anyone, like those of us who worked on From Middle to Model Power, who are trying to figure out what the future of diplomacy and the foreign ministry is. He and I agree that that the current model probably isn’t working.

On the environmental front Chris Hatch has launched his new blog – Zero Carbon. Part of the PowerUp Canada initiative, it serves as an outlet for the ideas and thoughts of several long time Canadian environmentalists as well as an aggregator for environment and climate change related news.

Finally, for the men out there who are looking to look good for less, my fiend Chris K. has recently launched his new company, Moniker. As Chris puts it on his site: “Moniker is a global group of friends who have cracked open the luxury supply chain.” And cracked it they have! Finally, I’ll get some french cuffed shirts for all the cuff-links I own…

Walter & Duncan Gordon Foundation’s Global Fellowship

The annual tradition continues! This is a post I always enjoy is putting up.

The Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation has put out its call for applications for the 2009 Global Fellowship program. The Fellowships are targeted towards emerging Canadian leaders who demonstrate potential to enhance Canada’s role on the world stage. The Fellowships will provide successful candidates with a cash award of $20,000 as well as other forms of support.

To be eligible for consideration, applicants must be Canadian citizens or permanent residents between 24 – 35 years of age with previous international experience – paid or volunteer. They also need to demonstrate a sustained commitment to international issues through studies, career choices and volunteer activities.

Application Deadline: Thursday, April 15th, 2009 by 5:00 p.m. EST

More information about the Fellowship programme, including application forms, guidelines and information on current and past Fellows, can be found on their website.

Articles I'm digesting – Feb 13 2009

New Planets & an Unknown Object Discovered Beyond the Solar System

Future telescopes such as NASA’s Kepler, set for launch in 2009, would be able to discover dozens or hundreds of Earth-like worlds. The Space Interferometry Mission (SIM), to be launched early in the next decade, consists of multiple telescopes placed along a 30 foot structure. With an unprecedented resolution approaching the physical limits of optics, the SIM is so sensitive that it almost defies belief: orbiting the earth, it can detect the motion of a lantern being waved by an astronaut on Mars.

The last sentence says it all. My mind = blown.

Fareed Zakaria – Worthwhile Canadian Initiative (via Sameer Vasta)

Canada has done more than survive this financial crisis. The country is positively thriving in it. Canadian banks are well capitalized and poised to take advantage of opportunities that American and European banks cannot seize. The Toronto Dominion Bank, for example, was the 15th-largest bank in North America one year ago. Now it is the fifth-largest. It hasn’t grown in size; the others have all shrunk.

So what accounts for the genius of the Canadians? Common sense. Over the past 15 years, as the United States and Europe loosened regulations on their financial industries, the Canadians refused to follow suit, seeing the old rules as useful shock absorbers. Canadian banks are typically leveraged at 18 to 1—compared with U.S. banks at 26 to 1 and European banks at a frightening 61 to 1. Partly this reflects Canada’s more risk-averse business culture, but it is also a product of old-fashioned rules on banking.

I’ve always thought Zakaria was one of the smartest commentators in the US. I’ve unbelievably excited he has his own show on CNN. Finally a show where real ideas are discussed not by pundits but by actual wonks. His show single-handedly elevates the entire CNN brand. Now he’s saying nice things about us. Hopefully we won’t let it go to our heads.

How the Crash Will Reshape America: The Last Crisis of the Factory Towns by Richard Florida.

When work disappears, city populations don’t always decline as fast as you might expect. Detroit, astonishingly, is still the 11th-largest city in the U.S. “If you no longer can sell your property, how can you move elsewhere?” said Robin Boyle, an urban-planning professor at Wayne State University, in a December Associated Press article. But then he answered his own question: “Some people just switch out the lights and leave—property values have gone so low, walking away is no longer such a difficult option.”

Perhaps Detroit has reached a tipping point, and will become a ghost town. I’d certainly expect it to shrink faster in the next few years than it has in the past few. But more than likely, many people will stay—those with no means and few obvious prospects elsewhere, those with close family ties nearby, some number of young professionals and creative types looking to take advantage of the city’s low housing prices. Still, as its population density dips further, the city’s struggle to provide services and prevent blight across an ever-emptier landscape will only intensify.

Many of the old industrial clusters are dying and we’ll have to manage this decline while helping figure out what the next wave will look like. This is part of the reason why think the federal government’s failure to invest in green technology/innovation will stand as one of the biggest lost opportunities of the century. At the peak of a financial crises and at the moment when our cities – particularly our mid-sized cities – need to think about what their economies will look like for the next 100 years (think renewable energy, green roofs/architecture, mobile computing, next-generation social services) we’ve plowed $30B into 20th century buildings and roads. Hopefully the good news of Zakaria will outweigh the bad news from Florida. I hope so, since it appears this crisis won’t be sufficiently significant to spur us to rethink our future.

Upcoming talks

Starting next week things are going to get busy for a few days. I’ve a number of upcoming talks and would be interested in feedback, stories, ideas for any and/or all of them.

Future of the Public Service: I will be doing a series of lectures/seminars on the future of the public service for Health Canada in Vancouver, Ottawa, Edmonton and possibly Montreal or Toronto in mid-march. I’ve got a number of ideas and themes I intend to talk on – technology, generational change, and open source – but am of course always looking for others.

If you have a story or an article suggestion please do pass them along. Personal stories of frustration and angst, or conversely success and empowerment, in the public service are always deeply appreciated.

US NOW panel: I’ll be part of a panel discussion at a screening of Us Now, a documentary that tells the stories of online networks that are challenging the existing notion of hierarchy.

When: FEB 20th 2009 — 7pm
Where: SFU Harbour Centre — Room 1900
You can register (for free!) here.

Northern Voice: Finally, I’ll be doing a presentation with Rebecca Bollwitt on Dealing with angry comments, Trolls, Spammers, and Sock Puppets at this year’s Northern Voice.

Northern Voice is a two-day, non-profit personal blogging and social media conference held annually in Vancouver.

When: February 20th and 21st
Where: Forestry Sciences Centre, 2424 Main Mall, UBC main campus
You can register for Northern Voice here.

Thoughts, ideas, articles and other inspirations on any or all of these are always welcome!