Conscious Communications

A great new thing in the works these days: The Conkers tweetup, to get geeks out behind their laptops and in touch with nature, and have a conversation around subjects of sustainability. Here’s some relevant bits from the mail the team sent out this week:

THIS COMING SATURDAY

Just under a week to go till Buy Nothing Day and the ConkerTU team is wishing it was Do Nothing Day! Two thirds of us have come down with colds. Still, there’s a warm welcome awaiting you in the National Forest, starting from when you alight at Tamworth!

Bring your Veggies

For the ultimate in crowdsourcing and to sustain our community on Buy Nothing Day, we’re asking you to bring a vegetable – so don’t forget a quick forage before you leave, so we can get to the root of the matter! Steve, General Manager at Conkers, is a whiz in the kitchen and promises to cook up a cauldron for ConkerTU – which we’ll serve with bread, some Sparkenhoe Red Leicester Cheese and a quaff of Eglantine mead in the Pavillion! There’ll be local Swithland water on tap too.

Tamworth Trainees

If your eco-journey to ConkerTU involves taking the train to Tamworth, make sure you arrive before 8.45am as The Green Bus departs then. Emma’s popping over to the bus depot next week to film all the WIFI and GPS kit they have on board, so you’ll have a sneaky preview of all the gadgets beforehand. Oh yeah and the bus is actually green – in colour – so you won’t miss it. Feel free to audioboo.

Your forest footprint

Here in the National Forest we’ve been planting trees since the late 80’s. We do it, our kids do it, our grandkids do it, so we’d like you to make your mark too – it is a forest for the Nation, after all! Jonathan O’Farrell, who’ll be telling tales of how Ibstock does Climate Change in the afternoon, will be digging up saplings in nearby Overseal on Thursday and Friday, ready for us to plant during our Voyage of Discovery at lunch time.

Media and the Geo Map

Throughout the day we’ll be making as much media as humanly possible, recording bambuser, audioboo, youtube and flickr pictures, as they’re all supported on our geo map. In the coming months, we aim to expand the system, so everyone can go back to the tree they planted, the rare species they saw, or the mind blowing conversations they had! We’d like all updates to be sent with our hashtag #conkertu so as to create a sustainable and low carbon resource, enabling remote users to comment and question participants.

Communal Connections

You’re probably well aware by now that Phil has been working on boosting the onsite internet and that we have a long term project to bring high speed connection to the local community – he’ll be telling you more about that on the day. We really want to make some noise about the potential of wireless services in the more remote areas of the UK, so if you have a WIFI booster, a MIFI of any kind, additional dongle or internet connectivity, do bring it with you if you can. The more tweets the merrier!

It’s lovely, and of course I’m going to go, powered by the lovely people at Sixt hopefully. But more about that later.

I’m very much a person who takes pleasure in nature (a walk somewhere quiet and green is much more fun than Alton Towers if you ask me), so much so that I have plans for a completely sustainable, locally sourced household if I ever do move to Nigeria, I’ve already identified the spot and the local artisans to help me. It’s going to be a showcase for what’s possible without really unsustainable, really expensive and quite unhealthy construction materials like concrete and quite silly and unsustainable interior design elements like imported carpet (yes, you won’t believe it, carpet. The point of carpet in a hot country? I don’t know. But it’s a status symbol so we’ll import it rather than using locally woven mats made by local artisans using locally sourced reeds. Anyways, I digress…)

Yes, Nigeria is a hot country so living close to nature is somewhat easier, even though you do need strong walls against the rains. When I spent time in India (West Bengal) 12 years ago I stayed in a hut made out of bamboo and woven palm leaves – it was great, as long as you had good mosquito nets over the bed frames. Which is not hugely difficult.

The UK climate makes it necessary to have big insulated houses though, and unless you’re going to go really extreme and build a strawbale house with a huge oven in the middle (a dream to live in!), you’re somewhat stuck for options. Also, most of us work and live in the city, so are stuck in the circle of renting or buying, supermarket shopping, rubbish removal, heating and electricity bills etc. There’s just not that many options.

Germany as a whole has made more steps toward sustainabililty, simply because I think we’re closer to nature as a people. Simply ask around what people do for fun in the weekend and you’ll see, there’ll be more rambling and fresh air and less Westfield/Alton Towers type activity.

I needed to explain about my attitudes to sustainability and being close to nature a little in order to explain why, even though I totally agree with the goals of the tweetup, I stated in a tweet that the mail the team sent out was “twee.” It’s oh so green, and we’re all campaigning for highspeed internet.

Highspeed internet in every household? That, to me, is not be best use of resources. IF we’re going to go down the green and sustainable route and figure out something new together, why not be aware of the basics? Datacenters around the world, which yes, you will be using as soon as you do anything anywhere, on google or in the cloud, consume a huge amount of resources and most aren’t run sustainably at all. (ask @monkchips.) Every google search, google calendar entry, etc, every mail you sent, and how much more so then every youtube or iplayer video you watch, has a carbon footprint.

Highspeed internet in every household is, to me, the very antithesis of sustainability. It is not only not realistic, it’s not desirable either. Why not create a few internet points in every neighbourhood so people go out to get it? Once you have the broadband, you still need the hardware to use it, and if you’re going to buy a computer, then why not get a laptop and go to the pub or library to get your daily internet? I personally am not comfortable using public library computers but now that mobile computing technology is so advanced, this is a more realistic model to me.

I live in London. I pick up 20 private networks at my home. I myself don’t have a private network, because when I’m home I want to relax. I freelance and my work is my life, so it never stops and I never really stop talking about it or doing it. I need the cut-off point for my sanity. I need the feeling that I go out to work, otherwise I might never get any offline time at all. And look around, was it Mamading who recently remarked on how so many people in our network were close to burnout and needed to look after their emotional well-being?

I’m all for arguments (good ones), so please argue with me. Do we really need a private high-speed internet connection in every household? Why?

I’ve just finished writing a blog post about my hometown for the Sixt Blog.

Sixt is a car hire company based in Germany. The call centre is so close to my mum’s house that if her windows weren’t blocked by blocks of flats, she’d be able to look right down on it. This is how close it is.

Apart from that, Sixt seems to be the only company I’ve ever hired cars from – but they are so convenient that I’ve done so on many occasions, as a result of this I’m now a proud platinum card holder with them. (I mean, a Smart or small Ford for £9.50 a day? yes please!) Probably the only company I’ve ever been that loyal to.

And now I think the time has come that I do more for Sixt and they do more for me in return. So some of my upcoming travels might be Sixt-powered. Who knows. Watch this space

Going to get working on a blog post about my lovely hometown now

Lokoja – the confluence of the Niger and Benue river. This was me with my friend Deji Falope, TV personality and huge supporter of what I was trying to do there.

What am I doing, going to the World Travel Market today rather than the 1pound40 conference? I don’t know, but I did find out rather swiftly once I got in – which was a troubled affair, as I had spent a lot of energy convincing J to come with me on his free day, but then he wasn’t allowed in as he’s under 16.

So once he was somewhat consoled and safely dispatched to his dad’s, I went in and immediately had my senses assaulted by the mostly really tasteful displays of the various tourist associations, tour operators, airlines etc. Unbelievable. I love travelling. And this was like going around the world in 80 minutes.

The first continent I stumbled onto was Asia, with beautiful displays by Thailand and Indonesia and of course India.

A real priority for me was to meet with the people at Sixt – I like that company. They are one of the steady employers in my hometown of Rostock, with their call centre based there, and being in London without owning a car I like the fact I can go on the 91 bus and pick up a Smart car for £9.50 a day. Have done that many a time (am in fact a platinum card holder with them).

So I wanted to talk about their social media thinking – it wasn’t really a salesy chat, as I really wasn’t in the mindset, it was more a “So what do you guys do” thing. I think the result was really promising as well – collaboration is the key.

The next stop was the general German tourist board, as my home state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania wasn’t represented. 3 companies advertising Rhine river tours, but no Baltic beach. Huge marketing failure. So I’ve made an appointment with the general marketing person of the German tourist board to talk about this. (as you do.)

The next stop: Africa! I (if you didn’t know) spent a couple of years in Nigeria, and I have lots of ideas around tourism there (most of them involving music and culture), so I talked to a few people and got to meet the head of the tourist board, Otunba Runshewe, who I have high regard for and who I had wanted to meet for absolute ages. Again, interesting chat, Nigerian party is tomorrow.

Then talked to the marketing man of the Nicaraguan government about what I think they should do. I like that little country, they are absolutely crazy (and managed to scare the US into investing a lot of resources into a war with them in the 80s. That’s gotta be commended.)

What did I say to him? Think about what sets this place apart. Get people around the table – local bloggers, the Germans who work for the local NGOs, the tour operators, some artists, etc – and figure out how you’re different with countries you might be competing against, and how you can talk about yourself in a unique way. Anyways it made sense when I said it

Since there was no Nigerian music I ended up dancing at the Venezuelan stand – I’ve always wanted to spend time in Latin America, I’ve got that spirit in my blood as well somewhere.

When everyone was leaving I saw my Gambian Kora player friend Jally Kebba Sisso – I couldn’t believe I had missed him playing, especially as the Nigerian and Gambian stands were right next to each other! And he had been playing all day. I do love Kora music.

I was born in 1970. My parents were both teachers, but I grew up with my mum after they divorced when I was 5.

We lived in one of the new suburbs of Rostock, in a block of flats which was built the year I was born. On old family photographs I can see my mum pushing me in a pram on uncompleted streets.

All my friends lived in the same style of flats and wore the same style of clothes. We shopped in supermarkets, basic food and rent was cheap, and we queued for oranges around Christmas. We brought our own shopping nets. We had school discos, we had a great library, where I devoured anything and everything, I loved the DEFA films which were sometimes about Indians but which were still great. I loved the children’s books by the authors who I met regularly at book fairs and who signed copies of their books for us.

My mum worked hard, she was an assistant director and a school inspector in different times of her career. I was pretty good in school, didn’t have to work too hard. I also was bullied for being too clever and a teacher’s daughter. I wasn’t bullied for not having fashionable clothes – we all wore pretty much local things, except two of our classmates who got parcels of “western” fashion.

I had lots of uncles and aunts, two of them lived in West Germany and we saw them sometimes at my grandmother’s house. They couldn’t come see us because my mum, as a teacher, was a party member and watched at all times. I was a member of the FDJ, the official youth organisation, because it was the regular thing to do. That was just how it was.

So when Gorbatchov started talking about Glasnost and Perestroika, I wasn’t exactly thinking oh here’s our saviour. I didn’t feel there was anything major wrong. I was painfully aware of not being able to travel. However I was only 17/18 and had moved to Berlin which was big enough at the time to represent the big wide world, and had I been able to travel, I wouldn’t have gone to Paris and Rome – I would have joined the people volunteering to help with the coffee harvest in Nicaragua, to help them make a stand against the activities of the US military there. Or done something equally silly.

However things quickly deteriorated when the government lost it (I’m not going to write a timeline here, you can find that on the BBC website – this is just how I remember it.)

The funniest thing was when they installed the boss of the FDJ Egon Krenz as general secretary, trying to convince the youth that they were in touch. He was just as dusty and old (well, maybe ten years less but still very old) as the other dinosaurs there.

The other thing they did to try and get the youth back on track was invite huge rockstars for free open-air concerts the whole summer of ‘88 – I saw Bruce Springsteen, James Brown, Marillion, I think Bryan Adams was there… all announced by Katharina Witt, the ice queen – it was great! And that after they hadn’t allowed “western” rock musicians to spoil the East German youth in 40 years. Even the Beatles were never big in East Germany, my mum told me.

What the West German State had learned since then to do really well was indoctrinate us with how great everything was in the West. And since we couldn’t check for ourselves, we took the TV reality as gospel. It was blasted into East Germany by strategically placed broadcasting stations along the inner-German border, covering all of it except for a small area around Dresden which was henceforth called the Valley of the Unexposed.

And that, dear Reader, is why I have an issue with all of this celebrating of the fall of the Wall. Yes, people did demonstrate and shout non-violence slogans and yes we had the greatest poets and philosophers talking to us about the need for a German re-unification. However, the reason this so-called revolution went so smoothly is because people thought they wanted the TV reality of what life in the West was like, with the bananas and the colourful posters and the Coca Cola. Not because they were tired of working for the State. (if you read academic German there’s a very interesting article on how TV influenced the situation here)

No, I’m not a communist. I don’t believe communism can work, because it demands from everyone to be idealistic about creating a better world, with equality, without material gain for themselves or their families. The state is by its very nature a non-entity. The people on the top, by their very nature, will be compromised and corrupted by their power. Nobody can work without being interested in the result, unless you’re totally Zen in which case the path is the goal. But even then you are interested in reaching nirvana. Which the state is unable to provide you with.

So yes, people have to own their enterprises and own the results. But what happened to the things that worked well? How did we manage to breed a generation of kick-ass women? (I hope that article from the Stern has made it into the online version yet…) How come my little hometown of Rostock had 7 fully equipped theatres? How come Berlin is what it is today?

And yes, I am celebrating today. I’ve had quite a wild ride in the last 20 years. Prost!

I don’t have wifi at home.

I go out to work and come home to relax and spend time with my son. If I had wifi at home I’d never be able to relax – I’d always find some reason to be on the laptop.

I don’t have a TV either – if I want to watch something it’s usually available somewhere.

Anyways. Last week my son was ill for a couple of days and I urgently needed to do things online. Conveniently, a new BTFON network had appeared the day before. So I spent £5 for a 24h pass Monday afternoon, thinking I’d be able to use this all of Tuesday while staying home with J, so would get things done.

The network however disappeared after about 5 hours of me using it and didn’t come back all of Tuesday.

When it returned on Wednesday, J was back in school, I was back in the office, and my 24 hour credit had run out. I wrote a mail to BTFON customer service, got a 24 hour pass to make up for this, but again, a couple of hours after me logging in to use it, the network disappears.

Obviously the user of the modem just switched it off over night and when it wasn’t used, which is perfectly reasonable. What is not reasonable for BT is to offer a service and charge for it when it has no power and doesn’t even claim to have any power over the service being available.

I then tweeted about this and @BTcare got in touch, which is nice. Here’s my exchange with them. (Some of them are DMs so can’t be linked to.)

@the_anke Home with sick child. BTFON not working. Ah well… Got knitting to do.
7:52 AM Oct 20th from Echofon

@BTCare @the_anke Oh dear, having problems with BT FON, DM me your details and I can look into this for you.
1:22 PM Oct 28th from API

@the_anke @BTCare
I buy 24 hr BT FON access, but can’t use the network for more than 4 hours, you need to let me use the credit when the network is there.
9:07 PM Oct 28th

@BTCare @the_anke Hi, what area does this happen in?
3:17 PM Oct 28th from API

@the_anke D BTCare N8 xxx. This is most likely a private shared modem that gets switched off when it’s not used.
3:26 PM Oct 28th

@BTCare @the_anke The Openzone pass can only guarantee a connection to Openzone hotspots, not BT FON, as they are customer controlled.
6:55 PM Oct 28th

@BTCare @the_anke The Openzone hotspots are guaranteed, as if there is a fault BT will repair. BT FON is customer based equipment.
7:49 PM Oct 28th

@the_anke @BTCare However they both go up and down simulationeously. How can BT charge for a service it can’t guarantee? That’s a really bad idea.
7:27 PM Oct 28th

BTCare
Oh dear, you may wish to view full information and FAQ’s on the BT FON services, if so go Online at: http://tiny.cc/rwLSd
8:56 AM Oct 29th

@the_anke Ok that’s it. Thanks @btcare for engaging re. #btfon nonsense (I pay for 24h, network disappears) – but “oh dear, pls read t’s&c’s”??
9:05 AM Oct 29th from Echofon

@the_anke If a business model is not sound, it’s not sound. That goes for @btcare or anyone. Full blog post coming up.
9:06 AM Oct 29th from Echofon

This, in the end, felt like a pisstake

BTCare @the_anke If you need any further help please tweet anytime..
9:49 AM Oct 29th from API

This week I met a lot of interesting people again. One of them was Samarendra Das, an activist from Orissa who single-single handedly is to blame for changing the way UK mainstream media reported about the protests against environmental damage caused by Bauxite mining by Vedanta Resources plc on tribal land in his home state.

Samarendra Das is a quiet, well-spoken gentleman from a Vaishnava brahmana background. I contacted him when I heard about him running a protest at the Vedanta Resources Annual General Meeting in London. I had been watching the developments and was impressed by the support he had gained – Bianca Jagger and Arundhati Roy attended the protests, GreenPeace and Action Aid have awareness campaigns, and the mainstream media is hugely supportive. How did all of this happen?

And more interestingly, since the owner of Vedanta, Anil Agarwal, is the richest member of the Hindu community and in good standing according to my Hare Krishna friends, why doesn’t anyone talk about this in that community? All I’m aware of from that side is that he’s trying to buy the neighbouring building to the Soho Street temple and convert it into a bigger temple and restaurant. Nobody seems to mind the environmental impact the mining is causing.

There is really good background reporting in the Guardian. Which is interesting, because only 6 years ago, the tone was quite different: “Maoist guerillas and tribal rebels threaten India’s industrial boom”… to this week’s headlines – “Vedanta versus the villagers – the fight for the sacred mountain”

Samarendra brought a folder full of these press clippings, reports, copies of reports… he showed me the letter he wrote in response to this reporting in 2003, which set him on the course which now has him travel the world working to unite the people who are having their environment destroyed by Vedanta.

In the end, I had my questions about the complete disinterest of ISKCON in environmental issues answered, but I had a lot more information than I have space for in this blog. So it all goes here: Niyamgiri Blog

Samarendra Das is speaking today at the LSE – it will also be the launch of the new blog. Watch me get into more trouble.

This week’s been busy as ever. Friday night and Saturday was Africa Gathering, ideas, tech, change for Africa.

Flickr Pool
What has the twitterverse to say about Africa Gathering? (links to blog posts, pictures etc)
Full list of speakers

It was a hugely diverse event. And that’s mostly quality-wise. We had Teddy Ruge from Project Diaspora, but we also had a very questionable young American Peace Corps worker, and a Nigerian who is president of an organisation with Olusegun Obasanjo as Grand Patron who came from nowhere.

But let me write a somewhat organised report.

It was a strange mix of idealists, finance people, entrepreneurs, academics – and some people who are combinations of some or all of these things. On both days, the quality of the talks varied hugely. On Friday, the lowest point for me was the stage being given to Dr Emmanuel Ekuwem, President of the Association of Telecoms providers of Nigeria, an association with ex-president and hugely controversial, disgraced ex-president General Olusegun Obasanjo as its Grand Patron, and who was talking about running Youth Summits to try and inspire the youth of the country.

I got this close to standing up and asking him if he really believes Nigerian kids are that naive.

The high point on Friday night was undoubtedly Teddy Ruge from Project Diaspora who gave a TED quality presentation about challenges and solutions faced by East African manufacturers, focusing on the importance of customer service, interspersed with slides saying African Banks Suck – no really!

That was also the end of the Friday, apart from the Afriguzzling at the nearby Lincoln Lounge.

Saturday again, a mixed bag of all sorts. Starting with Leon Benjamin from Winning by Sharing who was stimulating everyone’s brain activity by describing the organisational skills of slime, moving on to Glen Mehn describing Appfrica’s progress in the mobile market, moving on to Molly from the Peace Corps (yeah, I know. The Peace Corps? Have you seen their mission statement? *Americans*?) Professor Tim Unwin commented on the talk thus: “Listening to US speaker giving the same old top-down, arrogant, do-gooding presentation – please really listen to the voices of Africa”.

Up next was Kevin “Banana Man” Allen who started the Banana Appeal – he gave an account of how he got into wanting to do something practical, and it had to do with being too lazy to get to the remote control which was at the other side of the room. Really inspiring and funny – and Kevin was also the only person who said he wasn’t on Twitter because he’s not clever enough – I wonder if we could change that perception of social media.

Anyways – I probably forgot a few people (Like Ken Banks of Frontline SMS, and the fact that Credit SMS is now FrontlineSMS:Credit! How could I! And Justin Lyon from Simudyne who does water-related installations and who Akvo will have to talk to, again, how could I! And Bill Liao, one of the founders of Xing, who has started Neo.org) but that’s because I just can’t wait to tell you about Emmanuel Jal. There was another TED quality talk – I recorded 4 audioboos (War Child poem, Escape 1, Escape 2, Escape 3) and managed to post them straight away, thanks to the good wifi at the Hub. There’s no doubt going to be video of it as well. Emmanuel used to be a child soldier and was talking about his escape – there is just no way that you go away from this kind of talk thinking that you’re having problems.

After that, the panel – most of us were flagging seriously by then and were ready to go off to the pub. Emmanuel performed one of his songs, Emma, his thank you to the charity worker who rescued him and some of his friends, and managed to get everyone seriously emotional – after that an award was given to Kevin Banana Man Allen for his work with the Banana Appeal. Even more emotion.

I shall no doubt add videos of the talks here as they are being published.

Social Media as a serious vehicle for citizen engagement: One of the most interesting stories of the year so far happened yesterday. Brian Cox tweets something in the morning, a hashtag is created, a storm ensues, the Science Minister – who is in California at the moment – is shocked by the thousands of tweets he has received, he responds, he investigates, he debunks.

The details - and I might even have been involved.

Prof Brian Cox is probably THE science superstar of the new generation. I know my son identifies him as the guy who got him to get serious about science (and my son then wrote a school essay about the Large Hadron Collider.) He uses both facebook and twitter, and his updates are identical, so I could never figure out what he actually engaged more with.

At 7.51 he tweeted and updated this: The UK continues in its bid to relegate itself to the 2nd division of scientific nations. We need a campaign. http://bit.ly/KTsNj To which I sent him a comment on Facebook, letting him know about the @reply I sent him telling him we need a hashtag, and we can create a campaign around this (I know, a bit complicated, but it clearly worked.)

And what do you know – at 9.20 we had a hashtag. At 9.29 I retweeted it to some of my friends who I know would be interested in the subject, as it’s connected to the Digital Britain debate. The hashtag #saveukscience was born, you can see all discussions by doing a quick twitter search.

At 3pm, Lord Drayson, the UK Science Minister, tweeted this: Just logged on in California (ahead of mtgs next week in SF & Silicon Valley) 2 read rumours re CERN. I will investigate & report asap.

An an hour later, this BTW- twitter really is amazing. I cant imagine any other way of communicating so directly with my “constituency”. Its v cool. #SaveUKScience

And four hours after that, he said: I have got 2 the bottom of CERN rumour. It is complete rubbish. STFC have no plans 2 exit CERN. Period. Those who RTd rumr pls RT this

So in this case we have a rumour debunked by the highest possible authority when it became clear how many people feel very strongly about this – Lord Drayson also said: Important fact re CERN. UK involvement is via an international treaty which can only be changed with my approval as science minister.

Next time who knows what it will be.