Category Archives: Uncategorized

“Interim” period of life begins, between before and after the Valley Fire

It has been 10 days now since the Valley Fire erupted in Lake County, California. I’ve been watching social media and have seen the outpouring of concern for afflicted “neighbors” from miles around the burn area. How do we help? Who do we notify to let the “authorities” know we have resources, money and personal energy to offer? I have a spare room in my dog-friendly home, an extra car, unused clothing, extra office supplies, a patient ear and a kind word or two. Who do I tell?

In the early chaos of evacuations, pet rescues and emergency feeding and sheltering I thought I would just be in the way so I have sat quietly by and held on to my urge to help. Indeed, within the first 48 hours of the fire’s outbreak on Sept. 12, Red Cross shelters were so overwhelmed with truckloads of food and piles of clothing that the request went out to stop bringing “things” and just send money. Many people tried to use Facebook and Twitter to get or give information. The instant response was heartwarming and many, many fire victims, both human and animal were helped. Today, evacuees are sifting through the ashes and trying to organize an interim period in their disrupted lives.

Volunteers at Community Market in Sebastopol pack donated food for delivery to Valley Fire shelters

We’ve seen other disasters and we know that there will be delays in insurance payments and relief assistance, bureaucratic snafus, denied and disputed claims, uncountable frustrated tempers flaring in uncoordinated relief offices across the state and even the country for months to come. It has been 10 years since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and some families are still living “interim” lives. Now that the dramatic photos of flaming houses, crying children and singed, bewildered animals have been replaced by images of drowning Syrian refugees, much of the initial outpouring of public compassion may have drained away. Many would-be helpers are feeling relieved that the benevolent, authoritative hands of government and large-scale relief agencies such as the Red Cross are caring for those we wanted to rush in and support just a fortnight ago. Local agencies such as Lake County Local Assistance Center are making a valiant effort but they were not evident to outsiders a week ago and it took me days to find them. Perhaps, in the aftermath of dramatic disasters such as the Valley Fire, private, sustained, coordinated contribution is needed as much, if not more, than it was 10 days ago.

With this thought in mind (and my extra room still unoccupied) I again sallied into cyberspace to try to connect with a few individuals whose burdens might be lightened by my modest resource sharing. To cut to the chase, I fear I’ve failed. I did find one voice at the end of a phone line who took down my name, phone number and offer of a room. FYI, this was Shelter Care Hotline: 707-262-1090. Perhaps my information will find a circuitous route to a person and a dog who need it. With luck it will reach someone with whom I can stand to cohabit for more than a day or two while he or she traverses that interim between former and future settled existence.

While I wait for a response I’ll continue to share my ideas are about how we might create a more effective, efficient local disaster response infrastructure — via this blog in several more posts. This is a resource distribution problem and all the tools for an immediately deployable, just-in-time supply chain utility are available in both business and the military. We need to use these technologies to create a public/private collaboration, ready to be activated when the next inevitable, local emergency strikes. This way, when that emotional punch-in-the-stomach hits me – when I see my neighbor in trouble and automatically reach out saying “how can I help?” – there will be an answer. Send canned goods here. Show up to volunteer there.

Found terrier seeks fire displaced owner

Describe the skills you’re offering on this list. Post a picture of the frantic dog you are feeding and where to find him at this URL. Enter your temporary housing opportunity here. Throw your unique ideas into the bin over there. The time to get organized is before the disaster, not during it. And no, I couldn’t find such a response infrastructure at the Red Cross. If it exists it’s a very well-kept secret. Whether we find a workable utility someone else has built and simply publicize it, or build a new one, this is a task society needs done — now. We’re talking one, central, web site with several empty databases to be replicated for specific incident use, that can be filled with local resources when needed. It won’t take a lot of people to build it but it will take everyone in “the crowd” to spread the word once we have the prototype. Information technology can’t solve all of humanity’s problem but this is one that we can nail. I want it in place very, very soon. After all, the next fire, flood or explosion may happen on my street!

One of the organizations I serve as a Board Member, SHS, recently suggested mounting an email fund raising campaign. Below is my reply to my fellow Board Members.

“Dear All,

In this age of the internet, my personal response to online advertising is particularly negative. I always block messages from individuals and organizations that send me multiple appeals to give or to buy. I don’t click on ads that decorate the web pages I visit even if I am actually interested in the product. I generally don’t return to sites that mix ads with content in a way that makes it difficult for the reader to tell the difference. I don’t visit news feeds and blogs that cover more than 15% of the screen space with unrelated images or text. This is my way of voting with my dollars and my patronage. It is so easy for advertisers to barrage the public with unchosen messages that I believe we’ll gradually lose the ability to avoid them if we don’t fight back now. I would be very disappointed if SHS engaged in this practice. Even though the YIVO appeal is quite visually attractive, it is still advertising. This practice might appear to be successful at first but, IMHO, it will backfire in the long run.

I will support our strategy of making personal contact with potential sponsors by phone, snail-mail and personal email. I am also ok with “user-pull” strategies such as including small buttons on web pages that reveal the ad or appeal only when the visitor clicks on it. If we decide we need to be in more frequent contact with potential supporters, we might consider sending out single SHS Newsletter articles monthly. Each article could carry a donate button. This mailing would work like a free subscription service and should also carry a subscription cancellation button. Without that option we risk forcing resisters such as myself to block all communication from us so that we can not reach them, even occasionally. When users block our communication channel everybody loses: users can no longer receive the messages they do want from us and our overall readership decreases.

Let’s think this process through before we embark on a funding campaign that will hurt us down the road.”

How do your  organizations use the internet for fund raising?

Joel Josephson is a member of the Learning without Frontiers Group on LinkedIn. He describes himself as follows:

“an uneducated educator, he never went to university but today is involved in initiating European Union education projects that are targeted at creating learning systems and methodologies for the future education of children.”

In April 2013 he spoke at a TedX on education. (“Joel’s talk” )

In late July he posted on the LinkedIn group: “8 rules for education”

Joel lists:

1. Autonomy
2. Personal relevance
3. Collaboration
4. Self-criticism
5. Autodidacts
6. Creative and emotional
7. No stress
8. Parents

I replied: Nice set of goals, Joel. I look forward to visiting you other postings to see whether you address how to implement these. I have a number of suggestions in case you are looking for more ideas. Please let me know.

Also, perhaps one more goal would be helpful to add to your list for young learners: being aware of one’s own learning modality strengths and weaknesses. By this I mean that even 4, 5 and 6 year olds can become conscious of whether they acquire information faster and retain it longer by looking at still pictures, videos (with or without audio), audio only or spoken live. The same type of differentiation can be explored within the medium of text as soon as they learn to read. When learning a motor skill children can understand whether they prefer to watch a demonstration first or jump right in to the activity. They also can pace themselves in terms of how far to break a task down into small steps. With mastery of these parameters of their own learning in hand youngsters can more effectively decrease their stress and become the autodidacts you admire.

–     –     –    –     –     –

I find social media to be a good screening device for locating people who have interests similar to mine. But I’m always disappointed by the difficulty of having a serious discussion using these communication tools. Joel’s comments are tantalizing but lack the detail I look for to understand how his ideas might be implemented in real world schools. Of course, he has given us links to his TED talk and his blog. Still, I want dialog, no, I want multilog.  I want to put my ideas together with those of other people so we can generate a document or product that someone can use after we’ve hashed out the details.

Wikis were designed to do just this kind of collaborative work. Sadly, even though the platform is quite flexible, my experience is that very few people are willing to engage on a wiki and the ones I start end up more like blogs — I write a lot and occasionally someone adds a brief comment.

Perhaps I’m seeing the result of not enough of Joel’s #3 and a little too much of his #4. Is there a better collaborative platform out there that I’ve missed?

For more on Joel, see: https://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&gid=3141501&type=member&item=5903577365379837952&qid=47f489e3-292f-46e8-b356-415c38d03f0b&trk=groups_most_recent-0-b-ttl&goback=.gde_3141501_member_22653084.gmr_3141501

I just had two awesome conversations with folks who work with CiviCRM, an open-source, constituency relations management platform.  Each of these young gentlemen was knowledgeable, cordial, helpful and imaginative.  Of course they would be — they donate a portion of their work time and know-how to support free software used by nonprofit organizations world-wide.

The challenge of the “open” movement is how to generously participate in the “sharing economy” without starving in a world dominated by “the dismal science” (economics – meaning a money economy).  The fundamental assumption of economic theory is “scarcity” — that to have economic value there must be a shortage or limited supply of something.  Economic theories do not apply in a context of abundance and we modern folks have forgotten that  economic value is not the only kind.  We live in an abundant place and time in human history — we have mental and physical energy to spare.  Most of us are so blind to this that we tend to hoard our goods and services. Even if abundance threatens we create artificial shortages.  If I give away the surplus zucchini my garden produces the local grocer will complain that I’m destroying the market that creates his livelihood.  He’s right.  Moving away from scarcity economics will require major adjustments in the way we think about wealth and interact as a society.

Curiously, it’s the folks at the top and the bottom of the money economy spectrum who are most likely to discover the non-economic, sharing economy.  Those at the bottom don’t have any money so they can’t participate fully in the market system and must find other ways of surviving.  Those at the top often discover that they can’t take their accumulated wealth with them and their kids are already sated so they’d better start sharing.

Luckily there are a growing number of people in the middle who are waking up to the idea that openly giving away goods and services, sharing, bartering and exchanging freely, enriches their lives in ways that money can’t. I just met two of them. Eventually I’ll pay them for some of their services.  But the bedrock of our relationships will be the knowledge that giving freely of their surplus energy is likely to generate more rewards than holding out for a higher bidder.  I’ll be richer for my collaboration with them and you can bet I’ll make sure they are too.