Ed Dowding

Category: Collaboration

Rail strikes

Instead of public transport strikes, have “fun & free travel” days. Everyone turns up to work, but no one charges, all the gates are open, and musicians are invited to platforms. #railstrike #JustStopOil (Yes, it breaks ‘the law’, but laws are sometimes counterproductive.)

What open source hardware do we need next?

Now the world’s engineers have brilliantly created thousands of designs for open source ventilators (bringing the cost down by 2 orders or magnitude), it begs the question: What machines should we tackle next? What’s important, expensive, and public good? NB before we begin the list, hat tip to the Global Village Construction Set which has ...

Stop the domino effect concept for business solution and interve

Civilisation Continuity Planning

I was thinking about how governments respond to ‘surge capacity’ issues like this.  Part of the reason they don’t drill for BIG things as well as they could is that they’re TOO complex. So rather than work out and maintain relationships with tonnes of organisations which you’re ‘very unlikely’ to  need, you create emergency laws ...

Protected: Another referendum on Europe won’t solve the problems we all feel. It’s time to create a better democracy.

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Forging a sense of collective identity and finding common values is vital.

“Mass social movements based on coalitions of a broad range of groups will be needed to drive political support as individual issue groups are not strong enough on their own. Forging a sense of collective identity and finding common values is vital.” — Zero Carbon Britain

Exponential organisations

Here are my notes from Exponential Organisations, a book recommended to me this weekend by a VC in Paris. Have a “massively transformative purpose (MTP)”  (ie a worthwhile mission) Don’t plan more than 1 year ahead. Measure your metrics. Acronym alert: the first letters of the next 5 characteristics make up the word SCALE. Staff on ...

This town ain’t big enough for the both of us – or .. oh. wait yes it is!

In my silver-lining head, this is how it goes: 1. Israel and Palestine fight for decades. Nothing seems to change. 2. Trump makes a bold and antagonising move. 3. Other side realises this is the end game. 4. Some negotiations about logistics. 5. Everyone who wants Jerusalem as a capital decides to share it. 6. ...

Dowding’s law of services

Dowding’s law of services: the value of advice is inversely proportional to its cost. The quality of execution of that advice is directly proportional to its cost. ie professionals will tell you the right answer for (almost) free because doing it well is the hard part.

Game of Thrones to become daily, global, theatre

Feel of Poppies.

What is social enterprise?

It’s about playing a smarter game, and changing the rules of existing games so that they’re more fun for more people. How about creating and trying new games? We could play “Mostly Football” where you’re allowed to use your hands as much as would allow you to do supercool moves and throw the ball at ...

Post-materialist delight

I have to cut this from a presentation, but I just wanted to share it with someone before I do so that it’s not completely wasted. We live in an era of great change. The post-industrial society has spread across the world as fast as the economic globalisation which has driven it. The workers of ...

Running on ice

Imagine you’re standing on a hill near the edge of a huge frozen lake. Hundreds of people are skating on it, having a great time. As the day goes on, more families come down to the shore with flasks of hot chocolate, put on their skates, and head out onto the ice. By lunchtime, as ...

There is still time

via Ainda dá Tempo (There is still time).

The changing nature of human communication. And all the cool things which happen now.

wThis is summary notes from an essay (“Forthcoming Major Revolution in Global Dialogue“) which goes quite deeply into the opportunities for robots / artificial intelligence to engage meaningfully with us. However in reading it, it became obvious that there was more to it than that. It is a great analysis of the modes and capabilities of ...

Call of Duty.

Here’s fun: Open this link in Google: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=define+duty Read the first definition. Click the big grey arrow at the bottom of the box to show more detail, specifically the ‘usage over time’ graph. Reflect on that a moment.

Asking the right questions

An article at Youth Policy is saying that the age of effective mass-mobilisation is over. He has a point. It’s a lovely idea and the notion of ‘people-power’ is undoubtedly attractive, but it’s unlikely to work. It is a strategy that does not match the zeitgeist (spirit of our times) of the current age. […] ...

Evidence-based policies

Let’s face it, we know a lot of stuff now. Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data — so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. This data comes from everywhere: sensors used to gather climate information, posts to social media ...

“The Great Feast” – TEDxOxbridge

This is the transcript from my talk at TEDxOxbridge last weekend. —————–   If you a have a phone, take it out and hold it up. This device makes us magicians: At any time, from any where, we can know almost ANYTHING that is known to mankind. Ok – hands down. But what is truly ...

Accept what you can not change, change what you can not accept.

By all means, follow the advice of the Desiderata and “accept what you can not change”, but only so that you have energy and sanity left to change what you can not accept.

The Bottled Water Challenge – your opinions sought!

Public opinion needed here, please help! There’s a charity water company which raises £10k/yr from bottled water sales. This funds 3 clean water projects in India. The person running this activity costs £10k/yr in salary. Externalised costs include extraction, bottling, labelling, transport, and refrigeration. Costs: £10k + externalities Yield: £10k + cascading benefits So by ...