Flying Shortbread

TED: Rachel Botsman: The currency of the new economy is trust Reputation is the measurement of how much a network trusts you. As the reputation goes up the more tasks you get and the more you can charge. As we move digitally we leave a reputation trail. Let's make our reputation travel with us from site to site. But one score is not nuanced enough to really reflect us. Influence is not the same as reputation - that people like us does not reflect on whether or not we can do tasks. So how do we collect reputation data. Realtime stream of who has trusted me or responded to a task I have done. My reputation capital dashboard will be checked by others, like Linkedin. TrustCloud, ConnectMe. Your intentions, capabilities and values. It can create an influence positive disruption in who has power, influence and trust, taking power from the current powerholders. We are limited because our reputation currently cannot be measured or seen in relation to the celebrity power holders. M...

Help required ~ Pretoria Art Museum has no guards who can exclusively look after the parking lot - so car stealers just wait patiently until the guard goes off to patrol other areas. They have no on-site person who answers the two telephone lines they have. The area around it is a mess with papers and rotting food. Their website...(s!) are all neglected. I have sent through a note and got a shrug back. I have suggested: "Have two-day exhibitions over one weekend a month. Take the money you would do the whole month's worth of guards and employ two on overtime for that weekend. Get an extra person to man the phones on those two days. That way we can come to the exhibitions, feel safe, get the full service treatment guaranteed. I for one would rather have one good weekend to go to Pretoria Art Museum than none at all." Anyone like to support me and send a note through to Mmutle Kgokong (MmutleKg@tshwane.gov.za) who is at least prepared to forward emails to the shrugger? ...

The first thing I want to do is say thank you to all of you. The second thing I want to do is introduce my co-author and dear friend and co-teacher. Ken and I have been working together for almost 40 years. That's Ken Sharpe over there. (Applause) So there is among many people -- certainly me and most of the people I talk to -- a kind of collective dissatisfaction with the way things are working, with the way our institutions run. Our kids' teachers seem to be failing them. Our doctors don't know who the hell we are, and they don't have enough time for us. We certainly can't trust the bankers, and we certainly can't trust the brokers. They almost brought the entire financial system down. And even as we do our own work, all too often, we find ourselves having to choose between doing what we think is the right thing and doing the expected thing, or the required thing, or the profitable thing. So everywhere we look, pretty much across the board, we worry that t...

Systems have certain skills mechanisms to find problems mechanisms to solve problems checklists, with pause points, reminder of the key things that get forgotten the ability to implement - the part where you get people to adopt the method, difficult because it forces a confrontation with our issues we must accept that we are all part of pit-crews

Took place in Cape Town, I listened online - which another listener called listening in morse code because it was so choppy. And it must have been from their side because a 10 MBps guy in England experienced the same thing. And I followed the #NetProphet hashtag on twitter. It was fabulous. I was almost there. Here are my jumble of notes SPEAKERS #NetProphet ~ #RichardHardiman Richard Hardiman: Internet Radio in South Africa. Why it shouldn’t work • a differentiation happens online • consultants from overseas tell you how to do it • focus on client, not the end user, the client is the advertiser • Tim Bishop: Too many (Digital) Entrepreneurs= fragmentation of best brains into 1000s of small entities. We must #ENTREPRELABORATE • working for yourself you mind the hours and small salaries less because you are passionate • when you set out to do something different, people question it. • Average time spent listening to 'normal' radio is 23 minutes but internet radio is ...

Have each other at a distance we can control - The Goldilocks Effect We only pay attention to what we want to in a presentation, and never get to hear what we don't want to hear, this is a problem Conversations problem - we can't control what we want to say, we edit ourselves, we are just right, not too much, not too little Cleaning up relationships with technology Good for connection but not for really understanding each other Facebook makes up for feeling like no one is listening to me We're developing social robots for the elderly (robodog) We're lonely, but we are afraid of intimacy I share therefor I am Not suggesting to turn away from the devices, just make room for other stuff

Click here to listen to the podcast Half of the speaking team. Mark Gevisser; Sakhela Buhlungu; Angus Gibson; Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom; Anton Harber; Tsepo wa Marnatu; Chris van Wyk. Gevisser: Place to talk across boundaries. In and outside of university. Across that boundary. All male panel. Ironically women are vulnerable (corrective rape) in township. Apologizes that women will remain vulnerable. Will each speak for 10 mins on their work and how it changes how we think of township. Then the resident scholar will comment on what they said and ask questions that bring it together. Harber: Jokes about the diff between Wits and UP. Doesn't describe Diepsloot as a township. Reasons why he'd wanted to write about Diepsloot. 1994 arose. Product of transitional period. Townships are enforced segregation. Calls it a settlement. Core area is called the reception area (received for allocation). People are stuck there. ...

A leader needs the guts to stand out and be ridiculed He has to be doing something easy Then someone will join him The first follower transforms the leader from a lone nut into a leader The first follower is also a leader, it takes guts to be the first follower Will show the others how to follow The leader embraces the follower Nurture your followers if you are the first leader The next followers emulate the follower not the leader Three is a crowd and a crowd is news, the third one starts the tipping point As more people join in it's less risky Those that join in quickly will be part of the in-crowd Those that are too slow will be ridiculed because they don't recognise the leader Leadership is overglorified The first follower is the real leader Have the courage to follow, have the courage to be the first one to follow the lone nut

The water wasn't safe, so the English used drink beer By 1650 they had started drinking tea and coffee and since before they were drunk, the Enlightenment started when tea and coffee spread.  From pub to coffeehouse The architecture of the space allowed ideas to have sex Been studying what environments breed ideas, patterns Chaotic environments Important ideas have long incubation periods, they fade into view Building barricades around ideas - copyright, patenting - which stifles many of them Noodling around, hacking Chance favors the connected mind - ideas that pop into your head by chance because people suggest reasons and uses for your ideas, stimulating your imagination

Martin Luther King - I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be Mother Theresa - The problem with the world is that we draw the circle of the family to small We give too much voice to the most divisive amongst us Book titles reflect this - Pinheads and patriots; Arguing with idiots Negative otherizing morphs into violent extremism Counteracting otherizing A strategy: Take the other to lunch Agree on some ground rules - ahead of time Be conversational, don't persuade, interrupt, be curious, listen, be real, don't try to change the other side, acknowledge that it's a first step What issues concern you, what have you always wanted to ask someone from the other side Two people dropping the pretence of being know it alls Two people practicing ubuntu

Data deluge, complexity - experts can process the info better and can come to better conclusions than we can We give them parental-like authority Big problem Experts divide themselves into rigid camps, worshiping their own gurus, eschewing dissent We have to take them on and persist in the face of their annoyance We have to ask questions about their methodologies Google CEO actively looks for the arms-crossed disassociated person in the room Democratized expertise - shop girls get a say with the forecasting team for the company Best Buy introduced a gambling chip - employees could bet on stuff and they discovered important flaws in projects

I am a political conclusion. I am one of European ancestry. I am not, culturally, an African. I don't relate to anything cultural anywhere in Africa. I am filled with Americanisms, by choice. I can't call it American culture, it has no form or substance in my life other than: film. I hate what colonialism did to Africa. Colonialism did something to me in Africa, but it didn't make me African. I was born in South Africa, but my mothers blood did not seep into or out of African soil. I am not an African.

when a daycare centre introduced a fine for late pickups, the late pickups increased three fold. You have to figure out what the financial value vs the civic value, social value is of any action