Public Intelligence Blog

Venessa Miemis

This post is a contribution i made to Shareable magazine’s new ebook – Share or Die. hope you enjoy my story.

Share or Die

It’s October 2010, and I’m reclined in an all expenses paid seat in business class on a flight to Berlin. I’m going there for two weeks to collaborate on a video project with a couple of artists I met online, then flying to Amsterdam to present the video to a room full of bankers at the largest financial services conference on the planet. I’m not a media producer, nor do I work in the financial industry. All I can think to myself is “How the hell did I get here?”

. . . . . . .

Now I see this life as an Epic Adventure, with each of us in control of being the hero of our own personal mission. Here are three big insights I’ve had these past few years that make me confident in this belief:

Your community already exists, and is waiting for you.

Your vision already exists – it is a shared one.

The tools of empowerment already exist, and are ready to be wielded.

The pieces you need really are there, they’re just often hard to recognize. I went through a long phase of utter despair and hopelessness, and had no idea how to move forward. Only after putting myself out there with authenticity and a beginner’s mind did I see I was surrounded by a community of change agents with the heart, the vision, and the capacity to act.

As we all move forward in building the kind of society we want to see and the lives we want to lead, we realize more and more that everything is interconnected and we can go further by connecting, collaborating, and amplifying each other’s efforts than by stubbornly trying to reinvent the wheel.

We’re all in this together. Find your tribe and go change the world.

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Tom Atlee

GLOBAL INTERDEPENDENCE MOVEMENTS, DECLARATIONS AND DAYS

by Tom Atlee

It is so good to celebrate INdependence Days in the United States and the many other countries that have successfully gained and defended their independence from colonial rule.

For countries as well as individuals, independence is a dramatic move from dependence into a more self-defined, self-created life.

The next developmental step takes us into greater INTERdependence – bringing ourselves into increasingly mutual, peer, give-and-take relationships with others.

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Howard Rheingold

Introduction to Cooperation Theory

A six week course using asynchronous forums, blogs, wikis, mindmaps, social bookmarks, synchronous audio, video, chat, and Twitter to introduce the fundamentals of an interdisciplinary study of cooperation: social dilemmas, institutions for collective action, the commons, evolution of cooperation, technologies of cooperation, and cooperative arrangements in biology from cells to ecosystems.

If you are interested in signing up, contact howard@rheingold.com

Learning objectives

About this course: Expect participative and collaborative learning

Schedule

Missions

Below the line: synopsis of course with many open links.

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Venessa Miemis

Ven: A Digital Currency Designed for Environmental Sustainability

Hub Culture is a global collaboration network with over 25,000+ members distributed across 110 countries. Their stated mission to expand collective consciousness is driven by the blend of online workspaces for knowledge sharing with offline Pavilions for meeting and connecting – all powered by their digital currency, Ven. Below is an interview with Hub Culture’s Founding Director, Stan Stalnaker.

What compelled you to create Ven?

For us it was a matter of practicality – with a global, diverse community, we found that no single currency could offer a single pricing structure for global inventory in Hub Culture.  Our members needed a global wallet – as simple to use in Rio as Shanghai. As a social network, we thought linking this system to the social profile of our users would help them share and create value.  We needed a simple, transparent way for our members to exchange value and favors, and the answer was Ven.  It has been a learning experience for us. The currency has evolved and grown since its debut in the summer of 2007, and we have discovered ways to make it more useful for our members and the planet at large.

You’ve said Ven can be thought of as ‘green money’? Why?

Today Ven is the only digital currency to be priced from a basket of currencies, commodities and carbon futures.  These components give the Ven advantages of other currencies: the basket encourages price stability on a forward basis, and the link to commodities grounds value in hard assets.  The introduction of carbon to the basket is helping us think about how money can serve better social purposes – in this case to support and stimulate demand for carbon credits and social impact development, driving offsets for every transaction used with Ven.  This is how the idea of ‘green money’ developed with Ven – because its carbon linkages are able to play a role in this area.  I really like the idea that Ven is green, social and efficient, with a mission to improve the lives of its users and the communities that use it.

Read full interview….

Venessa Miemis

People-Powered Markets — 60 Resources

There is a growing movement towards peer-to-peer value exchange and production, prompted by a variety of things, like economic conditions, shifting cultural values, exploration into collective intelligence, and further enabled by social technologies.

I’ve been tracking the online marketplaces that have been cropping up for sharing, swapping, gifting and renting, as well as sites that give people different kinds of opportunity to share skills and knowledge, innovate, and work collaboratively both on and offline. Below are a few sites I’ve come across, please add any I’ve missed.

Below the line:  Sharing Cars, Rides, Bikes, Space, Land; Gifting, P2P Rentals; Swap Trading, Goods and Money Sharing/Borrowing/Lending;  Co-Working, Co-Production, Distributed Work, Skill Sharing, Barter Networks, Idea/Innovation Marketplace.

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John Steiner

Ron Shaich Lets Panera Bread Customers Pay What They Can

Lucas Kavner

Huffington Post, 15 June 2011

Ron Shaich, the founder and chairman of Panera Bread, has sculpted his company into one of the most successful small restaurant chains in the country. He’s also done something no other chain has done before.

By creating a unique, pay-what-you-can model at three “Panera Cares” cafes around the country — and more are coming soon — he has proven an idea that seems revolutionary for a large corporation, but is actually very simple: trust people; they’ll often surprise you.

. . . . . . .

“It worked,” Ron said. “20 percent would leave more than the suggested donation, 60 percent would leave the suggested amount, and 20 percent would leave less.”

Read full article…..

Amazon Page

Home Page of DVD

Phi Beta Iota: The industrialization/ chemicalization of agriculture, in combination with the corruption of every aspect of society beginning with governance and extending to the media, has allowed for the desecration of the Earth and the poisoning of humanity.  This has been done with the explicit consent and encouragement of the so-called elites of the West, who have a vision of eugenics and the covert eradication of the poor and uneducated over time.  These elites do not see that the brainpower of the three billion poor is the only thing that can restore natural harmony and sustainable agriculture as well as legitimate governance and natural capitalism.  The time has come to create M4IS2–public intelligence in the public interest.

Bono’s ONE foundation under fire for giving little over 1% of funds to charity By Daily Mail Reporter Daily Mail UK, 23rd September 2010 Bono’s anti-poverty foundation ONE is under pressure to explain its finances after it was revealed that only a small percentage of money it raises reaches the needy. The non-profit organisation set up by the U2 frontman received almost £9.6million in donations in 2008 but handed out only £118,000 to good causes (1.2 per cent). The figures published by the New York Post also show that £5.1million went towards paying salaries.

John Robb

Networked tribes, systems disruption, and the emerging bazaar of violence. Resilient Communities, decentralized platforms, and self-organizing futures.

By John Robb

HOW TO THRIVE (ECONOMICALLY) AS THINGS FALL APART

Posted: 20 May 2011 11:30 AM PDT

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37-Slide Briefing

Openworld.com