i like this guy for the fact that he presents quantitative data and not only anecdotes or ‘common sense’. for sure there’s an art to social media, but there is also a science. i fully agree with his main points for social media communication:
- – quantity is always better than quality, to increase your reach
- – avoid crowds: share on weekends
- – to be shared, content needs to be interesting, not engaging
- – stop talking about yourself!
- – help your audience make their friends look cool
- – good story structure: the villain is wronging the victim
- – give your audience a box of crayons, not a rubber stamp
dominik wind, berlin activist & thinker, participated in a panel at the influencer conference the other week, and this blog post pretty much summarizes the panel. you should really read it, especially for the researched facts.
There´s no better way to sum this up then Ronen Kadushin, who developed the open design concept, did at the panel: “We´re pretty much fucked.” Dave Pollard wrote: “We have unleashed the sixth great extinction of life on Earth […]. We have created a political and economic industrial growth civilization monoculture that is unsustainable, out of control and unstoppable.“ I´m a hopeless optimist so of course I can´t take “unstoppable” although reading through my research I´d agree on “probably unstoppable”.
The only quite utopian option I can think of is that a majority of us understands:
Industrialism and consumerism are the reason for, not the solution of, the problem. The technocratic promise of “inventing our way out of the problem” is proven wrong by the sheer numbers and statistics. It brought us here. We CAN´T have more cars, more traveling, cheaper clothes AND our planet. It´s time to act, the window of time left to act is closing.
yes, it sounds alarmist, but he has a bunch of figures to back it up. i pretty much agree with him that we are living in critical times. and perhaps all we can do at this point is damage control. we’ve heard about runaway climate change, and that virtually all scientists agree on what’s happening. in the US, activists are fighting keystone XL, and in mckibben’s words, if they fail, it’s ’game over for the climate’. we’ve even been told that our time will be coined ’the age of stupid’.
so, where do we go from here? i do fear it might be too big of a problem. it seems like people need to personally feel the effects of something before starting to act. however, we might not have the luxury for trial-and-error; the error might set us back too far. perhaps there’s no other way than to run everything into the ground, and start all over again with what’s left. reset. perhaps sustainability is something that our current society just wasn’t built for. perhaps from a greater perspective, sustainability means that the natural system will get rid of the destructive factor: mankind.
on the other hand, perhaps damage control can significantly us slow down before the crash, so we might be able to survive. but we need to turn the steering wheel hard, now. we have to go back to the drawing board and create systems that are not based on unlimited economic growth. i think we need to act and communicate with a high level of urgency (similar this dylan ratigan or howard beale), and get shit done. anyway, there’s no reason not to try it. nothing that’s worthwhile is ever easy. and who would like to be involved in anything less than saving the world?
i’m looking forward to meeting dominik again to figure out some solutions. and he’s not as gloomy as it might appear from the excerpt. after all his blog is subtitled ’replace fear of the unknown with curiosity.’
to get a hint at how the US got to such a high level of inequality, malcolm gladwell makes an interesting point about income tax:
nest, the thermostat that learns about you, so you don’t have to learn about it! neat idea, elegant design; very curious how well it will work and how quick you’ll have your money back by saving energy!
nice video from new york asking a good question: ‘where do we go from here?’
unthink, the new un-facebook just launched and crashed after 4 hours. their first video did make me curious, and so i’m waiting for them to get back up and running. actually, this is not even such a huge problem for them; they obviously have customers, it’s a ‘news’ story to tell, and since they’re the ‘underdog’, i doubt that people will hold a grudge against them.
i too am much more interested in what they have to offer. they’re certainly are idealistic enough to change some things, let’s see if they will be overflowing with neat tools and great notions. techcrunch’s explanation of their model:
On Unthink, user data isn’t sold to brands. Instead, users choose a brand to sponsor their page, by way of an ad dubbed “iEndorse.” The idea is that a user will select a brand they feel some affinity with, and will then become an advocate for that brand. Users who don’t want to select a brand have the option to pay for the service instead ($2/year).
if they let me choose from ANY brand so that i could pick an eco-social brand, i could probably live with this. i would indeed like to have more control over who gets to mine which parts of my data. as soon as they’re back up, i’ll have a look. send me a tweet or fb message if you want an invite.
a week after the #occupy protest started in berlin, there was another march today! it wasn’t unregistered, so it wasn’t a march, but just a bunch of individuals who all just happened to go for a walk around the same time. :) on the way we passed a tourist bus, where some girls were chanting out the window “we – are – the 99%!” we met another group of people at brandenburger tor and then went over to the reichstagswiese. probably around 1000 people were there, and we held an asamblea and working groups. there was a great spirit in the air, and i met some really interesting people today.
we still do not have a camp in berlin, because tents are not tolerated anywhere. quite unbelievable considering the “sympathy” all kinds of politicians (including our chancellor) expressed in the press. mr. lammert, please allow this camp!
but even without tents, people have been meeting every day at 3pm at the reichstag, and held an asamblea at 5pm. on sunday (2nd protest day) the asamblea found a very creative way to deal with the problem that the berlin police does not accept public gatherings without a leader (or a leader-less movement). after the cop announced over the human mic that there needs to be a leader, it was suggested that everybody registers a demonstration, so everybody is a leader. facing a mountain of paperwork from 300 registrations, the police seemed to tolerate the meeting.
another very creative solution was found on friday, when the police threatened to fine everybody for breaking the assembly law. thanks to the awesome livestream, a viewer from hamburg helped out by telling them (via chat?) that if people stand 6 meters apart from each other, it is not an assembly according to the law. brilliant! what a great case of the internet allowing information to be shared in meaningful way! of course, with the human mic, the asamblea could still communicate with each other and it even drew a bunch of attention from the tourists!
i’d like to share another story from a dear friend of mine. he was also there last saturday and got carried away by the police. well, after the cop kneeled on his head and twisted his arm to get him to stand up (yeah i know, weird logic..). well, he wasn’t arrested, but taken away from the center and released further to the side of the area. when the cop let him go, he put the visor of this helmet up and said: “my name is <his full name>, and i am sorry.” really great to see that this guy still tried to be a human being. and i certainly didn’t want to overgeneralize the police behavior in my account of the first night, i’m sure most of them do their jobs without any malice, but there are some that really need some anger management courses. anyway, they should realize that they too are the 99%! i can’t wait until the first one takes a seat on the side of the movement.
i think we need more structure in the asamblea. moderators and a speaker list would make it fairer and more effective. currently it’s hard for people with lower voices or that are a little shy to get to speak. and yes, not enough women get to speak. a suggestion: a 2-3 people moderator team: 1-2 people keeping a list of people raising their hands and one person to show whose turn it is.
the movement needs to grow. we need to be the 99%. the crowd today was much more diverse (with even more “rather conservatively” clothed people today), but we should also grow in size. to do this, i think the “agreement” that organizations should not be very visible should also extend to the antifa (who stayed peaceful during this movement as far as i know). the movement needs to speak to a large group of people, and too many media images from the black block won’t be helpful (when they just started chanting today, that’s where most of the cameras ran to).
we need to think about a plan for the winter. we have to continue the asamblea and the working groups. and have weekly walks (‘spaziergänge’). and ideally some form of a publicly visible camp-like demonstration.
as i write this post, i am witnessing the longest occupation so far via livestream: about 25 people are still at the reichstag, and it seems like they are tolerated by the police. awesome, even without tents, i think we can call this an occupation camp now. :)
asamblea tomorrow at 5pm, working groups from 3pm. next march, october 29. join us!!