Alex Stovell's Blog (12)

I've been pondering which social entrepreneur to shadow for some time, but after a recent visit to the Lost Gardens of Heligan and the Eden Project, I've settled on Tim Smit - the driving force behind both of…

This is an idea post in response to Can YOU Help Defeat the Dragon?

SUMMARY: A new area in EVOKE for emerging EVOKATIONS to be posted with the aim of getting comments and builds from the community, and especially anyone with relevant LOCAL INSIGHT.

DETAILS: A fourth ‘EVIDENCE’ stream could be created specifically to facilitate the nurturing of…

I’ve been thinking about EVOKE, where it’s heading, how things have gone so far etc. I’ve also been thinking about some of the things Jane McGonigal has said and written, about applying game thinking and skills to real world problems. I then started thinking about the reverse, about what EVOKE would look like in terms of more classical computer games. If EVOKE was a fantasy role playing game (RPG), for example, where would we be right…

So Week Three has come to an end and another set of missions awaits our collective focus and attention. It's certainly been a rollercoaster of emotions so far. I’ve been excited, inspired, appalled, amazed, frustrated, humbled, fired-up and de-motivated, to name just a few. I guess the main reason I’m writing this post is to cover the negative ones; frustration and de-motivation. I almost quit this week because of them.

Why? Well there’s a wh*** bunch of reasons, all tangled…

LONDON - ZONE 27-…

LONDON - ZONE 27 - 15-MAR-2020

We harvested the first beans today, enough for a salad. It was a turning point for us, an achievement, not voiced aloud, but quietly acknowledged in the looks we exchanged as we ate. We had fallen far, some said, but I wondered at the truth of it.

The Levelling had taken much from us that we had once held dear; comforts and indulgences for the most part, that had served only to distance us from the natural world around us and the…

Further to my post on Hydroponic Starter Kits, I've been doing some digging around to see what else is out there. There are certainly plenty of commercial home hydroponics kits, but these don't meet the constraints I set out (too expensive, don't use local materials etc). However, I did find this site for the Institute of…

OK, this is a NEXTSTEP post inspired by, Robin Ahren Kerber’s blog post, and building on posts by…

I dug out an old copy of New Scientist today - all the discussion here about urban farming and the link to Tokyo made me think of it. There is a great article by Fred Pearce exploring the future of urban living in megacities such as Tokyo, linking in with trends and practices already widespread in cities around the world. It's great food for thought. You can read some of the article here: …

OK, I think I’m ready. The last few bits I needed (and the hardest to get) I bartered in exchange for an old laptop, two kilos of home-grown peanuts and a one-month extra shift on the community hydroponics farm. Don’t worry – I can easily delay the hydroponics commitment if the EVOKE goes out (Kim & Lucy down the hall owe me big time for trimming the hooves on their goats).…

I've been involved with a discussion thread started by Crystal Bellar where the issue of tags came up. Basically everyone is using different tag formats - different cases, different word linkages etc, and it's making it harder to find similar or related stuff - something which is only likely to get worse as the community and the content continue to grow and expand. In an attempt to introduce a bit of order,…

How you define a problem will always affect the solutions you come up with. It's certainly important to know any relevant background information and what success looks like, but it is essential that you have fully understood the scope and constraints. The contraints form the boundaries of your creative sand-pit. Often the tighter they are, the more creative you'll need to be in order to find useful solutions (this is good!).

Constraints will often be related to time, money and…