Urgent Evoke

A crash course in changing the world.

Chris Ke Sihai's Blog – April 2010 Archive (20)

Ushahidi, an alternative use??

I've been musing this week on the connection between economics, security/resilience, and 'systems'. It suddenly occured to me tonight that Ushahidi is a tool that may be adaptable to enable systems for more efficient economics as well as in response to disasters.



To begin with, you need to see this video about how a systemic failure in Africa resulted in famine even while there was a food surplus - Eleni… Continue

Added by Chris Ke Sihai on April 27, 2010 at 4:30pm — 1 Comment

A word from a wise old man

A little while ago I came across an amazing piece of music by the celebrated New Zealand artist Tiki Taane. It's called "Tangaroa - God of the Sea" and voices his anger at the continuing rape of the world's oceans. In his own words: After the 2004 Tsunami I started asking a lot of questions about the world, our environment and about myself. I really felt the anger and rage Tangaroa had towards… Continue

Added by Chris Ke Sihai on April 27, 2010 at 3:30pm — 2 Comments

Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii

This is an amazing project, designed mostly to get free energy from the ocean, but as a by-product is also produces lots and lots of fresh water.



The idea is that sea water is warm at the surface and cold at the deeper places. If you bring the cold water to the surface then you can use a heat engine to extract some useful energy as it warms up. In the process, a lot of water gets evaporated, and subsequently condenses as fresh water. This can be used for drinking, agriculture,… Continue

Added by Chris Ke Sihai on April 27, 2010 at 9:30am — No Comments

About building websites

This is mostly a response to Ursula's questions

in this post
, but I think the answers are relevant to others too. (It's also a follow-up to this one about business plans.)



As for your project itself, I think it's a wonderful idea. Now let me please get on my soapbox and shout at you about tools for building… Continue

Added by Chris Ke Sihai on April 17, 2010 at 2:41pm — 10 Comments

About your Evokation business plan....

This is mostly a response to Ursula's questions in this post, but I think the answers are relevant to others too.



Some notes in the order they come up:



Your comments comparing the application process to a school paper are spot on. It would be good if Evoke were to provide a sample or three indicating what they want. (Instead of samples of more ambitious projects, and the caveat… Continue

Added by Chris Ke Sihai on April 17, 2010 at 2:32pm — No Comments

Apple, and innovation

I'm inspired to write this short piece after seeing this on Evoke: Looking around i see that many people need to learn about their

customers.




I agree completely, but I also read somewhere that Apple does not conduct 'focus groups' when developing new products.



Steve Jobs actually knows his customers better than his… Continue

Added by Chris Ke Sihai on April 17, 2010 at 1:16pm — No Comments

Raising money.... easy!

I don't have any entrepreneur points yet, so I did something entrepreneurial - I went to see a telemarketing company:



Me: Hi, I'm doing this project supported by the World Bank Institute. If they give me US$1000 for my new social innovation project, will you call five hundred companies for me and raise whatever else I need?



Them: You want us to sell an opportunity to be associated with your project? Saving the world, endorsed by the World Bank…
Continue

Added by Chris Ke Sihai on April 13, 2010 at 4:43pm — No Comments

Intervention Day, 10th Anniversary

Next week it will be the 10th anniversary of the day the aliens landed. The government has declared a national holiday and there will be fireworks, all the usual stuff. But not many people will be celebrating.



For one thing, there's another monster typhoon brewing in the Pacific. All those fancy new fusion generators don't seem to have fixed the weather. I remember the first television interviews when the aliens tried to explain what they could and couldn't do for us. They were like… Continue

Added by Chris Ke Sihai on April 13, 2010 at 3:30pm — No Comments

Challenge: Choosing Which Babies Will Die This Year

Most of the problems addressed so far in Evoke come down to how resources are allocated. The issue of 'unfairness' crops up in many blog posts. I want to solve a real-life dilemma that goes beyond fair, beyond who 'deserves' help, and which comes down to someone having to make a decision about which babies will die unnecessarily this year. If possible, I want to try and minimise the relevance of money to this issue and embrace all the other forms of capital out there - especially social capital… Continue

Added by Chris Ke Sihai on April 13, 2010 at 9:30am — 12 Comments

Recovering natural methane from water

This is a great story about a project to remove methane that is dissolved in reservoirs created by hydro-electric dams - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6638705.stm



Organic matter sinks to the bottom of the lake and is broken down by microbes. The process is anaerobic, and one of the by-products is methane gas. Methane is a major greenhouse gas and can also be burnt as a relatively clean fuel, but in deep lakes it remains dissolved in the… Continue

Added by Chris Ke Sihai on April 13, 2010 at 8:23am — No Comments

Exploding Lakes As An Energy Source?

In 1986, approximately 1,800 people were killed when Lake Nyos in Cameroon 'exploded' without warning, producing a tsunami and a huge cloud of CO2 which asphyxiated people up to 25km away. Many other lakes around the world face a similar threat, and I've been thinking of ways to turn this problem into an opportunity.



Exploding lakes are deep bodies of water… Continue

Added by Chris Ke Sihai on April 13, 2010 at 8:00am — 1 Comment

Why should I be empowering women?

I'm a man, and for the past three years I have been volunteering at The Garden of Hope, an organisation devoted to ending domestic violence. The biggest thing that I've learned is that women generally don't need men to give them anything or do anything for them - until we (men) start doing things that are wrong. Women only need to be empowered because men are the people with the power.



Every interaction, every day, carries… Continue

Added by Chris Ke Sihai on April 11, 2010 at 2:17pm — 4 Comments

Asian Tigers don't grow rice.

As a wealthy trading nation, there is no shortage of food in the supermarkets of Taiwan. But most of it is imported, and I was amazed to learn that about 25% of farmland in Taiwan is unused.



Trudging around in the mud on the family small-holding is just not attractive to the current generation of highly-educated urban professionals. The average farm size is just 1.1 hectares (Japan 1.6, EU 20, USA 190) and the average age of farmers is 58 years, so I see a picture of old men struggling… Continue

Added by Chris Ke Sihai on April 11, 2010 at 12:39pm — No Comments

Food security, starting at the beginning

ACT2 was a tough one, especially as I live in a relatively affluent country where farmers are looked after by the government and homeless are people are rare enough that the voluntary organisations already do a pretty good job of looking after them. (The Tzu Chi Foundation sends aid worldwide.)



I could just join or send money, but it seems like a cop-out. So I sat down and thought about where the problem originates and looked into the 'meat' of… Continue

Added by Chris Ke Sihai on April 11, 2010 at 11:30am — 1 Comment

FREE website-building tools I use, ignore the elephant in the corner

I've seen a few people on Evoke talking about their visions for things that can be done online, and looking for ways to achieve them. I decided to post this for the benefit of anyone seeking help with a web project. Feel free to contact me if you have questions.



I was surprised to learn recently that you don't need any programming or design skills to build a website that can do (almost) everything facebook or Evoke can do. And very often the tools you need are available for free from a… Continue

Added by Chris Ke Sihai on April 8, 2010 at 2:58pm — 9 Comments

A story

This is not my story, but it's about me - metaphorically speaking. It's from a book by Terry Pratchett.



It has been said that everything everywhere affects everything else. This may be true. Or perhaps the world is just full of patterns.



For example, in a tree nine thousand miles away, high on a cloudy mountainside, was a plant that looked like one large flower. It grew wedged in a fork of trees, its roots dangling in the air… Continue

Added by Chris Ke Sihai on April 8, 2010 at 1:42pm — No Comments

Going where the action is ... on Evoke

I was browsing through Evoke, and came across a couple of posts about the points system. (See this

one
and especially

this one
for more info.)



They prompted me to think some more about the nature of social movements, and the tyranny of numbers. I looked again at… Continue

Added by Chris Ke Sihai on April 8, 2010 at 1:26am — 2 Comments

Be careful what you ask for....

Sometimes dreams come true, although when psychologists actually studied this stuff they discovered that positive visualisation doesn't work. It's actually better to focus on the next step than to dream about where you will be ten years from now.



I could be anywhere in ten years. I'm on the other side of the world from where I was ten years ago, doing a job I never imagined I would do, living a life totally unlike the life I used to lead. Possibilities are endless, but a few things are… Continue

Added by Chris Ke Sihai on April 6, 2010 at 2:51pm — 4 Comments

What purpose art in social innovation?

My first thought when I saw this task was "but Douglas Adams is dead" and the next was "uh, 'Look for someone who's already tackling the world's biggest problems with creative solutions and entrepreneurial ventures.' How does Douglas Adams fit that description?"



After all, when you think of social innovators, you think of Bill Gates spending his own money to combat malaria or fix the schools. You think of…

Continue

Added by Chris Ke Sihai on April 6, 2010 at 1:30pm — 1 Comment

Six weeks to become a certified social innovator!

So here I am, a late entrant to this Evoke business, with only six weeks to save the world. I feel like Flash Gordon in the 80's movie where Ming the Merciless is dismissing the "pathetic Earthlings" and the fate of the Earth rests on "just a man, with a man's courage."



It's a silly movie, and a silly song, but the song just came into my head as I sat down to type - for no reason at all. As I type, it's followed by a… Continue

Added by Chris Ke Sihai on April 6, 2010 at 1:00pm — 4 Comments

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In this blog post I will focus on a plant that is abundant in our nature, and which is immensely nutritious. It's of course the Stinging Nettle. Let's start with the chemical constituents of this plant:37 % Non-Nitrogen-Extracts19 - 29 % Ash9 - 21 % Fiber4 % Fat22 % ProteinOnce the leaves are drid, their protein content can reach an astounding 40 %, which is much higher than beef, which even under the best of circ**stances can never exceed 31 % protein. In addition the Stinging Nettle consists…See More
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