Tim Winkelmann's Blog (16)

A new version of EVOKE has already started. But as I haven't seen that new version until now here are my thoughts about a possible successor.

WHICH great challenge...?

In my opinion there are three different scenarios which problems or challenges the EVOKE Network could tackle next. Not all of them are social problems.

The first future version of EVOKE is about all the problems in the Middle East. I came to this when writing about empowering women. The acceptance of…

I think a very important aspect in change communication is the actual reaction and behavior of the people who have to cope with the information. There seems to be a very sensitive dynamic within the way recipients assimilate and respond to potential threats. Being able (or at least have the chance) to control this is in my opinion the decisive key to increase the chance of de-escalation in any scenario.

This makes it interesting that in order to achieve a goal like breaking down…

I chose a case study about community forestry in Thailand.

As mentioned in many other case studies all over the world forest areas decreased dramatically during the last decades. Thailand issued a total "logging ban", which slowed down deforestation, but didn't stop it entirely.

So they headed out to find new ways for conserving the forest. In another case study I also read about the concept of community forests. Normally the government has the authority over the forest and the…

Until now I have never heard of a natural disaster or any similar crisis in our city or region, that lead to a break down of the infrastructure. I also can't imagine that things like an earthquake, a tsunami or things like that will happen here.

In the moment our health and welfare system is far better than in any developing countries. It's even better than in many other industrial countries. In relation to problems that we could possibly face in the future I have three different…

I talked about a resilience plan of our city with my some of my friends and colleagues at work and with my family. No one has ever heard about any kind of resilience plan for Braunschweig.

It is difficult to imagine what type of problems Braunschweig needs to face in the future that really need a resilience plan.

In my opinion Braunschweig should improve the infrastructure to face the continous growth. Furthermore they could provide a better food supply for the citizens and also in…

I read some of the articles and decided to choose one about American girls that raised awareness and money to fight child marriage in Ethiopia, Liberia, Malawi, and Guatemala.

The campaign behind this article is called Girl Up.

In the linked audio file Gina Reiss-Wilchins, Director of the Girl Up campaign explains the different reasons why parents in poor countries tend to get their little girls married to much older men.

One main reason seems to be poverty. All the…

In the learning part of this weeks mission I wrote about a system that works with talent points. In Germany it's called a "Tauschring". In my research about this system I had some ideas how it could be enlarged or enhanced.

First of all the current system is active in Germany and some other countries like France, Japan, or the Netherlands. But there nothing like a global trading system. You can use the system in Germany, but you can't benefit from your usage here when you are in…

In 2020 I will celebrate my 33 birthday but hopefully I will also celebrate the roofing ceremony of my zero energy house. I'm not sure where, but I dream about a zero energy house since I was a teenager.

As my sister is an architect I sometimes traveled with her to companies supplying materials for zero energy houses and it always fascinated me to see how a…

I thought about this for a time. Then I started gathering information of what I could do. In the beginning I found a website called Kiva.org where you can lend 25$ or more to people in a developing country. I read about this system and also found a review about the system Kiva uses and the MFIs. The author recommended another lending platform called Zidisha, where you can lend your money directly to the borrower and don't have the MFIs between you and the borrower.

I have already lent…

Basically there are three ideas or innovations in relation to money or future money that I really appreciate.

The first one is about talents. Talents that can be used like money for every kind of service. I first heard about this just one or two month ago. It's a system based on the special abilities every single person has and that can be offered to others. Someone might be very good in solving computer problems, while another one is great at reapairing cars, or baking, or perhaps…

In my opinion there is not only one method or innovation that will solve any problem that has to do with water supplies in Africa. So for example a newly published map of groundwater reserves shows that there is enough water already there, but it's not that easy to reach.

A very good way of providing clean and abacterial water is the use of…

I remembered an idea for really clean and sustainable electricity production called crowd farming. It describes a plan to harvest human movement energy. In my opinion this is would be a great invention as the human movement is unlimited and doesn't pollute the environment. It doesn't even harm the nature or wildlife like wind engines, underwater engines or a dam does.

The idea of crowd farming has been mentioned for the first time by two MIT students in 2007. If you are interested…

I'm not quite sure whether the following is really the biggest food security problem in our country, but I'm convinced that it is a problem.

In this article Mr. Dirk Niebel tells about the problem of volatile prices in the agricultural sector. He assumes that the volatile prices are not the reason why many people have to starve but because of structural…

I'm really not sure were and what I will be in 2020, but like many other people my biggest wish is to be healthy and to have a nice family with a dog.
I hope I have found an innovation that people needed and are leading my own little company working on things I like. Hopefully my peripheral vision lead me to a simple innovation that can improve or even solve the tokyo food crisis.

My personal social hero to shadow is Dieter Hagmann.

He is actively fighting against dolphin catching and killing in Taiji in Japan. It may be not that kind of social hero that helps people, but I think dolphins (or in general every animal) is even more lost without human help, because they can't speak for themselves.

I chose him because I'm totally against the keeping or killing of dolphins and many other animals. The doplhin hunt in Taiji is more brutal than anyone can…

My favorite secret is:

"Peripheral vision - keep a look out for other challenges or new solutions all the time.".

In my opinion this is one of the best ways to find new solutions for other problems you don't even know about when you start searching.

While focused on finding a solution or collecting ideas for one special challenge you often also have ideas or a new approach for totally different problems.

Many great innovations have been discovered only by chance and…