Urgent Evoke

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Learn2: What Rio Can Learn from Food Shortage Prevention on the Island of Kauai

Kauai is an island in the state of Hawaii susceptible to hurricanes and tidal waves. In 1992 before I arrived here there was a category 5 (really big) hurricane called Iniki that devastated the island with sustained 150 mile per hour winds for several days. The hurricane basically hovered over Kauai island for a long time. Crops were destroyed, chicken coops were upended, and homes were roofless. It took years to rebuild. There was some issue with food shortage in the aftermath of the hurricane. A state of emergency was declared and FEMA brought some supplies, but most people say not enough, and not fast enough.

I don't know very much about exactly what happened with the logistics of food supply in the aftermath of Iniki. I only know what stories the locals have told me of their personal ordeals. One woman tied a rope around herself and her three children during the hurricane, so they wouldn't blow away. A girl I work with remembers her father running out of the house in the middle of a tremendous wind surge. She thought he was running away and apparently this traumatized her a great deal, since she was only three or four. Another gentleman told me his family owned a hotel that was closed for over a year after the hurricane due to a new set of building codes that were implemented by the city council. It cost his family millions of dollars and contributed to the decline of property values in the area. This led to an influx of wealthy buyers who purchased tens of thousands of acres at very low prices. This man I speak of is actually quite angry with the city council for handling the aftermath of hurrican Iniki because he feels they were manipulated by these wealthy buyers and contributed to much local land being "stolen" from its rightful indigenous "Hawaiian" ownership.

But that's not why I'm writing this post. I'm writing this post to speak about the Kauai Food Bank. The Food Bank provides food to hungry people, and solicits donations from the community through our local radio station KKCR -- one of the great community-run radio stations of the world. On several occasions in the past two years the Kauai Food Bank has reached dangerously low storage numbers, threatening its capacity to provide food for hungry people. Ideally, the Food Bank would like to have enough food to feed tens of thousands of people for several weeks, in the event of another natural disaster of the scope of hurricane Iniki. During these times of distress, the Food Bank placed calls to the community through the local radio deejays. Sure enough, the community has responded on each occasion with an outpouring of canned goods and non-perishable items. Often enough it takes merely a genuine voice on the radio to spark action in the community.

Perhaps this is something we can apply to our current Mission 3 in Rio, as a way of critiquing our Evoke storyline. There is an issue with the television. The favela dwellers are watching futbol, and they like it. What if the futbol announcer could say something special using his own talents and spontaneous feelings to spark a major windmill generating movement?

If one of Alchemy's agents, or perhaps merely a well-meaning broadcast executive, could put in the Urgent Evoke to the announcer or his team, perhaps if the timing were just right we might experience social innovation at the very apex of entertainment and customer satisfaction? peace // cameron

Views: 14

Comment by Brian Ballsun-Stanton on March 19, 2010 at 12:43am
Cool. When I've visited Kauai, I've noted the very sane/relaxed attitude of the locals. This just goes further in proving it. IT's good to see that a community is capable of this sort of forward planning. Do you see any patterns that we can export to other communities?
Comment by cameron michael keys on March 19, 2010 at 4:32am
I see a few patterns capable of export, Brian. First is the capacity of the radio station leadership to identify a sane/relaxed market. They let volunteers program the music spontaneously, on a weekly basis, and all the volunteers are just amazingly interesting soul-persons. Funding the radio station is not much of a problem for several reasons: it educates people continuously because the people programming the content are concerned and happy; it throws great parties three times a year to raise funds; and it honestly and authentically utilizes traditional radio telethon fundraisers offering very generous gifts from local businesses in exchange for tax-deductible donations. So first, I notice the capacity of radio station leadership to identify a sane/relaxed market.

Second, I notice that most of the businesses on the island are owned or operated by local people who feel gratified at having discovered their livelihood on this beautiful island. There is a healthy business culture here, so most of the residents understand essential features of the marketplace. This produces a willingness to give in the personified mind of Kauai Commerce. Incentives to give are provided by Sanity and Relaxation. Logic works for the honest voice on Kauai because motivations are sane and relaxed. Now, this doesn't always apply to Kauai Commerce. The SuperFerry comes to mind, which was a project to bring 200 cars a day to our tiny island from Honolulu on a gigantic catamaran. Dollar sign haloes hovered over those businessmen. Their motivations had little regard for migrating whales, inter-island drug trafficking, or the powerful storm systems between Maui and Kauai. In this case of a lack of social and emotional intelligence from commercial intersts, thousands of residents jumped in the harbor waters to send the SuperFerry back from whence it came! The community radio station had wide-open phone lines and all demographics sympathized with the attitude of protest. We demonstrated an ability to literally educate Kauai Commerce as we would discipline a bully. Many business leaders sympathized with our rejection of the Super Ferry because they readily identified with themselves as island residents and not corporate entities. This is a very important pattern, Brian, and I think it's available for export. They call it Aloha -- Aloha is ready to viral, braddah!!!!

I think authentic emotional advertisement is what woks. When you present a montage of wh*** emotions to a crowd, nurtured by humor, good music, and effective logic, people will simply interpret your words as a proposal. Proposal-oriented advertisement works so much better than conditioned-response-oriented advertisement. You offer the recipients of the service an opportunity to contribute to an alternative marketplace specific to the context of the radio station. All the businesses participate in the same endeavors as private/residential contributors -- it's an augmented marketplace situation. 150 dollar massages are exchanged for 100 dollar tax-deductible donations. The radio station as third party organizer receives the donations with an implicit understanding from all participants that the money will fund the radio station exclusively on a technical and financially sound basis. All the listeners know the radio station is exploring energy alternatives to reduce costs. Thus, users of the radio broadcasting services can trust the infrastructure of the "funDrive".

The augmented marketplace actually mirrors a local culture of underground trade. For example, if you want a surfboard you show up in another augmented marketplace for a board swap on the first Saturday of the month. You can sell your board for whatever price you want. You can give boards away. You can trade boards for boards. You pay cash, but you can pay with promises sometimes. The board swap takes place in the same 'shopping village' where the restaurants are owned and operated by knowledgable local residents.

I've used the term "augmented marketplace" a few times. I think this is a useful notion. I recently read some of Tom Greco's work regarding the need for internationally-viable alternative exchange functions. Greco hopes that local currency experiments such as in Ithaca New York where volunteerism and work exchange utilize a fiat currency called "Ithaca Hours" to represent culturally nuanced exhanges of socially-intelligent human energy. Greco claims that internationalizing such nuanced exchange systems could make the global economy more robust. It would make it easier to travel for many people, and could alter trends associated with predatory credit lending.

I would like to discuss more about other variations on the concept of "augmented marketplace" perhaps in future blogs. First I'll consider whether the term makes any sense, i.e. can I describe the term through some logical structures that work to elucidate our collective situation. Thanks for prompting these thoughts, Brian -- I like how you play the game.
Comment by Brian Ballsun-Stanton on March 19, 2010 at 5:31am
My pleasure mate. Say, is there still that awesome awesome chicken place on the north shore? I can still remember it. (Don't remember the name, but it's om nom nom...)

That response is actually a good basis for a post. Especially the discussion of sane/relaxed (I'm glad you ran with it) and the underground trade.

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