Similarly, who is “poor?”  A person living in a remote Ethiopian village where everyone makes $2 a day (using purchasing power parity exchange rates), or someone living in a Chicago housing development with an annual income of $5,000?

“Well…” says Mr. A, the inexperienced economics student, “both their incomes are above their respective poverty thresholds, so they should have enough for life-sustaining goods. But the person making $2 a day is closer to that threshold, so he must be poorer.”

Dr. Goldberg, the economist counters, “Actually, the Ethiopian is surrounded by people making the same income and the person living in Chicago has an income far below the average national per capita income, so the latter, from a relative perspective, is poorer.”

The capriciousness of absolute and relative poverty in the developing world has captured much attention within the last century.  Through empirical work and countless trial and error, economists have developed strong summary measurements of poverty, such as those below:

Poverty gap index: Economists use this model to measure how much income is needed to bring the population under the poverty line above it.

Gini coefficient: A widely used ratio statistic that measures the relative degree of income equality between countries or areas.

Foster-Greer-Thorbecke index: A popular model used to measure the degree of income inequality among the poor. It was considered such a strong measurement of poverty that it is included in the Mexican constitution.

In contrast to these dry quantitative theories put forward by economists, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen has developed a far more qualitative, human-based approach to measuring poverty.  In his book “Development as Freedom,” Sen outlines his idea of how economics could be broadened to better measure people’s well-being.  As Sen explains, “focusing on human freedoms contrasts with narrower views of development, such as identifying development with the growth of gross national product.”  In particular, Sen examines the ways in which expanding people’s freedoms can be both a viable means to economic growth and a desirable end.  His unique approach suggests that poverty is far more complicated than a simple lack of income and should in fact be measured by the “capabilities” people have to live the type of life they desire.  This broadens the term “poverty” to take into account the education, political freedoms, and health services available to people.

Sen’s principles were a major influence in the formulation of the Human Development Index, a powerful method of comparing social well-being across countries. The Index takes into account life expectancy at birth, level of education and standard of living to give an overall measure of a country’s well-being.

So, if asked which person was poorer (the Ethiopian or the person living in a housing development in Chicago), Sen would consider any answer incomplete that doesn’t account for social, political, and institutional circumstances.

The mutatis mutandis assumption strikes back!

Is there hope for connecting federal K-12 education reform with your school?

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA, currently authorized as No Child Left Behind Act of 2001) is coming up for reauthorization.  Both President Obama and Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan are presenting the reauthorization of ESEA as an opportunity to help provide greater transparency in the accountability system, harness the power of incentives and rewards within the education system, and focus upon turning around under-performing schools.

Given the polarizing debate that has ensured since the authorization of No Child Left Behind, I wonder how the current administration is poised to address a real divide between parties that, until recently, focused upon arguing about the existence of the Department of Education.

As recently as George W. Bush’s tenure as president, Republicans assumed a position that the Department of Education, and thus federal involvement in education reform, should be abolished, as outlined by this Cato Institute piece.  Interestingly, the Cato Institute piece demonstrates that Republican perspectives about abolishing the Department may be shifting.

Conversely, Democrats are most commonly aligned with increasing the funding of the Department of Education, assuming that its presence and status are given, as exemplified by perspectives put forth by the Center for American Progress.

While the current administration in Washington D.C. is supportive of federal involvement in education reform, I wonder if there is enough political will and support for a significant overhaul of the NCLB.  Consider what Arne Duncan has identified as ways in which the federal government will create a common definition of success:

1. Raising standards for all students,
2. Rewarding success in schools,
3. Supporting and rewarding effective teachers and leaders,
4. Turning around low performing schools, and
5. Helping schools develop a well rounded education.

I would imagine that most people, regardless of political affiliation, could support these ideas.  However, the role of the federal government in bringing forth these ideas raises a fundamental question—how involved should the federal government be in the US education system?  What is the end goal that the federal government is aligning the education system? Is it to

…produce economically successful individuals, as researcher Richard Murnane proposes?

…produce workers with the needed skills for the global economy?

…develop global consciousness in our students?

…ensure that each child simply has access to education?

While this question could serve as a basis for multiple Ph.D.’s, conferences, and summits, one take home point stands out—the educational system is moving forward at full speed without a consensus as to where it should be headed.  In the interim the heading is focused upon using education as tool for promoting economic growth.  Who is willing to argue with the proposition that better education will position individuals and the US for future economic growth?  If I had kids, I would definitely be considering the financial implications of my kids educational opportunities and growth.

However, without developing some agreement on why we educate, we may be reliving history.  Consider this quote from Patricia Graham:

“Public purposes for education change as the society perceives its needs and priorities differently.  Currently our old educational shiboleths have been rejected but new ones have not yet been accepted.  The critique of contemporary educational processes is intense, but there is little articulate reformulation of either educational goals or of means to achieve them.”¹

26 years ago these words were scribbed, and it seems that we may well be articulating means to achieve something, without first deciding upon what we are to achieve.

Is there hope?

Can we afford not to have the federal government involved in this debate?  With state budgets crashing, federal stabilization funds from ARRA are playing an important role in maintaining adequate funding for schools.  Furthermore, the next budget put forth by the Obama administration proposes to raise the Department of Education’s discretionary spending budget by 7.5%, the largest increase ever proposed.

Without having fully analyzed the Obama administration’s budget and plan for education, I’m initially impressed with their focus upon utilizing data for making decisions.  Any attempt to increase the availability, rigor, and applicability within the education system seems very worthwhile, especially considering the historical lack of using data to drive decisions within the education sector.  It would be even better if the administration clarified the need to use data in a formative manner (to improve teaching), which is no small task given that data has been utilized mostly as an outcome metric over the last 10 years.

I’m hopeful that federal involvement will accomplish a couple things:

1. Provide a temporary bridge in funding for cash strapped states, and that states effectively deal with a precipitous drop in funding that is on the horizon once the ARRA funds are gone.
2. Elevate education reform within the public agenda
   1. I don’t care if takes federal intervention or complete state autonomy.  Our system has room for improvement and we need to apply all the currently available resources to improve it.
3. Engage communicates in education reform beyond local levies and limited campaigns to bridge federal education reform with local education reform
   1. To do so will require some sort of organizing body to align all of these efforts.  In Cincinnati an effort coordinate by Strive aligns over 300 organizations, in total over $7 billion dollars in resources, to move kids from birth to their career through an aligned system.

Here in Washington State, we have the opportunity to influence the future of this state’s education system—there happens to be a landmark bill (ESHB 2261) passed in by Washington’s Legislature in 2009 that will:

1. increase instructional hours,
2. enhance high school diploma requirements,
3. create a new transportation funding formula,
4. all-day kindergarten added to basic education, and
5. new finance structure for transparency.

Maybe Washington State has the opportunity to create a cohesive strategy for aligning federal, state, and local policies to bring about lasting education reform?

How might you want to contribute to this process locally–as a parent, teacher, administrator, or person on the street—what is your stake in education reform?

The big finale of the Mithun Olympics at Pier 56 includes the much anticipated Barbie Ski Jump.  Each nation must fashion a means by which Barbie can successfully slide down an 8′ ramp and launch into the air, preferably performing death-defying acrobatics.  Nations are judged based on length of jump, acrobatic performance, and style overall.  Sean Conner, our MA in mechanical engineering, creates a Barbie Ice Block and dons her in medical tape.  We think we’ve got a good shot for the Gold.

Clash of the Communities in Vancouver, BC

I am at the Olympics!

Yes, feel free to envy me for having the opportunity to witness the world’s greatest athletes going at it neck to neck, to despise me for supporting what some people think is just a corporate grab for money funded by taxpayers dollars, or to be completely indifferent to the fact that I’m in Vancouver… The point that I want to make is that the Olympics have made up the largest gathering of communities I have ever seen.

My mom and I in the middle of Olympic crowds.

First you have your national communities, people from all different cultures from all over the world have flocked to Vancouver and the Sea to Sky corridor, proudly wearing their national colors and, in some cases, traditional dress garb.

You have your sports communities: The community of snowboarders, the community of Nordic skiers, the community of bobsledders,the  figureskaters, the curlers, the hockey players, speed skaters, etc etc.

And then of course you have all the other communities not directly related to sport diverging on this one geographic point, communities of musicians, artists, protestors, and all of their fan groups.

It’s really pretty incredible to see all of these different groups in one area forming what you could argue is one, gigantic, international community united by one common goal: to celebrate the athleticism and accomplishments of our athletes.

Me, trying to be part of both the American and Canadian Nordic Ski Fan Communities at the same time... not sure if I was 100% successful.

It’s no wonder big corporations like McDonalds and Coca-Cola are sponsoring the Olympics. They suddenly have monopolized and targeted access to multiple groups of people . If they convert a few members of one of these groups into avid consumers, then they have an ‘in’! Though on a bit of a side tangent, you have to wonder at the irony of McDonalds and Coca-Cola – the gold medal winners for least healthy choice of nourishment – sponsoring one of the largest athletic events in the world. I highly doubt the athletes that appear in McDonald’s advertisements happily munch away on Egg McMuffins and fries everyday.

How do the Olympics bring in so many different communities?

There’s something about the Olympics, and other sporting events for that matter, which really excel in attracting people in a way that your average business cannot replicate. Is it because, as humans, we’re attracted to greatness? Do we always want to see the very best of the best? Partly…

I would argue that it’s because so many fans of sporting events (including the athletes themselves) become emotionally involved with their respective sports. People tie their own happiness and success to the success of the athletes. They see themselves as playing some sort of role in determining the outcome for team or idol – the louder you cheer, the faster your athlete goes (not entirely, but that’s the idea).

We are attracted to greatness, but more importantly, we are attracted to somehow tying ourselves to that greatness. If we contributed to that greatness, then we ourselves share in that greatness.

I guess the interesting challenge for your average business person out there would be to emulate the Olympics:

1. Compete like an athlete – be open and personal

2. Appeal to the emotions of your potential clients through stories of your triumphs and failures and be sure to invite them to share in those triumphs and failures.

3. Lastly, surround yourself with greatness (easier said than done!).

The communities will come flocking!

I like Ted Talks, can you tell? I think it’s an amazing database full of amazing videos featuring amazing people and their amazing ideas!

The video above features Majora Carter, founder of an organization called Sustainable South Bronx which works to promote holistic community and sustainability developments in New York’s South Bronx. Carter speaks passionately in this Ted Talk about the connections between economic degradation, environmental degradation, and social degradation. It’s an inspiring presentation and definitely worth watching!

In terms of community, I think Carter hits on a couple of important points, as follows:

1. Healthy communities need healthy environments. Carter mentions how the residents of South Bronx have higher rates of obesity and asthmatic inflictions. A community that does not or cannot care for its common space cannot fully prosper even at the basic health levels.
2. Sustainable, holistic development carried our from a bottom-up and people-first approach can lead to long term economic and social success.
3. Sometimes identifying with a community can have negative implications for a group of people. As Carter says, ”If you are told from your earliest days that nothing good is going to come from your community, that it is bad and ugly, how could it not reflect on you?”

I never thought of community in this light. I’ve always assumed it was 100% positive, and that people need and thrive in a community atmosphere. While I still maintain that people need community, I think it makes sense that sometimes the ’shared’ or ‘common belief’ that knits a community together can be negative, especially if the community ethos has been defined by society as negative. Food for thought!

1. Population, Poverty and Economic Growth

The interconnectedness between these three drivers and their impact on global development, brought to you by my favorite think tank- the Center for Global Development.

2. Opening Trade Barriers in Haiti

Another article from the Center for Global Development, that focuses on the parallel between development strategies deployed in Africa and new mechanisms that could be deployed in Haiti.

3. Channel 19: A Global Social Media Network

WOW! A collaboration between two organizations (Video Volunteers from the US, and Drishti from India)that  incorporates social media, video, and the internet to bring community-based stories and videography to life around the globe.

Prosuming

Opening up to open sourcing as a profitable business model is one of the newest trends among businesses. Many different companies are embracing the idea that their consumers and the public at large could produce valuable contributions to product design. Starbucks, for example, allows consumers to design their own coffee drink. Puma’s Mongolian Shoe BBQ lets the public design their own shoe. Amazon.com, IBM, craigslist, and a host of other businesses are all looking to open source as a new way to market, to design products, and to compete in what is becoming a ‘prosumer’ world.

Here are some more examples of companies integrating Open Source procedures into their business philosophy:

Fashion – Threadless

Why hire a product design team to come up with catchy phrases and designs for t-shirts when you can have the public do it for free?

Threadless is a Chicago-based T-shirt company which serves as the perfect example of a business capitalizing on prosumers. All of the tees produced by Threadless are designed and voted on by the public. Up to 300 designs are submitted daily, the favorites are picked by the public, and then the winners are awarded $2,000 per creation.

According to an article in Forbes Magazine, this translates into a T-shirt company with no product design team who made $30 million in revenue in 2009, secured 1.5 million followers on Twitter, and 100,000 fans on Facebook. Not bad for a company of only 50 actual employees.

Threadless has expertly cultivated a community of loyal fans and contributors that has proved to be the key to its success.

As Cam Balzer, the vice president of marketing at Threadless says:

“We’ve got a close-knit group of loyal customers and have worked hard to build that. The people who submit ideas to us, vote and buy our products aren’t random people, and they aren’t producing random work. We work closely with our consumers and give them a place on our site, the Threadless forum, where they can exchange ideas with one another–ideas that go beyond designing T-shirts. We have consumers who have voted on 150,000 designs, which means they’ve spent hours interacting on our site … They’re part of the community we’ve cultivated.”

- Forbes Magazine

The Web – Mozilla Firefox

The widespread use of the internet plays an integral in bringing open sourcing to the forefront of business practice. Without it, companies wouldn’t have nearly as much access to the opinions and contributions of prosumers. It therefore makes sense that web browsers like Mozilla Firefox (along with many other web-based software and applications) would be open source.

Introduced in 1998, Mozilla Firefox was designed around the idea that the internet “should be public, open, and accessible.” To that end, Mozilla brings together thousands of volunteers to aid its small staff in creating products which are available for free to the public. The company’s operations are open and transparent, the entire code for the browser is therefore a public resource, and the company hierarchy not defined by seniority or necessarily ownership, but by who contributes the most to product design and ultimately to “making the internet better for everyone.”

Media – NowPublic

NowPublic is a Vancvouer-based, online news source based entirely on stories and news submitted by the public. All of the audio, video, images, and written stories come from the public. The public even chose the lead story by voting on their favorite. The entire content of NowPublic is produced by 200,000 citizen journalists living in 5,500 different cities in 160 different countries. This makes NowPublic the largest participatory news organization in the world.

Still a relatively new company, NowPublic is rapidly making its mark in the media as reliable and remarkably current. Because NowPublic’s journalists are regular people with access to technology – whether it’s a computer, cell phone, camera, or anything else – NowPublic often finds itself the first news source to run a story. Other news sources have to bring in the reporters, ship them over to the drama lugging camera equipment in a manner which isn’t entirely expedious. For NowPublic, all it takes is one person with a Camcorder and an internet connection.

In 2007, NowPublic was named by Time Magazine as one of the top 50 websites for the year.

The Gold Industry – Goldcorp

Open Source methods have even found their way to gold!

When Goldcorp CEO Rob McEwen found himself heading up a dying mining company out of a 50 year old mine in Red Lake, Ontario, he knew he had do something different and radical to keep Goldcorp from folding.

Taking a page out of Linus Torvalds book, he decided to open up to the public and allow them to tell him where to dig for gold. McEwen published all of Goldcorp’s geological data on the web – an unprecedented move in the gold industry – and waited for mass collaboration to work its magic…. and it didn’t disappoint.

1,000 people from 50 countries competed for a grand price of $575,000 in what McEwen called the Goldcorp challenge. The virtual prospecting resulting in 110 targets being pinpointed by the public. 80% of those targets were profitable and resulted in $3 billion dollars worth of gold.

Goldcorp was transformed from the underperforming, dying company it used to be into a $9 billion company. Open sourcing proved to be the company’s savior.

A New and Open Breed of Enterprise

I’ll sign out with a quote from Wikinomics authors Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams from a Wikinomics series they wrote for Business Week in 2007:

“A new breed of 21st-century enterprise is emerging—one that opens its doors to the world; co-innovates with everyone, especially customers; shares resources that were previously closely guarded; harnesses the power of mass collaboration; and behaves not as a multi-national, but as something new: a truly global business. These new modus operandi revolve around four powerful new ideas: openness, ‘peering,’ sharing, and acting globally.”