Some Resilient Community links

  I had a great discussion about resilience on Thursday night at the GSA Degree Show preview. Rather than send links by email, I'm posting them here with a brief commentary. The links are not intended to be comprehensive or even representative. My major concern is that good intentions about Resilient Communities (RC) will do what good intentions always do. With severe consequences. The 1970's movements of alternative technology and appropriate technology had good intentions but (so far as I can see) little impact in practice; forty years on, people are still designing fuel-efficient stoves for Africa.

Scottish activity of interest

As regards 'mainstream' resilience activity, there is Transition Scotland. Permaculture Scotland is of course relevant, but not the whole answer. The aquaponics team at Stirling has the potential to be useful.

The Unreasonable Leaners Network is of considerable personal interest, and I'm hoping to give it the time it deserves.

IFF  seems to be up to the right sort of things. Their book has some clear thinking and practical approaches (plus some politically correct nonsense about climate).

UK activity

There is work on the difficult question of setting up appropriate organizational structures. This is vital for any sort of scaleability, and is a very long lead item. This post  at Res Publica  addresses the vital topic of  legislation for co-ops, mutuals etc. The B4RN lot seem to have done the tedious homework of setting up an organization for community broadband. John Popham seems tied in to this area somehow.

Wider activity of interest

Rob Paterson has a lot to offer. In the first place, he has a compelling personal narrative that is driving him to change. He is contributing to local RC development, and is curating a great health resource. In the background is a great deal of hard systems thinking.

The Resilience Thinking book provides a level of hard analytical thought that we need much more of. The resilience alliance is here. Useful video intro here at Mark Robinson's site. Mark Robinson has a publication (pdf) combining the arts and resilience.

John Robb seems to have moved from plotting the coming war to helping create the peace. Nonetheless, his book is axiomatic to thinking about the future (along with Globalistan), and Global Guerillas has lost none of its relevance, alas. He is building two great resources; the RC site, and Miiu. He seems to have links with Open Source Ecology. His two backgrounds come together for resources such as darknet.

The info activists of tactical tech have resources that could be put to widespread use.

Club Orlov is based on a clear model of societal collapse but tries to be absolutely positive. In terms of legal infrastructure, it is linked with Seasteading. It recognizes the need for some sort of spiritual dimension.
Michel Bauwens and the P2P foundation has the potential to be a very powerful resource.
Falkvinge and the pirates are relevant in a number of ways, including their thoughts on swarming.
Paradigms for Progress seems to be on the right lines as well.

Wendy Brown is apocalyptic in title, but less so in tone. The survivalist movement seems active in the USA but either non-existent or completely stealth in the UK.

John Thackara is fundamental, of course. Wider economic material of relevance  includes Gregor MacDonald,  Umair Haque, Eric Beinhocker(pdf), Steve Keen etc..

My own posting on the topic includes posts on the  long lead item of encouraging, supporting, spreading competence development. The IFF book has a nice slogan; "Ready for Anything without planning for everything" (whilst also discussing synchronous failure). My take on various approaches to readiness is here. I am unconvinced of the difference between localism = good and protectionism = bad. I did risk making a forecast, as much to test my own reasoning, as to broadcast it.

Update

The Simplicity Institute is worth a good look.

Normal service is being restored

If you had expected to hear from me, or had expected me to be doing something for you, this note is for you. It is a lessons learned note on some recent developments.
A year ago my parents were a resilient system contributing to the family and community. Now they are gone. My sister devoted the last year to their care - a year well-spent. I helped as best I could, with regular trips to Prescot. Work matters took a back seat. In addition, a good deal of work has been done on the house, with all the chaos that tradesmen bring with them.
There was a bit of a low point on my birthday, the last Sunday in April. My main task was to drive to Prescot for my mother's burial. As I started to pack up, my computer died. I decided to put off analyzing that till I came  back, and went to set off. The car wouldn't start. After my return late Monday night, I contacted someone to help with the computer; Tuesday and Wednesday were high-stress diagnostic days. In the middle of Wednesday night, we called an ambulance to take Wilma to A&E (trapped sciatic nerve), where we seemed to have arrived in the Social Engineering Dept. rather than anywhere with clinical capability. Somewhere beyond fatigue at that point.
 A good deal of the time since then has been devoted to getting my computer fixed, and data and applications in good order. No data loss, and things weren't too untidy given the events of the past year, but still time consuming. Wilma has responded to Bowen Therapy but is still on a slow and painful road to recovery (me, I'm just continuing with the sleep deprivation - not helped by the long Scottish summer days).
This note starts with simple technical lessons learned, and only briefly touches on more personal matters (more anon).

Co-creation with tradesmen

There are some tradesmen who can see the customer/home-owner situation, and some that can't. The difference is striking. The lack of awareness of someone who come in to ply his trade with no regard to interfacing with other trades, the impact of his activity on his customers and their neighbours is remarkable. Maybe they need to take their wives with them.

Resilience of home office computer networks

I minimize my use of the cloud; 'the user as the product' is not a model I subscribe to more than I have to (though Blogger does a good job for me here). Bits of the cloud that helped provide resilience were google calendar and Opera Link (for bookmarks). Plusnet webmail worked; I normally leave mail on the server because 3 mobile and Plusnet don't talk to each other so far as email is concerned. Wuala, skydrive, and greater use of Amazon 'cloud' storage all need investigating sometime.
Applications I use that help with resilience are Chaos Intellect (email) that allows sync'ing, including a fully functioning email on a USB memory stick, and Powerdesk, where sync'ing, multi-pane file viewers and a size management utility help with recovery.
It is wrong to waste a good incident; improvements made include changing the laptop set up from a basic awayday arrangement to a more fully functioning set of applications and resources.
As regards my main desktop PC, the main lesson is that spending money on a high-quality well-specc'ed machine was a mistake. RAID 1 on a PC makes dealing with other failures much harder; RAID is for NAS. So, policy now is to buy basic "cheap as chips" machines (Zoostorm from eBuyer or somesuch), and have all the fancy bits external to the box. As regards the laptop, the Crucial SSD upgrade looks appealing. The TeraStation is still graunching away but the newer La Cie RAID boxes are tempting. A DLink print server enables me to print with a dead computer.

Dependable road transport

I bought the Subaru because they are supposed to be bomb-proof. Reviewers consider their interior to be a bit old-fashioned, which appealed to me on the grounds that there would be less non-engine electronics to go wrong. These assumptions proved wrong, and were compounded by 'smart' charging (which means driving with your lights on to save energy, or somesuch). Two call-outs and two dockings later, I think my car will start. For the five years I had my Toyota, I knew my car would start. A big difference. The Subaru had real rust after three years (I mean Vauxhall Viva type rust, not a stone chip). Fixed now, but astonishingly, no analysis of the manufacturing defect. At a loss on the way ahead just now. Still too cross.

The Dutch saying "trust arrives on foot and departs on a horse" applies to all sources of technology.

NHS

Over the past year, we have had more to do with the NHS than is healthy. Individual staff range from the excellent (raging against the system) to the truly atrocious. There was a high point where the GP said "yes, we are a pretty good team" - a doctor admitting to being part of a team - wonderful!
The system dynamics (I use the term in its technical sense) are awful.
The financial uncertainty of care for the elderly in England is horrendous. The cash flow implications for care homes and nursing homes are massive, and doubtless add a big chunk to the bill.
The key issue seems to be managerialism, which has taken the NHS to the 'bureaucracy' stage of the Adizes life cycle. Hopefully this will be expanded into something less cryptic soon.

Family matters

With death, parents change from being someone you are connected to, and part of a mesh of relationships. You start to see them in a more isolated fashion, as they were themselves, gain new insights into them, your own similarities and differences, and a whole review of your own 'deep story' grinds away . Views of yourself that have been dormant for decades surface. The social obligations of the offspring to the deceased are considerable - particularly when the deceased was a significant figure in work or the local community.
I may try to plot their loss of resilience as a system.
Buddy networks, are, or course, what work. Robin, a friend from Sussex University days trod this road some years back and offered useful words of immense comfort (not for the first time). Ron Donaldson has had a similar time to myself, which helped with the 'no man is an island' perspective. His post on his own Cynefin was helpful. I came to realize that the Scouser/Wollyback border is where I have my sense of belonging, but have much less reason to visit now. Coylton is extremely friendly, but I have still to grow deep roots here. Maybe Everton would like to move North. The world of my childhood in North Wales is now a lost world alas.
In their demise, my parents helped to restore wider family links. It would be a tragedy if we let these lapse again. There is some cycle of creative destruction going on here that I don't understand yet.

Watching Dixie Dean

When my father was twelve, he was taken to watch Everton. This would be 1933, a year they won the FA Cup. Dixie Dean was playing, and was getting some abuse from someone in the crowd. Dixie Dean went up to the man and punched him. A policeman came along and said "Well done, sir" to Dixie.

21st Century Human Centred Design

  It is clear that "things are going to be different" - hopefully with a move towards "betterness". How will ergonomics contribute to this change, and what will it look like?

Somewhere Steve Pheasant said that ergonomics usually begins with some sort of task analysis, and ends with some sort of a user trial. In 'Ergonomics- standards and guidelines for designers' he wrote:

" The bulk of the substantive content of the discipline revolves around two key issues—human adaptability and human variability, both of which are measurable and both of which are amenable to standardization at least with respect to their limits."

The principles of Human-Centred Design are:

• A clear and explicit understanding of users, tasks and environments.
• The involvement of users throughout design and development.
• Iteration.
• Designing for the user experience.
• User centred evaluation.
• Multi- disciplinary skills and perspectives.

Let us take the above to be fixed i.e. that the core of the discipline doesn't change, but that its application changes in response to a changing world (i.e. ergonomics practitioners will face  a changing 'context of use'). If ergonomics can adapt to the changed context, the future is very promising.  The shift in emphasis looks like the following:

Healthcare
From:  Drug labelling, incident analysis, CHFG, MiniMe
To:   Empowered patients, individual differences with 'quantified self', application of functional medicine, community tool design, wellness support, recognition of 'healthcare' limitations

Education

From: Classroom furniture
To: Personal Learning Environments


Hazardous industries

From: Safety management, alarms, control room design
To: Resilience, governance


Work design

From: Factory and workplace design
To:   Enabling home and community resources e.g. hackerspaces  (home office design, the dangers of sitting etc. will have been done by others)


Defence

From: Equipment design
To: Facilitating Open Source Warfare


Consumer goods, work equipment

From: Product design
To:   Tools for co-creation; design, assessment, certification, of products/services (where the distinction has become unimportant). Input to open source design.

Suggestions welcome in the comments.

Skills and Manners for Resilient Communities

A post by John Robb on the skills gap used the famous quote by Robert Heinlein 

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

John Robb is right about the skills gap, and this post is my twopennorth on the topic. 

The resilient community movement might sympathise with Henlein's bold statement of individual self-sufficiency - the Competent Man. (Presumably women are supposed to be pregnant in winter and barefoot in summer). The list has sparked a great many similar attempts, including this. However, it is clearly not practical as a universal prescription, up to date, or appropriate for all situations.

As a contribution to bridging the digital divide, I have attempted to expand it, update it where necessary, and use headings that merge digital and traditional skills. Bridging the digital divide will be an important factor at both individual and community levels (the list is an expansion of one developed in response to David Pogue's post on 'the basics').

To quite an extent, the specifics of the list aren't all that important. The skill requirements for a resilient community are likely to be an emergent property - skill development will need a number of safe-fail experiments (cf. Cynefin). What is important just now is to make an estimate of the size of the undertaking and have an initial plan of how to bootstrap ourselves, in this Resilient Communities may be lean startups - including customer development; "self sufficiency" might breed a dangerous introversion. Rob Paterson took the view that the first priority was to get fit, so that the other requirements could come more easily. This seems very sensible, but it may not be your priority.

One suggestion is that your priorities are driven by "what you are least worst at". Every community will need its own approach and idea of end-point, but it would be reasonable to be well on the way to using " five per cent of the energy throughputs that we are accustomed to now" (a must-read piece by John Thackara) by ‘the 2017 drop-off’ discussed in the 2009 BITRE report.

So,  we need informed skill development at an individual level, driven by hard reality like Rob Paterson has done, rather than woolly idealism. Perhaps we need Personal Learning Environments. At a community level, there is the need to spot potential skill shortages (as John Robb has done in the post mentioned at the top of this piece). What obviously won't work are:

• Central planning
• Doing nothing
• State-funded institutions attempting to carry the load
• Individualised efforts.

Here's the list. Ones from the Heinlein list are *

Mind

Communicate

Make a phone call,  VoIP call

Txt on a mobile phone, Send a picture on a mobile phone (taken on its camera)

Send an email, know 'netiquette'

Subscribe to an RSS feed

Buy  online

Give a short talk e.g. welcome or thanks

Give a presentation without visual aids

Use powerpoint or equivalent sensibly (cf. Guy Kawasaki's Rule xxx)

Draw mindmaps or some other type of diagram

Read/produce engineering drawings

 Self-organize

* Take orders

* Give orders

* Act alone

Run a personal kanban

Eat healthily

Organize

* Plan an invasion

* Balance accounts

Plan a menu

Do a household budget

Get kids to school on time and with the right gear

Set up a website

Plan or evolve the layout and planting of a garden

Organise a sports event

Prioritize risks and opportunities

Facilitate

* Co-operate

Run a workshop

Tend

* Pitch manure

Improve digital photos e.g. red eye removal, cropping

Prune plants

Care for pets

Clean the inside of a computer, displays, keyboards, mouse

Vacuum clean a house

Clean windows

Sew on buttons

Replace zips

Take up a hem

Change the wheel on a car

Check under the bonnet of a car (fluid levels, belts, battery etc.)

Secure people and assets

* Fight efficiently

Use a fire extinguisher or fire blanket

Have an escape plan

Set up and use internet security (firewall, anti-phishing, virus checking)

Wear a seatbelt

Avoid drinking and driving

Use strong passwords and not have them accessible

Test for counterfeit banknotes

Use a spam filter

Check a suspect email that has come through the filter

Check suspect visitors to the house

Stop junk mail

Locate

Know your post code/zip code

Know your IP address

Remember what you went upstairs for

Use search engines, desktop search

Use bookmarks/favourites for web pages

Have contact details for family and friends

Have contact details for emergency situations

Find useful people (plumber at the weekend)

Use a map and compass

Use a GPS device

File

Keep personal records organised

Keep account details organised e.g. bank, utiliities

File work documents in a system

Have a computer filing system for documents, images, music

Have a consistent filename convention

Body

Preserve

Make jam, pickle, chutney

Back up to CD, hard drive, web-based resource

Preserve with salt or drying, canning, freezing

Transfer digital photographs from camera to local and cloud storage

Take video, post to web

Program the video recorder or PVR

Share

Use a photo sharing service, P2P music or video sharing

Use a group, forum, chat room

Raise money for charity, project

Host a party, barbeque

Write, distribute a newsletter

Care

* Change a diaper

* Set a bone

Do CPR, resuscitation

Create

* Design a building

* Write a sonnet

* Program a computer

* Cook a tasty meal

* Butcher a hog

* Solve equations

* Analyze a new problem

Paint in watercolours

Sketch

Build a website

Use computer graphics

Grow plants from seed

Raise children

Construct

* Build a wall

Use a lathe or milling machine

Use computer 3D to create something

Build a drone, robot

Control

* Conn a ship

Drive a car, tractor &  trailer

* Ride a bicycle, horse

Spirit

* Comfort the dying
* Die gallantly
Find inner peace
Survive hardship
Survive success

As an aside, the story of Heinlein and Lazarus Long is an interesting one.

Update: As regards digital literacy, the European Computer Driving Licence is obsolete. Resources that look potentially useful include the Digital Survival Guide and Digital Citizens Basics.

Eric Sherwood Jones RIP (26 March 1921 - 14 January 2012)

"Epitaph on my Ever Honoured Father" by Robert Burns

O YE whose cheek the tear of pity stains,

 Draw near with pious rev'rence, and attend!

 Here lie the loving husband's dear remains,

 The tender father, and the gen'rous friend;

 The pitying heart that felt for human woe,

 The dauntless heart that fear'd no human pride;

 The friend of man-to vice alone a foe;

 For 'ev'n his failings lean'd to virtue's side.

Building utilization; Efficiency vs. Effectiveness

A great piece by Workspace Design Magazine identified the coming interest in monitoring (and charging for) workspace utilization.

"I predict that the efficient utilization of real estate, resources, and energy will be a critical business focus during 2012. To arrive at astute, accurate financial decisions, management teams will focus on increasing data acquisition so they can analyze workspace utilization trends down to a finite level. They will also place greater emphasis on leveraging flexible space and videoconferencing solutions, all in an attempt to maximize productivity without increasing costs.

To gain a more detailed understanding of how space and energy is used, companies will extend occupancy detection beyond conference rooms and work areas down to individual workspaces, desks, and drop-in space. Monitoring space and energy at the granular level provides details needed to identify the necessary amount of real estate for efficient functions, while avoiding unnecessary expenditures on excess workspace. It also facilitates the reduction of energy consumption in underutilized areas."

Smart Buildings also has this in its predictions for 2012 (.pdf).

"Data and Metrics for Building Occupancy will Finally Move to the Top of the Agenda as Key Indicators  in Building Performance. Aside from the base environmental needs of a building, a  simple  energy management  approach for buildings is to have  energy consumption  aligned  with actual building occupancy. Yet few building owners  know how many people  occupy their building, where they go, when they’re there, etc.  Building owners are more likely to know how many cars entered their parking garage than how many people entered  their building. How can you possibly know when and how much heat or cooling or light should be provided without knowing the occupancy of  your building spaces? A variety of means for gathering occupancy data are now available; we  have lighting control systems with not only occupancy sensors but more sophisticated  occupancy systems  able to track the movement of the occupant. In addition, there is access control, video surveillance with people counting capability,  room and personal scheduling systems,  infrared people counters for doorways, as well as RFID technology able to provide some level of occupancy data. In 2012 occupancy data will drive energy management and  curtailment strategies for demand response and space planning. Expect new hardware and software tools generating or using occupancy data metrics to be adopted by facility management. "

 In a brief exchange of tweets, @workingdesign asked two really good questions.

• How effective is efficient space?
• What are the trade-offs between efficient operation and. flexibility and productivity?

 Answering the effectiveness vs. efficiency question will take some thought. This post doesn't attempt to give a proper answer, being more of a place-holder. 

“In terms of dollar outlay over the 40-year life cycle of an office building, 2–3 percent is generally spent on the initial costs of the building and equipment; 6–8 percent on maintenance and replacement; and 90–92 percent is generally spent on personnel salaries and benefits. These data suggest that if an investment in physical planning and design could be made that would favorably influence organizational effectiveness and therefore reduce personnel costs, total life-cycle costs could be substantially reduced.”  -  Jean Wineman (Behavioral Issues in Office Design)

 The above quote makes a strong case for effectiveness. The problem, as ever, with people-system integration is that costs and benefits don't come from the same budget. The case for effectiveness needs to be made clearly and in advance of the utilization metrics because so much of office history is against it. The effectiveness ambitions of Robert Propst with his Action Office were undermined by efficiency-driven implementation in the form of the cubicle. People such as Frank Duffy and Stuart Brand have fought the efficiency-driven approach with some success, but, with the new driver of energy consumption, battle will need to be re-joined. The world of work has changed dramatically since Propst and indeed say 'How Buildings Learn'.  The default for office space is becoming "Square feet, how square!". 

In 'Work and the City', Duffy says:" An even bigger blind spot is that architects have little motivation to measure and hence no vocabulary to describe how efficiently office buildings are occupied over time. Because our heuristic seems to be 'Never look back', we are unable to predict the longer term consequences in use of what we design. Yet the handful of space planners (such as my practice DEGW, which pioneered the technique) who do measure building occupancy report that even over the normal, eight hours of the working day most office buildings are lightly occupied—well over half of conventional individual workplaces are empty, even at the busiest times of day. Meeting rooms, even when pre- booked, are also, notoriously, often empty. Total occupancy of all office workplaces, combined with meeting rooms and all other social and semi-social spaces, peaks at 60 per cent and then only for relatively short periods at the busiest times of the working day.To say that office buildings are occupied at only half their capacity is a gross understatement. The actual situation is much more wasteful. The occupancy figures quoted above relate only to eight of the 24 hours and to five out of the seven days that office buildings are theoretically available for use." Plenty for the efficiency folk to go at then.

This post looks at how the effectiveness/efficiency debate might play in different organizational cultures, using Ron Westrum's organisational climate scale.

Pathological

• "Tina, that is the third time you have been to the toilet this morning. It is coming out of your wages. Your behaviour is now on the scorecard in the lobby."
• The cost of meeting rooms is now going to be taken from project budgets. No, we aren't reducing overheads in compensation. Since safety training does not currently have a budget, it will need to meet in Starbucks next door.
• Communications briefings have been stopped to save costs. Management information is now on the intranet.

Bureaucratic

• The steering group is now analysing building usage metrics on a monthly basis. A working group has been set up to produce guidelines on best practice for running meetings.
• Booking the large conference room now requires a director's signature one month in advance.
• Staff working late are reminded that prior approval is required. This is particularly important now because of the associated costs.
• There was an item in the suggestion scheme to try "brainstorming". We have appointed a committee to investigate this exciting idea.

Generative

• We have doubled our facilitator training budget. The money for that has come from savings by running Boosters instead of meetings.
• Last week's open cafe meeting was a great success. To celebrate, next week's meeting will have extra pastries. Please bring a friend and network.

 One of the many aspects of work that has changed in recent years is the quality and scope of facilitated meetings (Creative Problem Solving, TRIZ, etc.). Really, traditional meetings should be the exception rather than the rule. It might be worth asking whether a facilitator-in-residence becomes part of building management services? She might do more to reduce energy consumption and occupancy than many other measures.

Update: Susan Cain has a good article in the NYT on the loss of effectiveness in pursuit of efficiency.