Great that this conversation has taken place. Great to see you here @howard_rheingold ! @johncoate mentioned an uptick in interaction at The Well. Is Brainstorms still around Howard? Do you see an uptick there too (I haven’t been in Brainstorms in ages).
Two observations I made in the past few weeks that touch upon this conversation.
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Yes there is a long list of unconnected initiatives out there currently. Looking at a range of them here in the Netherlands, while some seem to have some substance, many others seem more a coping strategy that keeps one busy but has no impact or meaning on the originator’s scope of action or anyone else’s agency. Kind of like the way I keep a spreadsheet with case numbers in NL, providing a sense of control or something, but then announcing it to the world as yet another Covid dashboard for coders and designers to contribute to.
At the same time initiatives that might have a real impact are invisible and never mentioned online unless they become visible once creating such impact. (e.g. my brother in law’s 3d printer company has approached all businesses and factories that use their printers to donate printing capacity, creating a global networked printing facility, and now discussing with manufacturers (like Phillips) and health ministries how to deploy that network to print respirator parts and masks where needed. It won’t be publicly announced as a bottom-up initiative, and it may not be publicly mentioned at all ever.) How do we filter wheat and chaff on a list of initiatives, or do we have a role in guiding others to potentially more meaningful activities and away from the coping projects like my spreadsheet/ other’s shiny dashboards? -
On working from home en masse. Most of my work is with government entities. A common tactic for people is to wait with doing something and ignore emails etc until the requester shows up at your desk asking about it . That escalation path is no longer available, showing up at one’s desk. As a result I see some civil servants withdraw on an island of clearly defined tasks, simply not responding to mails,calls etc about any other topic. A withdrawal. This means that all kinds of activities that depend on weaving together different acts by different parts of an organisation have more trouble building the connections and getting things done. This impacts precisely the type projects (around digital transformation, deploying new remote working tools, running experiments etc.) that would be of more interest now than before the current situation. Something to find a way of dealing with.