The Captured Perspective

I recently picked up my first pair of TOMS shoes.  For those of you not familiar, (ex-Amazing Racer) Blake Mycoskie started TOMS in 2006 with a goal of using his company to get free shoes to those in need.  Their business model stands on a one-for-one model where every pair purchased leads to a pair given to a child in need. Since its inception, TOMS has given over 10,000 pairs of shoes to children in Argentina, and 50,000 + to children in South Africa.

TOMS on the GWOC

The shoes themselves are interesting– simple, yet strangely charming. Many of them are  canvas based with a simple rubber sole.  My pair (pictured on the Great Wall of China on the left… they LOVE to travel) has a canvas upper with a rubber sole meshed with rope– for extra traction.  It is fair to say that, in a real turn of events unforeseen by the masses, Mycoskie and his TOMS crew is bringing the loafer back!

Facilitated such fast growth is the popularity of their social impact model. They just released an AT&T commercial, Dateline (I believe) just told their story on national TV, and their founder recently visited the white house for a social entrepreneurship award.  No word on what pair Barack rocks in his spare time, but I would imagine its probably the University Ash Rope (also seen, surprisingly, to the left…).

One interesting thing to watch regarding TOMS in the future is how their business model will transition as they continue to grow in size and popularity.   With company/cause combinations like TOMS, the drive behind sales is more complex than just social impact.  Specifically, people buy TOMS because they are contributing to an important cause, but also because they are different in doing so, and want to be seen by others as such. In a strange way, it’s kind of like Indie Rock following.  One of the things many groups struggle with is how they maintain their original fanbase shifts as their popularity explodes. Those who got into the band early see the group as changed from their newfound popularity as their fan-base shifts. For the early adopters, liking the group is not nearly as exciting when you are not the only one.  With regards to TOMS, those who got into the show for its social cause might be less impressed by those who get on the bandwagon later (the ‘Peters,’ if you will), seeing them as groupies rather than purists.  At a certain point, companies like TOMS reach a tipping point where, for the early adopters, the TOMS they first supported is not the TOMS they see now, even if the mission is the exact same.  A shift in TOMS’ network of association will shift the way TOMS is seen by it’s potential customers.

UPDATE: After reading this post, my friend Karin wrote me saying, “Nice post but I don’t know if I agree with that indie band perspective.  I like to think that people who support causes like this aren’t doing things just for the sake of being different.” I agree with her, so I want to add a clarification.

I think our motivations are often mixed and multi-faceted.  People buy TOMS because they buy into the cause, but not ONLY because of this.  For example, if I made a show company with the same mission, but my shoes looked like pieces of newspaper formed over a piece of shaky cardboard, I would be out of business fast because my customers would avoid shoes that are not attractive do not serve their function sufficiently.  The same is the case with TOMS. I do not think that the primary motivation behind buys TOMS is appearing unique (and this specification motivation would be stronger with following the next big band), but I think that is one of many factors. Consequently, if that motivation disappears as TOMS fails to provide the unique experience for the customer, I think its possible that some people will look to fulfill their altruistic motivation in other ways.

There have been many potent critiques leveled against the American Dream. From Death of a Salesman to American Beauty, the darker ‘untold’ story of American suburban life has been told. While joining this long list of criticisms, Revolutionary Road departs from it in some important ways.

Like many, this story begins with a young couple that falls in love, marries, has children, and finds a house in the suburbs. The husband, Frank, takes a job he hates and is ‘too talented’ for and his wife April feels trapped and bored in her role as suburban housewife. Sounds typical, right?

Wrong. Most other stories have frustrating but likeable characters who end up sticking it to the man or living the life they always imagined upon an enlightening/ empowering experience. Lester Burnham of American Beauty fits this bill well. In Revolutionary Road, nearly everyone is despicable, blind, and completely lacking in courage. The one man who sees clearly the world Frank and April find themselves in is John Givings, a recently released psychiatric patient and former math professor. Here are a couple of his more powerful insights:

In speaking about the suburban way of life, he says, “Hopeless emptiness. Now you’ve said it. Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.”

Then, in an argument with Frank about April’s second (surprise) pregnancy and why Frank took a promotion at a job he hates instead of moving his family to Paris to start over as he had planned, Givings remarks, “I wouldn’t be surprised if you knocked her up on purpose, just so you could spend the rest of your life hiding behind that maternity dress.”

Unfortunately, Givings sees only ugliness, so much so that he is completely incapable of finding a role in society. Herein lies the underlying theme of the movie: There is no real alternative to a seemingly absurd world. While one leaves the film convinced about the futility of suburban married life as an end in itself, a deeper angst comes from the film’s intentional failure to articulate any sort of hopeful alternative. I left the movie asking myself, “If not this, then what?”

It’s a tough pill to swallow but, once taken, this film unearths some of our deepest insecurities as young American hopefuls.

What drives the career choices of my generation? Following years of studying and preparation for academic degree(s), many people face a relatively ambiguous job situation. Because many majors are relatively unclear with regards to what they prepare students for (with the exception of something like nursing, teaching, engineering), students often face a situation where it is unclear what they should do, or what they are prepared for. Take a J.D. for example– while many law students enter traditional law jobs, many others take non-traditional career routes (Dimitri Martin anyone?). Given the uncertainty in the academic job market (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/07/arts/07grad.html?scp=1&sq=doctoral&st=cse), a similar situation confronts many newly minted PhDs.

I suggest that we can understand the drivers behind such choice given ambiguity with a psychological framework that accounts for an individual’s desire for 1) self-authenticity and 2) causal influence on something considered important. By locating these factors in choice, I am not attempting to minimize the importance of more tangible things like salary and/or location; rather, I suggest that these additional two factors help us understand the search for job opportunities (e.g. what is appealing to us… what turns us off), while also helping explain what tips behavior at the margin, as is the case when making a choice between two jobs of equal salary and location.

So what does this psychological model imply for job decisions? By authenticity, I think that many in my generation fear being exactly like everyone else. This sentiment flows out of growing up a culture that emphasizes the importance of matching one’s ‘authentic self.’ Charles Taylor, in his magisterial work “A Secular Age” suggests that to understand life in the Western world today, we must see how a drive towards authenticity undergirds our moral imagination. Thus, with job choice, we panic at the thought of taking a job molded for the masses. The other day, for example, while walking down Hong Kong’s version of ‘Wall Street,’ I witnessed the lunch march of businessmen that felt akin to a Lemming death march. In sharp contrast to the goal of expressed individuality was my observation of a bunch of guys wearing the exact same thing, working towards the exact same goals, with the exact same conception of the good life– even if this is overly simplified and a bit cynical. We fear losing individuality and becoming a ‘suit.’

The second factor shaping our decisions is a desire to have a causal influence on something important. Take for example the choice to be involved in the capitalist enterprise. Though I find it easy to endorse capitalism in the abstract (people need jobs, and as a system it helps provide products and services to people in a highly efficient manner), I also fear being just one cog in the machine of its operation. This reflects itself in a realization that leaving the system does not change the operation of the whole that significantly. Even if my actions cause things of importance, I can also see that this causal role could be played by any number of others equally well. This fear of ‘expendability ” exists not only in business, but a variety of other fields as well: academia, law, medicine, and education, among others. While each of these tasks may very well be important, honestly assessing our contribution comes with the honest fear of our own lack of importance in the larger scheme of things. In a flat world of 6.76 billion people – many of whom are just as, if not more, talented – it does not take a great deal of self-awareness to realize that any specific career I choose to participate in will not fall completely out of orbit in an attempt to find my replacement.

So we search for jobs that feel true to ourselves (whatever that means) while also giving us a sense of influence on an important task. This means by association that not finding such roles leaves many disillusioned with the role of work as a whole  – a sentiment I see in many close friends.

If only there was a cool Fleet Foxes video to insert here that would really drive home the point…

On Wednesday March 11 around 9:00 p.m. Derek Copp, a student at Grand Valley State University, was shot in the upper-right chest by an Ottawa County sheriff’s detective during the execution of a search warrant at his off-campus apartment. He sustained injuries to the lung and liver and was, at last update, in serious condition at Spectrum Butterworth Hospital.

Comments to the stories center on whether marijuana should be legal, how closely administrative leave resembles vacation, whether police are pigs, and how much lawless kids can get away with these days.

Somewhat surprisingly the question of whether the officer was justified in shooting this man is barely asked or addressed. This is understandable in light of the fact that police have released no information about the raid. All we know is this: Copp was unarmed and did not confront the officers.

This black hole that is the police is nothing new. Consider the modus operandi of David Simon during his time on the crime beat at the Baltimore Sun:

Everyone had very good reasons for why nearly every fact about a crime should go unreported.

In response to such flummery, I had in my wallet, next to my Baltimore Sun press pass, a business card for Chief Judge Robert F. Sweeney of the Maryland District Court, with his home phone number on the back. When confronted with a desk sergeant or police spokesman convinced that the public had no right to know who had shot whom in the 1400 block of North Bentalou Street, I would dial the judge.

And then I would stand, secretly delighted, as yet another police officer learned not only the fundamentals of Maryland’s public information law, but the fact that as custodian of public records, he needed to kick out the face sheet of any incident report and open his arrest log to immediate inspection.

Where are the facts of this case? Why has it been nearly a week and still nothing is known about what took place between the time police entered through the rear sliding door to Copp’s apartment and the time he was shipped off to the hospital?

The police, whom we pay to keep our selves, our families, and our communities safe has has shot and nearly killed a private citizen. The onus is upon the government to provide clear, incontrovertible evidence that this intrusion into private life is justified. This shooting may be well-founded, but the police cannot sit idly by while a report is filed in a month or two.

The police keeping any and all information from us is akin to an employee keeping company records from his boss. No boss would accept that from a subordinate, and we should not either. The government derives political power from the consent of the people. To keep records and details of this incident from the public is a breach of the contract by which they are allowed to govern.

In fact, I propose a mandatory helmet-mounted video recording system be worn by officers of the law during the execution of a warrant. This footage could have been on YouTube the next day. With this we (the officer’s employer) could immediately judge whether, in shooting Mr. Copp, the government acted legally. The police could set up a blog to give their interpretation of the evidence, as long as the evidence was freely available.

And why can’t we see a Google map with pushpins at every traffic stop? It could show details of why a car was stopped, demographic information on the driver, and any charges or tickets that resulted. Someday…

Hong Kong Skyline

I am sitting here in my aunt and uncle’s university apartment in Hong Kong, having just returned from a run to the ocean and back.  In short, I am living the (jet-lagged) life.

Though I have only been in China for a few short hours, I must say how impressed I am with the city, and especially their technological development and reliance on public transit.  In Hong Kong for example, 90% of all trips take place using public transit. To a guy based in St. Louis with one rail line through the center of town, this is an astonishing number and I am feeling a bit behind the times. In addition, hearing my uncle (a pretty smart man himself, in that physics sort of way- http://www.physics.princeton.edu/www/jh/research/austin_robert.html) talk about Hong Kong as the city of the future really gave my visit an added level of mystique.

It is, however, interesting to contrast this impression with James Fallows’ recent piece on China in the Atlantic (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200904/chinese-innovation).  Here is a teaser:

The outbound buses and the better air were our local indicators of the economic contraction being felt in practically every corner of the world. And there were signs of it everywhere in China. Container ships sitting, moored and idle, in the harbor of Hong Kong. Revenues down in Macau’s casinos. Seas of empty seats aboard a small Airbus on the Shanghai-Beijing shuttle flight. (The first time I took that trip, in 2006, it was aboard a 747 with every seat full.) A report that a million or more of this year’s university graduates were still looking for jobs. Protests across the country, as real-estate developers and small-factory owners went bankrupt—and disappeared without paying employees months of back wages. Thousands of factories in Dongguan, in Guangdong province just north of Hong Kong, had been the real-life incarnation of the world’s stereotype of low-wage Chinese workers turning out low-value goods—cheap dolls and toys, Halloween masks, the bulk of the world’s Christmas presents and decorations. Within months the area was transformed into China’s rust belt.

You never know which statistics to believe in China, but in January a local official in Dongguan told me that at least 1 million factory workers had recently lost their jobs within five miles of where I was, and probably another million in nearby manufacturing areas of Guangdong province. The electronics supplier Foxconn, whose gigantic compound in Shenzhen turns out components for Apple, Dell, HP, and countless other companies and which had recently employed more than 250,000 workers, sent all its employees on a one-month unpaid furlough late last year. Reports in the Chinese press said Foxconn might lay off 100,000 worldwide.

Haven’t yet finished the article… it’s sitting on my desk here… but China’s response to the global financial crisis will be an interesting thing to watch over the next few years. Hong Kong has provided a model of Westernized growth and financial prowess for the rest of the country to follow, but this might not be the model that best fits a changing global economic environment (i.e. is a heavy reliance on global finance a sustainable way to orient a city… will this model have to adjust, etc.). What civic and market approaches across China best facilitate a dynamic adjustment to a changing environment– and thus prevent a further slide into poverty– will be fascinating to see.

The nonprofit sector is a strange world. I would like to take this moment to reflect on my experience this year working for a nonprofit among 30 other recent graduates doing public interest work in Chicago. For the record, I am not against nonprofits, but I do think good ones are the exception, not the rule.

Nonprofits are typically built in the following way:

1) Someone has a “new idea” that will solve the “most pressing issue” of our time.

2) The founder uses their charm, close networks, and good luck in raising money.

3) They operationalize their idea by developing programs and filling an office.

4) They find ways to show how well their programs are doing without actually addressing whether the world really looks any different because of their programs.

5) The cycle continues: restate the vision, get more funding, run programs, state impact…

The following are a few of my high-level critiques and observations:

1) There is no rational process that incentivizes real impact
Every nonprofit has a “unique approach” that validates their existence ad infinitum (though they all claim to be working to put themselves out of business). This leads them to have entirely different and thus uncomparable metrics of success, which also undermines the prospects of real partnership and collaboration. If everyone can define success differently, then there cannot be a mechanism that consistently rewards more impactful organizations. This means that funders do not maximize dollar for dollar impact, but instead rely on their gut, being wooed by emotional appeals, or personal pet interests and friendships.

2) “At least we’re doing something” usually means rationalized mediocrity
Nonprofits often have unbelievably audacious visions and rarely hold themselves accountable to audacious impact goals. One example is Teach for America (TFA). TFA is often discussed as a best-in-class nonprofit, and I would agree; they definitely attract top-talent (read John Boumgarden). However, I think they too fall into this category of huge vision with dissonant impact. Wendy Kopp’s vision is “One day, all children…” The average impact of a Corps Member is one tenth of one grade level better than the average (see study). Are we really to believe that this is the strategy that will lead to “One day, all children?” But hey, at least they’re doing something.

Did Gandhi start a nonprofit? Did King? The two most impressive civic leaders of the 20th century impacted world structures without the nonprofit apparatus. There are obviously many great nonprofits out there (see Harlem Children’s Zone), but I think we have become too quick to channel our desire to do good into the segmented, weakly accountable, and largely unimpressive nonprofit sector.

Vaclav Havel, the great Czech dissident and politician, offers us an alternative to the typical nonprofit approach. He says:

We are looking for new scientific recipes, new ideologies, and new institutions to eliminate the dreadful consequences of our previous recipes, ideologies, and institutions [...] We cannot discover a law or theory whose application will eliminate the disastrous consequences of the application of earlier laws and theories.

What we need is something different, something larger. Man’s attitude toward the world must be radically changed. We have to abandon the arrogant belief that the world is merely a puzzle to be solved, a machine with instructions for use waiting to be discovered.

We have to release from the sphere of private whim and rejuvenate such forces as a natural, unique, and unrepeatable experience of the world, an elementary sense of justice, the ability to see things as others do, a sense of transcendental responsibility, archetypal wisdom, good taste, courage, compassion, and faith in the importance of particular measures that do not aspire to be universal [...] The way forward is not in the mere construction of universal systemic solutions. Instead, human uniqueness, human action, and the human spirit must be rehabilitated.

How do we implement Havel’s call for a transformed human consciousness based on justice, compassion, and responsibility? I don’t know, maybe I’ll start a nonprofit.

Prezi in Action

PowerPoint has become the second language of business and academia, among other settings. If you don’t have bullet points and a click-as-you-go approach, you might as well go home now and avoid severe audience disillusionment.

But is powerpoint really that great of a way to present?  As Alan Jacobs recently twittered, “iTunes U has led me to believe that horrific PowerPoint shows are required of Stanford professors.” I too would have a hard time counting on the my two hands (and perhaps the hands of several other close friends) the number of times that I have seen a boring, disengaging, and uneventful presentation using the standard PPT methodology. Though I often blame the failure on the presenter, I cannot say that the tool is not merely guilty by association. It does take two to tango, after all.

The flip side of PowerPoint’s boring tendencies is that such presentations are often quite easy to follow given a shared set of expectations between presenter and presentee. As an audience member, you usually know what is coming next– even if that next slide is accompanied by tears of boredom.

This all leaves me wondering however whether there might be better ways to engage an audience in presentation.  And for this, enter PREZI (www.prezi.com)!  Take a look at soem of the examples on the site.  Prezi is a zooming editor where the essential approach is to create a visual collage of information, and then zoom in and rotate around to best tell the story in presentation.  It is visually stunning for the viewer, and relatively intuitive with regards to building a project. In short… I love it!

I would be lying however if I said I wasn’t left with some nagging fears.  Specifically, does the aesthetic appeal of Prezi come at the expense of communication efficiency given its deviation from the second language of PowerPoint?  Are audience expectations so strongly oriented towards PowerPoint that they end up having a harder time ‘getting’ the jist of a Prezi presentation? Are the differences between expectation and reality refreshing or distracting? Will the use of Prezi leave people more impressed with Prezi as a tool that the story you are telling?

No answers yet on my front, but based on first impressions, I think it would be more than possible to use Prezi effectively and overcome some of the potential problems of a linguistic curveball thrown at with the audience. Now it’s time to put those goals into action. Dissertation proposal Prezi style perhaps?

H/T Scatterplot (http://scatter.wordpress.com/2009/03/06/what-is-the-unemployment-rate/)

Over in the comments of Richard Florida’s blog, George asks an interesting question in response to my summary of Richard’s argument in The Atlantic.

Own or Rent?

George writes:

How do you place the idea of “more fluid in living” along side the theory that buying a permanent place (a house) leads to building a stronger community because the people are more invested in that more permanent location, thus improving schools, small business, etc.?

This is an interesting question… here is my response (with a few edits):

The general argument behind Richard’s original piece is that diversity in a city facilitates diverse social interaction, and consequently results in more creative output by individuals in that community/ city. In addition, there will be greater diversity with less homeownership, as renting allows people to more fluidly move between locations, city to city, as needed. A city where people do not move may be a cause of further decreased diversity over time as people become more similar to those they interact with, or so goes the argument of those in social networks and induced homophily literature- (Centola Axelrod, etc.) Imagine a city where 0% of people move. We would expect these people to converge in preferences, tastes, careers, etc. over time, thus leaving the city more homogenous as a whole.

And yet, for certain types of entrepreneurship, such as community development initiatives, the motivation comes from commitment to a place. Take St. Louis as an example– some of the more interesting development projects of late have come from people who are ‘committed’ to the city as life long residents. This seems to be the underlying tension as local entrepreneurship often flows both out of good ideas from diverse interaction (allowing people to build across diverse perspectives) and a commitment to the value of a pursuit in that specific place. Thus, entrepreneurship comes both out having a good idea, and a motivation from seeing it as having value (either financially or personally).  Does being a renter make one less likely to see local investment/ community development projects as good ideas, or valuable use of one’s time? Does it make them more likely to leave a town of less ‘value’… perhaps the cities most in need of the ‘creative class’ pursuits? Will increased ‘flow’ of human capital only serve to make the good towns better and the bad cities worse in a survival of the fittest sort of dynamic? It seems in the example of Detroit that this would be the case, as homeownership has been one major thing that has prevented a more fluid population drain from the city. Hence Dr. Florida’s example of Detroit still being one of the largest cities in the U.S. despite a long period of economic decline. If there was less homeownership in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, would Detroit be at a better place– more vibrant, more capable or more renewed– or would it just be more barren, under-populated and economically under developed? Is this even the appropriate level of analysis? Moving from ‘a city’ as an entity, what about those people who could have left had they been renters… would they be at a better place, more prone to creative pursuits?

These are some honest questions for which I do not have much in the way of an answer.  What do you think?

Serenbe, Georgia

Over breakfast this morning, my eye caught an intriguing article in the New York Times, “Heads Up – Outside Atlanta, a Utopia Rises.” The article deals with an issue close to my heart, that of New Urbanism. Written by Kevin Sack, the piece traces the development of Serenbe, Georgia, a new development thirty miles outside the ever-consuming sprawling entity known as Atlanta, Georgia.

Serenbe, Georgia, initially started as a weekend retreat and place of solitude for acclaimed culinary couple Steve and Marie Nygren. In 1995, the Nygren’s purchased a 60-acre farm as a weekend retreat from the chaos of Atlanta. Soon their weekend retreat transformed into a vision for a sustainable community, founded on the following ten New Urbanism principles: walkability, connectivity, mixed use and diversity, mixed housing, quality architecture and urban design, traditional neighborhood structure, increased transportation, green design, sustainability and quality of life. The article briefly addresses the values of New Urbanism, choosing instead to focus more on the unique culinary heritage of Serenbe Community and the resulting impact on the community today.

New Urbanism, according to their website, offers the following definition:

Giving people many choices for living an urban lifestyle in sustainable, convenient and enjoyable places, while providing the solutions to peak oil, global warming, and climate change.

Notable communities founded on New Urban principles include Seaside, Florida; Celebration, Florida; and Kentlands, Maryland, among others.

Seaside, Florida

For me, one of most interesting principles of New Urbanism is its commitment to mixed used and diversity. New Urban communities seek to blend demographic and social heterogeneity into their communities, and yet, when wealth is not equally distributed across demographic lines, diversity is difficult to achieve when the introductory prices of houses are $300,000 – $500,000, as is the case in Serenbe, Georgia.

So how should the tension between diversity and housing quality be addressed? Should New Urbanist communities continue to espouse the importance of mixed use and diversity as a principle, or sacrifice these components in order to create the idyllic community that results from high realty prices? In addition, why is diversity important if it continues to remain at the center of New Urbanism. While New Urban communities and designers propagate the importance of diverse communities, they offer limited reasons as to why diverse communities need to exist. Is ‘diversity’ just another buzzword used without justification? If we as a society and community value diverse communities (something I very much believe in), how can we best explain the rationale behind this intent to live in community with diverse others? In the following series, I will attempt to address these questions.