Update: Project Polaroid in Ghana

Back in September I posted on Project Polaroid, an effort started by UNC student Carly Brantmeyer to provide children in developing countries with the first pictures of themselves they’ve ever owned. I wanted to post some of the recent Project Polaroid photos from Ghana.

Project Polaroid in Ghana

Earlier this month in Accra, Carly interviewed a family of steet beggers via a translator who had emigrated from Niger to better understand their lives and challenges. Afterward, she shared Project Polaroid with their children. Here’s an excerpt from her post, “Exploring Niger.” I think you’ll agree: for a 20 year old–it’s quite a piece of investigative journalism.

I wanted to know why they came to Ghana, what they experienced in Niger and in Ghana, how they lived, how much they make per day as beggars, their struggles and their joys, the hopes for their children, how they use their money, if they want to return to Niger, and so much more.

 

Before migrating to Ghana, the Niger people lived in the “bush” in Niger, in extremely hot conditions, as the country is located among the Sahara Desert. Niger is one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world, with over 80% of its territory covered from the Sahara desert. In the interview, they said that it sometimes would not rain in Niger for months, even years at a time. Thus, they lived very simple, constricted lives.

 

In the bush, they lived in shacks constructed from logs, leaves, and other scraps. They wore only pieces of leather as clothing, and survived hunting their own animals and by tapping water from trees. They described the bush to be a place of struggle, where it was difficult to make ends meet. As I tried to dig deeper into the hardships they have experienced, the man became short, unwilling to disclose too much detail as he reflecting on their struggles in Niger would flood back sad memories.

 
I interviewed four Niger adults, one of the men speaking for the others the majority of the time. They each came for various reasons, but all mainly because of the government unrest in Niger and because as West Africa is now approaching the dry season, living conditions are growing more unbearable in Niger. As water becomes more scarce in Niger, there are less animals to hunt, thus less food to intake. Subsequently, they migrated in hopes of being able to provide food for their family each day.

 

I asked about their hopes and their desires, about the dreams they have for their children. The man answered simply, by saying (in Hausa), “We are human, too, we have the same hopes and desires for our children that all humans have–I hope that my children are able to one day receive a good education and that they will be able to eventually provide for themselves.”

 

He continued by saying, “I want my oldest son to have a sewing machine, so that he can sell goods to provide a larger income. He currently has no means of making money, besides begging, and he is growing too old to be a [child] street beggar.” I would love to get this child a sewing machine. If I have learned nothing else, I have learned the power of investing in a child, by means of education in school or education in trades. Education, whether formally or in a particular trade enables a child to be self-sufficient, giving him or her the knowledge needed to be successful off of the streets.

 

These people are some of the friendliest, most receptive, loving people that I have ever met. If nothing else, this investigation taught me to take a closer look into someone’s life before judging. I think that lesson is so important, especially with the groups of people that our world and society often deems as the “untouchables”. Like it says in Matthew, Jesus taught us to love the poor, the distressed, and the poverty-stricken.

Here are some of the Project Polaroid pictures of the Nigerien children… 

Project Polaroid: Giving A Child Their First Picture

How do you get the attention of a large global company (Polaroid) and convince them to reverse a key strategic decision? Hopefully, like this…

The Birth of Project Polaroid

Nine months ago, in early January, I was hanging out in Charlotte with a friend of mine named Carly. Carly is just 20 and a junior at UNC-Chapel Hill. She is an entrepreneur and a social entrepreneur who runs a photography business, Carly Brantmeyer Photography. We were brainstorming. She wanted to do more than be a student and photographer. She wanted to use her talents and abilities to give back.

Carly had just returned from a Christmas family trip to Costa Rica. There, she took lots of beautiful digital photos. The children were eager to see the picture she just took of them on the back LCD display. She wanted to be able to give the children a copy of their photo, but couldn’t. There was no easy way.

She thought, “If I had a Polaroid camera with me I could give them a copy of the picture right now.”

She returned and while brainstorming at her house in January she came up with Project Polaroid. She would bring hundreds of Polaroid instant film with her to developing countries and give children a picture of themselves–something most of them would never seen before, yet alone owned.

Project Polaroid in Colombia

Carly had the opportunity to visit Colombia over the summer to try out Project Polaroid for the first time. She borrowed my Polaroid camera that was given to me as a gift in 2007 and bought some film. Here are some of the inspiring pictures she took. Take a look especially of the one of the mother, holding a picture of her beautiful young daughter for likely the first time:

Project Polaroid in Uganda

In July, I went to Uganda for a week. Carly had returned from Colombia so I got my camera back the night before. Here are some of the pictures I took.

I was able to take about 60 pictures there while in Uganda while in 4 different locations. Each time I noticed an interesting phenomenon. In one of the locations, I found myself in a small village near the Mirembe Kawomera Peace Coffee Cooperative. This place was about 30 minutes down a dirt road from Mbale, Uganda. I took my first photo of a child and gave it to her. She was very confused as to what it was. I told her to shake the picture. She then ran away, nervous it seemed.

Exactly, on the dot, 3 minutes later, a group of at least eight kids came running around the corner jumping up and down with excitement. The picture had developed! Each time I began taking photos with just one or two children. They would go away, wondering what I had gave them (most Ugandan children in villages speak little English), then come back with their whole crew just 2-3 minutes later when they realized what had been given to them. This run away, see the photo develop, and bring back more children would happen every time. Sometimes, as Carly has experienced, you get surrounded by as many as 40 or 50 children within minutes.

In the village outside of Mbale I also gave away some of the soccer jerseys and shorts that had been donated by Sports Endeavors of Hillsborough, NC, the owners of Soccer.com and Eurosport, through the U.S. Soccer Foundation Passback Program. The children created such a commotion that the villages lone police office came over hurriedly, thinking the children were stealing from the van.

Project Polaroid in Ghana

This fall semester, Carly is living and studying in Legon, Ghana at the University of Ghana, with a study abroad program from UNC. She has received a number of donations to help expand the program and has brought dozens of packs of film. Here are some of the photos she’s taken so far in Ghana:

Polaroid Will Stop Selling Polaroids in Early 2009

For background information, back in 2001, Polaroid Corporation, the makers of the famous Polaroid Cameras and instant film filed for bankruptcy. It’s assets ended up being purchased by a private investment firm, Petters Group Worldwide, in 2005.

Very unfortunately for Project Polaroid, Polaroid announced back on February 8 that it will be phasing out production of its instant film and that it will be completely off the shelves by early 2009. We were of course a bit saddened by this announcement. Polaroid will no longer sell Polaroids. It’s a travesty of sorts and will certainly make the project difficult to scale. Polaroid has said that it will be willing to license its instant film technology to another firm should another firm be interested. Here’s hoping Polaroid somehow comes across this story and they realize the immense value that Polaroid film has to their brand.

Carly writes on her detailed travel blog.

“The idea is simple. $1=1 Polaroid photo, for 1 kid, that will last a lifetime. So many children around the world have never even owned a single photo of themselves. What could be more precious of a memory than a photo of you/your family?”

How You Can Help

When she left, Carly raised money from her family and community. She was able to take a few dozen packs of film with her. A month into the trip, Carly is now running out of film. If you would like to contribute, the best way would be to mail her a pack of two of Polaroid 600 film. She would very much appreciate any help. She will be at the following address until December:

Carly Brantmeyer
University of Ghana
c/o International Programs Office
International Student Housing II
Room #127
Legon, Accra, Ghana

Update: If you’d prefer you can send them to Charlotte where Carly’s mom Lisa has offered to collect them and mail them in one package to Ghana. The address is: 14803 Davis Trace Drive, Charlotte, NC, 28227.

Overall, I am excited to see Project Polaroid in Ghana and look forward to her getting back in January and brainstorming how to scale the project to many more developing countries. Being in Uganda myself in July and seeing the impact owning a simple picture can have in the life of a child and the parents of that child has made a lasting impact on me. One of the children was 3 and didn’t have pants–just a long shirt. He lived in a thatch hut near a school Roey and I were speaking at with his brother, sister, and mother. He didn’t have pants but he was overjoyed with happiness to have the picture. Hopefully we can convince Polaroid to sponsor the project in the future and keep producing instant film.

A Place of Ideas: Renaissance Weekend Day One

I’m in Aspen, Colorado for an inspiring gathering over Labor Day Weekend. It’s Friday night at 10pm and the dance floor is calling–but I am driven to write first and dance later.

The gathering is called Renaissance Weekend, started by Ambassador Phillip Lader and Linda Lader in 1981. I first heard of the Weekend on my way to the Orlando airport in 2006 while serendipitiously sharing a taxi with former U.S. Congressman Martin Lancaster, the current President of the NC Community College System.

We were on our way back from the National Association of Community College Entrepreneurship (NACCE) conference. He told me how the weekend gatherings, originally in Charleston, SC over New Year’s and now in Aspen, Tuscon, and Monterey, brought together driven and accomplished people to discuss public policy, science, business, religion, and more.

I took a look at the site and saw past participants included Bill and Hillary Clinton, Alan Greenspan, Gerald Ford, Evan Bayh, Howard Dean, Bill Richardson, Janet Napolitano, Lawrence Summers, Ted Turner, Steve Case, Steve Jurvetson, Steven Colbert, and North Carolinians Terry Sanford and John Sall.

I wanted to go, but had no way in.

I heard nothing more of this gathering for two years, until this June when my friend Stever Robbins gave me a call. He nominated me to attend and wonderfully I’m now here.

Today was the first full day of Renaissance. I must say from the first day that it has been a wonderful experience so far. One of the ways the Weekends are different than any other conference is that every attendee is assigned to present briefly (for 2 minutes to everyone and then for about 10 minutes in numerous breakout panels) on either what they know most about or what they are most passionate about. This practice enables attendees to hear from experts in their field ranging from astronauts to cosmologists to entrepreneurs to neurosurgeons. At this Weekend, there are about 300 attendees.

Today I was assigned to present for 2 minutes to the group on “An Immodest Proposal - If I Could: Serious and humorous proposals on policy, work, religion, and marriage.” I then participated on a panel with six others called “Why Not Change the World? Examples and Visions of Social Entrepreneurship & Community Service.”

At noon, I experienced the most intellectually stimulating hour of my life since the panel on global peace at Fortune Brainstorm with Jeff Bezos last month. My friend and venture capitalist Nick Beim from Matrix Partners moderated a panel called “Putin’s Czarist Plan: Is His Russion a Neo-KGB State” that I hope to post about next.

Tomorrow, Saturday morning, I’m presenting for 2 minutes at 9am on “When I’m 65 - A Red Bull Generation Envisions Their Professional, Personal, & Nation’s Future,” taking the afternoon off to go white water rafting for the first time in my life on the Colorado River, then returning for a 6pm discussion, “Must There Always Be a Bottom Billion: Promise & Pitfalls of Reducing Poverty, Supporting Social Entrepreneurs, and Assisting the World’s Less Developed Nations.”

As a short aside I’ll share a fun story. This visit is my first time in Aspen and the Aspen Institute since July 2006 for Fortune Brainstorm 2006. I recall then sitting next to John McCain for 10 minutes while watching the Germany-Italy World Cup game in the lobby of Aspen Meadows and then seeing him go to the back of the lounge to speak with Vinod Khosla, ostensibly about alternative energy. Thinking she was a passerby and not knowing then who she was, I asked Cindy McCain to take a picture of Senator McCain and I. She somewhat unwillingly oblidged, but alas, the camara battery was dead and no proof exists.

This is a place of ideas and action–action that leads to making a difference in the world. I’m fortunate to be here and look forward to sharing tomorrow night how the day goes.

From their site:

“With equally distinguished participants, all Renaissance Weekends foster lively exchanges which transcend ideological, political, economic and religious differences. This eclectic, non-partisan group - CEOs, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, Nobel Laureates and Pulitzer Prize-winning authors, artists and scientists, admirals, astronauts and Olympic athletes, judges and journalists, volunteers, diplomats and work-at-home parents, Presidents, Prime Ministers, professors and priests, Republicans, Democrats and lots of Independents, innovators from across America and several nations - has become for many an extended family.”

The dance floor is calling my name…

This Page May Contain Content That is Not Consisent With the Moral Cultural, or Social Values of the UAE

I was in Dubai for a night two weeks ago on my way to Uganda and tried from my Holiday Inn Express in Dubai Internet City home of the Middle East campuses of Sun Microsystems, Cisco, and EMC and to access a blog called Secret Dubai Diary. The site came up in a Google search for Dubai nightlife. When I tried to access the site, I got the lovely “Surf Safely” message above, indicating that this site was “inconsistent with the moral, cultural, or social values of the UAE.” Unfortunately for the government censors in the United Arab Emirates, they didn’t think to block the Google Cache version of the page.

It was very reassuring that UAE recognizes the Internet as a “powerful medium of communication, sharing and serving our daily learning requirements.”

If you wish, you can send an email to “safesurf[at]du.ae” to share your view of Internet censorship.

Thoughts on Uganda

I was in Uganda from June 29-July 6. I was there to visit two non-profit organizations I have been involved with and contributed funds to in the past. It was my first visit to Africa, and definitely will not be my last.

Uganda really is a beautiful country. It has lots of challenges, yet lots of real opportunities. Seeing the extreme poverty that exists there first hand was difficult, yet instructive and very helpful to my understanding of the issue. 89% of Ugandans are currently subsistence farmers, so a great majority of the population lives in rural villages. It was very common to see families of 6 to 8 living in mud and stick one-room shacks with tin or grass roofs with dried dung floors with no running water, toilet, or electricity. The primary school we visited in Mityana in the West had neither windows nor doors and had dirt floors.

Even more difficult is the realization that the difficulty of the living conditions I saw in the rural areas pale in comparison to those in the refugee camps 300 miles to the north in Northern Uganda, centered around Gulu which was the center for the LRA activity, which has significantly calmed since the 90s. I was amazed at the extent to which the children and most adults living in these most difficult conditions maintain such a level of happiness and non-complaint.

It was a bit unnerving to see out front of every bank and gas station an armed security guard with a rifle or shotgun. The traffic is absolutely insane, enhanced by the pavement ending at times. At one point we were passing a car that was passing another truck, and got driven into the shoulder on the other side of the road. That type of experience was common. There are no medians and the highways are all two lanes. There are just three stop lights in Kampala and none elsewhere in the country.

The thousands of Boda Bodas (motorcycles) and Matatus (bus taxis) all over and the pedestrians crossing allover add to the confusion. And not to mention the cows, which are often in the road calmly walking across. Cows and goats tend to be tied up to the side of the roads so they can be used for mowing. Babies run around naked or just wearing shirts, often with no parents in sight, and kids from 3 to 12 wearing bright purple, yellow, green, or blue school uniforms can be seen walking along the side of the roads for miles around 8am and 5pm each day. The kids would often smile and yell out “Muzungu” which means white person when we drove by.

The current Museveni administration has been in power since 1986 and while it seems to be succeeding in providing some basic services, the roads are still very spotty and the electrical grids shut off a few hours per day outside Kampala. Many are calling for him to leave, not because he’s doing a horrible job but because he’s been in power 22 years. They seem to have a good freedom of speech there and an opposition newspaper. People we spoke to were not shy to offer their criticisms. Many people were speaking about Mugabe and his visit to the African Union last week and hoping for his ouster.

The economy is growing. The competition between CelTel, Warid, Uganda Telecom, and MTN for cell phone was intense. All the services sell Airtime Credits rather than monthly subscriptions since most Ugandans do not have a fixed postal address nor a credit card. These four companies advertise literally everywhere, including painting in exchange for compensation thousands and thousands of buildings and homes along the side of all the roads.

Uganda now has GPRS service which allowed me to access my Blackberry email without a problem most of the time even in very rural areas.

They also are deploying 3G service in the major cities. I saw a number of iPhones there among lawyers and professionals. The biggest employer in Uganda is interestingly Coca Cola. There are tremendous opportunities to invest in alternative energy production, especially in regards to biomass. Roey and I had a chance to visit Torero Cement, the largest cement factory in Uganda on Friday as he’s working with them to supply biomass so they can reduce their coal usage. The economy remains a cash economy. I did not find a single store or company that accepted credit cards outside of the airport.

We stayed with an investment banker who runs Daro Capital on Friday night in Kampala. He help a get together of a group of technology execs and professionals on Tuesday night, including a gentleman who is starting an SMS marketing service. I spoke to a number of people to get a sense of the ripeness for email marketing. Rough statistics, but it seems right now about 25pc of Ugandans have email addresses, though most check them via Internet Cafes. Broadband access is only available via Satellite at a cost of USD$1000 per month, so even the professional class and wealthy have only dial up or GPRS access. A T1 is being installed in Uganda in 2009 after which access will go substantially up.

We visited Entebbe and Kampala on Day 1, Mityana on Day 2, Mbale on Day 3 and 4, and Torrero on Day 5, and Mukono on Day 6. We also drove though Jinja and saw the source of the Nile river.

In Mityana, we visited Nourish International Students working at Naama Millennium School, a school funded by Dr. Christopher Kigongo, who now lives in Durham most of the year and was the former Director of Health Education for Uganda. In Mbale, we visited the Foundation for the Development of Needy Communities (FDNC) which has a vocational school and special needs school founded by Samuel Watulatsu, who presented at a Entrepreneur & Social Entrepreneur Meetup at our house in Chapel Hill last October.

On the way there I spent a day layover in Dubai. Dubai is one of the 7 emirates in the United Arab Emirates, so it’s the size of a county and has 6-7 cities in it, that have names like “Internet City, Media City, and Sports City.” The amount of construction and cranes there was immense. The Emirate boasts an indoor skiing area, and man-made islands in the shape of a palm tree and one in the share of the world. They have built the largest building in the world, the Burj Dubai, shown in picture 4. It is still being finished. When it is done next year it will be 166 floors and 2100 feet tall.

Bottom line, the experience has caused me to be even more dedicated toward spending the rest of my life working to increase access to education, healthcare, food, and technology and working toward ending warfare and ensuring sustainability. I look forward to going back again soon.

Under 30 CEO Summit This Weekend in Utah

I’m out in Alta, Utah this weekend near Salt Lake City for the Under 30 CEO Summit being put on by Elliot Bisnow.

We’ve been skiing at Snowbird, heard from Ted Alemayhu from U.S. Doctors for Africa, chatted with Scott Fredrick from Valhalla Partners, and talked a lot about business, entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, and how we can work together to make a difference in the world.

Blake from Tom’s Shoes (which donates 1 pair of shoes to children in developing countries for every pair they sell) debuted his video “No Polo Window” announcing the launch of his leather boots campaign to reduce a foot disease called Podo in Ethiopia. Blake gave us each a pair and I’m quite happy to report they are awesome for breakdancing.

The people that are here include Dan Melinger (Socialight), Cristina Miller (Store Adore),
Sean Belnick (Bizchairs.com), Ben Lerer (Thrillist), Blake Mycoskie (Tom’s Shoes), Cameron Johnson (The Big Give), Ben Kauffman, (Kluster), Josh Abramson (CollegeHumor/BustedTees), Rob Jewell (Gratis Internet), Joel Holland (Footage Firm),
Lin Miao (Tatto Media), Ricky Van Veen (CollegeHumor/BustedTees), Jud Bowman (Motricity), Sam Altman (Loopt), Anthony Adams (CreditCovers), Nathan Stevens (Yodle), and Jeff Fissel (KZO Networks).

Yesterday I skied for the second time and went from extreme beginner to beginner. It’s been a great time so far and I’m looking forward to tonight.

What We Did in Berlin Today

Today in Berlin we met up at 3pm for a walking tour of the city, then ended up at 5pm at the British Council office at Alexanderplatz 1 in East Berlin next to the Fernsehturm television tower that was a major symbol of the GDR in the communist era.

We began at 5:30 with a brilliantly led introduction and ‘The Great Transatlantic Debate.’ We lined up in order of height, grouped into teams of 5, and then separated into planning rooms.

Each of the six teams (we were team 3) had a provided thesis they had to prepare to prove in the upcoming debate. Our team was tasked to prove that ‘the relationship between America and the E.U is strong and getting stronger.’

In our five minutes, Peter Macleod from Canada played the American husband and Angela Brunete from Spain played the European wife. Peter allegorically referred to the EU/US relationship as a marriage in which there were ups and downs but at the end of the day we would always be together. Angela accused Peter of cheating on her with India, and Peter accused Angela of cheating on him with China. But they reconciled as Rabah Ghezali from France shared the cultural and historical ties including the core values of liberal democracies and the Marshall Plan, Dragos Pislaru from Romania shared the strategic and military ties including our recent learnings of what can happen when we don’t truly work together in global conflict, and I shared the economic ties including trade and FDI growth. Team Four proceeded to present the other side of the argument for five minutes, followed by a one minute rebuttal.

Following the debates, we discussed issues including the identity challenge, citizen media, technology and mobility, E.U. enlargement, the relative stasis of the U.S., whether there were 4, 5, or 7 continents in the world (Europeans learn 5), red blue and purple America, the Stockholm consensus, lateral relationships between the U.S. and Eurozone countries, whether the West or East would most define the 21st century, demography, and our shared history.

After the group discussion we held a reception and dinner and followed on with about three hours of networking in the lounge of the British Council’s office. Around 10, Jeff Johnson and I worked to persuade the group to go to ‘Weekend‘ the dance club across the street in the Sharp Aquos building until we found out that GMF was not name of the Sunday night DJ but rather meant that Sunday night was Gay Night–so we headed to Bar Wave at the Novotel instead.

We’re all building some tremendously valuable connections that will help our businesses, non-profits, and public service organizations for many decades to come while broadening our understanding of global challenges and global entrepreneurial opportunites.

I’m off to get back to work on my Sunday night email catchup.

Building Bridges Across the Atlantic

What’s up, what’s up. It’s Sunday at 3:34am but I feel like I’m still on EST. I’m over in Berlin this weekend doing some analysis of the usage of email marketing in German small businesses and attending a pretty cool conference put together by the a group called the British Council.

They’re calling it Transatlantic Network 2020. They’re basically bringing together 100 people from N. America and Europe for each of the next 12 years until 2020 to build relationships among future world leaders from the NATO countries between 23 and 36 years old. 2008 is the first year of the program.

The attendees are off the heazy. The 15 or so U.S./Canandian participants got together tonight at 6 in the hotel bar and then we headed off for dinner at a biergarten and had the traditional bratwurst, sauerkraut, and potatoes.

I met some mad smart people tonight–including social activist Jeff Johnson from BET, Washington Post “How the World Sees America” blogger Amar Bakshi, NASA public affairs specialist Stephanie Schierholz, Bethan Jenkins, a 26 year old Welsh Parliament member, and David Kirby from America’s Future Foundation and KSG at Harvard where’d I’d love to be at in a few years.

It’s wonderful to have a dinner in which we can get wide-ranging perspectives on topics like ice cap melting, microfinance, U.S. space program research, asteroid path projections, bilateral aid inefficiency, fuel cell physics, U.S. rural poverty, nationalism vs. internationalism, global health, genocide, the role of colonialism and Nation-State border creation in global poverty, Barack Obama’s triangulation of internationalism, government efficiency, and social liberalism, and the degenerative devolution of hip hop since Dr. Dre’s Chronic album in 1992.

I can’t wait until the outlook and ideas of the participants from Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, France, Scotland, Portugal, Poland, Spain, Romania, The Netherlands, N. Ireland, England, and Turkey are added tomorrow.

The other cool thing that keeps happening is that I keep running into iContact customers wherever I go. I ran into three our four while speaking at Metro State College in Denver on Thursday and here at the conference David Kirby from America’s Future Foundation uses iContact to send newsletters to the supporters of his non-profit. Word is spreading.

We just got back from a dance club called Tresor in a former communist-era power plant in East Berlin that seemed to just be getting started at 3am when we left. Man it’s harder to dance to techno than hip-hop, especially with the unvarying/long beats of underground Berlin trance.

Tomorrow afternoon we’ll be meeting the European participants and doing a guided walking tour of the city. The main conference runs from Mon-Wed.

If you are interested in being considered for the Dublin Transatlantic 2020 Conference in September check out their site and contact Jacqui Allan.

From their site:

ABOUT THE PROGRAM
Transatlantic Network 2020 (TN2020) seeks to create sustainable, multilateral networks that span the Atlantic by engaging future leaders from North America, the UK, and the rest of Europe to collaboratively address global issues. Building on the history and shared values of the transatlantic relationship, the program aims to foster long-term relationships among future leaders and to incite grassroots action on important global issues. It is designed to run until 2020.

WHY FOCUS ON THE TRANSATLANTIC RELATIONSHIP?

North America and Europe share a common set of interests – in the advancement of fundamental rights and liberties, education, science and technology. Reports indicate that North America and Europe need to strengthen the transatlantic relationship and work together more closely to best tackle global issues like climate change, immigration, and security. TN2020 will foster collaboration between the next generation of North American and European leader

HOW WILL THE PROGRAM WORK?

TN2020 will feature initiatives that give a voice to the next generation of leaders on both sides of the Atlantic, encouraging them to work together to explore common solutions to current and future global issues.

The Superficial Luxurious Degeneration of America?

I’m in Las Vegas for the second time about to get on the plane home. I was here for a web marketing conference called PubCon. I’ve enjoyed my time here. I saw the Blue Man Group and the Wayne Brady Show. I also did the all-American thing and lost $100 at the blackjack tables after a poorly executed Martingale strategy on the $5 tables at the Sahara. I leave, however, feeling the same way I felt last time–a bit dirty, a bit uncomfortable.

I’m disappointed with the excess and waste of the Westernized luxury culture. Wealthy men with fake-as-can-be paid escorts on each arm at the $5000 per hand blackjack tables, faux-venetian canal boats, Rolex, Prada, Burberry, and Louis Vuitton stores galore, Ferrari and Maybach dealerships, swinger clubs with $65 entrance fees, men on the streets passing out cards with naked women available for between $35 and $150.

I wonder to myself–Does this city in many ways represent a key part of what is wrong with our culture or a key part of the freedom that causes it to thrive? I am as pro-competitive market economy as the next guy, but I have to wonder what role do super-luxury goods play in a just society. I’m not talking about the $200 purses or $40,000 cars–the splurges that perhaps are bad within the realm of defensible-reason in moderation for quality or happiness-inducing reasons. I’m talking about the $10,000 purses and $500,000 cars.

I was taught in my economics education that societies should work to maximize utility. But whose utility does it maximize to spend $75,000 on a diamond necklace in which the original diamond miners in the DRC were paid $10 to mine the raw materials for? The purchasers? What benefit could the male purchaser of a diamond necklace of this cost gain other than the ephemeral loyalty of an ever-expecting superficial person? It is not my place to judge or question their morality, but I must wonder.

Are there not so so so many better things to invest money into other than temporarily attractive fake parasitic members of the opposite gender? And trust me, I’m not talking about women in general, just a very specific type of women that happen to be all over Las Vegas and Beverly Hills. And some wealthy women are just as guilty as the wealthy men. If the advertising and celebrity indoctrinated culture of spend-and-trash materialism didn’t create false desires to ‘be better’ and ‘have more’ could we perhaps focus our investments on something that actually matters to our society?

Could we focus our efforts and funds instead on education, healthcare, and nourishment for the 26 million children who die every day on our highly-optimized six-sigma logistically perfected world from preventable disease and starvation? I’m not talking about giving questionable ideology-inspired bilateral or multilateral aid to dictatorial governments that don’t represent their populace. I’m talking about giving directly to proven projects in our community, country, and world run by local entrepreneurs through groups like GlobalGiving, Kiva, UNICEF, UNESCO, Doctors Without Borders, Heffer International, and Save the Children. Could awareness of the dire situation of so many of our fellow sisters and brothers reduce the demand to waste money on super-expensive non-necessary junk?

But then I came back to questioning myself. What right do I have to question the utility-maximizing choices of ultra-rich people? If they want to spend 1% of their income on a $500,000 car, shouldn’t they be able to? Isn’t the freedom to do just that an ingrained part of our American culture? Is it fascist to even suggest that we should create a society in which it would not be legal to buy a $500,000 car?

I have to agree–we should not make it illegal to buy a $500,000 car or a $10,000 purse. That wouldn’t jibe with the values of our liberty-based democratic republic and market economy regardless of how wrong or wasteful it may be. Our country was also built on the value of equality of opportunity, however. And equality of opportunity surely does not exist quite yet in America.

So perhaps instead of regulating the supply side of the equation we should work on reducing the demand side of the equation. If we can create a consciousness of the realities in our world today–and create a shared awareness of what is actually important (family, friends, health, laughter, memories, the ability to create, a sense of shared humanity, an end to genocide and warfare, environmental sustainability, an end to extreme poverty and hunger, and the prevention of preventable diseases), we may be able to create a world in which the super-luxury wastefulness of the Westernized Vegases, Macaus, and Dubais can legally exist, but end up being destinations that focus on entertainment rather than superficial luxurious waste. Is possible to have entertainment without super-luxurious waste? I think so. Is it unrealistic to attempt to reduce the demand side if we agree we should not regulate the supply side? Can a committed society actually build national human consciousness over a period of decades? I am not sure.

I sometimes wonder, is celebrity culture actually more interesting than the natural drama of the future of the world? I see lots of Entertainment Tonight shows but very few United Nations Tonight shows. Maybe the issue is how the news is presented. Perhaps we need to popularize and dramatize the storylines of the world’s future. Perhaps we need a new form of realtainment that combines The National Enquirer with The Economist. ‘Pakistani Inflation Worry’ turns into ‘Smack-Down Out East: Will Musharref Bodyslam His Central Banker?’ The Current Channel on cable has done a good job at this–but it just doesn’t reach enough people.

With all due respect to Nickelback, at the end of the day who really wants to be drugged up rockstars living in hilltop houses and driving fifteen cars with girls coming easy and the drugs coming cheap? I don’t want a brand new house on an episode of Cribs nor a bathroom I can play baseball in with a king size tub big enough for ten plus me. I think, and I may be wrong here, that the large majority of people want to be happy with friends and family around them and the knowledge that they’ve made a difference in our world.

The government, businesses, and the media tells us to ‘be American’ and buy, buy, buy. The goods end up quickly in landfills. Until the full cost of producing products is internalized instead of externalized in the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles we will be incented by misaligned priorities. Hurricane Katrina was a terrible disaster that had an immense human and environmental effect–and yet it increased our GDP due to the cost of rebuilding. That wasn’t economic growth–that was economic recovery. We’re adding revenue to our asset column without first subtracting the associated expenses from the liabilities. We’re off-balance sheet financing our future.

As a final thought, perhaps we shouldn’t focus on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) but rather Net Domestic Product (NDP), the GDP minus the costs to replace the non-renewable environmental resources that are used up in producing the input goods and final goods. If we invested in companies on the NASDAQ and NYSE based on their EAARC (earnings after all real costs) instead of their EBITDA we would be a lot closer to having a market that valued companies appropriately based on their contribution to their customers and society.

I’ll end this essay with a quote from the comedian George Carlin. While I enjoy living in the fast paced globalized technology-driven business world as much as anyone—I agree with his core message…

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider freeways but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness. We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values.

We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We’ve learned how to make a living, but not a life. We’ve added years to life not life to years. We’ve been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We’ve done larger things, but not better things. We’ve cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We’ve conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We’ve learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. Give time to love, give time to speak! And give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind.

PubCon Vegas

I’ve been at WebmasterWorld’s conference PubCon in Las Vegas the past few days. As with Altitude, the content is fairly good but the relationships that can be built here are what’s most valuable. Everybody here just happens to have a need for iContact.

Here’s Virante’s CTO Russ Jones and me with Matt Cutts of Google inside the Wynn on Tuesday night…

Last night we played a version of Werewolves and Villages called SearchSpam created by SEOMoz and moderated by Rand Fishkin. Russ and I made it to the winners table with Matt Cutts. We were all whitehats and had to out the blackhats at the table before they killed us all off.

It’s been a good conference–and I’ve learned that the Martingale strategy in Blackjack will eventually make you lose–so don’t try it.

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