Do: without TV

Last weekend's Do Lectures were the most amazing weekend of my life; four days spent with some of the brightest, most caring Doers that you could ever hope to meet. Do colleague Leonora Oppenheim is blogging summaries of the talks on Treehugger. Here's a taster:

"Turn off your TV", "Get Rid of your TV", "I haven't owned a TV in years!" This refrain was heard throughout The Do Lectures this year, putting a damper on our nights slobbing out in front of the box. Right out of the starting gate came graphic designer Geoff McFetridge with the statement "Never watch TV it's just not good for you!" "But", came the response, "What about good TV?" And then, almost in unison, everyone said "But what about The Wire?" Nope, it seems that if you are a Doer TV just doesn't cut it, not even The Wire. So folks what shall we do instead?

The Big Do + The Small Do
Each speaker throughout The Do Lectures was asked at the end of their talk for a 'Big Do' and a 'Small Do'. Geoff Mcfetridge's Big Do was really a don't - don't have a TV. His Small Do suggested what we can do instead - draw for half an hour a day. Even if you are not an artist just set a stopwatch for 30 mins and doodle, see how it calms you down and clears your mind.

We'll be posting talks in the coming weeks, and aiming to enable over 1 million people to do a little more in the next 12 months. Email me if you want to get involved as a volunteer, speaker or participant

Join the Do Lectures

The Do Lectures are around 6 weeks away. The speakers are preparing their talks, and ticket holders readying for inspiration. We're offering a crowd-sourcing membership of the Do Lectures this year to raise money for the talks and help reach 1 million people next year. Here's why in words penned by Do founder and co-pilot David Hieatt

Why The Do Lectures matter?

And why becoming a member matters too?

We live in interesting times.

And we live in important times.

Most of the important business models have yet to be written.

Most of the ‘why didn’t I think of that’ answers for climate change have yet to be dreamt of.

Most of the important scientific or technological breakthroughs are just doodles on a notepad.

As well as interesting times, these are exciting times.

Necessity will make a good taskmaster. Crisis will make a good editor. Having finite resources will make us infinitely more creative with how we use them going forward.

Yup, interesting times.

And if consumers will have to change how they consume, and if business will have to change how they do business, then so will Government have to change how they govern.

Our system of having a four-year government for 100-year problems means tough decisions are rarely made. A manifesto designed to win votes isn’t the same as a manifesto designed to do what needs to be done for the safety of future generations.

And how we have treated this planet in the past will have to be different to how we treat it in the future. A tree helps produce oxygen, rain and sucks in carbon dioxide. Yet we only put a value to it once we cut it down. At the very same time as when it stops producing rain, when it stops producing oxygen and stops sucking in carbon dioxide.

Indeed these are interesting times.

We have to fill in a 3-page form to start an account with Fed Ex. Yet a badly run bank has to only fill in a 2-page form to get billions from the Government to shore up their bank.

Interesting times, indeed.

But rather than being a time to be down or despondent, this is the time for great change. And yes, there is much that needs changing. There is much to do.

But reassuringly the human mind is more creative than any computer will ever be. The answers will come from the brightest, stubborn-nest, and oddest of people.

And the thing that brings this oddball bunch together is that they are all stubborn dreamers. Brilliant enough to have the idea. Stubborn enough to make it happen.

Buckminster Fuller described the importance of vision best when he said, “ There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly”. But as well as the vision, you need that grit determination to make your idea live.

That is what The Do Lectures is here to Do. It is a platform for the Doers of the world to tell us their stories. So they can inspire the rest of us to go do something amazing too. In simple farming terms, it is just manure for the field. It is here to help grow ideas.

The Do Lectures is not a business, but it has to pay its way in the world. Appropriately a set of talks with sustainability at its heart needs to be, well, yes, sustainable.

To that end, we sell tickets for the event so the rest of the world can see them the talks for free. Our aim this year is for a million people to see the talks. To me, that is a lot of ‘mind manure’ being spread around the world.

So does the Do Lectures matter? I believe they do. And maybe they matter more in these interesting times than any other time.

I believe that ‘mind manure’ sure needs spreading around.

So my last question today is would you become a member of The Do Lectures?

Memberships costs £50. You will receive 4 newsletters a year. Have the inside track on choosing speakers and be able to make suggestions too. Have first refusal on future tickets. Receive a Do Lectures 2009 T-shirt that has a chance of coming with a golden ticket to this years Do lectures.

But the biggest thing of all is just to feel part of it. To feel like you are doing something to make this happen. To become a doer too.

So if this is crowd funding in its truest form, we need the crowd to put their hands up and say ‘I’m in.’ ‘I think The Do Lectures matter. Here’s my £50.’

A simple email to Claire@thedolectures.co.uk will be enough to start this off

Notes from Kaos Pilot flight control

This lovely paragraph was written by Kaos Pilot adviser Hanne Vibeke-Holst and forwarded to me by Do Collective colleague Em Metcalf. Kaos Pilots were founded and run by Uffe Elbæk and have developed into an outstanding education intiative to develop skills for real change. Uffe is joining us in Cardigan for the Do Lectures to share his story with us, and around a million others over the next year. Here are Hanne's words

You can see them in your mind’s eye; the young, bright-eyed pilots, who take off – the one after the other – in order to carry out their mission. They fly through the night, crossing borders and territories, filled with the courage and will powerthat comes from knowing that what they are doing is right. Undaunted, they plough through the clouds; without fear, they dodge enemy fire; without hesitation, they continue towards their goal like the true heroes of history, who know that the future is what you dream of today. They know that someone must undertake to navigate through chaos, that someone must dare to loose their foothold for a shortwhile, that someone must fly through the clouds to get a bird’s-eyeview of the world, in order not to sink into earth-bound resignation.They know that without daring and ambition, it will never be possible to find new solutions to old problems. Risky flights are needed to turn chaos into order – and order into chaos, when necessary. And I, where am I in all this, as I am not the one sitting with my hand on the control column in the small, exposed cockpit? I sit in the Tower, like a flying instructor who makes sure that the young pilots take off successfully. I give directions; I study the sun and the stars. I incite and I ground. I am there, a voice in the ear, when the aircraft nose dives and an emergency landing is the only possibility left; but I am also there when the wheels hit the runway, and yet another victory can be celebrated. I am there with my cool head and my warm heart. Because I cannot imagine a more meaningful place to be, now that darkness threatens to swallow us up, no matter where on this Earth we live.

pure genius

"

Mark Vernon writes a thoughtful blog that's worth turning to from time to time for inspiration on all things philosophical, and many others beside. I liked this post last week, highlighted to me by fellow blogger Mark Charlton

More evidence that we belong to the hugely successful species, homo rapiens. Tomorrow, World Ocean Day, will be marked by screenings of the film The End of the Line. It's billed as focusing on the collapse of stocks of the luxury bluefin tuna, Nobu dish of choice. That's the genius of so much human exploitation: it can be taken for progress.

Our use of words such as progress, developed, civilised, needs to be pulled close. Progress, I thought, meant moving forwards. You'd think that the developed world would be harming the planet less slowly than the developing world. As for civilised? When the world's biggest arms manufacturers are permanent members of the Security Council, something has gone wrong definition of civilised. Etymonline describe its roots as "first recorded 1772, probably from Fr. civilisation, to be an opposite to barbarity"

Down to the wire

Working with government can be the most frustrating thing in the world, or the most inspiring. Today was the latter; I spent a while in conversation with Simon Bilsborough, the brains behind much of the best climate policy and action that is coming out of the Welsh Assembly Government; it's a high standard that he has to follow as Wales leads the world in areas ranging from CO2 reduction targets to built environment standards. We spent time talking about the first day of Hay on Earth, when the First Minister, Rhodri Morgan, and Minister for Environment & Sustainability, Jane Davidson, will be launching Wales' new Sustainability Plan. Apart from spending a couple of hours facilitating a process to get large organisations working out how to do things differently, and change much, much faster, we're going to building content on a wire timeline over the four days - putting 'smart' actions and real dates onto the line so that the urgency and need for action becomes clear and compelling to all who see and contribute to it. Simon was fully behind the plan, and could immediately see how it could gel action;  he is a doer of the first degree, and inspiring to work with as a result. Hay will be even more fun than I was expecting a day ago.