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Like any organisation, TED, and those of us that attend or organise TEDx events (I am the licensee for TEDxCanberra), as its community, need to be aware of the need for positive change and reinvention. I’m well aware that TED itself is going through a period of introspection about its relevance and the shape it takes into the future; it’s a subject of discussion that TEDx organisers around the world have been asked to contribute to.

As someone whose day job it is to help to define the way an organisation gets out its message and designs and delivers the things it does, I’m more than abundantly aware that no matter what insiders believe (and I do believe that TED really does have the best interests of the globe at heart and really is interested in “ideas worth spreading”) that it doesn’t matter. What matters is perception. Because for most people, even otherwise smart, critical thinkers, perception is reality.  And there’s no use arguing against it.

For example, the matter of the cost of TED is often contentious. Sure, its production values are insanely high and it must cost a terrifying amount to put on, but what almost everyone I’ve spoken to outside the TED community don’t know is that TED runs non-profit. When I point this out to many people they’re often far more circumspect in their criticism of TED after that realisation.

Overall, I think the biggest problem TED faces, to quote my Marx, is that it has become something of an opiate of the masses. It’s all too easy as a reasonably wealthy, middle class person, to attend TED, or a TEDx or to watch videos and to feel aware of problems in the world and become smug and self-satisfied that in your awareness, you’ve helped.

Not by a long stretch.

What really needs to follow is action. To take ideas worth spreading and convert them into actions worth doing.

Every. Single. Time.

I’d like to urge the international community of TEDx organisers to be a part of that; to be a community that doesn’t just showcase great ideas, but that inspires, drives and gets involved in action. To be defined by betterness, in the sense Umair Haque outlines in his book of the same name.

We’ve done it a little at TEDxCanberra, but are focussing on it more strongly this year. We’re going to ask presenters, where possible, to challenge the audience to get involved, or to leave them with a question, or a call to meaningful action.

No more neat bows.

If the doing of important things was what the rest of the world saw from TED rather than the (somewhat incorrect perception of the) wealthy and famous attending an expensive, hard to get in to event where they satisfy their perception of being involved by listening for four days, I think there might be fewer of the negative analyses out there.

As I said, perception is reality. What people see in TED, regardless of what we believe on the inside of that community, is what it is.

It is indicative of two things, I think; the fact that the traditional media have abrogated their responsibility for their actual job, the reporting of actual news, and the fact that the politicians are so governed by spin and manufactured news and absent of actual policy aimed at social betterness that constant leadership speculation can become the news.

A pox on your collective houses!

Media commentator, Stilgherrian, waxes lyrical (and justifiably potty-mouthed) on the same subject in his The 9PM Edict. If only the Press Gallery took notice.

I’m not holding my breath.

Here, Galen Hooks of The LXD, one of my favorite dance crews, speaks of dancing at TED 2010. She’s obviously deeply moved, even a year after the experience. She understands the power of the thing she does and how it can affect people.

Watch. Enjoy.

Fuck the low-hanging fruit. Aim for the top. Forget quick wins; go straight for the long-term. Screw office politics & mow down the ignorant

From my friend, Nathanael.

I could not agree more.

Here’s how it works. Flexible Purpose Corporations can write one or more special missions into their articles of incorporation. They can be as ambitious as fighting climate change or as modest as maintaining a park near the company’s office. The law instructs directors to consider the special aims in their decision-making, even when it could mean lower returns for investors. To make the appeal as broad as possible, the law’s authors avoided setting a minimum standard for what a “special purpose” could be.

The twenty-first century capitalist’s agenda, in a nutshell, is to rethink the “capital”—to build organizations that are less machines, and more living networks of the many different kinds of capital, whether natural, human, social, or creative. And, second, to rethink the “ism”: how, when, and where the many different kinds of capital can be most productively seeded, nurtured, allocated, utilized—and renewed. What we need, then, is a new generation of renegades, laying deeper, stronger institutional cornerstones.

Haque’s argument resonates super-powerfully with me. While I certainly don’t have the chops to have written The New Capitalist Manifesto, it articulates many of the arguments I’ve put to people in the past 10 years; business today is no longer sustainable in the way it was before. It can’t go on cannibalising profits and circulating the same money (and making more and more “pretend” money that only exists in a computer somewhere. Business needs to act to add real social value and not only make money but make social goods as well, as Haque suggests, the paradigm needs a shift thus:

• Loss advantage: From value chains to value cycles
• Responsiveness: From value propositions to value conversations
• Resilience: From strategy to philosophy
• Creativity: From protecting a marketplace to completing a marketplace
• Difference: From goods to betters

I can’t recommend The New Capitalist Manifesto strongly enough, and also highly recommend Umair Haque’s new, short ebook, Betterness, which extends his articulation of some of the themes in this book. If it was mathematically possible to give a book 6/5, I would give it here.

We welcome contributions about the issues covered in articles in Inside Story. Well-argued and clearly written comments are more likely to be published, and we’re now asking all contributors to provide their full name for publication. Because all comments are moderated, they will not appear immediately.

It appear that the folk at Inside Story, and their editor, Peter Browne, are taking a fairly robust stance on this matter; at least judging by the email trail Craig has published.

As the recent nymwars over Google’s insistence on real names for Google+ illustrates, insistence on real names is neither useful nor valid, and in fact excludes many for a number of reasons including a desire for anonymity and name structures that don’t meet a perceived level of validity. Either way, the nymwars experience is an object lesson in the harm and potentially chilling effect a real names policy imposes.

Like Craig, I’ve chosen to email the editors of Inside Story, pointing out the harm I think they’re doing. My email is below:

From: Stephen Collins

To: Peter Browne

Peter

I have been alerted to the fact that Inside Story requires real names in order to comment on articles on the site. I wish to express my very strong view that this policy is both misguided and potentially harmful.

Such a policy places at risk the openness of discourse on the site, in terms of it having a chilling effect on commentary by those who for whatever reason (risk of bullying, employment risk, a wish to otherwise protect their identity, etc.) wish to remain anonymous.

There are many options available to a site like Inside Story to ensure that commentary on the site is both validated and non-spam in nature. Demanding real names ought not be one of them.

The recent and well-documented furore over Google insisting on real names for Google+ registrations — what has become known as the “nymwars” — offers a powerful object lesson on the harmfulness of such policies, the public support for anonymous (but validatable) identity and the demonstrable need for such in online (and physical world) public discourse.

You have made an ill-judged decision in imposing this policy and I urge you to reverse this decision and allow anonymous comments on Inside Story.

Stephen Collins
–
Stephen Collins
trib@acidlabs.org | +61 410 680722 | @trib

acidlabs | Conversation. Collaboration. Community. | www.acidlabs.org

I cannot argue any more eloquently than researcher, danah boyd, who posits that real names policies are an abuse of power.

UPDATE (23–1-2012, 10:00AM): In a pleasing development, Peter Brown of Inside Story has responded to me noting that pseudonymous comments are an acceptable alternative to a real name when used on Inside Story. I’m not yet certain how this plays out in practice and in their comment moderation practices, but it’s a good acknowledgement of a viable alternative.

“What if, instead, we practiced consciously, deliberately, and became good at the things we really want to be good at? What if you first, above all skills, learned to be more aware of what you are practicing? What if constant conscious action is the skill you became good at? If you could learn to take conscious action, you could learn to practice other things you want to be good at, rather than the ones you don’t.”

- Life as a Conscious Practice :zenhabits