Chiclete Com Banana

By Steve Song, on May 14th, 2011 Print This Post Email This Post

On Wednesday this week I was fortunate enough to spend a couple of hours chatting with Gilberto Gil.  I am still pinching myself.

When I was 17, I was an exchange student for a year in Brazil.  It was there I was introduced to Musica Popular Brasileira (MPB) which translates to Popular Brazilian Music but the translation doesn’t do it justice.  Musica Popular Brasileira is a unique mix of latin american, african, folk and pop sensibilities that mixes catchy melodies with complex rhythms.  Gilberto Gil was not only a pioneer of MPB, he was also one of the first Brazilian artists to become  internationally famous as well.

My love of Brazilian music is bound up in the massive cultural impression that Brazil made on me as a teenager.  Suffice to say I’ve been a lover of MPB ever since.  Gilberto Gil, Chico Buarque, Maria Bethania, Caetano Veloso and now a host of others define me in the way that we allow ourselves to be defined by music, connecting with an attitude, an aesthetic, an emotion.

Of course Gilberto Gil isn’t just an amazing musician.  He has also had a successful career in Brazilian politics culminating in his post as Minister of Culture in President Lula’s government.  He wasn’t your average Minister of Culture either.  As a champion of Open Source culture he helped lead Brasil towards more progressive intellectual property approaches including supporting the Creative Commons and promoting Open Source software development.

So, brilliant musician and champion of one of the things I hold close to my heart, I was understandably a bit apprehensive about meeting him.  At this you may be wondering, what ARE you doing meeting with Gilberto Gil?  A very happy stroke of luck.  Together with Swiss production company, DreamPixies, Gilberto Gil is making a documentary called Connecting South that explores his unique perspective on the world, combining music, indigenous knowledge and philosophy with the open culture movement, technology and its implications.  First prize would have been to get Mark Shuttleworth to talk about the origin of Ubuntu but thanks to challenges with his schedule, I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to participate.

Often, meeting one’s heroes can be a disappointing experience.  They are never what we imagine to be and there is a natural tendency to build them up beyond reasonable expectations.  So, I was prepared to be disappointed.  I was also nervous that I was going to make a complete ass of myself.  I shouldn’t have worried.

Gilberto Gil and Vusi Mahlasela rehearsing at the Market Theatre in JohannesburgHe brought something to our conversation that I wasn’t expecting.  Humility.  I still can’t get over the fact that the person I was talking to was an international music superstar, visionary politician, among many other things.  We got two hours to talk about things we both love: open culture, Brazilian music, Ubuntu philosophy, and the enormous potential for transformation that lies before us as we face challenges bigger challenges than the world has ever faced before.

Perhaps that is just a talent, making people feel at home.  Whatever the case, Gilberto Gil’s obvious humanity and humility in the face of his remarkable achievements are a profound inspiration.  An inspiration to do more, to do better, to be better.

And as a bonus I don’t think I said anything egregiously stupid.  Being able to sit on the rehearsal later that day with Vusi Mahlasela only reinforced that sense of inspiration.  Thank you.

May 14th, 2011 | Tags: , , , , , | Category: All Things Open, World View | 2 comments

What I liked about the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship

By Steve Song, on April 6th, 2011 Print This Post Email This Post

Guilty admission. I am a fault finder.  Show me a perfect rose and I will find the petal that is slightly wilted. Or at least that’s how I grew up. I’ve spent much of my adult life learning to behave differently but it still comes out from time to time. What’s wrong with being critical? Science (with a capital S) and the entire canon of western philosophy is based on the notion of critical thought and the importance of understanding the weaknesses of an argument in order to craft a better one. But is criticism the best way to find truth? Let’s imagine knowledge as an physical structure. If I look at the edifice of your knowledge and I detect a weakness in the foundation, is pointing out your flaw the most important thing I can do? What if I chose not to focus on that but to rather emphasise how innovative your second-floor window design is and how that will help me improve the design of my structure. This is building on success as opposed to emphasising flaws. This positive approach can help break down the defensive positions that we find ourselves in when engaging with others, especially others who are at work in similar fields to us.

Of course criticism has a role to play. If I thought a flawed foundation was going to put anyone at risk, I would speak up but it might be easier to make someone aware of the virtues of a stronger foundation than to point out bad a flawed one is. Because like it or not, we own the foundations of our knowledge and we don’t like it when someone tells us we bought a lemon.

Faciliator extraordinaire Sam Kaner has an excellent table in his book the Faciliator’s Guide to Participatory Decision Making which explores these two different value systems:

Either / Or Both / And
Value System Competitive Collaborative
Type of Outcome Expected Win / Lose Win / Win
Attitude toward “Winning” To the victor goes the spoils Your success is my success
Attitude toward “Losing” Someone has to lose If somebody loses everybody loses
Attitude toward minority opinions Get with the program Everyone has a piece of the truth
Why explore differences between competing opinions? To search for bargaining chips, in preparation for horsetrading and compromise. To build a shared framework of understanding, in preparation for mutual creative thinking.
Essential Mental Activity Analyse: break wholes into parts Synthesise: integrate parts into wholes
How long it takes It’s usually faster in the short run It’s usually faster in the long run
Underlying philosophy Survival of the fittest Interdependence of all things

So what does this have to do with the Skoll World Forum? I mention it because for the most part, the Forum embodied this notion of interdependence, of openness, of our collective need to work together to solve the most pressing problems of our time. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that almost everyone at the event, young or old, rich or poor, were friendly and ready to engage whether milling around or in more facilitated environments.

I talked to people standing in queues, I barged into conversations, people spontaneously joined tables. It reminded me of a great XKCD t-shirt I have always wanted to buy and wear to events.  Not that amazing perhaps but also not that common especially if you’re like me, better in small groups than in big events. My last experience of something like this was last year at AfrikaBurn where the spirit of the gift economy is very strong.   So real kudos to the organisers of the Skoll World Forum who have done an amazing job at cultivating a spirit of openness and engagement. I got a lot out of it because the participants were so willing to give.

And was it perfect? Not at all. And here I still bite my tongue not to expose its flaws in order to show you how clever I am. Maybe I’ll get over that completely one day.

April 6th, 2011 | Tags: , , , , , , | Category: innovation, learning, Social Entrepreneurship | Leave a comment

The Evolution of Solar Social Enterprise

By Steve Song, on April 5th, 2011 Print This Post Email This Post

Jeremy Leggett - Chairman of SolarAid

I had a chance to sit down and chat with Jeremy Leggett last week at the Skoll World Forum.  Jeremy is the Chairman of SolarAid, a social enterprise that delivers solar solutions to rural Eastern and Southern Africa.  SolarAid is one of a number of social enterprises that have emerged in the last five or six years that are taking advantage of advances in technology to create innovative solar power solutions for people who live beyond the reach of the power-grid.  Others include SolarSister, d.light, and ToughStuff.

What is interesting about these organisations is that they are all working at the intersection of commerce and philanthropy.  All are trying to create sustainable local businesses with solar technology but the difference lies in how philanthropy plays a role in their work.  SolarAid, d.light, and SolarSister are registered non-profits that seek donations in various forms as seed capital to help local solar enterprises grow.  ToughStuff alone appears to be a for-profit “triple-bottom-line” company that has a social and environmental mission.

Both ToughStuff and d.light are product-oriented organisations producing solar products uniquely designed for developing world challenges.  SolarAid by contrast is more of a solution integrator, bringing products, financing, and supply chain together to enable rural businesses.  Jeremy described their model as aspiring to be the CarPhoneWarehouse of the African rural solar industry.

When I asked him what the key barriers to the scale-up of rural solar solutions in Africa were, he emphasised the difficulty of finding and/or creating channels for distribution and financing.  Like so many apparently technological problems, the big challenges are social, logistical, and organisational.

What struck me most in our conversation was the evolving nature of SolarAid.  They started out as a typical non-profit relying on for-profit SolarCentury which donates 5% of its profits to SolarAid and support from traditional aid programs like USAID but now down-play the non-profit nature of their organisation.  Tellingly, the SolarAid brand (with the philanthropic nature of the organisation embedded in the title) is no longer used in the field.  They rely instead on their micro-franchise brand SunnyMoney which conveys a very different message in the title.

In addition, they are talking to micro-finance institutions to explore local financing solutions for solar entrepreneurs.  When I asked whether they might actually evolve into a for-profit social enterprise in the future, Jeremy said they haven’t ruled out that possibility.

A tipping point seems to the provision of entrepreneurial start-up capital as a grant or a loan.  There is a tension here between wanting to lower the barrier for would-be entrepreneurs and increase the spread and uptake of solar technology versus the danger of creating dependencies through grants or worse distorting the market for solar solutions.   The reality though is that all markets are distorted in one way or another.  Perhaps the key is not to focus too much on whether the market is distorted or not but rather on what a healthy ecosystem for the market looks like and how to move in that direction.  Viewed from this perspective, it is easy to see the virtue and appeal of an organisation like SolarSister that combines social enterprise and women’s empowerment to great effect.

April 5th, 2011 | Tags: , , , , , , , | Category: Social Entrepreneurship | 3 comments
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