Chicago’s The Plant: Mushrooms, Beer & Fish

Posted on May 18, 2012 by Tom Peterson

I learned from Frances Moore Lappé about a cool agricultural effort in Chicago. A group is turning an old meat packing plant into a vertical farm — plus. The building is being converted by volunteers into a home for raising vegetables, tilapia, mushrooms and for a host of other enterprises: a beer brewery, a kombucha tea brewery, a bakery, a catering operation.

Writer Julie Beck went there for a “Young Aggies” event, noting that it’s “in a creepy part of town that caused my roommate to posit that this would be a good place to lure young people with the promise of an urban agricultural event and then murder them.” Beck suggested that rather than a vertical farm, The Plant might be best described as a “food business incubator.”

Sustainability and integrated farming permeate the building. The various enterprises will feed each other in a way that makes the best use of waste and energy. The byproducts of the brewery will feed the fish, the fish poop can fertilize the vegetables, and so on. Much of what can’t be used in another enterprise will be converted into energy to heat and cool and provide electricity.

You can read more in a recent post in Good, or by visiting The Plant’s website.

Photo: The Plant, Flickr


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Cheese, Dogs, and Pills to End Malaria

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Tom Peterson

God bless you, Bart Knols. To bring attention to an important cause, you’re willing to address a global audience in your boxers.

Why did he do it? To spread the word on some innovative ways to fight malaria. While many parts of the world have pretty much eliminated the danger of malaria, primarily through draining breeding grounds, there are still more than 200 million cases a year. The worst hit are African children — one dies from malaria every minute.

These out-of-the-box solutions may help.

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Anne Frank: How to Begin

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Tom Peterson

 

 

 

In Writing to Change the World, Mary Pipher tells of visiting the Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C., to see a special exhibit on Anne Frank. The exhibit included the cover of and pages from her diary as well as film clips of a neighbor who brought food and a rare clip of Anne waving from a balcony in earlier, better times. At the end of the exhibit, Pipher reports, visitors hear a girl reading from an essay, “Give,” Anne had written after watching beggars on the street below.

She wonders if people who live in cozy houses have any idea of the life of beggars. She offers hope: “How wonderful it is that no one has to wait, but can start right now to gradually change the world.” She suggests action: “Give whatever you have to give, you can always give something, even if it’s a simple act of kindness.” And she ends with: “The world has plenty of room, riches, money and beauty. God has created enough for each and every one of us. Let us begin by dividing it more fairly.”

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10 Leadership Tips from North Korea

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Tom Peterson

North Korea recently celebrated the 100th birthday of Kim Il Sung. I was privileged to see some of the monuments to his greatness when I was there in 1999 for an international nonprofit. We had gone to coordinate a shipment of breeding goats that were hand picked in France and flown in by plane.

We were put up in a “fancy” government retreat center a half hour from Pyongyang. It was a pretty setting, on the side of a mountain and facing a lake. But in this country, you’d complain about the room, for sure.

There was absolutely nothing to do in the evenings, so I asked several different staff if they had a piano I could play and was always told no. But the pause before the “no” made me wonder. Then one guy said, “Follow me.” We walked down this dark hall that went on forever. It struck me: we’re going under the mountain — a bomb shelter! Finally, he opened some double doors, and we were standing in a huge ballroom, with wood floors and a full stage with a baby grand and drums.

What foresight, I thought. In a worst case scenario, the leaders would still have live music. Because North Korean leaders are so different, we usually don’t realize how much they have to teach us. Here are a few principles:

  1. Don’t be distracted by the little people. Some feel that deep, across-the-board talent is an organization’s greatest asset. It’s actually more important to boost your leadership with a strong military or by creating an atmosphere of fear. If the leaders don’t survive, who will lead?
  2. Keep doing the things that worked really well for you in the past. The fifties and sixties were the golden age. Innovation is overrated and can lead to a coup or worse.
  3. Put on frequent extravaganzas. The Dear Leader’s 100th birthday was a great reason for a big-time public display. Excessive celebrations will remind everyone how wonderful your organization is thanks to your leadership.
  4. Don’t worry about playing well with others. Collaboration is overrated. Screw them!
  5. Show is more important than substance. Don’t waste limited resources trying to nourish and develop everyone when you can help a much smaller group at a fraction of the cost. Be sure to showcase that group, because perception is reality.
  6. Occasionally piss off the other players. Nothing like kidnapping the citizens of competitors to remind them not to cross you or to get them to do what you want.
  7. Occasionally do something really insane. Sink a ship, test a weapon, try to sneak into Japan to see Disneyland. This keeps everyone off guard, on edge, reminds them who’s in charge.
  8. Keep a disciplined control of communications. Allowing people to freely associate and express themselves, allowing unfettered access to the internet, and so on, can undermine the authority of your leadership.
  9. Keep your plans and everything else close to the chest. Don’t give away your secrets. Once they know your intentions, you lose all power. Transparency is overrated.
  10. Perpetuate a cult of personality. Invest that little bit extra to assure the supremacy of your leadership. If people want to believe you can control the weather, let them. Those 30-percent-larger-than-normal military hats subtly say, “These people are really important.” Plus they’re awesome!
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Congratulations, Bill!

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Tom Peterson

 

I was excited to read in this morning’s paper that one of my heroes will be awarded the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Bill Foege is not well known like others named: Bob Dylan, Madeleine Albright, John Glenn, Toni Morrison. But he has arguably helped save more lives than any living person.

I got to know him when he served on the board of directors of Seeds, a magazine I edited in the 1980s. At that time, he headed The Carter Presidential Center and had already led in the eradication of smallpox. He had previously directed the CDC and later advised the Gates Foundation on health initiatives.

Back in the 1980s, UNICEF director James Grant approached Foege with a proposition: UNICEF and the World Health Organization may be able to get beyond their turf wars if a third party would chair the Task Force for Child Survival to help the world’s children. Foege agreed. The campaign focused on four approaches to reduce child deaths by half: tracking an infant’s monthly weight on a growth chart so a mother will know if he or she is not growing properly; oral rehydration therapy, a simple mixture of salt, sugar and water that saves the life of a child dehydrating from diarrhea; the promotion of breast feeding; and immunizations against six common diseases.

The campaign engaged every U.N. agency, every government in the world, faith-based communities and almost every sector of society. It immunized 80 percent of the world’s children and saved an estimated 12 million children in the 1980s alone. When they began, 40,000 children under age 5 died every day from mostly preventable diseases. Today that number has fallen to 29,000.

Just as important, the campaign showed what a unified global effort could accomplish.

For someone who spent a lifetime taking on diseases — small pox, river blindness, polio — Foege himself was, ironically, highly contagious. Every once in a while, I meet someone who has also brushed up against his passion and brilliance. As with me, he wildly raised their sense of what’s possible, encouraged them to not settle for lesser goals.

Before switching to a smart phone, for years I carried around a to-do list on paper. At the bottom were two quotes, I’d heard Bill say at meetings. So I’ll pass these on:

“There is a place for cynicism and pessimism. But whenever you need it, contract for it. Don’t get those people on your payroll.”

“Tenacity doesn’t always work, but it’s the only thing that does.”

Congratulations, Bill!

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World’s Coolest Main Street

Posted on April 19, 2012 by Tom Peterson

 

 

How is innovation part of reclaiming an urban core? It may not look like it now, but in not too many years, Little Rock will be home to the world’s coolest Main Street. It’s going to take some creativity.

I took these photos, looking north and south from Capitol, the very heart of downtown, on a weekend day last summer. You can tell by the shadows that it’s mid-day, but it’s empty (one of those two cars is mine). Absolutely nothing going on!

What these pictures don’t show is the energy surrounding the street’s rebirth. You do see some nice old buildings, trees, a wonderful scale that’s screaming to attract offices, stores, galleries, cafes and residences.

Two clusters of energy are focused on this. First, the mayor’s task force to revitalize Main Street focuses on the street north of the interstate that so divides Little Rock. A few developers are beginning to take on some of the empty buildings. We’ve got a new jazz club, and construction will soon start on a $20 million mixed-use project, the Mann Building. Serious “art district” conversations are taking place.

And south of the interstate, SOMA (south Main) seems to have more youthful and creative energy. It’s becoming one of the Little Rock’s most walkable neighborhoods, but still just getting started. Already, it has two bakeries and a little retail (we just got ice cream last week). And the office of Oxford American just moved in with plans for a southern restaurant and an eclectic mix of entertainment and community gathering.

On Saturday morning, May 5, (9-12) we’re holding an Idea Generation session at Oxford American. With a couple of Clinton School students facilitating, we’ll gather whoever’s interested to share ideas on how to make it happen quicker and cooler. (They’ll be using “Liberating Structures” to facilitate — more about that in a future post.)

We’ll be looking at two things: First, what can we do that’s “lighter, quicker, cheaper” for some early, fast gains. Second, what’s the most outrageous idea we can imagine? Austin built an 8-story wind-powered icebox and offered free air conditioning to developers who would build in their empty downtown. It’s now full of tall residential buildings and full of life. What’s some crazy idea of that ilk?

If you’re a Little Rocker, join us. RSVP through tom@thunderheadworks.com

Stay tuned, we’ll share the results.

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Inside Look: Celeb Brainstorm

Posted on April 16, 2012 by Tom Peterson

Rarely do we get to see the inside thinking of creative greats. By lending their names and energy — and connections to their fans — celebrities often help bring attention to important causes. But from time to time, they also come up with solutions themselves. In this video, we get to watch Ted, Mary, Matt, Sean, Jack, Ben, and Kristen come up with some promising ideas on how to improve the world.

Learn more about Kristen Wiig’s interesting approach to global warming.

 

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Food Trucks on Main Street

Posted on April 13, 2012 by Tom Peterson

 

Besides my marketing and strategy work with nonprofits, I volunteer with a few groups. Longest running of these is the effort to revitalize downtown Little Rock. First as a board member of the Downtown Little Rock Partnership; and more narrowly, on the mayor’s task force to revitalize Main Street; and more narrowly still, the “Entertainment Committee,” which narrows even more to co-chairing a Food Truck Festival.

Around the seventies, most downtown businesses fled to the suburban malls and strip malls. So for the last few decades, Main Street has been almost dead. But a steady effort from some passionate folks is moving the street toward becoming the focal point of a vital downtown. And the momentum is gaining.

Our committee’s goal: hold some kind of happening, get people to the street. The last event there was in 1992 when President Bush (the dad!) made a whistle stop at Capitol and Main — I suppose, a symbolic gesture in the heart of Clinton territory.

Early on, we landed on the idea of a food truck festival. It wouldn’t cost much, food trucks are cool, we could get some local bands, find some artists to sell their work. So the small group (including fantastic DLRP staff) scheduled the first one for last October. We lined up 18 trucks, got interest from the media, rounded up a few pioneering sponsors, set up a Facebook page that quickly gained 1,000 likes (we had to reboot the page for this year).

The day came, and the weather was fantastic. Of course, we had a great location — the street is lined with oak trees and nice old buildings. And The Rep, Little Rock’s wonderful theatre that has anchored the street for so many years, held a giant sale of 10 years worth of costumes, just in time for Halloween.

The festival was slammed! More than 5,000 hungry people showed up; some trucks ran out of food by early afternoon. Many people were in lines an hour-and-a-half. The bands played into the evening. And despite the waits, folks generally had a great time, saying they’d be back for the next one.

So, to build on that, today we held our first weekly Food Truck Friday. Again, great weather, and several hundred people showed up to get their lunch from Hot Dog Mike and a couple of trucks. While it’s not much, this weekly lunch happening will add to the steady and growing energy on Main Street.

Sometimes, the best strategy is just make your best guess about what might work and doesn’t cost much — and simply get started.

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sOccket

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Tom Peterson

Because a professor was indifferent to his students’ first project idea, many people around the world will have light at night.

This week at the Clinton School of Public Service we got to hear Jessica Matthews, co-founder and CEO of Uncharted Play, an organization that mixes fun with solving the world’s problems. She and her colleagues developed a soccer ball that is a portable generator — thirty minutes of play will power a LED light for three hours.

Four years ago, in her junior year at Harvard, Matthews had a class assignment to come up with a need, and a solution that includes both art and science. So Matthews and three other women, none with an engineering background, formed a project team. Upon hearing their first idea about mobile health records, “our professor said, Meh,” recalls Matthews. They had to come up with another concept. “So we locked ourselves in a room and started throwing out ideas.”

The need they identified was the quarter of the world’s people who don’t have reliable electricity. Because they wanted to start with something people already enjoy, they thought about soccer: why couldn’t a ball capture kinetic energy, and solve the power need?

Though told by engineers it wouldn’t work, with just high school physics, they built a prototype, and the sOccket ball worked well enough to pass the course and encourage them to develop a better version. Later, when they tested it in South Africa, they found that for kids having a soccer ball that created power was like magic.

Of course, the sOccket itself is just the beginning. Learn more about how it is distributed, its educational value and other plans at Uncharted Play.

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Hairdressers Cut Skin Cancer?

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Tom Peterson

Winston Churchill said, “The maneuver which brings an ally into the field is as serviceable as that which wins a great battle.” Gaining the support of President Roosevelt and the United States, of course, turned the outcome of World War II. Now the British are looking at a new ally for a different battle: the war on skin cancer.

A recent BBC News article notes that while 100,000 new cases of skin cancer occur in the United Kingdom each year, there is no significant screening process. But training hairdressers from the country’s 36,000 salons in simple identification techniques could make a huge difference in saving lives.

“Hairdressers would not be expected to make the diagnosis, but instead to tactfully point out any lumps, bumps or sores they find to their client who can bring it to the attention of their own doctor,” says the article.

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