Obama’s new open government directive marks a turning point geared towards bringing government and citizens closer together. The new Obama administration mandate pushes U.S. government agencies to be more transparent by providing information in “open formats” online. Data has always been available to the public by request under the Freedom of Information Act. However, few people know and request the data because its usually an arduous processes, difficult to request and retrieve, and not particularly user friendly for building web applications.
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Sequoia Capital’s new homepage. They funded Google. Proof enough they know how to invest.
“My own view is that we have to approach extreme poverty a little like the way in which a doctor might approach a patient. By that I mean do a diagnosis and understand what is it that is really ailing the particular country, the particular region. Sometimes its terrible governance and the question is how to improve the governance and the hope for the kind of change that is needed. In other places it’s the terrible burden of disease that may be addressable by good public health measures. In other places it is to show how to grow more food. In other places its how to get business going and microfinance has proven to be an incredibly powerful tool.
Once the basics are in place, the people are eating and can survive, then microfinance can play a huge role in helping a poor community find ways through the market to get new opportunities, to earn new income, to start saving, making investments and start the process of climbing the ladder of economic development in your children, in your business or your farm and continuing up the process of improving skills, specialisation, new business ventures and so on. We’ve learnt that microfinance can be a wonderful tool for that.”
Jeffrey Sachs - Director, The Earth Institute, Columbia University
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about sustainable communities. Not sustainable in the sense that they have a low carbon footprint (although this is an important aspect to creating an economically sustainable community), but in the sense that people want to live there.
Among other things, a sustainable community is facilitated by an infrastructure that encourages interaction and cooperation among its occupants. It leverages human nature to ensure positive outcomes. For example, more outdoor common areas are incorporated into sustainable communities. This results in more interaction between occupants, fulfilling an innate human desire which in turn lowers crime rates and encourages the collective maintenance of common areas. Everyone wants to live in a welcoming, clean neighborhood.
Let’s take low-income housing developments as an example. Instead of forcing underprivileged families into sprawling projects outside of high-rent urban areas, what if cities invested in environments where families actually wanted to live? How would that change the ethos of communities challenged by crime and cyclical poverty? It would be economically beneficial to the city on many levels.
I want to share this PBS program with you because I think it defines sustainable communities quite well. Its 30 minutes long, but i encourage you to set aside the time.
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We just finished the logo for Clean Economies and posted the new contest to crowdsource the design for the rest of the site.
I’ll be posting more about the experience later. If you’re interested in sustainability, you should follow Clean Economies on Tumblr and Twitter.
Stay tuned for the new site.
This is the new logo for Clean Economies. We crowdsourced the design on 99Designs. Over 3 days, we received 275 logos from 34 designers for just $295.
Understanding crowdsourcing is a bit counterintuitive. But, this is proof that the business model works. I’ll post the complete site design when we’re done crowdsourcing it. Stay tuned…
“Social Production” is the next era after “Social Networking.”