andrewfrank.ca

Just a quick plug for a new online start-up called SocratED. I came across it while conducting some unrelated research, and it’s pretty darn cool if you’re interested in developing online courses. Easy and free to use (nice clean GUI), SocratED let’s you create online lessons – glorified online powerpoint presentations that can incorporate various online teaching elements such as video, websites, blog posts, you name it. Your lesson is hosted with its own unique URL.

While it’s still early days (the venture appears to be only a couple months old) it’s definitely an interesting development and should spark some creative ideas for online content developers and educators.

Last Wednesday the Globe and Mail reported that Canada’s conservative government is planning to gut the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act by sneaking changes into an unrelated budget implementation bill that would effectively narrow the scope of environmental assessments and give the Environment Minister the power to determine the scope of any assessment.

The changes are a direct attempt to sidestep a recent Supreme Court ruling that found that the Federal government failed to take into consideration the full impacts of a proposed mine that would have dammed creeks in British Columbia’s Sacred Headwaters for the purpose of creating an artificial lake to store mine waste in. Yes, you read that correctly, store mine waste in a lake.

The changes are effectively a poison pill that the Conservatives know the opposition parties will swallow to avoid an election.

According to John Bennett of the Sierra Club, the changes represent, “…a big step backward about 20 years…What they’re trying to do is take away the big picture.” By “big picture” Bennett means the ability of the Canadian government to observe the total environmental impacts of a proposed industrial project (e.g. the mine itself, as well as the ecological damage caused by storing mine waste in a nearby lake). The Conservatives prefer a fragmented, myopic approach to environmental assessment – see no evil, hear no evil – one that pushes projects through faster, and in the absence of public hearings and review, more quietly and unopposed. It’s a cynical political bet that Canadians don’t care about or understand what’s at stake (the ability to conduct credible environmental assessments), or that they won’t find out about the changes, at least not in significant enough numbers to constitute a political threat.

Our Fragmenting “Big Picture”

I was discouraged when I read this story. Not only are the changes short-sighted and reckless, but the fact that the government was willing to make them in the first place means that they weren’t worried about a media backlash or sustained reporting of the issue. The good news (before I get to more bad), is that the Conservatives still felt the need to hide the changes from the public in a non-related budget bill – they know Canadians wouldn’t support a transparent effort to make the changes. Apparently Harper isn’t putting much stock in Preston Manning’s poll-based push to green the Conservative party.

Okay, so there’s hope, but I’m still concerned. With traditional media ad revenues and subscriptions tanking, and the quality and depth of reporting suffering (far fewer full-time journalists, let alone environmental reporters), as well as audiences fragmenting, at least in the short-term it’s going to get easier for governments to hide poor governance. Studies show that fragmented audiences are correlated with decreased accountability on the part of politicians. This trend can carry over into accountability on environmental issues, and right now, I don’t think the environmental movement fully understands what this change means for traditional media advocacy efforts.

But What About Social Media?

Don’t they count for something? They do, but primarily (at least in their current use) as very efficient news distribution and warning systems (a good thing, but not a substitute for original reporting). As a recent Pew Research Center report finds, the news ecosystem is still dependent on traditional media to find and break stories. The report is based on a recent study of Baltimore, but it’s not difficult to imagine the results being similar in other North American cities.

Highlights from the study include (with some edits for brevity):

- Among six major news threads studied in depth—which included stories about budgets, crime, a plan involving transit buses, and the sale of a local theater—fully 83% of stories were essentially repetitive, conveying no new information. Of the 17% that did contain new information, nearly all came from traditional media either in their legacy platforms or in new digital ones.

- Over a one week period, general interest newspapers produced half of the stories—48%—and another print medium, specialty newspapers focused on business and law, produced another 13%.

- As the press scales back on original reporting and dissemination, reproducing other people’s work becomes a bigger part of the news media system. Government, at least in this study, initiates most of the news. In the detailed examination of six major storylines, 63% of the stories were initiated by government officials, led first of all by the police. Another 14% came from the press. Interest group figures made up most of the rest.

Based on this study and the decline of traditional media, in my run-on sentence nightmare as an environmental communicator, I worry that we are rapidly moving towards a news ecosystem that functions largely as an echo chamber, bereft of original reporting, with niche audiences roaming in small groups, never fully aware of larger overarching environmental issues, with what little overarching news input does make its way into the system largely being created by government and special interest groups. You could say that’s already where we are, it’s already where we’ve been, and to be clear I’m not saying the “old ways” are better. I’m excited about the opportunities the changing media landscape affords, but I’m worried about corralling enough eyeballs and their associated hearts and minds to actually hold governments accountable and to ensure that they make responsible environmental decisions.

What follows is just a small taste (and I’ll offer more in future postings) of what I think needs to start happening if we’re going to get those eyeballs.

Be The Media

That’s what I think various advocacy groups, especially environmental organizations, need to do. We need to be the media. Environmental groups have always been early adopters of new media technology, and have often used it to great effect. Environmentalists are also great producers of original content in the form of reports and studies – research that captures and clarifies environmental issues and debates, ideally translating them into public findings and conversations that traditional media can report on – but we need to do more.

Groups need to make a bigger effort to grow their respective audiences and talking heads and videos of beautiful but remote and distant wilderness won’t cut it. We need to produce compelling content that’s not just about big “W” wilderness. Some of the most popular videos environmental groups produce employ consumer frames, e.g. how to make cleaning products and cosmetics at home, environmental values can be communicated as part of an attractive lifestyle.

Tap your talent and let others “save the world” – Environmental groups are often so busy “saving the world” that they ignore perfectly good offers of pro bono work, including content production from very talented people. Environmentalism naturally attracts complimentary professions and interested individuals like filmmakers, musicians, artists and more…often the need to tell an institutionalized environmental message closes the door to meaningful collaboration. It shouldn’t. It’s time to relinquish control, blow up the bottleneck, and evolve or die. If someone wants to help tell your story, LET THEM.

Hire journalists (and stand-up comedians) - It shouldn’t be hard to find very talented and very unemployed journalists these days. Environmental groups need better story tellers, people who can interface with scientists and campaigners to write compelling stories that are sticky enough to be picked up and distributed by social and traditional media. These stories need to be written in language other than traditional “ecospeak” less talking heads and moral imperatives. The content needs to get better (entertaining) and journalists can help do that. Also, enough with the shitty video quality and cheesy green screen effects…technology is cheap, shut up and make good looking video.

Build a news network – Traditional media advocacy needs to be turned on its head. Compelling content, especially FREE compelling content is in demand these days…the internet is insatiable. We’ll always need to pitch stories, but people also want our stories…we are content creators and we need to become content providers, forming partnerships with a network of websites, bloggers and a mix of traditional outlets is ideal. The David Suzuki Foundation does a good job of this with efforts like its Science Matters column.

That’s chapter one of what was supposed to be a quick blog post. More soon.

From time to time, I use this blog to evangelize about new products or services I think are cool. I don’t get paid to do this, I just want to share the love and make the world a better place (etc. etc.). If it makes your life easier, mission accomplished.

Today, I’m going to say a few words about the “contacts” section of Gmail and the new Google Forms service and how when used together, these two features have the potential to TAKE OVER THE WORLD. That being said, I have a feeling that what I’m about to illustrate is not actually revolutionary and may in fact be painfully obvious and old school. To be honest, my enjoyment of the features may just be that I’ve never had a contact database that I actually used.

Here’s what I’m talking about:

In my line of work (environmental communication) I do a lot of media relations, pitching stories to journalists on various social and environmental issues. To do this, I have historically used various online media contact databases, spreadsheets, email chains, names and numbers scribbled on napkins etc. Essentially I’ve pulled together pitch lists from a number of disparate sources. NO MORE.

Today, I have close to 7000 media contacts in my Gmail account, searchable by name, position, location, and also divided into regional lists, cities, subject areas, you name it. When I make a new contact with a journalist, I update my database. Gmail contacts, with its ability to import spreadsheets and to then apply powerful search to those contacts, as well as the ability to divide them into convenient, instantly emailable groups, has made my life a whole lot easier.

Coupled with Google forms, the whole Gmail / Google docs suite of products is incredibly powerful for both collecting and organizing information. For someone who HATES spreadsheets, these services have changed my whole attitude about what’s possible when it comes to collecting information.

Here’s an example:

A while back, I realized there was a need for a comprehensive list of Canadian environmental bloggers – folks who write on the types of stories I pitch. To create this list (largely as a value add to my clients) I hired two students to comb various online blog databases for people writing about the environment. To record the information, I created a simple Google form (Google automatically hosts the form online with its own URL you can refer people to), and included basic questions (name, email, url, subject area etc.).

The beautiful thing about Google forms is that it automatically creates a back-end spreadsheet to store all of the information entered into your form’s fields (great for surveys). Once the students were done searching and entering the information, I had over 400 environmental blogger contacts in a nicely organized spreadsheet…what’s more, I simply imported the spreadsheet into Gmail contacts and PRESTO! I now have an easily emailable list of environmental bloggers that I can pitch stories to.

Google Forms & Gmail Contacts  – check ‘em out.

A paper I wrote a while back with recommendations for improving forums for citizen deliberation on environmental issues.

It’s posted to Scribd, which is a handy social-publishing site for sharing written material. Enjoy!

Constituents of Reconciliation Frank CMNS800(2)

I was privileged to be part of the media relations team that helped tell this story on Tuesday. Bottom line: This is where tar sands expansion, at least with respect to a pipeline route through British Columbia, hits a wall.

Following Tuesday’s press conference, Premier Campbell, at a session of the provincial legislature, left himself an opening to cancel the project: “If concerns could be answered, said Campbell, ‘it will proceed. If there is not an answer, it will not proceed.’” – nebulous language that should make investors in the pipeline, and tar sands expansion in general, nervous.

That same afternoon, Enbridge, which may have well been aware of Tuesday’s pending announcement, made a pivot of sorts, declaring that the U.S. Midwest was now the new growth market for Canadian tar sands (forget about Asian demand). Steve Wuori, Executive VP at Enbridge, used meaningful hand gestures and reassuring language to make his point, “(The Midwest) has probably the safest refineries in terms of the threat of offshore refined product imports,” he said. “I think you’ll see that that is really the epicenter of where most of the Canadian heavy (oil) growth needs to be.”

Personally, I think that keeping the tar sands land-locked (confined to North America) and slowing down and cleaning-up their development, ideally using them to transition to a renewable energy economy (and certainly one subject to some form of carbon pricing) is the most pragmatic and realistic solution to current social and environmental impacts. I also think that Albertans need to give their heads a shake and adopt a royalty system that accounts for the true value (and damage) that these projects are creating.

All in all, a good news day.

Welcome red-tailed hawk fans! Ever since I published a post about drawing a picture of my grandad with his red-tailed hawk, I’ve been getting steady traffic from folks searching for the words “drawing of a red tailed hawk.” What’s more, once you folks find your way to my site, you spend an average of twelve minutes checking it out (my site average is like two and half minutes)! Clearly we have something in common.

That beautiful bird

In the South Okanagan on a clear sunny day, there’s a good chance you’ll come across one of these majestic birds, circling high in the ponderosa pine/ blue bunch grass ecosystem, that glint of a red tail shining in the sun, a call carrying through the wind. There is something so peaceful about the way they soar, and something so visually appealing about their colour and patterning, dusted with tans, reds, whites and blacks (I’m big on desert colors, coming from Canada’s only pocket desert). A spiritual experience to be sure. My family often associates the birds with those who have passed on, a reminder that the spirits of our loved ones once soared along the valley hills (whether by foot or wing) and still do as they live on through us.

Anyhow, welcome, I post pretty often on various environmental issues including environmental communication, environmental storytelling, as well as political and social issues, poetry about nature with a soft spot for stand-up comedy…it’s definitely a grab bag of content, but it’s beginning to turn into something cohesive.

I hope you enjoy it!

When it comes to decimating fish stocks, Canada is an expert, and apparently we’re now sharing that expertise internationally. Embarrassingly, Canada was one of the countries opposed to an export ban on Atlantic bluefin tuna, this past weekend at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in Doha – despite the fact that bluefin are expected to disappear in 2-5 years. Apparently it makes more sense to fish a declining stock to extinction than to potentially save the species and the long term fishing economies that depend on it.

Monaco, a country that has a long history of consuming bluefin, has argued that extreme measures are necessary to save the bluefin because, “…stocks have fallen by 75 percent and current managing agencies have done nothing to rebuild the stocks.”

Instead of taking action and building consensus to protect the environment, Canada’s narrow and selfish style of thinking is contributing in countless ways to the tragedy of the commons.

Bob Hunter believed that images like these were “mind bombs,” that is, dramatic, camera-ready images of opposition that challenged the status quo, reaching and perhaps changing the public consciousness by visualizing new or alternative ways of thinking/being. Famous “mind bombs” could include Thích Quảng Đức burning himself to death, as well as images from Greenpeace’s first campaigns against whaling – the image of a human putting his or her body between a harpoon and a whale – a larger recognition of the importance of ecological balance.

The title of this post is inspired by a book I highly recommend by Bob Hunter, titled “The Storming of the Mind.” Here’s Rex Weyler’s description:

Hunter’s book, The Storming of the Mind (1971, McClelland & Stewart) became a defacto ‘manifesto’, merging peace, ecology, ‘post-industrialism’, and media strategy into a vision of cultural transformation. “The critical problems which now threaten our existence can only be understood in terms of gestalts, wholes, flows, or synergistic effects,” he wrote. “The new holistic consciousness is basically an ecological consciousness.”

And where Hunter’s more colorful treatment of what was essentially an ecology of mind might leave some wanting for intellectual rigour (his language and approach where on occasion stereotypically “new agey.”) Gregory Bateson with his training in biology, anthropology, linguistics and cybernetics, delivers.

Continuing with my series of posts on Bateson’s “Steps to an Ecology of Mind,” here’s a quick redux of the simple and powerful insights found in the essay, “Conscious Purpose versus Nature.”

Bateson’s thesis is that at any given moment, by biological truth, our consciousness (the thoughts we are aware of) represents just a small fraction of our total mind. Moreover, the content of that limited screen of awareness, more often than not, is determined by purposive thinking (thinking that plans sequentially for attainments e.g. food, sex etc.). The result is that we not only have incredible blind spots in our thinking, but that we also purposively interpret the sensory input we receive. The consequences of this type of thinking are often errors in interpreting cause and effect (we blame ourselves, we blame someone else, but rarely are we wise enough to see the totality of the system at play), affecting everything from the perpetuation of age-old conflicts (e.g. Israel/Palestine) to unsustainable development. When a given environment is viewed purposively, one man’s boreal forest becomes another man’s overburden (something standing between a gas tank and a massive hydrocarbon deposit).

I have to admit that after reading this essay the prospects of “fixing” some of the dilemmas we find ourselves facing don’t look good (Bateson’s thesis finally describes a notion I’ve felt for a while now). That being said, once we’re aware of the challenge and our own limitations, there are at least some potential remedies, namely those that “jump” us out of purposive thinking that are worth pursuing (if not just for shits and giggles).

Stressing improvement at the individual level, Bateson names humility as a quality we may have some capacity to bring about in ourselves and to stress or emphasize in others. He (and others like him writing in a similar vein) also identify creative experiences in which our conscious minds play only a small part, including the creativity of art, or the perception of art and poetry, dreams, painting, writing, music, dance etc. He also includes what he calls, “the best of religion,” and given his proclivity for using religious analogies, and quotes from various schools of philisophical thought, including Zen, I take that as an endorsement of the more creative and less prescriptive texts within various religious traditions.

Looking at this as an environmental communicator concerned about the ecological crisis, I see (purposively) at least two important avenues for change:

1) As he suggests (and some will find it “New Agey” but that’s just a Western purposive backlash) opportunities to think less purposively are important, the ability to not “think,” or to at least exercise and become consciously aware of other aspects of our total mind (the parts we don’t access much during daily purposive thinking) can only lead to greater insights and wiser actions when we are thinking purposively. Adding humility to that mix will keep us pliable and open to new ideas, interpretations and solutions, while also being more compassionate and empathetic with one another.

Readers will know I recently had a small brush with the creative experience recommended by Bateson when I decided to try my hand at drawing – it really did feel like I was using parts of my brain that hadn’t been consciously exercised in a long time, and there was also an element that wasn’t purposive, a piece of the exercise that represented a more total account of my mind (or at least other parts of my own accumulated “wisdom” – which isn’t much).

2) The continual development and sharing of purposive ideas that fall outside the status quo or that are inspired by those underused parts of our accumulated knowledge (or wisdom). These could include new technologies, new sustainable lifestyle practices, innovations etc. A diversity of ideas available to the purposive thinker will result in a diversity of actions and hopefully more balance in our conscious actions.

Ultimately, the system will balance itself out whether we like it or not, what that looks like from a humanitarian or ecological POV is a different story.

The challenge that excites and inspires me everyday is to live a bit closer to the wisdom that we all share, and which could result in a more sustainable, humane and socially just society.

Watch Now: http://www.archive.org/details/DeafTelevision

For my undergrad practicum, I co-wrote, directed and edited a Deaf television pilot titled, “Pah!” with members of Toronto’s Deaf community. It was produced for Deaf and hearing audiences, and includes audio as well as a musical interlude by members of The Wooden Sky.  The audio was intended to be “felt” by audiences through tactile transducers at a viewing installation.

The production won a bunch of student awards, including the 2004 Broadcast Educators Association of Canada award for best video drama/comedy, and was reviewed by the National Film Board.

Through the magic of the internet, the production has been uploaded to the internet open source library, archive.org and can now be shared and viewed by anyone, anywhere! You can download it (highest quality) or stream it right from the page itself.

This version of the show doesn’t have subtitles (I still need to learn how to transfer those from the DVD…not an easy thing I’m guessing), but for hearing audiences, you can still enjoy this rare and visually rich introduction to Deaf culture – albeit in a dramatic/comedic storyline.

Enjoy and feel free to forward far and wide!

Okay, I always found this cartoon a bit harsh…what if you want to help others before throwing on your mask? What if you hold your breath? Of course the basic idea here is that you need to have your shit together before helping others, and it’s mostly true. Gregory Bateson thinks so.

In my last post I talked about Gregory Bateson and his collection of essays, “Steps to an Ecology of Mind.” In one of his essays titled, “The Roots of the Ecological Crisis,” he makes a concise summation of the causes of the pickle we’re in:

“…all of the many current threats to man’s survival are traceable to three root causes:

a) technological progress
b) population increase
c) certain errors in the thinking and attitudes of Western culture. Our ‘values’ are wrong.”

That’s his summation, and in the remainder of the essay, as well as in others, he suggests some solutions which I attempt to summarize here, again organized along the three root causes:

a) While technological progress is inevitable, we should steer it in appropriate directions (think renewable energy, potentially cleaner uses of non-renewable energy sources, sustainable aquaculture, permaculture, new contraceptives etc.)

b) “Stop at two.” This one is pretty basic. If you’re going to have a family, two (or fewer) children is considered the magic sustainable number (balancing earth’s birth and death rates). Reproducing is the largest environmental impact you’ll make in your lifetime. Also, having two kids will allow you to cash in on all those family vacation specials.

c) Certain errors in the thinking and attitudes of Western culture…this is the trickier one, because of course it deals with how we think – how we make sense of the world right now. Bateson actually names some of the ideas he thinks are most dangerous and false (I reproduce them here verbatim, including outdated gender references):

a) It’s us against the environment.
b) It’s us against other men.
c) It’s the individual (or the individual company, or the individual nation) that matters.
d) We can have unilateral control over the environment and must strive for that control.
e) We live within an infinitely expanding “frontier.”
f) Economic determinism is common sense.
g) Technology will do it for us.

The creature that wins against its environment destroys itself.

Bateson obviously felt these ideas needed to change, and ultimately he says our consciousness will change to reflect the new limits and re-balancing that will take place within the eco-mental environment – basically Bateson’s idea that the entire system that is the universe in its totality is a “mind” of its own…of which we are smaller cogs (or neurons if you like). How many people and species we lose during that transition is another story and up to us. During these changes he hoped the world would be a “wise” one…one where violence or fear of violence was kept to a minimum.

Tending our own plots of consciousness, being honest and clear with ourselves and our ideas is an important part of making the change wisely. Bateson felt that it was incumbent upon each of us to achieve clarity in ourselves and to then look for every sign of clarity in others and to implement and reinforce “whatever is sane in them.” He considered the concept of “power” to be a myth (although often made into a self-fulfilling prophecy by our own acquiescence to the idea), and in various ways encouraged citizens to understand that those in “power” are entirely dependent on everyone else. The exercise of not only our rights as citizens, but also our capacity as creative parts of society, pieces that interact with one another and that can create new forms of social reality, he saw as being vitally important. We shouldn’t wait for others to encroach on our rights, but rather we should exercise them. Practically, from an ecological stand-point, I think this includes creating new value around natural places that matter to us, whether that be building a trail in the wilderness or organizing social events around ecological areas or values. It’s difficult to encroach on something that is vibrant and valued by others in society.

In creating that aforementioned wisdom, he saw value in what he called “sensitivity groups” – groups that increase our “sensitivity” as a society to any given issue. This could include everything from humanizing elements within corporations (say corporate social responsibility and human resource departments) to environmental and other issue groups, working to channel and amplify social concerns and values and to pressure and affect change from governments and corporations with respect to social and environmental impacts and policy making.

As for other age-old conflicts, say the conflict in Palestine, he saw the need to change the rules of the game…he drew direct lines of causation from the Treaty of Versailles that “concluded” World War I, right through to the hatred between Israelies and the Arab world that still defines that part (and parts further away) of the world today. He felt the most important moments in history were those moments when attitudes were changed, when the “thermostat” or bias of the system was set differently. With this criteria, treaties and key moments in writing the “rules” of the game are paramount, whereas events like the dropping of the Atomic bomb, while enormous and awful are still part of business as usual. Being mindful of opportunities to engender new attitudes is critical to prevent future generations from being born into the “insanity” put in motion by previous generations.

While I’ve read Bateson’s ideas a millions times before as expressed by other authors (before and after him), I found his particular treatment of these issues refreshing, and I hope I’m distilling them in a useful manner for others here.