The Tricky Business of Changing the World: The Backyard and WorldChanging.com

Everyone, at some point, wants to change the world into a better place. The methods vary - some methods vary from popular to less than popular, and even the reasons for popularity can be sliced and pinned out on a map of 'democratic progress'. But the bottom line is that a some people want the world to change in positive ways and some people could care less (thus there is not as much rapid change). Good ideas, strangled by Bureaucracy and cultural inertia, lay all about with rigor mortis setting in.

The good news is that good ideas make great fertilizer for other good ideas. Some things happened yesterday that had me staring at the keyboard yesterday, considering a lot of things - until I was tired and had to sleep. I promised myself I would write it down this morning, and here I am - armed with coffee and a lot of thoughts before I go off working on a small project.

The Practical Maintenance of Backyards

Yesterday, I headed up to Port of Spain to talk to a company - actually, a person - about some contract work that they needed done. It ended up being very interesting, and there may even be a long term place for me doing work with this company. Some people look for work, for contracts... but if you're lucky, you fall into something that suits you. Creativity, innovation, challenge and a strong work ethic are things that I look for in people - and if you're lucky, you get a vision that goes with it. The meeting went well for me because these things were expressed, and I have something relatively small to do today as a result of it.

But what I caught wind of is what had me smiling on the way back. There is a vision behind the enterprise that I seem to share, and I'm a tough sell on 'vision'. Many people mix up pragmatism with negativity. Some people believe rigorous thought is something either above or below them. And then, there are people like myself who try to find the value in things pragmatically, and don't leave stones unturned. Then someone flings one at you and it hits you in the head, and you hold your head for a moment and say, "Ouch. Oh!". Eureka.

It does my heart good knowing that there is at least one group now that I have found which is using modern resources, bending them to the will and needs of the business while being socially responsible. While looking at a future where Trinidad and Tobago is more than a place where you drop pipes into the ground and pump out the earth's lubricant. Oddly enough, the person I spoke with at length went to the same secondary school that I did, found me through this site (and is probably reading this), and was in the same class as my elder cousin. And the ideas, the pragmatic approach... seductive. Better than Carnival for me (but then, so are many other things).

The point is that to change the world, one has to change a small part first. And to change a small part, you have to change a smaller part. Before you know it, you could probably track back small changes to how you deal with your back yard. I'll admit a prejudice now - I judge people by their back yards. Not their houses, the back yards. Why? How they treat their back yard, hidden behind their house, demonstrates character which is not affected by others. Without a backyard, you have to look deeper at what the person does when nobody is watching. The little secrets that aren't sought out because they usually don't involve whips and chains. Show me what a person does with something that they have complete control over, and I'll show you who that person really is.

The Backyard philosophy also means that if everyone takes care of their own backyards, the world will be a better place.

So did the whole thing turn out well in Port of Spain? I think so. I feel that way. I see the same future that others see. I think it's a practical way for me to see some positive change and get paid for it. We'll see how that plays out, but - I came away from the whole thing with a very positive vibe, which is a rare thing for me. But even as I considered that, I came across a post at WorldChanging.com which brings up changing the world at a meta-level, and it brings with it it's own challenges.

WorldChanging.com Need Your Help.

I used to be a contributor to WorldChanging.com. I wrote mainly essays; you can read some of them here. There were some differences in opinion on some things, and I went solo amicably. I think highly of the WorldChanging.com team, and having met Emily and Dawn in person, I'm comfortable with them on a personal level - though the one person I regret not having met yet is Jamais.

So now they are trying to raise money - something which I can understand. There are costs that Jamais and Alex have paid over the years in bandwidth, in hosting, and so on. They did it because they wanted people to see each other's backyards - my own simplification based on my backyard philosophy, but I think it fits.

$150,000 is a lot of money, though. I'm at odds because people will say, "When the Wikipedia needs money, you're the first one to point out that we should help them." I do. It's not that I believe in the Wikipedia more, it's that I can see where the money is going and why it is needed. The Wikipedia needs lots of servers, lots of storage space, and needs some people on a salary to keep it running smoothly. With WorldChanging.com - well, I don't know enough of the plans to say, "$150,000 is well spent". Sure, I was part of the team, and sure, I do believe in changing the world.

But it's hard to come up with a reason why $150,000 is needed. I mean... if I had $20,000 U.S., I'd have the evolution of the Alert Retrieval Cache in operation. If I had $10,000 U.S., I could get back to completing the Medical and Health Information Network in testing within a month. The reason I can pull these numbers together is because I did the research, and I can substantiate where that money would go and what value would be derived from it.

If I had a few bucks to spare, would I personally send it to WorldChanging.com? I thought about it. There's not much to go on as tangible, even with a link from Smart Mobs. Just because Smart Mobs posted it doesn't make it a good bet. In fact, for me, a Smart Mobs post is a liability. Let's be serious. When we donate money to anything, it's a bet. It means we're putting money toward solving a problem. It means that, when we do so, we expect something to happen.

If I donate a dollar right now to WorldChanging.com, I don't know what it will be used for - as Olivia said in the comments. That's pragmatic. The response from the team was to visit Worldchanging's Search for Solutions, which - I'm sorry - still doesn't tell me much.

And so I have choices. I can choose between the tangible and the intangible. I can send money over to WorldChanging.com to let them do whatever they think is good with it, or I can keep my money and use it on my own backyard stuff. Things which the WorldChanging.com team wasn't too awfully interested in then, and which I doubt that they are now. The good news for WorldChanging.com is that they are credible, and they do good stuff now - and that they are trying to grow. But I find the magic figure of $150,000 troublesome - obviously some thought went into it, but I don't see it... and Alex, as usual, is out there saying, "just wait...".

Maybe I've seen NGOs acquire funds too many times and lose them in administration or unclear methodologies. Maybe I have grown colder as I have seen more than one NGO fall under it's own weight in trying to get funding. What I do know is that I have a backyard to maintain, and plans of my own for things which I believe in. I have better odds betting on myself than betting on WorldChanging.com, as I see it. I want to believe in WorldChanging.com, but I don't see where the money is going. The technical end isn't that expensive. If someone is getting paid, say so. If these are for travel costs, say so.

Obviously the figure of $150,000 wasn't dreamed up - substantiate it and I'll throw in my support, if only in voice and even if I don't believe in the direction that WorldChanging.com is going with it - I didn't believe the direction a year ago, and have been amicable. People don't have to agree with me to gain my support. They have to be good 'bets'. The gimmick of 'if the public puts in $50,000, we get $50,000 from these other people' is interesting because it's a way to get the public to donate. It's better than saying, "these other 2 groups have given us $50,000 and all we need is $50,000 more'.

I don't like being hard on this, but - someone needs to be. I like the people at the WorldChanging.com team, generally speaking. But I don't believe in tossing money into the wind. More information is needed, team.

Changing The World Ain't So Easy

It starts with the small things. It starts with things like a Creative Commons license, or some benefit to the community other than just pointing and looking. And the small things shape the larger things... and the larger things shape even larger things... so you have to be careful what you seed.

We all want to change the world into something we would prefer living in. Where the rubber meets the road, we have to practice what we preach, and that's the point here. Our backyard should take on the appearance of the world as we see it. Perhaps my backyard needs more money than yet another NGO needs my money.

Hard decisions, these. I'm an advocate of setting landmarks and achieving them. We all need money to change the world. Concentrating that money in certain areas shouldn't be something done on a whim, it should be substantiated.