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• At the end of the day...

  j_ling 9:14 pm on January 16, 2010 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: change, inspiration (7)

  

  (from: http://tinyurl.com/yey35nv)

  
  

   

• 10 ideas that are changing our world right now!

  j_ling 4:24 pm on November 7, 2009 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Africa (3), change, debate (3), impact (3), journalism (3), stats (5)

  As my time in the last month or so has been pre-dominantly con­sumed by prep­ping and par­tic­i­pat­ing in a busi­ness case com­pe­ti­tion in Texas, I found my read­ing list to be nar­rowed down to database/news/papers/reports on cur­rent mar­ket trends, the eco­nom­ics of emerg­ing mar­kets and [insert topic of case research here].

  What I did come across in my mean­der­ings across the inter­webs was this [recent-ish] issue of the TIME’s mag­a­zine, which high­lights “10 ideas that are chang­ing our world right now”. The com­piled list of ranged from issues in reli­gion to infra­struc­ture to the econ­omy, one of which I found to be of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to me.

  Africa: Open for Business

  

  The arti­cle high­lights that Africa has long been per­ceived as a con­ti­nent of where progress is irrel­e­vant regard­less of the efforts being done — for­eign aid, eco­nomic stim­u­lus, etc. Africa is essen­tially viewed as hope­less, and a $40 billion/yr for­eign indus­try has been built around that per­cep­tion to the point where peo­ple are start­ing to ques­tion whether aid is even doing any good at all. Thus, when the world’s econ­omy went into Def­con 5 last year, the $40 bil­lion indus­try started being called into ques­tion with debates and books being writ­ten that for­eign aid is bad, fuels cor­rup­tion, under­mines gov­ern­ments, unsus­tain­able and is  counter pro­duc­tive. (ie. Dead Aid — Dambisa Moyo, for­mer Gold­man Sachs and World Bank economist)

  Drilling down to the actual rel­e­vancy of aid and devel­op­ment, the arti­cle points out the obvi­ous fact that has been star­ing us in the face all this time. That through­out the noise of the aid indus­try, real­ity is that aid is no longer Africa’s main source of for­eign income. Yes, that’s right. Africa is now a busi­ness destination.

  So, I did some eco­nomic dig­ging and cam across some very inter­est­ing information.

  1) For­eign Direct Invest­ment (FDI)  inflows into Africa have improved tremen­dously in the last 6 years. From $14.6 bil­lion in 2002 to $53 bil­lion in 2007 (UNCTAD World Invest­ment Report, 2008). This trans­lates into a 263% growth rate over a 6 year period!

  Note: FDI refers to invest­ment in domes­tic struc­tures, equip­ment and orga­ni­za­tion by for­eign pri­vate sec­tors or gov­ern­ments. Does not include for­eign port­fo­lio invest­ment in a domes­tic econ­omy. FDI con­tributes to the eco­nomic per­for­mance of a host coun­try by: first,representing addi­tional resources which can be used to build addi­tional phys­i­cal cap­i­tal and cre­ate more employ­ment. Sec­ondly, increases a country’s out­put and pro­duc­tiv­ity by encour­ag­ing effi­cient use of exist­ing resources by increas­ing the size of the cap­i­tal stock. Over­all, FDI also improves local skills and tech­nol­ogy know-hows which trans­late into growth and development.

  The IMF puts Africa’s aver­age annual growth for 2004 to ’08 at more than 6% — bet­ter than any devel­oped econ­omy — and pre­dicts the con­ti­nent will buck the global reces­sion­ary trend to grow nearly 3.3% this year — Time Magazine

  2) The rea­son for an increase in FDI is an improve­ment in both eco­nomic and polit­i­cal con­di­tions on the continent.

  Eco­nomic Con­di­tions: The UNCTAD Report stated that not only has Africa’s econ­omy grown over 5%/yr since 2001, but cross bor­der M&A’s in the extrac­tion and related ser­vice indus­tries of Africa has tripled. Com­bined with the fact that the high prices and demand for resources like oil has attracted invest­ments from both devel­oped and devel­op­ing coun­tries. An inter­est­ing fact to note is that because Africa’s econ­omy is rel­a­tively dis­placed from the global econ­omy, it is actu­ally to their advan­tage dur­ing the cur­rent eco­nomic cri­sis, that they have been rel­a­tively unaffected.

  Per­haps the most attrac­tive ele­ment of the improv­ing African eco­nomic con­di­tion is the very fact that China has devel­oped a healthy inter­est in the continent.

  While the old super­pow­ers still ago­nize over Africa’s poverty, the new one is cap­ti­vated by its riches. Trade between Africa and China has grown an aver­age of 30% in the past decade, top­ping $106 bil­lion last year. — Time Magazine

  The Chi­nese has changed the psy­cho­log­i­cal approach on Africa. They enter the con­ti­nent to trade, not to pro­vide aid. In her book, Dead Aid, Dambisa Moyo pointed out that those who still needs con­vinc­ing about Africa should ask them­selves if they are con­vinced about China, “because if you back China, you’re back­ing Africa.”

  Polit­i­cal Con­di­tions: The turn of the new mil­len­nium has brought about a wave of peace, with a rapid decline in civil wars and con­flicts. Democ­racy is up, trade is improv­ing, infla­tion is declin­ing and growth is hap­pen­ing. Yes Africa still has its Zim­bab­wes, Dar­furs and Con­gos, but the truth of the mat­ter is, the con­ti­nent is trend­ing towards a more peace­ful and demo­c­ra­tic region as a pow­er­ful con­sen­sus is emerg­ing across Africa for good gov­er­nance and as nearly all African coun­tries have been involved in some type of polit­i­cal and insti­tu­tional change.

  This is reflected by the fact that bet­ter gov­er­nance means bet­ter stan­dards of liv­ing, infra­struc­ture, edu­ca­tion and although most Africans are not mid­dle class, most are also not liv­ing in extreme poverty.

  The per­cent­age of Africans liv­ing on $1.25 a day or less dropped from 59% to 51% from 1996 to 2005 and has decreased fur­ther since — World Bank

  Essen­tially, when it comes down to it, Africa really is open for busi­ness. Per­haps the issue lies in whether the world is ready to receive it? Remem­ber, the fig­ures really do speak for them­selves. Trade, not aid.

  For those who are curi­ous, the full list is:

  1. Jobs are the new Assets

  2. Recy­cling the Suburbs

  3. The New Calvinism

  4. Rein­stat­ing the Interstate

  5. Amor­tal­ity

  6. Africa, Busi­ness Destination

  7. Rent-A-County

  8. BioBanks

  9. Sur­vival Stores

  10. Eco­log­i­cal Intelligence

  The TIMES’s arti­cle can be found here

   

• Of Talks: Terry, Ted and Tedx

  j_ling 8:18 pm on September 17, 2009 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: change, impact (3), inspiration (7), motivation (4), presentation (2), TED (2), ubc (2), Vancouver (2)

  Before June 2006, very few have heard of Ted, much less Ted­Con­fer­ences, TedTalks and Ted­Fel­lows. That all changed when TED decided to release their Talks online, with this mission:

  

  “We believe pas­sion­ately in the power of ideas to change atti­tudes, lives and ulti­mately, the world. So we’re build­ing here a clear­ing house that offers free knowl­edge and inspi­ra­tion from the world’s most inspired thinkers, and also a com­mu­nity of curi­ous souls to engage with ideas and each other.” http://www.ted.com

  Start­ing out in 1984 as a con­fer­ence bring­ing experts from the world of Tech­nol­ogy, Enter­tain­ment and Design, it has since evolved into some­thing more. Ideas and con­cepts that res­onate. Shared. Spo­ken about. In the spirit of spread­ing ideas, TEDx has been cre­ated, enabling com­mu­ni­ties around the world to con­struct a TED-like con­fer­ence with sup­port from TED.

  Here at UBC, we have our very own TEDx Terry Project. The project launched last year and was received with tremen­dous suc­cess. This Octo­ber 3rd would be the 2nd Terry round of talks and reg­is­tra­tion is now open!

  “Imag­ine UBC’s most fas­ci­nat­ing and engag­ing stu­dents com­ing together for a day, giv­ing ‘the talk of their lives,’ shar­ing their ideas and dis­cussing their visions for UBC and the world. Now imag­ine being there, with stu­dents, alumni, fac­ulty, admin­is­tra­tion, and mem­bers of the gen­eral pub­lic watch­ing this unfold and par­tak­ing in the var­i­ous dis­cus­sions, and think of all the pos­si­bil­i­ties that this idea-share holds.” — http://www.terry.ubc.ca
  

  
  photo credit: abdal­lahh

  Reg­is­tra­tion is free and comes with a free lunch. It is cur­rently restricted to UBC stu­dents, staff and fac­ulty and some alumni. To reserve a ticket, click here, and to have a glimpse of what is in store for us, check out what hap­pened last year!

  I had the plea­sure of attend­ing Ter­ryTalks last year and it was a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence. UBC has some of the bright­est stu­dent minds in North Amer­ica and the ideas that were shared last year blew me away. I am def­i­nitely not miss­ing this year’s! Get your tick­ets now and see you there!

   

• Deconstructing idea-viral videos: The Girl Effect and Yes, We Can

  j_ling 10:41 pm on July 28, 2009 | 1 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: change, inspiration (7), music, presentation (2)

  One of my biggest fas­ci­na­tions lately is the usage of social media to spread causes. Of the many medi­ums used, I would like to share with you 2 of my favorite idea-viral social media videos, decon­struct­ing them as I go along. The videos are: The Girl Effect and Obama’s Yes We Can.

  Here’s how we break it down:

  1) We start with an idea. The girl effect had this fact sheet and Obama had a pres­i­den­tial cam­paign to sell.

  2) The ques­tion: How do we get peo­ple to care? How can we cre­ate a movement?

  3) Now, think about it. What would you do if you were in their sit­u­a­tion? What is the most effec­tive way of reach­ing as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble given our resources and mes­sage? Many of us who are try­ing to fund-raise for a cause, run­ning for an elec­tion — think for a minute what you have done in this same sit­u­a­tion.   Most of us would use Word-Of-Mouth sup­port, news­pa­pers, per­sonal web­sites, face­book with per­sonal net­works, and often; that is more than enough.

  But what if instead, the peo­ple you are try­ing to reach out to, instead of being your uni­ver­sity, is mag­ni­fied thou­sands times fold to a nation?   And to add in another clincher, what if you only had 4 min­utes to sell your idea?

  4) Now, watch both videos. That’s what they came up with.

  The Girl Effect

  Yes, we can

  5) Both videos are have their dis­sim­i­lar­i­ties, but decon­struct­ing the videos fur­ther, here’s what I was most drawn by both concepts:

  1) Usage of typog­ra­phy and colours. Less is more. Both videos only have 3 colours — black, white, red (Yes, we can) or orange (the girl effect). Bril­liant. Often colours can over­whelm the sense and take away from the main mes­sage. This way, the chang­ing of colours of the typog­ra­phy, draw us in towards the impor­tance of the words and the weight that they carry.

  Yes,  we can: notice that words only appear after the main punch of the speech is deliv­ered, and the words merely give us a rein­forc­ing ‘graph­i­cal’ rep­re­sen­ta­tion of what was said earlier.

  The girl effect: how many videos do you know that are made up of purely only words, that you are hooked onto every let­ter. Note the effects of ‘sink­ing’, stretch­ing of typog­ra­phy on words like ‘prof­its’, and how the typog­ra­phy seem to take a life and mean­ing of the words they present.

  2) Music — Music is an ele­ment that tran­scends race, cul­ture, and the merg­ing of a bril­liant score with the magic of the inter­net is a win­ning combination.

  Yes, we can: Notice that the main mes­sage of Obama that his cam­paign team wants to be deliv­ered — Yes we can, we want change, is spo­ken and chanted through­out the music video, solid­i­fy­ing the phrase in your mind even after you have fin­ished watch­ing the video. This video is one of the most beau­ti­ful har­mo­niza­tions of speech and song, bal­anc­ing the seri­ous­ness of the mes­sage and catchy tune that occurs through­out the video. To add to the polit­i­cal feel of the video, they threw in chants in the back­ground — just like one would expe­ri­ence in a polit­i­cal rally.

  On top of all of that, they used singers that have dif­fer­ent pitch classes, com­bin­ing them in polyphony, a tex­ture con­sist­ing of two or more inde­pen­dent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice or music with one dom­i­nant melodic voice cre­at­ing the order of each unique voice fit­ting into the pic­ture of ’ yes, we can’. It cre­ates the effect of being inclu­sive and united — great delivery.

  The girl effect: When words fail us, music speaks, and the mak­ers of The Girl Effect, used purely instru­men­tal music to evoke the emo­tions that they want. First, choice of music — clas­si­cal, with­out words, draw­ing the view­ers of the video into the words. The music is there to cre­ate and enhance the emo­tion. It starts with a piano intro­duc­tion with (I’m guess­ing — do cor­rect me if i am wrong) a xylo­phone car­ry­ing the melody of the piece. Bril­liant choice of instru­men­ta­tion as its bright, sharp tones are often asso­ci­ated with the ‘aha!!’ moments — like a bell going off in our heads.

  Usage of pauses cre­ates the dra­matic effect — See 0:32s into the video the cli­max of  where the reg­is­ter of the piece, moves into the higher octaves and stop­ping abruptly before the pre­sen­ta­tion of the main idea (0:32s) — A Girl with a sin­gle chord. The music after this, takes on a beau­ti­ful homophony, a tex­ture in which two or more parts move together in har­mony, the rela­tion­ship between them cre­at­ing chords, lay­er­ing in idea after idea, part after part, build­ing upon the foun­da­tion of the main idea — A Girl. Another pause occurs at 1:40s when another idea is presented.

  The music then moves to a Devel­op­ment stage– pre­sent­ing what hap­pens with a girl is helped, before mod­u­lat­ing back to the orig­i­nal theme that was pre­sented at the start. Notice that the move­ment of the piece is pre­sented in A-B-A theme, the “A” parts address­ing what you can do and what you should do, and “B” part, what a girl can do. Great under­ly­ing dis­tinc­tion of what you can do and what a girl can do using music, isn’t it?

  

  3) Pre­sen­ta­tion of idea. An idea which advo­cates change needs to engage an audi­ence on these three lev­els: Visu­al­iza­tion, cred­i­bil­ity and impact ( micro –> macro). An audi­ence needs to be able to relate to your idea, to actu­ally think that your idea is worth­while, and to be able to see its impact.

  Yes, we can:

  Cred­i­bil­ity: obvi­ously the use of big movie stars and singers were a great draw, espe­cially in terms of draw­ing the type of audience.

  Visual: The image of Obama pre­sent­ing his speech through­out the video inter­change­able with images of the singers.

  Impact — the core mes­sage of this video is, besides “yes we can” is to VOTE. Sim­ple action on a micro level, but huge on an macro level: all you have to do is fill out a bal­lot and watch change unfold. Evi­dently, it worked!

  The Girl Effect: Now this a lit­tle trick­ier with lim­ited funds and resources. What do you do then? You sell your video line by line. Curios­ity always kills the cat, and the video is built on a ques­tion– answer basis.

  Cred­i­bil­ity: They build a con­crete idea with­out over­whelm­ing you and by appeal­ing log­i­cally step by step to things that have been done.

  Visual: they ask you to visu­al­ize in a a form of a sim­ple story line, what a girl can do in her village.

  Impact: they then mul­ti­ply the idea of help­ing a sin­gle girl by 600 mil­lion girls in devel­op­ing nations and com­bined with a bril­liant use of dots mul­ti­ply­ing across your screen — voila, you’re not only hit with the visual impact, but the micro to macro shift in idea.

  2 min­utes later you’re left sit­ting in your chair think­ing — man, that was awe­some and that totally can happen.

  ***

  

  So, the next time you want to spread a cause you believe in, think about the mes­sage you are send­ing with your colours, typog­ra­phy, music and pre­sen­ta­tion: visual, cred­i­bil­ity and impact (micro to macro).
  Maybe, you’ll be able to cre­ate the aware­ness and change that you are look­ing for.