January 2008
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14 March 2008
Rowland’s Links
The clip above is from infosthetics – a website devoted to data visualisation. This a big trend at the moment, out there in geek-land. As is interactive computer stuff – check out Jeff Han’s TED talk for a glimpse of the future.
Hans Rosling’s amazing TED talk has some incredible number-pictures. His company is Gapminder, but I actually find Many Eyes a more useful site. Here, you can upload your own datasets – is there an RSA Network in that?
In the UK, the Social and Spatial Inequalities Research Unit does some interesting academic work on this. Swivel are also good – and again, they have a user research programme.
Of course, like everything else in the world, data visualisation has been turned to the service of the US Presidential Elections. The Christian Science Monitor has a patchwork map of the nation; the New York Times has a visual of candidate schedules. Strangely addictive, actually.
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31 January 2008
A (not very) funny thing happened on the way to John Adam Street...
Are jokes pro-social acts? I guess it depends on their content and the context of their telling. It is as hard to make up jokes as design pro-social experiments. Although I love hearing and telling jokes I have only ever made up three, and one of those was this morning. Here they are:‘Why do rabbits care about the Government’s finances?
Because they are worried about the size of the public sector burrowing requirement’
(This joke is losing its already limited appeal as HMG long since stopped using PSBR as a measure.)
Man: Doctor, doctor I am invisible until I eat my lunch
Doctor: I’m sorry, I can’t see you until this afternoon’
And this morning’s joke:
‘I have made friends with an amoeba who is into boxing and martial arts. I am trying to get him to buy my car.
It’s proving to be a hard cell’.
I know these aren’t very good but they are mine. I am intrigued as to how many other people can claim to have actually invented (rather than just rediscovered or retold) a joke.
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30 January 2008
High priority
It's a sign...This week in Fellowship...
Going greener
RSA Hospitality is very much run on environmental and sustainable principles. To give but one example; our tablecloths are not cotton, but a material which looks and feels like cotton to maintain our high standards, but which is washed at a much lower temperature, thereby saving energy on the laundry.
The offices that I inhabit upstairs have not always had such an organised approach, which is something we've decided to really get to grips with. A couple of colleagues and I met with the lovely people at Global Action Plan who offer free environmental audits for small and medium businesses. Now I'm itching for the report to arrive so we can get stuck in.
Lucky numbers
According to the whiteboard on the other side of the room, we now have a grand total of 26,921 Fellows. Which means only another 79 to make it to the milestone of 27,000. It's exciting to think about the influence this resource of collective expertise and enthusiasm will have (and we've been promised cake to celebrate).
We've also recently linked up with Teach First - a charity that encourages top graduates to enter teaching - in order to recruit more Fellows, and applications from that relationship have just started to trickle through.
Until next time...
Information on how to join the RSA Fellowship, and how to nominate others here.
(Photographs by me - this one taken on a street in Whitechapel)
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30 January 2008
Full steam ahead for the RSA Academy
First some good news. We have agreement from DCSF to the funding agreement for the RSA Academy so it’s full steam ahead for the new school to open in September, and be in the new building early in 2010. We have recruited some really good people to the Academy – many drawn from the existing staff at what is a fast improving school. One job we still have vacant is a Director of Business and Strategy so is anyone out there up for being part of this exciting initiative (you don’t need to be a trained teacher, details on the RSA website)?
This news is timely with the first meeting of our future schools network next week. To hear more about this visit Ian McGimpsey’s RSA Education blog. And while you are cruising our site can I recommend you go to the Carbon Limited site and hear about our fantastic public engagement even in Cardiff at the weekend.
Last Friday was the RSA Xmas Party. We always have it in January as Hospitality staff are working flat out on other people’s events in December. After a knife edge vote it was decided to go to a Medieval Banquet in St Katherine’s Dock. I dressed up as Richard the Lionheart and being the only man in costume felt like a complete plonker. The night was great because RSA colleagues are fun people to be with but I will draw a discreet veil over the quality of food and ‘entertainment’.
Thanks again to Ian Gilmour for taking the pro-social interventions idea on to the RSA networks platform. Ian has loads of ambitious ideas for where we take this next but we will need to keep adding examples and growing the conversation if we are to get to a take off point.
If you heard or saw me doing punditry over the weekend on the Peter Hain resignation and the Alan Johnson allegations, I hope I managed to tread the fine line between being impartial and – as I always do – trying to counter the general view that all politicians are corrupt and dishonest. I went out on a limb by saying on Radio 4 and 5 that I thought the AJ allegations were specious. But the way this shock horror exclusive story has faded quickly from view suggests that – on this occasion – I was right.
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25 January 2008
Do communities need boundaries?
It’s great to see the activity on the RSA networks web platform. This has flowed out of the debates and initiatives started here at the Fellows’ day on November 22nd. We are still only at the beginning of the process of transforming the Fellowship and putting Fellows at the heart of the RSA. Where this journey takes us is one of the big questions for 2008.
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25 January 2008
Drinking with Dave and other stories
Hello and welcome to a new section of the blog, where each week the events team will take you behind the scenes of our packed programme of lectures and screenings.
It's been a really busy week here with an event happening every day, so we are only just now trying to draw breath. Monday evening's RSA Screens event with Dave Gorman went down really well - he's such an interesting guy although he was telling us in the bar afterwards that he’s trying to leave behind his wacky comic persona, and carve out a reputation as a serious documentary-maker making “proper grown-up telly”.Also, still picking up coverage of our event with the Chancellor last week, It’s good to know that RSA events have a life beyond John Adam Street.
We’ve been getting ready for the start of our new series on education and rushing around trying to find a copy of Michael Young's new book for Ian in our Education team, who's going to be doing an interview with Prof Young for the RSA Journal. It should be a good start to the series.
And finally† off to Oxford this evening to attend the first event in a new series in partnership with Oxford Amnesty Lectures, looking at the very topical subject of religion and human rights with major international thinkers including Simon Schama, Ronald Dworkin and Asma Jahangir .
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23 January 2008
Punch & Judy politics
As Rosie writes last night’s event with Simon Duffy was fantastic. We have breathed new life into the Albert Medal, hopefully we will do the same later in the year with the Benjamin Franklin. Over the years I believe we can build a strong public awareness of the medals and the particular virtues and achievements they celebrate.
Social Care Minister Ivan Lewis presented Simon with his medal and spoke eloquently about how the work of in Control reflected his and his Government’s values. I have heard several ministers speak over the last few days. Despite the many difficult issues facing Government – most obviously economic volatility – the ship of state seems steadier than it was in the periods between the faux election debacle and the end of the year. I wonder if the next batch of polls will show Labour back to parity with the Conservatives. If they do the media will no doubt turn their guns on David Cameron pointing out that when Tony Blair got a ten point plus lead in 2004 he held it in every poll for three years.
Politics continues to be in a strange place. With Conservatives rattling on about social justice and Labour cracking down on public sector pay and emphasising its toughness of security, the connection between ideology and party is opaque to voters. At the same time people are less and less inclined to believe that any politician has the answers to the big threats and changes of the modern world – whether it’s market turbulence, climate change or violence among young people. In these circumstances the national media, themselves suffering from declining public interest, try to extract drama from politics by presenting it as an oscillating boxing match. Thus someone always has to be up against the ropes; last year it was Blair, then it was Cameron, then it was Brown. Today’s cowering punch bag is tomorrow’s come back kid and so it goes on.
Generally political commentary takes place from exactly the wrong distance. It is neither up close enough to policy issues to really understand or explain what is at stake (Simon and Ivan were talking last night about a genuine revolution in social care but don’t expect to read about it on the front pages), nor is it far enough away to put in context increasingly volatile (and thus pretty meaningless) swings in public opinion.
PS Thanks Matthew for more examples of pro-social experiments. Do try to keep them coming - we have a long way to go to reach the 100!
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22 January 2008
The Albert medal
I am really looking forward to tonight’s RSA event. We are awarding Simon Duffy of In Control with the Albert Medal.
The Albert and Benjamin Franklin medals are an established part of RSA history, but they lacked distinctiveness and profile. The problem was twofold. One the one hand the medals have tended to be given to the kinds of figures who already have a stack of such honours. On the other hand, there wasn’t much clarity about the criteria for their award.
So, after some reflection with our wise Trustees and in keeping with the traditions of RSA , we have decided that the Albert Medal should be awarded to an individual who has contributed to social innovation, while the Benjamin Franklin should be awarded to an individual who has contributed to enlightenment thinking.
Without being too rigid we foresee the Albert Medal usually going to a UK citizen, and preferably a Fellow while the BF Medal will be more international in its focus. And while the medals will go to people of achievement we want to try to aim for people who are not as established and for whom the medal might lead to a wider acknowledgement of their work. Simon (an FRSA) is an amazing man whose work has leading to what has been described a revolution in social care. Just last week the work of his organisation In Control was strongly endorsed in a major DEMOS report and before Christmas the Government confirmed that an idea that just three years ago was considered wildly idealistic and experimental is now at the centre of social care policy.
I think there are still some places for Simon’s lecture tonight, so do join us for a great lecture and a new beginning for RSA’s Albert Medal.
P.S. Keep the pro-social experiment ideas coming. I see the lane blocking idea is controversial. That’s fine If we could do the book that Ian Gilmour and I have written about maybe each idea could be accompanied by a short expert assessment of its pros and cons?
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21 January 2008
First mobile post
This is the first post from my Blackberry and if it all works according to plan I should be able to post while on the move.
There are still a couple of kinks unfortunately. Our email signature is being automatically posted as well. Hopefully this will be fixed soon.
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18 January 2008
A call for ideas
Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this conversation about social experiments based on small kindnesses. There are now several ideas in this thread but I’m sure we can generate more.
I visited Karma Army and Team Nice as Laura and Ian suggested. They are both great ideas although I sense neither currently quite has the momentum to reach a tipping point. We need to create a small kindness alliance.
Maybe it’s because I am a policy wonk social scientist but I like the idea that the RSA initiative is not just about acts of kindness but about gathering evidence (albeit impressionistic) of the effect of benign behaviours on others. I wouldn’t want to vouch for the safety of Peter Mansfield’s lane blocking strategy but it would be fascinating to see whether lots of drivers copying him did start to have an aggregate impact on behaviours.
Ian Gilmour mentions PledgeBank and I too him am a great fan of the concept. PledgeBank is already doing good thing but I have always believed that it needs to grow into a network of local banks to really deliver on its potential (after all most of the concrete things we want to do together are at the local level). Maybe RSA networks can help to take Pledge Bank to this next stage (what do you think Tom?).
Back to kind social experiments; how about this as a target?
Let’s discover/generate 100 ideas.
Then I can approach the Faculty of the Royal Designers for Industry based here at RSA and ask for assistance from some of their members to design and illustrate a little book of the 100 ideas.
Then we can sell it (one of those checkout books you see in major bookshops) with the proceeds going towards a fund for civic initiatives emerging from RSA networks.
The first step is to keep the list of ideas growing – once I’ve got up to about a dozen I’ll ask the team here to design a space on the RSA site to list them and so we have a link to send around to encourage more of the same.
Ian Gilmour has already suggested this idea, and I fully agree with it. Of course, some people will see this all as very whimsical but it is a mistake to think that big change and small change are mutually exclusive aspirations. Not only can small changes tip into big changes but doing small things provides legitimacy, credibility and insight to those calling for social transformation.
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17 January 2008
The youth of today
The view from the 3rd floor.Hello, and welcome to the section of this blog bringing you news and views from the Fellowship office. I'm a researcher here, keeping my beady eye on the world to find new people to send invitations to.
This week in Fellowship...
The Young Achievers Trust
The RSA is currently in partnership with the Young Achievers Trust, helping to support and celebrate inspirational young volunteers. I emailed a group of Fellows this week to ask for help in judging the awards, and I was cheered by the postive response and the high level of enthusiasm at the chance to be involved.
"This sounds like a great initiative and I would be honoured to be involved"
"I would be very interested in helping with this [...] I know the tremendous impact that volunteering can have on both the volunteer and their communities"
We have eight Fellows on the panel, and we will be looking to the Fellowship again to provide mentoring opportunities and advice for the winners when they are announced in March this year. There is an interesting conversation on the Networks platform about the value of mentoring and internships to encourage young people.
I spent last Friday shortlisting the applications, and I was bowled over by what some of these young people have achieved. I volunteer for the Food Chain once a month, and it can be hard to motivate myself to do that, even though I always have a great time when I'm there. I left the office with a buzz, and the feeling that, by supporting these inspiring young people, the RSA and our Fellows are really making a positive difference.
Until next time...
Information on how to join the RSA Fellowship, and how to nominate someone here.
(Photographs by me - this one taken from the 3rd floor of the RSA House)
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16 January 2008
Alistair Darling at the RSA
The Chancellor spoke to a packed Benjamin Franklin room here yesterday.
You can download the mp3 of his lecture, Peter Riddell's response and the Q&A (13 MB) from our lectures audio page.
Meanwhile, Benedict Brogan and Peter Riddell are (as always) worth reading. They both see it as a significant moment in Mr Darling's time at the Exchequer.
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14 January 2008
Social experiments of the non-sinister kind
A great thing about having an interest in the science of human behaviour is that you can conduct little social experiments as you go about day to day life.
Here are two I have been doing recently, both at tube stations. When coming up from the train in a station with a non-moving staircase between the up and down escalator, I usually find that no one is walking up. But I find that if I walk up by the time I reach the top I can turn and see four or five people have followed in my wake. I undertake the second experiment at the RSA’s local station, Embankment. 
There are two cash point machines side by side. Although both cash points accept all major cards, usually two separate queues have formed. This can be inequitable in that if you happen to be in a queue behind someone who is very slow or undertaking a complex transaction, you reach the machine after someone who arrived later then you in the parallel queue. So, whenever I queue I stand between the two existing queues, forming a new single line in which the front person goes to the next available cash point. Interestingly, although my intervention changes the previous queuing pattern, on every occasion so far new queue joiners have joined my new more equitable single line rather than by-passing me to reassert the single queue pattern. The experiments show how small interventions can encourage behaviour which is on the one hand, good for public health and, on the other, more equitable and rational.
The conclusion some readers might reach from this is that I am simply a very sad person. But for those who find any of this interesting, my invitation is to develop and report on your own mini social experiments (preferably ones which seek socially benign outcomes; we don’t want hundreds of little Stanford Prisons out there!).
Imagine if tens or hundreds of thousands of us were everyday pursuing our own experiments into how to encourage pro-social behaviour; so much learning, so much positive social reinforcement - a revolution of tiny and clever kindnesses.
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11 January 2008
From the RSA blogs...
The RSA has a clutch of blogs under its virtual roof with news and debate for the New Year.
Carbonlimited is the RSA's project exploring personal carbon trading. Their blog has the latest news and ideas and reflections on the project from Fellows and the team.
On the Arts and Ecology blog, there are some thought-provoking ideas about life without toasters, TVs and stereos. And from our library and archive blogs, this week's featured book from the Fellow's library explores the motives of terrorists, and our archives put the 'Royal' in the RSA. Enjoy!
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10 January 2008
Brains and behaviours
I continue to be fascinated with the research emerging from the new field of social neuroscience. This involves a multi-disciplinary approach to exploring the interaction between the hard wiring of our brains and our social behaviours.
For too long biological and social explanations of behaviour have been seen as incompatible. Instead we should be seeking to combine insights from science, social science and philosophy into an integrated understanding of human behaviour and development. I hope this emerges as a big theme for the RSA lecture and research programme over the coming year.
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10 January 2008
New year, new blog
The new blog starts here. My younger colleagues have finally persuaded me that writing full length opinion columns every 7-10 days is putting old wine in new bottles. So from now on the blog will be shorter, more frequent, more linked up to other blogs and more of a platform for other voices in and around the RSA.
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