About this time last year I went on a little day-trip to Birmingham with my friend Steven Johnson. It was grey and miserable and we had to go and buy umbrellas from Boots to keep dry. It was a fantastic day though. We were on the trail of Joseph Priestly tracking down the places he […]
Tag archives: Practical Optimism
Some photos from Social Innovation Camp in Scotland
More details on the Social Innovation Camp site and I’ve got a piece in today’s Independent that includes some of the thinking behind what we do.
Meetups and Ministers: Self-organizing public services
[This is a slightly adapted version of a short talk I gave at MASS LBP on 10 March 2009 in Toronto, Canada] It feels a bit unfashionable in tumultuous times like these but there’s something you should know about me before we start. I’m an optimist — a practical optimist in that I like making things happen […]
Post TED thoughts
So, as previous TEDsters had warned me, TED 2009 did blow my mind. That many amazing talks one after the other interspersed with constant caffeinated/slightly drunken conversation with some of the best minds in the world on tech and design was just brilliant. Everything at TED is done to such high standards. The talks are […]
Don’t throw sheep
It’s not big and it’s not clever as I point out on the Guardian’s PDA Blog today. I should also say that the idea really comes from a far cleverer person than me. Tim O’Reilly uses it in this fantastic talk.
An Ode to Optimism
Just sent a link by my mum to Ode Magazine and browsing around found the current issue includes a list of 25 optimists. They call them intelligent optimists, I would say they were practical optimists, but nevertheless they’re the kind of people who I think will pull us out of our current problems. The intro […]