Glad to be on Board

[Kamal Al Merhebi]

Hi all,

 

its great to be part of this initiative and im looking forward to getting to know you all (the wizards behind the movement)

 

As a start, My name is Kamal AL Merhebi, I am a finance grad and hold some degrees in Project Management.

I have been working for the past 3 years and around 8 months on a new form of social networks, id like to call it an Idea network.

 

 

the concept is simple, empower people by aligning their collaborative efforts in developing an idea into a project and big things can happen. It is a structured attempt to harness the full capacity of an idea by enabling people to collaborate on the development of the details without straying off the scope or budget baseline.

 

in a summary

ETP is a new form of networks (specifically speaking, www.earthtippingpont.com is an idea network) designed to actively transform the users’ ideas into projects that benefit the wellbeing of the planet. This Idea Network aligns the collaborative efforts of its members and users in a structured and systematic way, enhancing the quality of their proposed ideas and eventually the success rate of their projects. the concept emphasizes on the fact that when the mutual needs of people coincide in the same idea, it will be adopted by the masses. One thought propagated through a network designed to have a real output could have monumental effects.

 

Through Earth Tipping Point, you can share your ideas, develop teams, create plans, assign responsibilities, acquire funds for your project and more all for free. It aims to empower individuals interested in fighting a good cause by structuring their ideas and aligning their efforts. The aim is the full disclosure of projects that could benefit our environment. No more funding or donating blindly, we fund your projects that help protect our environment. It is the simplest and most efficient way of gaining supporters for your ideas, with absolutely no cost.

 

ETP recognizes that raising public awareness to environmental hazards and issues is the foundation to all successful environmental projects. Accordingly, the webpage also acts as an information sharing medium, allowing its members to learn about current environmental issues and hazards in an interactive way. You can share articles, geographically map out environmental problems and hazards, develop awareness campaigns or even educate the public.

our vision is:   Humanity's collective determination for a better way of life will incrementally compile for a humane resolution

 

I look forward to collaborating with Coalition of the Willing in any way, as I believe we share the same beliefs.

if you would like to take part of ETP and share some ideas, please visit our splash page and signup for the private launch at http://www.earthtippingpoint.com  (it is not the animation movie you would expect, cheap stuff but some good words)

 

if you could also share this link with individuals that are interested, I would truly appreciate it.

 

Cheers
Kamal Al Merhebi

CEO and Founder of Earth Tipping Point

[Tiberius Brastaviceanu]

Great idea Kamal !  

This sounds a lot like Seb's intent map concept. When you see different individuals converging on the same idea, independently, it means that the idea is good.  

Welcome!

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[Tim Rayner]

Just checked out the splash page on http://www.earthtippingpoint.com. Like wow! Earth Tipping Point looks like a Catalyst System and an Open Innovation Center rolled into one. I am deeply impressed, Kamal. I've signed up for the launch - looking forward to taking part in it.

Today I was reviewing CotW-related email correspondence from April-May 2009. It reminded me how much energy and excitement there was two years ago for ideas about online social media as a tool for climate action. The failure at Copenhagen really took the wind out of the sails of the climate movement. Consequently, I think, a lot of people working the world of social media dropped the ball on the issue too, assuming that because politicians won't step up, civil society won't get excited about it either, and therefore, the issue is good as dead. No doubt climate politics is a stalemate issue in Washington right now, and the majority of citizen-consumers about the world are more than happy to not to think about it as well. If only this really meant the issue had gone away - alas! The fact is the current stalemate only makes the need for innovate social media solutions like ETP more desperate.

There are any number of hurdles presented to entrepreneurs like Kamal to get these new systems off the ground. Then there is a huge, towering, historically as-yet hurdled hurdle which concerns how to inspire take up and use of these systems. The first set of hurdles can be crossed with funding and persistence. The second hurdle - this is more difficult. Difficult, but not impossible. Really, when you look at the situation we're in today, it seems that a social media climate action revolution is a culture shift waiting to happen. It is a 'tipping point' issue (I suspect Kamal had this in the back of his mind when he named the system): we know climate change is happening and happening now; we know that the outcomes will be catastrophic; and we know that our 'leaders' (sorry Paul - colloquial usage) are so compromised and so focused on short term gains that they will not do what needs to be done to stop it. At some point - and I doubt it is far off - a savvy entrepreneur is going to find a way of keying into the concerns of a critical mass of concerned citizenry, and boom!

I hope Kamal is that entrepreneur. ETP is a new beginning. This is the kind of system I was dreaming of back in 2008. Thank God the future is here at last!

Tim

--

[Kamal Al Merhebi]

Hi Tim, Hello everyone

 

God, now I feel even more compelled to push forward.

 

I am shocked by how my mind is reacting to all that I have done in all its stages. Three and a half years ago, I started developing the plans. Lacking any project management experience and knowledge, I hit the books and did my degrees. I was walking blind with bits and pieces of the concept, but mainly fueled by belief.

To be honest, I was once a student in the American university of Beirut studying environmental sciences. Don’t know if I could have been categorized as a student when I spent most of my time chasing girls and partying, so needless to say, I got expelled from the university. To add to that, I had always been a rebellious individual, tenaciously fighting systems I didn’t believe in, so again, needless to say, I was expelled from schools and universities. The pride and joy of the family !

 

Eventually, I got to accept how things are and played along. Got some finance degree and project management certifications. The first was out of obligation, but the second out of need to pursue my belief. And I perfectly remember when I started thinking of ETP. I was a teller at the bank, making $400 per month, just enough money to get me drunk from time to time and forget about the shitty economy I live in. it was either robbing the bank or starting something I believe in, both are achievable, but I chose ETP. Lol.

 

That was the introduction for the following. The 400 usd salary, walking blind, scattered concept, the need to do something, all piled up to the point of inevitability. I either let all this turn into another day dream or I take a serious bank loan to start what I want to do. I have imprisoned myself to this concept a long way back. That doesn’t feel too tough, what does feel tough is being indebted. After seeing all the positive feedback from all those I have been in touch with, I have been indebted by their expectations, their humane beliefs and needs, their instantaneous acceptance and encouragement for this act of good. This outweighs all my fears as I feel compelled to safeguard their expectations.

 

If everything fails, Earth Tipping Point will have a life span of three years, through which I will proceed with implementing additional systems to complement the scope baseline. After renegotiating the contract with Icreon (the development company), I had to reduce the scope significantly. Currently, users cannot signin using facebook, send invitation to all their hotmail, yahoo and gmail contacts and the entity profile was not developed. This could prove to be a serious downfall for the time being, however being new in this domain, it would be risky to try to boost ETP’s grown asymmetrically. In short, you have my true and honest commitment to Coalition of the Willing. I will promote your concepts and ideas in whatever way possible. After the launch, we could start meetings and develop strategies that could enable us to get your word out there faster (including the movie), built strategies to benefit both of us and much more. I believe coalition of the willing is the Knowledge Database you have been searching for; individuals with enhanced knowledge dedicated for a righteous battle.

 

Last, I got to admit, I am no entrepreneur. ETP is an entrepreneur’s nightmare; it could generate income but not in the immediate future. It requires a lot of time, dedication and belief to develop something meaningful, entrepreneurs, at least the ones I know, rather stay away from this kind of commitment.

Guys, again, I am really happy to be part of coalition, I do not know if you still have the same motivation as you had before, (I don’t know about your struggles, successes and failures) but you can count on me being a worthy team player.

 

rgrds

Kamal

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[Kamal Al Merhebi]

Btw,

as a correction (highlighted by Chris and Tim)

the url is http://www.earthtippingpoint.com

in my original email, I misspelled my own url

however, Tim’s and Chris’s emails stated them correct

 

If you would like to view the page on our testing server, please visit etp.dotnetdevelopment.in (please do not share this url with your contacts outside Coalition, as this url is just for testing purposes)

 

rgrds

kamal

[Mark Roest]

Hello Kamal and Tim,

Synchronicity is at work again! I have been working to communicate my vision of an environmental, economic and land use planning knowledgebase that looks sort of like GoogleEarth on steroids, and is open to the peasant on the ground to tell the world (and science) exactly what is happening right where she or he lives, and is loaded with expert systems, and in which information is tagged by the eco-regions and cultures for which it is truly useful.

Since the link to Jane McGonnigal's TED talk about using the power of game psychology to motivate people to work for good was posted on CotW's open stewardship pages, I have been developing a vision of how to build a game engine on top of the knowledgebase, to do that motivating on a global scale.

Last night I wrote a narrative about how development and implementation of that game system could go, from the 60,000 foot perspective. I prominently included both project management and supply chain software in the storyline. What follows is long, but it is just a fraction of the material I have written so far.

In a few days the second of two people who are interested in the project will move into my apartment building (the San Mateo Ecovillage); one just graduated from Stanford in Earth Systems, and knows ARC-GIS, and the other is a professional game designer. I figure that makes prototyping the game an idea whose time has come!

I am very interested in what you described, and I will also sign up when I get done here. Kamal, please let me know what you think is the best way to work together. Besides what I am working on, I'd like to help identify ways in which Gaian.me could also collaborate.

Regards,

Mark


The game takes you through learning about how human psychology works for good and for evil, and then invites / challenges you to a series of escalating resemblances to the  real world, and its problems, in which you develop and assemble (and learn to use) a series of tools and then tool-kits, and then to understand how to orchestrate the tool-kits, within fantasy-world environments which look and feel progressively more like the world around us.

Finally, the wizard comes out from behind the curtain, and invites you to the real deal: taking on, with your peers, a significant challenge in the real world, and modeling it within an extremely powerful environment which empowers you to make a literal simulation of the challenge, and of the context -- the systems -- of which it is a part. This environment is a game engine, riding on a knowledgebase of the natural world, of human nature, of economies and the many ways in which they can work, and of the myriad industrial and agricultural infrastructures we have built, to which millions of people will ultimately contribute. In this phase of the game, you actually create the game environment in detail, using the resources of the game engine and the knowledgebases.

The secret is to model the world as it is, both good and bad, in your chosen arena, and to build in the 'secret powers' that can direct it toward good in any form. These 'secret powers' might be inventions that enable communities to challenge multinational corporations that take production to desperately poor countries, and to China, and produce what they need within the community, sustainably. They might include the working strategies of therapists who help people tame their demons -- and the Stanford Medical Center's CCARES program, based on Tibetan Buddhist meditation technologies, which teaches groups to manage their emotions in ways that allow members to feel and express empathy and compassion more often in their lives. (It has now been adopted by over 2000 schools across the United States!) They might even be high-quality, open-source, supply chain and project management software, but I tend to be inclined to put that right out front, and teach its use soon after people come in the door. Why? Because these tools are two of the real secrets of corporate power, and used by the people, for the people, they can unleash amazing potentials for organizing and collaborating for good, in the real world.

Two other 'secret powers' are deep story-telling, and charrettes (group or community design exercises that draw out what every participant cares about, and usually find ways to embody each priority in a shared result).

The line of game play moves from simulating the situation, and developing powers to change it, to modeling the dynamics of mobilizing swarms sufficient to the cause, and leading them in applying the 'powers' to the challenge, and meeting it for good (as in 'for a good cause', and as in 'for once and for all'). This is done as a massively multi-player simulation, with people taking various roles and acting out their characters -- and responding to the more or less loose 'script' as if they truly are those characters, the way actors do on stage or in movies.

The players simulate the intervention, and then do 'after-action assessments' to find out what worked, what didn't work, and what ideas people came up with for doing it better next time. Then, as in Agile software development, they incorporate the ideas and corrections, and do it over again!

Once it begins to feel right, like most of the low-hanging fruit is in the simulations, and people are learning to carry off their roles with style, the next level is to find out how other people are doing in other simulations responding to other challenges, and to use the knowledgebase to identify what the larger system interactions and potential relationships are. Then, research those opportunities, both in the knowledgebase and by doing brainstorming sessions and charrettes with the people in the other simulations, and discover how to collaborate so that there are more resources for all, with less impact on people and the environment; so that the network effect is magnified by orders of magnitude, and so that large numbers of people are drawn into the action of the simulations by their growing, visible potential to make a profound difference collectively. Then, merge the simulations at their boundaries, so that they can actually simulate working in collaboration with each other. Tweak the game engines so that they reflect the new discoveries of the arts of the possible! Run the simulations, and repeat the processes!

If mass mobilization psychology is taking hold as it can, participants are going to be naturally feeling that it is time to go live -- to take it to the streets! This then becomes the focus of discussions in the virtual and physical worlds, as they assess whether just about everyone is ready, or there is work to do in specific scenarios to make them as strong as the other links in the chain. So everyone who can contribute to those efforts does so, and the people engaged in the difficult scenarios get to feel as if they have been in a ropes course, and stood at the edge of a picnic table and fallen off backwards, into the arms of all the people taking the course with them! (Of course, the people helping get to feel as if they were catching those people falling off -- a truly sacred experience!)

It is now time to bring the virtual and physical worlds together. The project management and supply chain software will have a model of all the resources needed, and all the processes to manifest, to immerse the simulation in the physical world and effect a paradigm shift. It is now time to secure commitment of all these resources, and to all these processes, by the participants, self-selecting their roles. Some (most? all?) of the roles will involve persuading people in the physical world to collaborate with the transformers as they take it live. It may take a campaign, with creative, uplifting displays of progress toward the levels chosen, and role-playing and even charrettes to work out solutions to problems or issues that are blocking people, to get all the commitments needed. And if there are missing pieces, or people down, others will need to come up with solutions and implement them, on time and without disrupting other resources (or solving that too).

Some parts of the solutions simulations may have been shown capable of functioning in the physical, social, economic, political world autonomously, or with some of the other parts, and they may be designed to help set the stage for full deployment of the processes and resources modeled in the simulations.

So it's D-Day! Or, P-Day for Paradigm-shift Day, or T-Day for Transformation Day; "let's roll!"

Using the same tools and processes as in the simulations to manage coordination and communication, but now 'out in the wild', the swarms start to act, individually and collectively, and to display and share about what is happening in a million websites, blogs and wikis. It's a full court press in basketball terms. Except that it's also defense, reserves, change-ups, and more, and there is no real way to defend against it by those who cannot stand the thought of national and global unity from the bottom up and from the middle out. What's more, the participants have already calculated how many people are in each arena, and have prepared to welcome all of them into the new paradigm, as it unfolds -- and as people undergo profound realization and rush to join, or seek shelter or reassurance in fear that it will bring calamity. Even as some seek to strike it or crush it, wherever they are. Collectively and, to the extent we are able, individually, we respond fully to the varieties of the human experience, in real time.

Since part of the simulations was practicing the steady-state new systems which will be developed in the paradigm of sustainability and social justice (I forgot to mention that earlier), and since they are modeled in the knowledgebase and in the content of the simulation of the environment, people will also know how to exercise stewardship of these new systems in the physical and economic world. In fact, if the designs are really good, it will be intuitively obvious what the tools and resources are for, and how to use them. (That is the definition of an Affordance in industrial design terms.) So between people who have studied how to manage them and their natural affinity for the human mind, the tools will metaphorically 'fall naturally to the hand', and people will realize a profound level of peace and security, and the simulation participants will start showing their friends and peers how to allocate their time and resources in an 'open stewardship economy'.

This is what I meant when I gave the Great Game the name, Reset!!!

Would you care to join me in making it real?

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[George Mokray]

On Apr 24, 2011, at 11:51 AM, Kamal Al Merhebi wrote:

Btw,

as a correction (highlighted by Chris and Tim)

the url is http://www.earthtippingpoint.com

in my original email, I misspelled my own url

however, Tim’s and Chris’s emails stated them correct

 

If you would like to view the page on our testing server, please visit etp.dotnetdevelopment.in (please do not share this url with your contacts outside Coalition, as this url is just for testing purposes)

You might want to take a look at the index of all the entries to the Buckminster Fuller Challenge Awards, from 2008 to date:

http://challenge.bfi.org/ideaindex

Lots of ideas, lots of thinkers, lots of possible connections.

[paul horan]

Excellent point, George!

Hi Kamal ...

--

[Kamal Al Merhebi]

Hello Mark,

 

lets schedule a meeting on Skype, id like to know more about the the knowledge database you want to develop with the Google Earth interface. it’s the missing link, so to speak, for Earth Tipping Point. I have been developing something like that but it is just in its earliest phase on earth tipping point. so far, on Earth Tipping Point, users report on environmental problems according to their geographic location by selecting the category (the list should be enhanced) and writing a summary of 500 characters about it.

the second phase will include some additional options. id be interested in knowing some common grounds we could work on together.

my skype is kamal.merhebi

 

also, we have been trying to develop a game that feeds on these reported problems, but we are still in the planning phase.

 

cheers

kamal

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[Mark Junkunc]

Vary interesting ideas Kamal!

I want to make sure I'm on the same page in regards to the knowledge database Google earth interface. Conceptually, I see it to be a simple blend of pad-mapper but with a timeline. Link: http://www.padmapper.com/

Padmapper.com compiles the data from multiple housing websites (craigslist, apartment.com, and many others) and utilizes the Google maps API to geo-locate the available options found in the database of said websites.

I think that the timeline aspect could be of much use and am curious if there are any thoughts you might have to that point? 

-Mark

[Christian Hogue]

How is this all progressing?

[Kamal Al Merhebi]

Hi all,

 

It has been such a long time since ive received an email from Coalition group.

 

I hope I am not straying off the subject with my reply, but concerning the Map ETP has utilized, we did the following:

Used Google Earth API to import all active Wild Fires from MODIS database. Every 2 hours, ETP will be updated with the latest wild fires. Google Maps does not provide this feature, so we had to use google earth.

 

Other options would be to view

Projects proposed by users

Anonymous reports of ecological and community problems

 

Unfortunately, the development of Earth Tipping Point was soo expensive for me that I doubt I will be able to continue hiring developers and designers from my own money, when the site brings in no revenues.

That, ofcaurse, without mentioning the serious budget related to marketing it.

 

I have been working as a SAP BPC Senior Consultant in the MENA area, which was a good source of income to fund further development. But I have taken a serious hit with one contractor is Saudi Arabia that just fled with my money, so now I have to collect (through legal case) before I consider further development.

 

I had 4 article writers and was working on hiring a social media specialist, additionally, I was ready to start the third phase of development to integrate the timeline on the maps (in addition to data about Severe weather patterns, Earth Quakes and possibly Tsunamis), with some UX enhancements, Sequential tool tips, and other features but this “contractor” is all I am concerned with now.

 

Tough times, but I always manage. (eventhough, sometimes I think I should just delete ETP all together. It a serious weight to be carried by just one person)

--

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The Coalition occupies several spaces for communication and action. Keep the discussion on this list civil & assume good faith. Strive for brevity.

For the what-why-where of Coalition work, look to http://cotw.cc. That wiki functions as a routing-portal and a locus for some of the work. All group efforts should maintain an updated statement of current focus, channels and spaces of work and anything necessary to support orientation & keeping up-to-speed.
 
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[Mark Roest]

Hello Kamal and all,

First, Kamal, I apologize if I never followed up with you on Skype as you requested 2 years ago. I looked at your recent post and the earlier discussion together, from at least a couple of perspectives.

1. I am now in a battery technology start-up, and I wonder if the technical mechanisms you have created for a company engaging people in a country could be adapted to market development for renewable electricity generation and storage on a local scale. That could mean village cooperatives saying yes, we're interested, or potential distributors reaching out to us. We would want one or more layers of the GIS to hold and display insolation and energy-in-the-wind data, which is initially obtained from databases that serve project developers. We'll use the data to prioritize marketing efforts, with renewable energy equipment manufacturers or developers as partners, most likely.

2. Since a while after the Coalition basically imploded I have been in contact with Y Worlds, which also is trying to build a platform to rally people to plan and develop solutions to climate change. They have a different, probably complementary approach. I tend to think of them as a user interface for a GIS / digital earth imaging / expert system knowledgebase; perhaps that would apply to your efforts, too.

As a stand-alone product, I don't really feel a lot of high-energy potential in its current form. It's not an affordance (in industrial design terms) for anyone who would interact with it. It's not truly intuitive and lacks flow from start to finish for any one role, and you don't offer well-written, comprehensive directions for use, in plain sight as soon as questions start to emerge.

However, it's potential usefulness for a variety of stakeholders is evident; it seems that one way to go is to work up a business case for how it could be reshaped to serve multiple organizations with different market niches and approaches, for more easily routing people to them. You, or people in the network, would identify them, and their strategic overlaps, and display them and their relationships visually on the site -- not just in a searchable database back end. Much more of a marketing approach. By featuring multiple organizations who want to reach people, you have some potential to get them to divide up and take responsibility for the cost of supporting your work. You would need to sell this idea to those organizations, but the network, or simply reading about the possibility, could prime their interest.

I tend to think in terms of whole systems design in all endeavors, including creating business and / or civic ecosystems. So I think of developing a strategy and game plan for collaboration among all players which is able to get the attention of various interest and values clusters, and to create a meme that can spread out from them virally. That is what CoTW was trying to do, also. I think it needs to go beyond that, to a scenario for specific, major contribution to a paradigm shift in energy use, political power, economic patterns, social / community empowerment, and service to nature. That is my top area of interest, and I see the batteries as potentially playing a key role in that, both for renewable energy integration and for improving the user experience for a billion utility customers who are given sporadic, low-quality service.

When you come up for air after solving your immediate cash-flow issue from being stiffed, let's correspond, and see if we can align on a brain-storming exercise.

Regards,

Mark Roest