September 2nd, 2010 by hubamsterdam
On September 19th at The Hub Amsterdam project group Ekosofia organizes an information event for people interested in co-creating, living and/or working in a self sustainable eco-village or green district for 300-500 households close to the city.
The circular design integrates natural agriculture and permaculture with a variety of old and new school organic architecture. We are working on a pilot community that could very well prove to become of international value because it will beautifully demonstrate a whole range of existing and effective low and high-tech green solutions.
On Sunday the 19th the project will be explained in a short presentation by Patrick van Uffelen (De Groene Geus). Marc Crijns, initiator of the organic district Buitenkans in Almere is one the invited speakers! There will be time for green networking and Q&A about the plan (www.ekosofia.org). We present one hour of interesting and related video’s (the kick-off for the monthly Green Screen starting in October at The Hub) and finally people can register to join the group at its monthly meetings.
Fee € 5,-
Register:here.
Tags: eco-village, ekosofia
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September 2nd, 2010 by hubamsterdam
Deep Democracy is a facilitation methodology designed for anybody who works with groups. Rooted in insights from process-oriented psychology, it offers simple yet powerful tools that are used by leaders, managers, consultants, social activists, coaches, teachers, parents and others all over the world to improve the way that people work together in complex and turbulent situations.The real strength of Deep Democracy is the ability to better understand group dynamics and to learn a set of practical tools which can be applied for collaborative decision making and for conflict resolution.
The foundation course comprises 8 modules over two days, including both theory and practice.
- Friday September 24, 2010 from 9:00 – 17:00
- Friday October 1, 2010 from 9.00-17.00
Participation costs Euro 650 Corporate/ Euro 450 Individual. Hub members receive a Euro 100 discount. Please email lara [at] deep-democracy [dot] net or bente [at] deep-democracy [dot] net for information and registration.
You can read the full invitation here.
More background information about this method can also be found online atwww.deep-democracy.net.
Tags: Deep Democracy
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September 2nd, 2010 by hubamsterdam
Learn a breakthrough way to understand, manage and respond to sustainability complexity. Spend seven months with 20 sustainability veterans and pioneers learning to leverage the Integral Framework and strengthen your awareness to cultivate superior sustainability results. The Integral Framework is a comprehensive map of systems, culture, psychology, and behavior. It is used worldwide at the highest levels of business, government, and civil society to design and execute sustainability initiatives. It is at the heart of this program.
Course Details
- One night a month commitment for seven months. 6:30-10:00pm.
- Course runs October 19 – May 3 in Amsterdam and November 11 – June 16 in Rotterdam.
- €1290 corporate / €690 individual and Hub members. Partial scholarships available.
More information and to register
- A complete course brochure with links to register can be found here.
- More information about the Integral Framework can be found here.
- Questions? Contact Barrett Brown: bbrown [at] integralinstitute [dot] org
Tags: barrett brown, complexity, framework, leadership, sustainability
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September 2nd, 2010 by hubamsterdam
Do you ever get the feeling that the world is much more complex than your traditional news channel tells you? At VJ Movement we certainly do. We are a collaboration of more than 200 professional video journalists and cartoonists from almost 100 countries. We believe that “There is more than one truth”. This notion is the starting point of our reporting. We bundle our stories in comprehensive but in depth projects consisting of videos and cartoons. We make a point of showing different perspectives. We publish online: www.vjmovement.com
In the process we value the contribution of you, our audience. We are convinced that your expertise can strengthen our reporting. Journalists need experts to inform them. Therefore at VJ Movement we want to extend the collaboration to involve the audience. Your expert information will become part of our stories.
We are almost ready to launch our new English language platform. We want to offer an exclusive group of people the opportunity to take a look before the official launch. We challenge you to be among the first ones to get involved in this new way of producing journalism of a high standard. Send us an email (avandenbeld@vjmovement.com or tloudon@vjmovement.com) and within two weeks we will give you access to the site. Post your blog, column or comment. Pitch your story idea for a video or a cartoon and invite others to do the same.
Just to give you a hint of the kind of projects we are currently working on:
- The right of children to work; child labor a crime or a necessity?
- Same sex marriage around the globe; legal reality and daily consequences
- Ghost towns; what the urban world is leaving behind
- Invasive species; terrorizing eco-systems
- New Public transport; changing societies, enhancing co-existence
Each project will contain stories from different countries, produced by journalists with very different backgrounds. We want to know what your take on these and other issues is, so we can help you share your expertise with the world.
We look forward to working with you!
Tags: global stories, media, news cartoons, online video, press, video journalism
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September 1st, 2010 by hubamsterdam
In America and Britain governments hope that a partnership with “social entrepreneurs” can solve some of society’s most intractable problems, wrote the Economist on August 12 [article]. The new Dutch cabinet is about to cut in everything that implies funding, including most innovation and sustainability facilities. No discussions here on whether and what is good or bad, but we can conclude together that social entrepreneurs in search for capital and network (poen & partners) should look elsewere! Princess Maxima announced new facilities for the Qredits scheme, so a small loan should always be available, but maybe you should look for an (informal) investor to help make your dreams come true.
“If you don’t need an informal, don’t!” states Keith Wallace. Co founder of The Investors Alliance (De InvesteerdersClub) and workshopleader (and trainer) in the mid-summer Poen&Partners event in The Hub Amsterdam on the 29th of jJly. Poen&Partners is a collective of organizations that believe in a businesslike solution to social problems and bring together entrepreneurship, investment and innovation in a series of information events concluding in a festive Investors Lounge with a pitch contest of the better plans that are truly sustainable, entrepreneurial and investable. After two successful events in Rotterdam, it now landed in our capital city.
‘Investors are mostly grey, mostly man and mostly very stubborn people, that will take a share in your company’ Keith underpins his earlier statement. Not a very positive start! An honest one as well. To many entrepreneurs are showing eurosigns in there eyes when pitching to investors. But they are not always the multimillionaires eagerly waiting to give you there money. It’s often (ex-)entrepreneurs that rather invest their money on small scale companies which they can be involved with, then losing it on the stock markets or dust away at a local bank.
If you want to know the more positive site of having in investor on board. If you wonder whether your company is suited for informal investment or when wondering what alternatives can be? Come to one of our next meetings and join our lunch and pitchsessions @ Hub Amsterdam. Visitpoenenpartners.com
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September 1st, 2010 by hubamsterdam
Name: Thijs Hoffmann
Project:Growing Minds
Mission: “Boosting the growth potential of NGOs through smart marketing”
Case: “Delivering the Dutch campaign for Greenpeace to save Orang Oetan habitats in Indonesia”
Growing Minds has delivered the online version of Greenpeace’s Kitkat campaign. In the campaign, Greenpeace calls to send an email to Nestlé en to protest through social media. The facebook page of Kitkat was taken off the internet after a few days because it was flooded with protest messages. This, in result, created a brilliant case on how corporates shouldn’t deal with social media.
The campaign has caused Nestlé to stop collaborating with the Indonesian supplier of palm oil in question, which has been a great success! Subsequently, Growing Minds developed an online tracking program for Greenpeace to get in touch with the anonymous campaign participants, which showed good results. “We were asked to develop a new campaign for Greenpeace Netherlands, as well as subsidiaries from other countries. It’s time for us to go International!”
Obviously, The Hub is a great support network in expanding abroad…
Tags: greenpeace, growing minds, kitkat, nestlé, online campaign, palm oil
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September 1st, 2010 by hubamsterdam
Hub Member Joost Schouten: “The usual time tracking software is purely administrative… that’s not enough these days.”
Name: Joost Schouten (1978)
Project:JSPortal
Mission: “Empowering employees by means of holistic time tracking”
Joost developed his fascination for project management during his graduation internship from his study at IPO School of Industrial Design in The Hague, Netherlands. He noticed that after making an initial planning managers mostly lacked insights in the real progress of their projects. Joost then did some research, looking for tools that could be helpful, but found them mostly inadequate.
“The usual time tracking software is of a purely administrative character. The employees input their time and only after the project has finished do the managers know whether they made a profit or a loss. I was looking for a tool that would enable both management and employees to see real-time if their targets are being met or not. Are they leaping ahead or legging behind their schedules? Is the schedule realistic all-together?”
After graduating Joost went to the US to work as an industrial designer. In his first job he noticed similar problems with time tracking in the projects of his new employer. Therefore in 2002 he made his first brave move: he quit his job and made a deal with his former employer. Within four month he would build a totally new online tool for time tracking. Minor problem: he still had to learn how to program….
Powered with this first big assignment Joost travelled Europe and Asia. In his backpack a new laptop and the book Teach Yourself Java in 21 Days. “It turned out to be eight years,” he admits laughing, “but this book gave me the basics and after four months I actually delivered the time tracking software I envisioned”
After that breaktrough Joost went on travelling and programming, meanwhile making money with jobs as industrial designer and programmer. From 2003 until 2007 he mainly worked and lived in Singapore and Australia and from 2007 until 2010 in New Zealand. In a dialogue with his customers he constantly improved his software. “My customers tell me that their employees are happier. Their voices are being heard. And because of the holistic picture my software offers, the management is able to switch its leadership style. There is less need for control and more room for coaching and cooperation.”
In 2005 Joost made a second move. He wanted a better user interface and a better data structure for his program and decided to rebuild it from scratch. From the beginning of 2010 the Beta-version of this new release was ready. In the fall of 2010 it will officially be launched.
Joost delivers his JS Portal software as a service via the Web. For small companies (up to three users) it is free.
http://www.vimeo.com/14606887
- by Hub Member and Journalist Fred Teunissen
Tags: jsportal, online platform, product launch, programming, time tracking, time tracking software
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September 1st, 2010 by hubamsterdam
Hub Member Jason Wohlstadter “I hated to see talented DJ’s quit because they needed a job”
Name: Jason Wohlstadter (1984)
Project: protonradio.com
Mission: “trying to create a sustainable system for the music I love”
Protonradio.com is a platform for songwriters and DJ’s who love technohouse. It started in 2000 as an internet radio station, which is still a central activity, now adays enriched with its own music label and subscription service. Protonradio.com counts 125.000 registered users and has between 300 and 500 listeners from all over the world at any given hour of the day.
Jason joined in 2004 and is the main organizing and empowering force of the website now. “When I was at high school I hated to see talented people stop making really good music because they needed to get a job. They couldn’t make a living from their own main talent. That’s sad and that’s what I want to change.”
Protonradio.com pays small amounts of money to its contributors. “Sometimes I write a cheque of 50 or 100 dollar. In poor countries that is already a big deal! In the future I hope to be able to give more support via our platform. It would be fine to know that this makes it possible for songwriters and DJ’s to pay for the rent or for food. When these basic needs are met they can concentrate on the main thing: to continue to create marvellous music!”
Jason travels the world for a couple of years now. At some point he didn’t feel at the right place any longer in his home town Los Angeles. “It lacked the communities I was looking for.” Since then Jason is spotting new type of places with good ‘vibes’. He went to Miami, New York, Chicago, Bolder (Co), Seattle, Hawai, Denver and lately Amsterdam. In each city he meets local DJ’s. “Travelling is a good way to meet new people, to make connections and to promote protonradio.com.”
His next stop? “Hub Islington in London.”
http://www.vimeo.com/14606858
- by Hub Member and Journalist Fred Teunissen
Tags: dj, internet radio, music business, online, technohouse
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August 31st, 2010 by hubamsterdam
Ever have days like this?
We have noticed Hub members all work so hard! If we are working so hard for sustainability ‘out there’, how can we better take care of the sustainability of our own hearts and bodies?
The Hub hopes to be a living example of healthy entrepreneurship and believes it is time to support each other in taking care of ourselves and our life-balance.So in collaboration with Sento Spa and Health Club just down the street from us, we have a special promotion for each Hub Amsterdam member to help you look after your health. A free day pass (with a personalised first training session with a fitness instructor) and a discounted offer for Hub members who take a Sento gym membership this fall.
Details are available to Hub members through the amsterdam.members list or from a Hub Host.
Besides, it will be more fun with more of us! And we are also exploring other ways of collaborating with Sento including: a Hub Health series where experts come in to the Hub for talks about different aspects of health and nutrition, Hub members brainstorming about social and environmental business challenges for Sento… get on the treadmill to health!
Tags: gym, Health, opportunities, sport, sustainability, wellness
Posted in Hub Amsterdam History, Member Opportunities, Topic: Sustainability, Topic: Wellness | No Comments »
August 31st, 2010 by hubamsterdam
by Tatiana Glad - Last year I had the chance to meet Richard Hames as he came through Amsterdam in one of our Hub’s social investors’ living room. We got on quickly in a conversation about how conversation around the so-called paradigm shift going on the world is so much getting in the way of people just getting down to action, and start doing things differently – in more life-affirming ways. Why is it so difficult? What does it take to socially innovate?
So while we actually come from different generations, different life experiences and also complete opposite parts of this planet, we found resonance in a call for a new kind of leadership needed on this planet. One that is collaborative; not just one person making the effort to collaborate with another, but collaborative leadership – that which arises from genuinely shared purpose and passion.
When back in Australia, Richard was introduced to our friends starting up Hub Melbourne and more recently this year shared some of his thinking around a ‘paradigm in progress’:
I envisage a new resonance and connectedness emerging from a truly inclusive people’s assembly – an association of children, elders, men and women who are deeply conscious of the more systemic, longer-term issues, facing us and who have a desire to guide humanity in imagining, composing and enacting better futures. Comprising people drawn from all cultures and beliefs (entrepreneurs, social artists and innovative thinkers dedicated to unshackling the human spirit through deep design) such an assembly would give genesis to the fused civilizational consciousness we desire.
JOIN US at the Hub Amsterdam to hear Richard speak about his insights and findings he calls The Five Literacies on 29 September 2010 at 19.30. No speaker’s fee; just €5 suggested donation towards roomcosts. RSVP amsterdam.hosts@the-hub.net
Founder and Honorary President of The Hames Group (a globally distributed think-tank and strategic design laboratory); Director of Thoughtpost Edge; Chairman-elect of Australia 21 (this is Australia’s most influential non-aligned multidisciplinary think-tank). and Distinguished Professor and founding Director of the Asian Foresight Institute at Dhurakij Pundit University in Bangkok. Also an advisor to our newly emerging Hub in Melbourne, Richard has a unique perspective that is a gift to hear while he is in Amsterdam for a short visit. Read Richard’s blog 
Tags: author, collaboration, consciousness, hub, Hub Events, hub special guest, leadership, Richard Hames, social innovation, speaker
Posted in Hub Amsterdam History, Member Opportunities, Topic: Social Innovation | No Comments »
