Hub Bergen

This is the 8th day of my journey. I have been to Oslo and Bergen, and came back to Oslo yesterday afternoon after 7 hours amazing train ride with lakes, islands, mountains, glaciers, rain, snow, sheep, wetland, trees coming non-stop into your eyes. My computer just clashed last night, so photos will be uploaded after Jun 21st, when I got back home.

I really enjoyed my stay in Bergen. It's a vibrant lively student town. I sent 10 couchsurfing requests before I leave. And 7 have accepted me, which made me a bit embarrassed to decline the hospitality.

While wondering around the Bryggen area a small name tag on the letter box caught my eye. It reads "the Hub Bergen". I was careless enough to miss this on the Hub website, but I was glad that I ran into it anyway. I knocked on the door, Silje opened the door. After I explained my intention, she brought me a tour around the Hub, and we had a nice chat, and at the end of the meeting Silje helped connecting me to the Hub network with the founder, Simon from London, and the Hub in Stockholm for my next visit (however, because of the bus schedule, I decided to cancel my trip to Stockholm and go to Poland instead). Here are some thoughts I recorded from the interview:

1. The Hub needs to live its name. The name of the Hub was generated from the computer language which is a connection point for hardware. So the Hub in Bergen wants to act as a connection point for projects, members, NGOs, government, local people and all the other stakeholders. So it is important to keep both independent from the other parties, but also seek opportunity to develop together. It might be a coincidence that the Bryggen area was historically a trade hub in Bergen or Norway. So it is very meaningful for the Hub in Bergen to establish its base in this location.

2. The host of the Hub should also live its name and act as a connecting point between members and projects. The host should encourage the communication and transparency between the members. They could also pass on messages and inspirations between the members. Besides providing an environment that encourages communication, the host should also organize events to include all the members. The host should also keep a balance between the members enrolled into the Hub, so there would be the diversity desired. All this sounds very easy, but I can foresee it could be very difficult to deal with conflicts between the members, and be open and selective among the projects and members at the same time.

3. Social Enterprise usually have very complex business model. Besides the usual fund seeking and the revenue stream from space renting and membership fee, and a few add-ons like the HubShop, copy shop and beverages, the Hub needs to look for creative ways to generate revenue. One idea we explored during the interview is micro-finance. The Hub could publish the projects developed there through internet or other forms of publication, or organize some events to display and introduce all the on going projects, and invite all interested party to join. The purpose of such publication is to make it possible for anyone interested to invest any amount in the projects. It could help the project to live. Besides that, the Hub itself could act as a private equity and invest and have shares in the projects. But these are very rough ideas, which a lot of details need to be refined.

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And a small summary of my trip so far. I have not used plane yet, and I don't think I will need it as far as my plan goes. I forgot to fill my water bottle yesterday morning, so I ended up buying a bottled water. Shame.
My next stop will be Krakow, Warszawa, Gdansk in Poland, and then Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Salzbourg in Austria (if I have time), then go back to St. Gallen to collect my thesis topic from the school, visit the Hub in Zurich, then Koln and Frankfurt to visit some friends where I used to do my internship. Then it would be the end of my journey.

Hub Follow up and love at last dight in The Garden

Hub follow-up
I joined Nynke for the community lunch in the Hub, Rotterdam and met a lot of other members working there and they gave me a lot of advices. I just want to record them here for future references.

1. It's about passion, commitment and money. The Hub is a long term project. It needs quite an amount of initial investment, and it would not break-even in less than a year. Deciding to start a Hub needs passion, but to carry it needs commitment. Since the Hub is a very local projct, it probably means not leaving the base city for a long time. And even it is about realizing dreams, it is also about financial returns. Because we need to support our living.

2. They suggested that I can do an internship in one of the Hubs in the world and get to know the operation.

3. I am going to take on a trip around Europe from 20th May-20th Jun. And my aim is to not to fly but keeps a budget, so I will use bus for most of the trip. And try not to consume any bottled water. They were very encouraging on my trip, and suggested that I can visit the Hub in several cities I am visiting. So if I ended up in a city that has a hub based there, I will walk in and have a talk with the people working there.

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The second part of the bolg today is about leaving. I am leaving Rotterdam in three days, and I just started to discover the beauty of it. Hence "the love at last sight" in the title.
Today was the last time for us to have the class in the garden. Now that spring is here, and summer is almost here as well. The garden has been so colorful now. Just some photos here:

An idea

Last Wednesday’s class was about toxic plastic. While discussing how can Eastman develop their strategy to promote the bio-degradable plastic, I have an idea of how to decrease the use of plastic water bottle. The idea was to install a beverage station in convenient stores.

We buy bottled water all the time. Even if we carry a water bottle, we might not always have access to water to fill it. However convenient stores, as their name suggested, are so convenience that they are everywhere, so we ended up buying bottled water and the PET bottles. Is there away to decrease the consumption of PET bottles? Eastman have committed to research on save and bio-degradable plastics. However, I have came up with an idea which can hugely decrease the use of plastic bottles and hence decrease the waste beverage industry caused. That is by installing a system which I would call it “buy your content or pay for the wrapping”.

It is inspired by the plastic bag system we are using now in most European and Chinese supermarkets and convenient stores, where you can either bring your own shopping bag or pay extra to buy a bag from the shop. If we apply this system to beverages, you can either bring your own container or pay extra to buy a bio-degradable bottle from the shop. Basically, supermarkets just need to have several of those beverage filling machines like those bear tabs or the coke machines that are used in McDonald's combined with a bottle selling machine. When consumers do not bring their own bottle, they can buy a bottle first then get their drink, or when consumers bring their bottles along they can start getting their drinks right away. Consumers can insert coins to activate the machine and get the drink they desire to fill their bottle. The machine will calculate the total price base on how much drink consumers filled. Consumers can stop the machine and get changes at any point, or they can pay more to get more drinks.

With this system, consumers are encouraged to reuse bottles and largely decrease the waste. The transportation from the beverage manufacturer to the stores could be realized by big metal containers which could also be reused. The disadvantages of the system could be the waiting time, system breakdown and hygiene concerns. It might seem that using the machines increases the waiting time for us to get a beverage, however, it is not necessarily the choose. In the stores now, we have people buying beverages and non-beverage products mixed together waiting in the queue in front of the cashier. With the new system, consumers are classified into beverage queues and non-beverage queues, which makes each queue shorter. The system breakdown and hygiene concern could be further improved by improving the technology.
I am quite excited about my new invention, and I need look for people who has engineering knowledge to realize this.

A burning question about sustainability

This Monday we had class at the Hub in Rotterdam. And we got to think about a burning question about sustainability that we have been wondering.

I have been wondering why some people are more conscience about sustainable development than others. According to the neo-classic theory, everyone do things out of incentives. There must be something one can get from being environmentally friendly, while such thing does not apply to the others, or has no value to them.

So then I ask myself why I care about the environment. Actually, I don’t really know. I have always been taught in schools not to waste water, electricity, food and etc. The living standard in China back then was much lower than now. Most people were living under a budget and food and other resources were scarce. Classify trash and recycle them could earn back a few cents, which could help the family last to the next month. The government did not have as many power plants as they do now. The change was tremendous that several cities and provinces are generating too much electricity then they can consume that they have been sending their surplus to other provinces that are short on electricity. Causing waste has been seen as “unforgivable” to me since I was a kid. Now, at least in big cities like Shanghai, such scarcity no longer exists as commonly as before. My family has been better off financially, the money we can save from save water and electricity consumption or we can earn from recycling do not mean that much to us anymore, but saving energy consumption and recycling has been a habit that is difficult to change.

Another incentive that motivates me to be conscience about the environment was from the people I met. I happened to meet a few friends that I really like and care about. They have been actively engaged in environmental protection activities. Some of them are vegetarians, and some enjoy spending time with the nature. As I got to know them I also got to know their life style and what they care about. They have great influence on me, encouraged and inspired me in so many different ways. I liked the videos they shared with me about different topics on ecologic ways of living. Sometimes, when I am careless about something, for example, when I use plastic containers for take away food, I felt slightly shameful, because I could imagine them shouting at me if they were with me then. I could imagine this one particular friend being “argh!!! Bonnie, why do you use that stupid plastic box”. Now, I found myself being like that to some of my less conscience friends. I wouldn’t sound that harsh, but it has been slowly taking effect, at least on a small scale.

So, to conclude, financial incentives and peer-pressure do motivate people to be more environmentally friendly. Yet education from an early age is also vital to a better environment.

we all have stories

This Wed we had class in the Hub again. But we moved the classroom outside to the park in front of it. We were sitting on the grass, with the very nice sunshine. Sometimes the sun hided behind the clouds then it was a bit cold, but generally a nice weather. Three members from the Hub shared their stories with us. I found two of them really interesting and inspiring.

Part1
One woman was born in Israel with a Persian dad from Israel, and a Dutch mom. I could not get her Dutch name right. She studied social science back in school, and wrote her thesis on diversity from diversified background, how layers, business, social worker, etc. think about diversity. She chose this topic because she found it amazing that we can live together with different ideas. However, we sometimes unavoidably have conflict, so she wants to know how to make different ideas co-exist. I think I am a bit like her. I like different kinds of ideas, and like to present different ideas to people, especially those who only saw one side of the stories.

She traveled all over the world, and gets ideas from a lot of different sources. She said if she had kids, she would force them to travel around and get different ideas. I found I have a lot of similar ideas with her. I think it is very important to have an idea of different views. A lot of times, there is not the one and only right answer, but all the solutions have their own goods and bads. I also think it is very important to have different experiences. And one way to do this for me is to take cross-discipline courses. The other way is to go to different places, and talk to different peoples and try to understand them.

Back to her story, she finished her degree and started working with some organizations to help developing the countries who are suffering. She once joined UN to help Rwanda to rebuild, but turned out it was nothing she wanted to do. What UN, or some of the other big organizations is doing is to rebuild a Rwanda based on the western standards. Basically, they are making a copy of a developed country in Rwanda, because they think the western world is a stable world, so if things work well there, it must be good for Rwanda. But she believed local problems should have local solutions, they can't just adopt an existing model and ignore the difference. Confused and unhappy with what big NGOs are doing, she set out to travel again and look for ideas that suits her value and belief.

During that trip, she got to know the hub. where you do not need to go around yourself and look for ideas, but you set up a base, a connecting point, a hub where you attract different ideas to come to you.

I have heard of the Hub before, and I was very much attracted to the co-working idea where members transparently share information and ideas with each other, and thus build up an innovative community that is based on trust and synergy instead of competition. I do believe that competition brings efficiency, but collaboration could bring unexpected inspirations and support. The competition motivation is built on the assumption that people are rational individuals seeking for profit maximization, while the co-working idea is built on the assumption that people are social beings who seeks the profit maximization of a community. These assumptions, based on philosophers like Marx are ideologies that does not reflect the reality, but rather, are made to believe. Because we believe in the rational behavior theory or we started to doubt about it, I do not see why we can't believe in the community theory or at least test the assumption. Hence, I am very much interested in starting the Hub in Shanghai.

I talked to Nynke who is now working part-time there, who was also in the company in ecology class 2 years ago, to see if she can tell me more about setting up a Hub in Shanghai, and she told me that I could join their community lunch next Tuesday, and talk to more people there, who might give me advices.

Part 2
It's a story of Frank Renaud, who used to work in a club in Rotterdam as a marketing director. He thinks he's so cool. He has a cool job, cool friends. He even has a cool dog. But his sister disagreed him. She told him that he was so cool that he was ice cold. He coulsdn't even have a stable loving relationship. So she signed up a coaching workshop for him. I couldn't remember the name of the workshop, but it is so uncool. But the workshop helped him to realize that while he was busy being cool, he was actually afraid of somethingelse deep down. He was afraid of failure, so he had a strong urge to be cool to show that he is not a loser. After he realized this, he decided to challenge himself to deal with his fear. And that is to make something impossible possible.

Frank loves music. so he wants to do something impossible but related to music. Then he decided that it must be impossible to let the deaf people enjoy music, so he started his journey to make this impossible possible, and he start organizing parties for deaf people. Those parties are enjoyed by both the hearing and deaf people. They seek all kinds of ways to transfer the mood from the music to the hearing-aid. They would install viberating dance floor, aroma jockey, light effect, vj, and even some massage jockey. They have, so far, done the party in africa, south america, and a lot of times in Europe.

Frank felt he had made this possible. He felt very achieving by bring music into the life of the deaf. And he had successfully integrated the life of both the hearing and the deaf. The hearing aided people usually live a very isolated life from the society. They have their own community. And the hearing people also don't know how to communicate with the hearing-aided. There was just no communication going in between. But such a party where both the hearing and the aided peope participate in a common social experience, and witness the same happenings, encouraged the understanding and communication of both parties. Frank said he has never felt so happy before when he see the hearing-aided people dancing with the hearing people. He could have never felt that way when he was having his “cool” life.

Frank then extented his party to mental hospitals for the first time last year. But he was very dispointed at the party because most of the mentally challenged people do not seem to be enjoying the party. They do not seem to be as happy as the other people in the party. Frank felt failure, but he got to know the other side of the story during the even evaluation meeting with the hospital administration. They were very happy with the party and would very much like to have another one. Frank was frustrated, how could they like the party when they are not even enjoying the music. The doctors told him that for some patients, they could never sit still for more than 10 minutes and watch a TV program, but during the party, they have been sitting there the whole night. That has been their largest progress in their healing. Frank was moved. He finally realized that different people are looking for different things in life, and his party can give so many of these different things to them. He finally felt everything has paid off, and he has been successful.

My take-a-way from this class was that all 3 of the guest speakers was lost in their journey at one point or another. But one day, they found something they are passionate about, then everything worked out. It is okey to wonder, but we should not give up our dreams.
Additionally, money is not the largest problem. There are a lot of ppl who loves ideas, and don't care too much about money, but would love to help you if your idea is good enough.

Follow up: I went to join the Hub, Rotterdam for a community lunch this Tuesday (10th, May). And they gave me a lot of ideas about how to get started. So, for now, I would take the chance of my next travel month in June to visit the other Hubs in other cities like Stockholm, Zurich, etc. And I could use some time to do an internship in one of the hubs in the world and get to know the operations.

walking in darkness

I was talking to a friend today about my last tree hugging experience. He became very interested in the blind folding experience, and said that there is a dark restaurant in Shanghai where people dine in absolute darkness. And some customers say the dark room makes them focus more on the taste of the food.

I haven't eaten in darkness, but walking in darkness is another interesting experience. Not knowing the situation I am in could make me anxious. And I would start to make contingency plans. But one can never plan for change, because change is always faster than plan. Some psychologist study suggested that we are afraid of darkness because we have not overcame the fear human being suffered during ancient times that they might be eaten by beast after dark through. Evolution hasn't help us realize that there is no beast in the civilized world. It's interesting how after living in a civilized word for some twenty years, knowing no beast will eat us, we are sometimes still afraid of darkness.

Kafka gives another explanation. He thinks the thing we are really afraid of is not darkness, but uncertainty. We are afraid of unable to plan ahead and thus loss control. But after living for some twenty years, we should also have noticed that sometimes, the plan just does not work something happened and we lost control and don't know what to do. So maybe it is time we start enjoy not to have a plan sometime, and let our life lead us. Planning is indeed making choices, while making choices indeed means forgo chances. We try to debate and calculate, and try to utilize by choosing the one with the minimal opportunity cost. But life is continuous. The “best” choice you made now is very likely to close a door somewhere later in your life. It sounds depressing, What might sound more depressing is that life is also unrepeatable. I sometimes wish life is an experiment where I can control variables and see the results. But we can't re-live. How we live is just like how we walk in darkness. We do not know where the way lead to. One path we chose will lead us further away from something, and it is difficult to find our way back to the original point. However, most importantly, life is full of surprises. So why don't we give up control and let others lead the way sometime. It might open up a whole different world.

I found when I travel without a travel book, I aways find something out of expectation, be it a witty graffiti on the wall, or a restaurant of great value. While if I travel with a guide, I am basically going through all the touristic places and tick my list. If you want to find the gem in life, let life lead you. You will be surprised what darkness has to offer.

Companies VS. Ecologies

Yesterday in the botanical garden I met my friend Renaud who studied landscape architecture and now working in the garden as an internship. He was curious what course we are taking in there. So I told him it's Companies in Ecologies, and it is a business elective.

"But isn't business, economies in contradict with ecologies?" he asked.

Well, yes in a way. It depends on the ideology you believe in. If one believes in the shareholder model which is to maximize the profit of shareholders, it might seem right that companies and ecologies can't co-exist. But if you believe in the stake-holder model that a company should engage in the interests of all the relevant parties in the society, then being ecologically friendly should just be one of the many goals a company seeks.

While I have some other friends who are anarchies, and hate anything that is capitalist or materialist. For them, any company is just an evil organization destroying the world and our brain. When they heard that I am taking this curse,they acted in the way like I am joking. Pfft, companies just want to earn money, their so-called sustainable development is just to please the consumers, and it is some what a fetishism for the company now to be eco-friendly.

Well, it is difficult to tell the real intention of the companies. As sometimes we don't even know the real intention why we do certain things ourselves. Maybe we want to be green so that we can be included in a friend group we like. Who knows? But we can't deny that companies are now the engines of the society, whether it is a lucky thing or not. To save the planet, we need all powers possible. If companies are willing to make changes and participate in the green revolution. They should be more than welcome.

As a consumer, we should be happy so see that we are not only the puppets under the marketing tools, but now we are channeling the companies to use practices that pleases us. However, then, to please part of the consumers who care about the environment, companies raises awareness among other consumers who might not initially realize the seriousness of the environmental problems. So companies and consumers depend on each other to realize their goals. There should not be hatred in between, but collaborations.