Category Archives: meaning

cool, data saving lives, meaning, musings, quotes & aphorisms

“The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads… That sucks.” Jeff Hammerbacher

“After a couple years at Facebook, Jeff Hammerbacher grew restless. He figured that much of the groundbreaking computer science had been done. Something else gnawed at him. Hammerbacher looked around Silicon Valley at companies like his own, Google (GOOG), and Twitter, and saw his peers wasting their talents. “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads,” he says. “That sucks.” (…)

“Any generation of smart people will be drawn to where the money is, and right now it’s the ad generation,” says Steve Perlman, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who once sold WebTV to Microsoft for $425 million and is now running OnLive, an online video game service. ” (…)

Hammerbacher: “If instead of pointing their incredible infrastructure at making people click on ads,” he likes to ask, “they pointed it at great unsolved problems in science, how would the world be different today?”

— Jeff Hammerbacher, founder and the Chief Scientist of Cloudera, one of Facebook’s first 100 employees, cited in Ashlee Vance, This Tech Bubble Is Different, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, April 14, 2011

complex adaptive systems, data saving lives, healthcare, meaning, musings, policy, politics, rapid learning health systems

The gist of my concerns…

Post-change makers festival closing event, here’s a first go at capturing my main beefs with the health system – a little rough around the edges but captures the gist:

 

  Appearance Reality Vision
Mission Brittle health system Bankrupt sickness market Sustainable learning wellness market
Universality Universal healthcare Safety net + PHI Universal
Payment Fee for care Fee for activity Fee for outcomes
Leadership Run by experts Run by amateurs Run by the finest minds
Levers Doctors in hospitals prescribing pharmaceuticals and performing procedures Unmanaged social determinants with doctors spruiking pills and procedures Actively managed social determinants featuring broccoli magnates

That said, and given the issues and concerns we discussed, I suspect some (if not all) of what needs to happen, has to happen alongside or entirely outside the existing system. Hmm.

I just returned from the closing event for this: http://changemakersfestival.org/

I didn’t have a chance to properly speak with Jenny about our discussion, but got the impression that there simply wasn’t the kind of support for think tanks here that existed overseas.

That said, I did have a reasonable chat with Nicholas Gruen – an very interesting economist and thinker – and suspect there may be an alternate angle to pursue… will keep you posted.

complex adaptive systems, data saving lives, entrepreneurship, healthcare, healthy habits, meaning, musings, nutrition, policy, quotes & aphorisms, rapid learning health systems, research methodology

The behaviour change arms race…

Behavior change is difficult, but to date it has dominated by industries, such as the processed food industry, who have mastered the art of mass market behaviour change through a withering combination of product research, development and engineering, marketing, advertising and promotion, all founded on an unstoppable and lucrative business model. At this moment in history, industry is the unopposed, global behaviour change super power. Serious capital investment with serious returns but with the unfortunate side-effect of producing a global epidemic of non-communicable disease.

The institutions charged with protecting the public’s health have been caught flat footed. Rather than trying to neutralise industry’s behaviour change efforts, medically-dominated health systems have instead chosen to layer their own lucrative pharmaceutical and surgical business model on top.

Doctors quite legitimately pay lip service to the “diet and exercise” mantra because they know it doesn’t work. And why doesn’t it work? Because anyone can say eat healthier food and exercise, thus making it difficult to justify their years of training and high fees. It’s much better for doctors to note “diet and exercise”, but then pump the drug and surgery options.

So what needs to happen?

A countervailing super power must be established. Not one founded around a powerful business model, but rather a movement of interested citizens, concerned by the grotesque monentization of the population’s health. In effect, a competing super power in the behaviour change arms race.

Key characteristics:

  • protect the children
  • use evidence, but don’t wait for conclusive results
  • empower with data
  • apply political dark arts

Funding sources:

  • social impact bonds
  • crowd sourcing
  • private health insurers
  • government (not a good time for this)

Inspirations

  • Purpose.com
  • GetUp.org.au

 

complex adaptive systems, entrepreneurship, meaning, politics, technology

Jeremy Heimans :: movement entrepreneur

From: Aim higher than president

Movement entrepreneurs are digitally savvy outsiders who create new sources of power by aggregating and mobilizing the voices of many.

Tips:

  • Use institutional power but don’t become institutionalised – small groups of passionate people are lean and nimble and have autonomy are more powerful than those in power.
  • Build a movement, not a cult of personality – less susceptible to cock ups.
  • A movement is not an internet meme – build for the long term.
meaning, musings, storytelling

Purpose :: Tim Dixon – the power of narrative and story telling

Tim Dixon from Purpose gave a terrific presentation at the Progressive Australia conference.

Among the highlights, he referenced this part of Obama’s 2008 Victory Speech.

I spoke with him briefly afterwards and he indicated that Purpose hadn’t explored any movements around public health issues before. I can’t help thinking there’s a huge opportunity to do so, particularly around the global threat of non-communicable disease.

This taps into this article on story telling by Marshall Ganz shared with my by JMC.

Here are some of the slides he presented:

WP_20131103_002 WP_20131103_003WP_20131103_004WP_20131103_005WP_20131103_007WP_20131103_008    

meaning

Regrets of the dying

Terrific insight into what really matters to people at a time in their lives where there’s no point lying any more, collected by a palliative care nurse in the UK.

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

 

Book: Amazon
Huffington Post Article PDF: The Top 5 Regrets Of The Dying
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/03/top-5-regrets-of-the-dying_n_3640593.html