“Be the change you wish to see”: Back to TEDxBeirut?
Posted by: adonis49 on: January 25, 2012
“Be the change you wish to see”: Back to TEDxBeirut?
Count on Lebanese to review past event, like the TEDxBeirut that was held in late September. This time around, it is worthwhile a serious recollection of this non-profit project that came through with flying color. It was a great event that required 6 months preparation and the exhausting last month, which prevented two dozens in the board from getting a couple of sleep daily.
A few members in the organizing board had quit secure and well-paying jobs, a few risked being fired by spending work-hours doing something else other than their paying work, a few stacked up phone bills of around a $1,000, and a few shifted the entire focus of their consultancy towards a non profitable project.
I have posted four articles on TEDxBeirut, and on Jan. 23, YOUSSEF Chaker published his version of the event under “Be the change you wish to see in the world”.
Youssef wrote (with slight editing): “I told my co-founders and our interim board members to fuck off (a big deal for an entrepreneur who poured everything into his startup for the past year). The stories of individuals, sacrificing so much for this non-profit project, span the entire group of VOLUNTEERS that come from varied backgrounds (including different countries) who worked around the clock, for days on end, to bring to Lebanon an event of a different caliber.
TEDxBeirut wasn’t about the speakers and the big names featured on the program. The theme for TEDxBeirut 2011 was “From Limitation to Inspiration.” What people outside of the TEDxBeirut organizing team didn’t realize is that it was a theme for the journey the team went through.
TEDx events (x = independently organized TED event) are special no matter where they are held in the world, but in a country like Lebanon, organizing such an event comes with its own set of difficulties. Unless you are a well-known group or company backed by some good contacts, getting past the paperwork alone is an overreaching goal.
When Patsy thought out loud about organizing a TEDx event in Beirut, she was merely expressing a wish (maybe some event company would make it happen). Little did she know that she was going to be the one spearheading the effort to see her dream go from idea to reality. And this is why I say it was an event of a different caliber.
It wasn’t the major players and usual suspects who were behind the event, but it was, according to many attendee testimonials, one of the best organized and professional events that people in Beirut have ever experienced.
Now why am I talking about an event that’s more than 3 months old? I promise you it will all come together at the end of this post. Bare with me as I take you through parts of the journey that will explain to you why if we ever talk about Lebanon, I might say something along the lines of “I live in a different Lebanon than you do!”
What I experienced during the days leading up to TEDxBeirut was only a fraction of what some people went through before I had joined. But I got the opportunity on many occasions to sit back and take a distant view of the behavior of the team members. It’s important to mention the HUGE differences on all levels among the people involved.
This organizing group was a typical Lebanese blend (makhlouta) like mixed nuts in interests, skills, personalities, backgrounds, education, all of it was different. But the situation was atypical: There was a common goal. The entire team was working on a single goal, with no personal interest at all. We were all volunteers.
None of us was gaining anything from participating in this effort on a personal level. I saw people work their ass off, to put together a one day event in Lebanon, knowing that with the Lebanese mentality all they were going to get in return were complaints and criticism because the Lebanese are never pleased.
It didn’t matter, we were doing something that we cared about, that we wanted to see happen, and if others wanted to be part of it that would be great. Keep in mind, when Patsy started organizing the event, she meant it to be for about a hundred or so people. The expectation was bumped up to 300, and again to 800, to eventually get an 800 seated audience and about 200 other people sitting on the stairs in the theater or watching the stream in a different room (not to mention those who tuned in for the live stream on the web)!
Exposure, recognition, TV spots or seats in the parliament were never the objective, this time around.
I urge you to take a moment and let that last paragraph sink in. It might not impress you at first, you might think it’s weak, your reaction might be meh, so what, what a big deal… But take a moment to put it in perspective. We are talking about a “do it yourself” mentality coupled with a “do it FOR yourself, fuck everyone else” attitude…
I am an entrepreneur, I don’t mean to keep mentioning it just for the sake of rubbing it in, there’s a mindset at the root of it. It is important to understand that so much goes into planning an event of this caliber. It takes certain personality traits, but also education and culture to foster such a mentality, which is not the case for most people in the world (especially Lebanese people).
And not only is it not part of our upbringing, it’s also discouraged in favor of ‘secure’ jobs: We are reminded most of the time that individuals not seeking stable secure jobs are different, geniuses, basically not us. With TEDxBeirut, the group of individuals who participated broke that mold. They showed that ideas belong to everyone, and the execution is as possible for the common person as it is for the likes of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
TEDxBeirut created a platform and an opportunity for other members of the community to follow suit. Donner Sang Compter (Give Blood/Without Counting, a play on words) is an initiative, by student founder Yorgui Teyrouz, to promote blood donations in Lebanon in an organized and continuous manner and raise awareness about the importance of contributing. 
Yorgui Teyrouz talk at TEDxBeirut
“The impact that TEDxBeirut had on this idea was inspirational! Straight after the talk, a queue of “imaginers” wanted to help bring the idea to life. At home my inbox was already loaded with sign-ups, and the twitter and Facebook accounts with mentions and messages.”
The Lebanese community is a very capable group of people who unfortunately have been dormant and passive for many years. But all it takes is one person to get the ball rolling and action starts happening: “Together, we moved from one idea – Imagination Studio – to 22 brilliant ideas that can be put in action right now, right here, with the support of voluntary teams!”
Imagination Studio happened, and an open call for volunteers took place for people to contribute in their own way and using their own expertise to solving a problem. Joanna compiled a list of people interested in contributing along with the actionable ideas that need to be implemented. The effort is still in its beginnings.
I am sure many of the skeptics out there who are used to bringing down others who are pushing for change will say that nothing will come out of Imagination Studio. There might be plenty of obstacles and many discouraging days, but what TEDxBeirut has demonstrated is that the only obstacle between us and change is ourselves and our own doubt. Everything else can and will be overcome.
Imagination Studio FunThe TEDx movement is hard to explain, and hard to explain in terms of impact, or for the business people out there in terms of ROI. But it does have the IT factor that you do experience once you take part. No wonder there’s a book being written about it by an author who’s traveled to a dozen or so countries in 2011 and attended about 30 TEDx events and will attend double that number in 2012.
At the moment, the efforts might be on a small-scale. But we have a blueprint for social change that can be the example and inspiration for others. One pretty well-kept secret, which I’m sharing with you right now, is TEDxSKE.
TEDxSKE is a weekly gathering where a bunch of us (not just TEDxBeirut team members) get together to watch TED and TED like talks (TEDxSKE is run by Patsy who is licensed by TED which is a requirement to run TEDx events, but any group can get together and do the same without using the TED name although the license is not hard to get).
TEDxSKE was the precursor to TEDxBeirut and has grown since then. The activity changes from one week to the other, usually around a certain theme. It is not limited to TED talks alone, it could be any idea worth sharing. Of course, the evening doesn’t stop at the video/talk level.
The highlight of these gatherings is usually the discussions or activities (games) that we participate in between talks. And the result varies from one person to the other. I can not claim to know the effect that TEDxSKE has on each and every one of us, not even on myself. As this is an ongoing thing, a process of growth for all of us.
I can tell you that I see the change in the others and they see it in themselves as well. Some of us are trying to find out who we are, why we are on this planet and what we are supposed to be doing. Others are looking to affect change. And a few are, for the first time ever, getting exposed to alternate points of view.
TEDxSKEers are discovering aspects of their own personalities that they did not know about themselves, broadening their horizon and challenging their beliefs. And trust me, this is not poetry or empty talk. This is paraphrased directly from the participants themselves. TEDxSKE is a collective of passionate and motivated people who are a support system for each other. Many of whom are or will be important pillars in the social entrepreneurship change in Lebanon in the coming years.
It might be a tad bit early to talk about results and accomplishments, but it is not too late, nor too early to talk about inspiration or even a different kind of movement in a country that has not adopted the Tunisian or Egyptian model of the Arab Spring. So when you drive or walk around Beirut, and you think about the potholes, the traffic and the corruption that Lebanon represents to you, remember that there is another Lebanon. A Lebanon you are more than welcomed to be part of, where DSC and Imagination Studio are not just ideas and where Thursdays (replaced by Tuesdays) are for the spoken poetry and arts club… Such a thing exists, stay tuned for more details.
It’s another kind of Lebanon which promotes action over wishful thinking, local change over change of country of residency. Just remember, be the change you want to see in the world.
A few cultures find math easy: many cultures have difficulties
Posted by: adonis49 on: January 22, 2012
A few cultures find math easy: many cultures have difficulties
Do you think math abilities is genetic? Not quite, apparently. Do you think that math is just a matter of manipulating numbers? Not quite, apparently. There are at least four main factors that promote math thinking and abilities:
First factor: There are indications that math aptitude is generated from customs of persistent habit in resolving problems. It appears that doing well in Math is related to engaged attitudes for working hard: The more persistent and resolved to solve a problem, the longer your attitude to be engaged in what you do, the better you are in math.
For example, people in culture working in rice fields that require constant and hard effort all year round do better in math than other people who just saw, forget the field for a season, and just reap in the proper season. A rice paddy, the size of a room, is built from the ground up, irrigated frequently at the proper level, and constantly maintained and worked 360 days a years, rain or shine…A rice paddy is literally “blood” and sweat and waking up everyday at 5 am to tend to the paddies: The rice peasant and his family have to tend to the adequate amount of water, varieties of proper rice shoots, cleaning each plant from parasites…If you need good quality and two harvest, you have got to sacrifice blood, sweat, persistence, endurance…The survival in rice planting culture is very delicate, and working hard with resolve is a way of life.
Second factor: Cultures with vocal numbers that are reduced to single syllables do better than culture complicating the utterance of simple numbers with long string of syllables. Why? Kids of 5 year-old, instead of focusing on manipulating numbers, spend many precious years just memorizing how to say and comprehend verbal numbers. Our short-term memory of a couple of seconds can handle ten syllables, and if the numbers are of single syllable, kids are better at memorizing and recalling strings of 10 numbers in any order they are presented: Digits are fun and no longer a complicated manipulation of transformations from the verbal to the numeric dimensions…
Third factors: Cultures with logical correspondence between the vocalized numbers and the digits do better than other cultures in math. For example, what eleven (11) has to do with one and ten? Or the French number 93 (quatre vingt threize) has to do with nine tens and three? Instead of first transforming a complicated vocalized number before figuring out its corresponding digital number, the Cantonese Chinese culture has arranged to say the numbers the way they are written logically.
For example, how would you keep in your short-term memory two numbers such as two hundred and forty-five (245) and seven hundred and twenty-one (721)? Suppose these two numbers are vocalized as (two hundred four ten and five), and ( seven hundred two ten and one), which would constitute 10 syllables since each number is of a single syllable, the kids in which culture would have a qualitative edge in manipulating numbers and math?
Adding and subtracting the two numbers are straightforward in Cantonese: The digits are plainly arranged for computation, and you don’t need several mental transformations before you get to the task of adding…
Kids of 3 year-old in a particular culture have more facility with math than kids of over 5 year-old in other cultures, simply because they don’t need to undergo several mental manipulations and having to retrieve from the various working memory data and information stored in verbal forms and complicated shapes…
Culture relying mainly on trading variety of goods end up devising a coded language for transactions, mainly by truncating the verbal numbers and shortening the sentences in transactions: I guess, lengthy verbal numbers originally adopted in the language are truncated when transacting goods…
Four, kids who are trained to solve all the math problems and exercises after each math chapters, from the easiest to the hardest, in neat and legible handwriting, do better than kids who have no patience of solving but what they consider to be harder than the other problems, and don’t care to sit down and put down on paper how they solved the problem…
This practice of solving all the math problems and exercises has this huge benefit of spending 10,000 hours in math practice-sessions, a requirement to getting top among math professionals…
Curiously, kids and students who excel in math have acquired the habit of focusing entirely on the lesson in class.
Maybe the second and third factors don’t translate well into the abstract domain of mathematics in the long-term, simply because the kids get used to relying very much on their short-term memory and fail to train adequately their working memory for other kinds of intelligence and abilities. But the first and fourth factors are essential for doing great in math.
Note: This post was inspired from a chapter in “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell
Do you smile at a hot loaf of bread offered to you? I’ll tell you what I smile at…The Maslow’s Pyramid?
Posted by: adonis49 on: January 21, 2012
Do you smile at a hot loaf of bread offered to you? I’ll tell you what I smile at…
What is this Maslow’s Pyramid? Abraham Maslow was a psychologist who identified in the 1940′s a simple and easily understandable set of human needs that motivate mankind. The pyramid is a structured hierarchy of needs starts from basic needs for satisfying physiological needs such as eating, drinking, sleeping… and stepping up to satisfying feeling of security and order, then growing emotional needs to belonging socially (to love and be loved), achieving the yearning to be respected and recognized, and finally working toward self-fulfilment…
And many “professionals” in all kinds of social and psychological fields bought it and programmed us according to this “rational” concept, which lacks the necessary experimentation
There is a book by Paul W. King “Climbing Maslow’s Pyramid: Choosing your own path through life” who is regurgitating this pyramid concept of mankind priority needs and wants. King starts his pyramid with confidence and self-esteem, the next step in the hierarchy is sex, love, relationships, and followed by spirituality and meditation, upgrading to appreciation of beauty, form and balance, before reaching the urge for self-fulfilment, of whatever that mean…
If you were offered a hot loaf of bread, would you smile at the gesture? I am confident if this bread (hot, cold, dry, or moulted…) is extended to a famished kid in Somalia, and the billion kids and adults living on less than one dollar a day, they will display a broad smile, and laugh their heart out for this opportunity to surviving the day…
If you are not in such a dire need for your daily intake of bread, corn flakes, rice… would you smile for a hot loaf, bowl of soup…?
How many kids recall eating, drinking, pissing, shitting, feeling that cold…? They don’t recall these basic needs. Why? They felt “secure” that the family, extended family, and restricted community will cover these basic needs. The kids in a secured environment can recall how secured they felt that their basic wants and needs will be satisfied.
Even if you are in a boarding school and rarely see you parents, you still don’t recall eating, drinking… The institution was meant to satisfying the basic needs, but you may recall the instances you felt insecure and scared.
An orphan not cared for, kids displaced from their known communities, forcefully detached from their families…do recall these rare occasions when they were offered a hot loaf of bread, a candy, a bar of chocolate…and do recall the face of the benevolent “intruder” into their harsh life…
If you were offered a hot loaf of bread, would you smile at the gesture? Maybe not. If you were lost, you certainly will smile to a friendly face you come to cross. If you were freezing outside, you will smile to someone who offers you a warm and clean bed. If you had no bath for weeks, you will smile to the opportunity of dipping in a jacuzzi, having your cloth washed and dried…
First come security for survival: mainly, finding the group, the community ready to shelter your “insecurities” and all the other needs follows…
How can you acquire any self-confidence if the basic need for security is lacking? Anyone who claims: “I made it all by myself, all by my self-effort and determination…” is a veteran liar. Without your community, there is no chance you could have survived your first days, year first month, your first year…
What is this “self-fulfilment”? If you managed to accumulated enough money for your retirement period and can afford not to cater for your daily chores, because billion people are still slaving to maintain your comfort zone, what kinds of activities do you think may fulfil your various satisfaction? Would you be able to survive a day without thinking of the multitude aching and laboring for your”self-fulfilment”?
Don’t you feel that tackling your daily chores like sweeping your home, doing your dishes, washing your cloths..,.when you can afford to pay someone else, are opportunities to enjoying what you were forced to do before ”self-fulfilment”? Doing what the free starts doing when slaves should be doing…
Do you believe that you are unable to appreciate beauty, forms…until all the other lower necessities are satisfied? Do you think mankind survive sequentially or because he can process many needs and wants in many parallel ways, and negotiate his survival at every single moment…?
I have two basic beefs with this kind of structure:
First, “rational” systems that are not fully substantiated are far more dangerous in consequences than systems based on hunches…
Second, this pyramid is not standing right and is wrong…
For example, Freedom is an abstract concept, until your phrase it into “How many choices are you willing to handle, and reflect upon the every aspect of daily living chores and future aspiration and passions…” For example, if your passion is for a particular school teaching system, and the State government intentionally impose severe hurdles into instituting your teaching method, would you feel your freedom has been abridged? If the State facilitate the practice of your passion in your particular school system, would you demonstrate with others who have other passions that the same political system prohibit?
Note 1: Paul W. King was born in India to British parents and is studying at the University of Alberta (Canada). Paul is a professional photographer and a speaker and coaches in giving talks and presentations.
