THIS is fascinating. Where our world is going…very fast.
March 2nd, 2010
Lessons learned from hosting the 2010 Winter Games
February 24th, 2010In the late months of 1997, the 2010 Winter Games were a twinkle in the eyes of Bruce McMillan and Rick Antonson of Tourism Vancouver, and then Canucks owner, Arthur Griffiths. It was a buoyant time in Vancouver. The economy was humming along. Tourism was growing. We believed in a better Vancouver. We were innocent of the world-changing events of 2001. At that point, the wheels were set in motion for Vancouver to compete against other Canadian cities to win the right to host the 2010 Winter Games. Thirteen years is a long way out to foresee how these Games might be perceived in 2010. Sometimes you just need to take a shot.
A universal truth, however, is that an issue this complex is not so binary that it can be reduced to an either/or concept.
Many people have rightly raised concerns about funding the Games in lieu of other more egalitarian causes. Hosting the Games has been associated with tossing the elderly out of their homes, hiding the homeless and canceling surgeries. Although the rhetoric has been a bit maudlin, much of this may indeed be true. Mistakes and misuse of power exist. I understand the frustration of advocates for the disenfranchised. They have seen Vancouver “gulping the Koolaid” since the Games began. A universal truth, however, is that an issue this complex is not so binary that it can be reduced to an either/or concept.
Spending on culture is never a waste
There was so much angst and anger leading up to the Games about how we could spend money on a “party” rather than health care, education and social housing. There is absolutely no doubt that we must put more into all of these priorities. But this is not all that human beings need.
I cannot imagine a modern society where physical needs are the only concern. People are recharged and psychologically fed by interacting with society. The ancient practice of meeting in marketplaces and forums is critical to our well being. The eloquent part of that interaction is through the arts. The arts allow us to imagine, to stretch beyond our human form and to escape the day-to-day of just getting by.
I don’t really think anyone but a handful of people had any idea what the Games would do to the streets of Vancouver. We have poured into them, talking to each other, shouting and clapping and laughing. I’ve seen people break into spontaneous dance and song. Street performers, singers, artists, designers, actors and musicians have pulled us out of our February doldrums and shown us how amazing Vancouver can really be. People say that they want more and they want it to continue. Who can blame them?
We have peeked out beyond our parochial viewpoints and enjoyed the presence of our global family.
We like the world
Vancouverites seem to have discovered that it’s pretty cool to have the world show up. We saw it during Expo ’86 to some degree, but a lot of the people who are now seeing this were babies in 1986. We have peeked out beyond our parochial viewpoints and enjoyed the presence of our global family. A big part of what the Olympics is about is making the world a better place. One of the three Olympic ideals is to “build a peaceful and better world through sport”. That is a very succinct statement but captures issues of the environment, culture and social need. It is a fact that exposure to new ideas makes us more tolerant, more generous and helps us to think more broadly.
We could have done better
Oh, yes. We could have done it better. Not one thing, done by anyone, anywhere at any time has ever been flawless. The Olympic effort as been no exception. There are some big blights on these Olympics. The heavy-handedness with which brand management was handled is now infamous. Not everyone got equal billing. First Nations got too much, and they got too little. Our cultural mosaic was not represented well enough for many. The balance of opinions was not represented. Bad people ruined the legitimate protest of good people.The litany of wrongs is long and bitter.
We have amassed a knowledge cache from this that can be put to good use — from funding formulas that work and don’t work to the unerring reliability of the Zamboni.
So what do we do with that? We have amassed a knowledge cache from this that can be put to good use—from funding formulas that work and don’t work to the unerring reliability of the Zamboni. The populace has discovered in staggering numbers that public transit works quite well and I think we’ll see far more use of it going forward. We’ve had time to stare at what being Canadian is about. Perhaps now we’ll have a better idea of how to define ourselves to the world.
Would we do it again?
That’s a great question. I think that we may have collectively realized that this wasn’t such a bad experience. I suspect we will see some long-term economic growth from it, however incremental. If you believe that economic growth increases our ability to fund the social safety net, then economic growth will be a good thing for everyone in Vancouver and the province of BC, not just the privileged.
I think that hosting the 2010 Games was good for our collective psyche. We found out a lot about ourselves and about others. We figured out how to pull together.
If we do something like this again, we will do it better. We need to embrace legitimate protest and honor it, listening carefully to what it asks us to see. We need to consider an even broader perspective of legacies than even these groundbreaking Games managed to do. And, hopefully, we’ll do it while we still have that valuable cache of knowledge at hand. If that is wasted, it will indeed be a lesson lost.
Casey Hrynkow, Partner
Herrainco Brand Strategy + Design Inc.
“Wood fibre: the oil of the next decade”
December 3rd, 2009I heard this odd headline on the radio today: the oil of the next decade….wood…I could hear the execs at several forestry companies I know high-fiving themselves all the way from Granville Island.
But, I’m thinking maybe we’ve done the save the trees thing to death. No argument with the idea that we were mowing down old growth faster than a small lawn, but we still need wood and the people who know how to harvest it. And we still need fibre.
I believe we have lulled ourselves into complacency thinking that using computers has somehow saved the earth from a catastrophe. But no action is possible without an equal and opposite reaction, if I remember my physics correctly. We may need to consider using fibre as a resource going forward. Not necessarily all wood fibre, but we need fibre. I think there is a way to make it work, to the benefit of our planet. Goodness knows, it’s time to have a look.
In the interest of full disclosure, I am cribbing from facts presented in ”This is Ed, #13 Balance” presented by the New Page Corporation — a paper company in Miamisburg, Ohio. And I am a child of the westcoast, home of one of North America’s primary softwood lumber resources. But facts are piling up from other sources that compel me to go toe-to-toe with the status quo, an attitude I’ve had trouble carrying around my whole life.
Now, here’s a bit of a pin to burst the “paperless era” bubble. 200 million items of e-waste are thrown away every year in the U.S. alone. You may have seen the images of peasants in Guiyu, China scrambling over piles of mercury (and worse) laden computer waste. It’s just getting shipped where no one in the western world has to look at it or think about what it’s doing to people and the planet.
Here are some more facts:
> 70% of toxic waste in the U.S. comes from e-waste
> Burning a CD produces 4 times as much CO2 as printing a single annual report
> Spam emails sent annually have the footprint of driving a car aound the globe 1.6 million times.
> 57% of the paper consumed in the U.S. was recovered for recycling in 2008, while only 18% of the three million tons of electronic waste in the U.S. is recycled. (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency)
Electronic devices, particularly older ones, contain numerous hazardous materials that are harmful to human health and the environment. Lead, mercury, arsenic, barium, beryllium, cadmium, chromium, to name just a few — all are increasingly finding their way to the water table through landfills around the world. Source
Over my years on this planet, I have observed that we as human beings are compelled to polarize. For the majority of us, it’s either black or it’s white. Forestry bad. Greenpeace good. Socialism bad. Free enterprise good.
Come on, people. Think about it. It’s not that simple. If it was, we would have it all solved by now. We are complex beings. There is a lot to consider. And yes, we only have one planet. But it must sustain not just the albino bears and the maiden hair ferns, but us as well. So how do we find a balance?
We have to think not just with our hearts, but with our minds. We have learned to use resources. Now we need to learn to use them judiciously. In balance. With care. Wood is a sustainable resource, properly managed. Never mind hemp, grasses and all other manner of quick growing fibre. We also need our computers. I, for one, will not give up blogging. But, once again, everything in moderation.
My overall point is that we have all but crushed the forestry industry in the last decade. I saw it coming in the early 80s. We had forestry clients. I asked them if they were paying attention. They laughed — and now they’re all gone. Every one of them that we worked for is NO MORE. There were good people working in all of them. People who cared about nematodes and bitsy thingies that lived in the soil and supported biodiversity. They were passionate about living things. It’s not black. Nor is it white. If there is good in this world, so there is evil. We need to be watchful. But we need also to consider not running repeatedly from starboard to port. The boat will sink.
Think about it.
Casey Hrynkow, Partner
Herrainco Brand Strategy + Design Inc.
Who is entitled to design?
October 2nd, 2009Ray and I got into a lively discussion tonight about the accessibility of design. We talked about the philosophy behind the Bauhaus. Was it elite? Was it socialist? For those disinclined to dig for ‘what the heck Bauhaus was about’, my take (and anyone is invited to disagree with me here) is that there was an overarching concept of universality in reaction to the industrial revolution that sought a return to more purity and simplicity, as well as things that were hand-crafted. However, at the time, I believe that the aesthetic as geared to a “trained” eye — someone who valued the “no frills” philosophy of the deutscher werkbund which created entire homes in this image — from walls to furniture. As altruistic as it was, it still offered something so different from the aesthetic of the time that I can imagine that it may have been seen as aseptic to the “common man”. I should mitigate my comment by saying that, clearly, it was a movement with legs as it has informed the enduring modernist movement, an aesthetic which I greatly admire.
I do feel more comfortable, though, in the presence of objects that have more humanistic intent. I said to Ray that I thought Phillipe Starke gave usable things personalities and stories. I like that concept and thought it was compelling. Ray aptly pointed out that, try as he might to make his chatckas affordable, Phillipe Starke has been forced to worship at the alter of profit, just like everyone else. His creations are relegated to being described — and priced— as exclusive. Industrial designer Yves Behar of fuseproject believes in this storytelling and takes it further.His $100 laptop has gone further to make design more accessible. But then there’s the problem of giving laptops to kids who just need three squares or even a daily allotment of clean water.
So, does design need to be affordable to be accessible? Does making it affordable make it truly accessible? Is it only for the rich or the highly educated? Can altruism hide its products from profiteers? I think it all warrants some thought.
Casey Hrynkow, Partner
Herrainco Brand Strategy + Design Inc.
Teach Children Creativity. Save the World. Design Thinking in Action.
October 1st, 2009
Design Can Solve the World’s Problems
September 30th, 2009Using Design Thinking
September 29th, 2009I’d like to share a link to a Ted Talk by Tim Brown of IDEO. It beautifully illustrates what design has grown up to be, or is starting to grow up to be. Design thinking is transferable to problem solving in every realm and, in fact, is a way to break down old paradigms and think far more creatively. Design thinking is special, and it’s this thinking, not any lovely artifact or output produced by it, that makes design one of the most important professions of our time. In Tim Brown’s examples, “big” problems of hunger, thirst and poverty are illustrated. But shortcomings in our western world can also be solved by design thinking. When we think outside of artifacts — products, books, posters — and think about culture and understanding, we solve meaningful problems, produce less junk and make people’s lives richer if not better.
Casey Hrynkow, Partner
Herrainco Brand Strategy + Design Inc.
Nice Nugget from Seth Godin’s Blog
September 25th, 2009Cultural Wisdom
It’s very easy to underrate the value of cultural wisdom, otherwise known as sophistication.
Walk into a doctor’s office and the paneling is wrong, the carpeting is wrong and it feels dated. Instant lack of trust.
Meet a salesperson in your office. She doesn’t shake hands, she’s fumbling with an old Filofax, she mispronounces Steve Jobs’ name and doesn’t make eye contact.
Visit a website for a vendor and it looks like one of those long-letter opportunity seeker type sites.
In each case, the reason you wrote someone off had nothing to do with their product and everything to do with their lack of cultural wisdom.
We place a high value on sophistication, because we’ve been trained to seek it out as a cue for what lies ahead. We figure that if someone is too clueless to understand our norms, they probably don’t understand how to make us a product or service that we’ll like.
This is even more interesting because different cultures have different norms, so there isn’t one right answer. It’s an ever changing, complex task. Cultural wisdom is important precisely because it’s difficult.
And yet…
Who’s in charge of cultural norms at your organization? Does someone hire or train or review to make sure you and your people are getting it right? At Vogue magazine, of course, that’s all they do. If they lost it, even for a minute, they’d be toast.
It’s funny that we assume that all sorts of complex but ultimately unimportant elements need experts and committees and review, but the most important element of marketing–demonstrating cultural wisdom–shouldn’t even be discussed.
Spec strikes again and Eric Karjaluoto of Vancouver’s SmashLAB Responds
August 11th, 2009This is SO tiresome. People insist that designers should work for free when everyone else gets paid. Something to do with the misconception that design work is some sort of hobby. Eric Karjuloto has a wonderful response to a “contest” by author, Tim Ferriss, here.
Seth Godin’s Wisdom
July 23rd, 2009From Seth Godin’s Blog, this is too good not to share.
You’ve probably seen it. The fish monger sees a decline in business, so they have less money to spend on upkeep and inventory, so they keep the fish a bit longer and don’t clean up as often, so of course, business declines and then they have even less money… Eventually, you have an empty, smelly fish store that’s out of business.
The doctor has fewer patients so he doesn’t invest as much in training or staff and so some other patients choose to leave which means that there are even fewer patients…
The newspaper has fewer advertisers, so they can’t invest as much in running stories, so people stop reading it, which means advertisers have less reason to advertise which leaves less money for stories…
As Tom Peters says, “You can’t shrink your way to greatness,” and yet that’s what so many dying businesses try to do. They hunker down and wait for things to get better, but they don’t. This isn’t a dip, it’s a cul de sac. It’s over.
Right this minute, you still have some cash, some customers, some momentum… Instead of squandering it in a long, slow, death spiral, do something else. Buy a new platform. Move. Find new products for the customers that still trust you.
Change is a bear, but it’s better than death.
Ray Hrynkow is Herrainco’s senior designer and strategist. 
Casey Hrynkow has been creating compelling ideas for over 25 years.