For our most recent post, please go directly to: http://puretimes.org/2010/07/22/daily-purefix-the-new-puretimes-life-in-a-day-turning-into-gods/

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Thanks and see you all soon!

Ryan Fix

for today’s purefix, i wanted to let you all in on an incredible project my new pal kyle westaway is work on.  ’be a biographer’ is an open-source design challenge that invites the general public to help tell stories of victims and survivors of the sex trade industry through their designs.  ’biographe,’ the brand behind this project, promotes the holistic restoration of women exploited from the commercial sex trade in southeast asia, teaching them marketable job skills in fashion design and production, and employs them in a positive work environment while earning a sustainable living wage.

this is the future happening now guys!  please get behind this amazing project and blast it far and wide!

learn more & join the challenge at http://www.beabiographer.com/

Now that you have been inspired, you might want to check out and schedule daily visits to Gratitude Log.  And check out Project GiftED, which is aimed at spreading awareness on the inadequacies of today’s broken education system.  MindValley seems like an incredible place to work!

Have a great day guys!

We are Officially Halfway through the Institute

The Unreasonable Fellows have been busy. In their first five weeks, they have made clean-burning briquettes from waste materials with the founder of Engineers Without Borders. They’ve learned to tell stories from the Executive Producer of Law and Order: SVU, polished their investor pitches with an entrepreneur who has raised $2 billion in funding, formulated plans for globally scaling their ventures with the founder of 7 international companies, and gotten detailed feedback on their business plans from the former Chief Investment Officer and COO of Acumen Fund.

Now, with 29 days remaining, everything they’ve learned is about to be put to the test. In the final weeks of the Institute, they’ll form relationships with twenty-five more mentors, travel more than 3,000 miles, pitch before hundreds of investors at pitch events in San Francisco and in Boulder, allocate $225,000 amongst themselves in seed funding, and prepare to launch progress-defining ventures.

Just a regular summer at the Unreasonable Institute.

West Coast Pitch Fest

West Coach Pitch Fest: Hungry to capitalize on the skills they’ve honed over the past five weeks, our 22 entrepreneurs will be packing into a bus next weekend and traveling 3,000 miles round-trip to the angel investment capital of the world: San Francisco, California. There, they’ll stand before nearly 100 angel investors and philanthropists for 8-minutes each to ask for the capital they need to launch their ventures. Hosted by the Hub Bay Area, Good Capital, the West Coast Pitch Fest will take place at the Hub SoMa at 2:30 PM PDT on Monday, July 19. Get your tickets today!

Unreasonable Global Summit

The Unreasonable Global Summit: The culmination of a summer of mentor-intensive acceleration, the 22 Unreasonable Fellows will each take the stage at the University of Colorado’s ATLAS building On July 31 for 6-minutes to convince the world they deserve the seed capital to launch their ventures. 150 investors, entrepreneurs, and supporters will sit in the audience before them and hundreds more will be watching the web broadcast on www.unreasonable.tv

Join us on Saturday, July 31 from 3:00pm to 7:00pm MDT for what may be four of the most significant hours of your life. Please RSVP here.

Unreasonable TV: Episode 4 Premiers!

Our incredible production team has released 4 episodes of the 10 total episodes documenting the inner workings of the first ever Unreasonable Institute. We invite you inside the walls of the Unreasonable Mansion to witness the struggles and triumphs of the 22 Unreasonable Fellows. Check out Unreasonable TV at www.unreasonable.tv.
]]> http://puretimes.wordpress.com/2010/07/11/nearly-daily-purefix-unreasonable-institute/feed/ 0 40.721563 -73.994322 40.721563 -73.994322 ryanfix http://puretimes.wordpress.com/2010/07/09/not-so-daily-purefix-2012-generation-we-home-movie/ http://puretimes.wordpress.com/2010/07/09/not-so-daily-purefix-2012-generation-we-home-movie/#comments Fri, 09 Jul 2010 23:55:39 +0000 Ryan Fix http://puretimes.wordpress.com/?p=303 ]]> wow, it’s been busy, and hot out there!  sorry it’s been so long!  i have allot of stuff stored up to share, so i’m planning to send out a consistent stream of posts for a bit.  hope everyone is grand.

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2012: Time for change

Went to this incredible screening last night of my friend daniel pinchbeck’s film.  Here is the tailer and info:

“The ultimate crisis we face is a crisis of consciousness.”  Daniel Pinchbeck

“2012: Time for Change is a cross between The Corporation and What the Bleep Do We Know!? This visionary doc is a practical teaching tool connecting anthropology, politics, architecture, history, science, metaphysics, art and ecology…”  Scott Beibin, Lost Film Fest

2012: Time for Change presents an optimistic alternative to apocalyptic doom and gloom.  Directed by Emmy Award nominee João Amorim, the film follows journalist Daniel Pinchbeck, author of the bestselling 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, on a quest for a new paradigm that integrates the archaic wisdom of tribal cultures with the scientific method. As conscious agents of evolution, we can redesign post-industrial society on ecological principles to make a world that works for all. Rather than breakdown and barbarism, 2012 heralds the birth of a regenerative planetary culture where collaboration replaces competition, where exploration of psyche and spirit becomes the new cutting edge, replacing the sterile materialism that has pushed our world to the brink.

FEATURING: DANIEL PINCHBECK, STING, DAVID LYNCH, ELLEN PAGE, GILBERTO GIL, PAUL STAMETS, SHIVA REA, BARBARA MARX HUBBARD, DENNIS MCKENNA, BUCKMINSTER FULLER, BERNARD LIETAER, MICHAEL DORSEY, PENNY LIVINSTON-STARK, RICHARD REGISTER, DEAN RADIN AND TERRANCE MCKENNA.

http://2012timeforchange.com/

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generation we: in case you did not know, they are our best bet for a more sustainable future…

Millennials are the largest generation in American history. Born between 1978 and 2000, they are 95 million strong, compared to 78 million Baby Boomers. They are independent—politically, socially, and philosophically—and they are spearheading a period of sweeping change in America and around the world. No one knows the Millennials like Eric Greenberg. In Generation We, Greenberg explains the emerging power of the Millennial Generation, shows how they (and their supporters from other generations) are poised to change our nation and our world for the better, and lays out a powerful plan for progressive change that today’s youth is ready to implement.

http://www.gen-we.com/

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home, the movie: one of the most powerful, important and moving films i’ve seen this year!

Dowser is focused on changemakers, but any do-gooder or student of life in general would benefit from the advice of Steve Jobs (Apple), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Paul Hawken (WiserEarth) and Muhammad Yunus (Grameen Bank). Ellen DeGeneres is even clumped in there for her hilarious and heartfelt plea to follow one’s path. These people have all used their unique talents to make the world a better place, overcoming countless obstacles along the way. They don’t mince words, either: the common thread in these remarks made over the last few years is that we have more great, complex, and increasingly unavoidable problems to solve than ever. At the same time, their optimism is just as clear: today we have more tools and—despite the negativity of The News—more collective will to solve these problems.

Granted, you pretty much have to be optimistic and hopeful at a commencement speech. But the best ones, like these, don’t avoid the elephant in the room. Rather, they manage to inspire us while earnestly addressing the great challenges presented by adulthood. In that vein I’d eagerly add another to the list: the late David Foster Wallace’s well-known 2005 diatribe on the challenges of modern adult life.

Anyone familiar with DFW’s work can imagine that his “version” of the commencement speech would be smart, funny, engaging, long, philosophical, deeply personal, and ineffably, exquisitely his. And it is. If you’re a fan of DFW and a college grad, you surely had the same reaction to reading it that I did, which was to curse your speaker’s dreadful, generic lameness, well-intentioned as it surely was. (I had to email my friends to remind me what ex-Secretary of State Madeline Albright said to us in her speech.)

The implicit challenge dropped by these provocateurs is: so which side are you on? Given your absurdly elite background of talent, education and general privilege, are you going to carve out a niche of comfort in your own life and let the cards settle where they will for the rest of humanity, or are you going to use your skills to actively make the world a better place?  Are you part of the problem or part of the solution?

I remember well, back in ’01, being dismayed by the number of talented peers who majored in Econ and were off to grind at investment banks, manage brands in corporate America, and/or reinforce various harmful dominant paradigms. Now, as school lets out for college grads and for teachers like me, it’s so very helpful to be reminded of this fundamental question. Here’s to keeping in Pure.

Second, it’s a sign that the Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) funding model is advancing. That’s good news for potentially large-scale, transformative projects requiring both substantial initial investment and wider-ranging, longer-term support in areas of social policy. Third, the PPP model simply makes sense in an age of increasing hybridity, cross-industry cooperation, and crowdsourcing. Successful PPPs challenge the (largely American, since PPPs are ubiquitous in Western European social democracies) capitalist notion that government and private interests can or should not align.

Nathaniel over at Change.org reports.

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What will Matter
Author: Michael Josephson

Ready or not, some day it will all come to an end.

There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours or days.
All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone else.
Your wealth, fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance.
It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed.
Your grudges, resentments, frustrations and jealousies will finally disappear.
So too, your hopes, ambitions, plans and to-do lists will expire.
The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away.
It won’t matter where you came from or what side of the tracks you lived on at the end.
It won’t matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant.
Even your gender and skin color will be irrelevant.

So what will matter? How will the value of your days be measured?

What will matter is not what you bought, but what you built; not what you got, but what you gave.
What will matter is not your success, but your significance.
What will matter is not what you learned, but what you taught.
What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage or sacrifice that enriched, empowered or encouraged others to emulate your example.

What will matter is not your competence, but your character.

What will matter is not how many people you knew, but how many will feel a lasting loss when you’re gone.

What will matter is not your memories, but the memories that live in those who loved you.
What will matter is how long you will be remembered, by whom and for what.

Living a life that matters doesn’t happen by accident.

It’s not a matter of circumstance but of choice.
Choose to live a life that matters.

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Today’s daily dose of inspiration comes from my friends at Echoing Green, who hosted ‘Meet the Finalists’ last night.  If you don’t know about this amazing organization providing risk capital and other resources to early stage social ventures around the world, PLEASE CHECK THEM OUT!  And have a look at the video below to ‘Meet the 2010 Finalists.’

Last night I experienced first hand how fast the world is changing!  In the 5 years or so, not only has this annual event grown from being hosted in a small bar to a large auditorium at the Credit Suisse financial headquarters (who have sponsored the entire finalist selection weekend), but the entire place was full of bankers staring in seeming awe.  I wish I could appropriately convey the powerful energy in the room when the night’s host, Charley Rose of Cityyear, asked everyone to pause for 30 seconds of silence to ponder the impact of the ten 90-second Finalist pitches they had just hear; WOW!  You see, Echoing Green Fellows, on average, have raised 44 times the initial capital provided by Echoing Green.  This is a staggering multiple that is impressive to any financier.  Point: the financial markets are watching and listening closely to this rapidly growing movement around social innovation, creative entrepreneurship, venture philanthropy, conscious capitalism, or whatever other name you want to give it.  The fact is our systems are crashing and a new world is emerging, a world where doing good with dollars is the only, and I mean ONLY, way forward to a more sustainable future.  So, put on your thinking caps, get into your creative flow, and ask yourself how YOU can help tear down the walls that separate the non-profit ethos with the for-profit incentive.  One final note; we are human and we are driven by self interest.  This is not a bad thing, per se.  Let’s find the intersection where doing the right thing meets personal satisfaction, in a balanced manner I might add.

There are some bold statements here and I would love to hear your thoughts, so please feel free to leave a comment or shoot me a note.

Enjoy the rest of your day and have a lovely weekend!  And I’m only including one item below today, as the impact here deserves to stand alone!

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MEET THE ECHOING GREEN 2010 FINALISTS

Per Amazon review: A linchpin, as Seth describes it, is somebody in an organization who is indispensable, who cannot be replaced—her role is just far too unique and valuable. And then he goes on to say, well, seriously folks, you need to be one of these people, you really do. To not be one is economic and career suicide.

The point Seth makes in this book is that we are all indispensable, although some of us may have had that spirit educated or otherwise forced out of us.  We must summon that spirit within us as we are all unique and creative individuals.  If this idea inspires you, please check out Sir Ken Robinson’s inspiring TED Talk below on ‘divergent thinking.’

More inspiration and opportunity from seth here and here.

And on Sir Ken here.  And check out The Blue School while your at it; he’s on the board, and yes the Blue Men (now dad’s) created it.

Enjoy the video and other inspiring items below!  And if you have a story for us or are interested in sponsoring these posts and/or re-posting, that would be great!

Have a lovely day!

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If your in NYC this week and/or interested in sustainable design thinking, please have a look at at my friend Emily Pilloton’s recent newsletter full of great stuff below:

Join us in New York City this week for two Project H happenings: our Design Revolution Road Showfinale at the Metropolis Booth at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, and the opening of the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum’s Triennial exhibition, which includes our Learning Landscape math playground!

• Our road show Airstream trailer, which houses an exhibition of 40 products that empower people from our book Design Revolution, will be installed as part of the Metropolis Magazine booth at the Javits Center, from May 15-18th. Info below or via Metropolis. Project H founder will also be doing a book signing on Saturday, May 15th at noon, at the Metropolis booth.
• Our Learning Landscape math playground system, which facilitates a more active and engaged way to learn elementary academic concepts, is featured in the Cooper Hewitt’s Triennial exhibition! The exhibition, entitled “Why Design Now?” opens May 14th, and runs through January 2011. More info on our Learning Landscape here, and more info on the exhibition here.

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DESIGN as a tool for positive change

May marks the launch of the second annual G4C, designed to support those who instigate lasting, positive change in their communities. Last year the G4C highlighted the efforts of those who move in the spirit of the Nau Collective: Athletes, Artists, and Activists challenging assumptions about what it means to move, be moved, and move others. The 2010 G4C highlights a second facet of the Nau brand: that of DESIGN as a tool for positive change.

For Nau, this speaks to our commitment to the blending of Beauty, Performance, and Sustainability, in both our product design and business model. For you, this acts as a call for entry.

Show and tell us how you, your friends, or colleagues, use DESIGN to provide creative, compelling, effective, and replicable solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges. Nominations are open from May 10th ‘til June 11th, with voting open ‘til June 20th. More details about the grant can be found in the attached outreach PDF. Starting May 10^th, this information will be available online at www.nau.com.

It’s inspiring stuff. Last year was a tremendous success. This year, it is up to all of us to get the word out. There are amazing efforts in positive change happening all over the country, and we want to know (and we want you to know) what is happening in your neck of the nation.

Nominate. Learn. Vote. Have at it. This is the Grant for Change. Don’t hold back. The more nominees we get, the more stories of change we get to tell. However you decide to participate, we are excited to have you as a part of the story again.

Join in the fun here.

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The Good Eater Collaborative

Below is pulled from a recent email from co-founder Joshua Levin:

I’m writing to share my excitement about the launch of a new media project I’ve co-founded with chef/author Kenji Lopez-Alt: “The GoodEater Collaborative“.

It’s a blog and discussion platform featuring leaders from across the food industry: farmers, chefs, business executives, media members, non-profit directors, etc. The goal is to cut through the noise on food sustainability and feature the voices of those who are in the trenches on this every day. These dynamic individuals from across the field will be sharing their experiences, ideas, and concerns, creating a true cross-sector dialog that’s open to the public. Our hope is to cultivate the kind of systems-thinking necessary to address issues in our food system, while simultaneously giving everyone the inside scoop on how to “eat good”.

You can check out our fantastic collection of authors, or some of the recent posts such as backyard chicken economics, a country addicted to fish farming, the ease of early spring canning, home composting, making your own ricotta, and a lot more.

Besides checking out The GoodEater Collaborative, the easiest way to take advantage of this awesome resource is by subscribing to our RSS feed, weekly headlines E-Newsletter , or to have posts simply emailed to you!

Please visit here: http://www.goodeater.org/

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The Sustainability Imperative

The Harvard Business Review makes the compelling case that:

Most executives know that how they respond to the challenge of sustainability will profoundly affect the competitiveness—and perhaps even the survival—of their organizations.  Full Story here.

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