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It is the First Responsibility of Every Citizen to Question Authority
Now more than ever. Scientists (not phylosophy anymore) state that humankind is on track to become the 6th cause for mass extinction in Earth’s history. Within 250 years 75% of all living species will have perrished, including our own. So much for the economies of growth focus.
Mathworks Views Project Expansion Photos
Who said “It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority”?
- Karl Marx
- Ayn Rand
- Nelson Mandela
- Benjamin Franklin
It’s important to participate in our democratic process and question the process, procedures, methodologies and results of our national, state and local leaders. Are the processes fair? Are the procedures correctly followed? Are the methodologies sound? Are the results reasonable and equitable? Were the Constitutional Rights of the few vigorously defended?
This creates a lot of work and effort for citizens. After all, who wants to spend their time monitoring the actions of a local town council, zoning board or planning board? Yet many local citizens have been doing just that, and finding they must do so to ensure that the processes mandated – are followed. A recent example is the “sitewalk” for the Mathworks Expansion Project. It’s mandated this occurs the first Monday in April, and involved citizens…
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STIR Academy, the power of change
STIR Academy is recently accepted as partner in the Smart City and Communities program of the European Community because of our network structure of HUBs to share knowledge, innovative initiatives, inspiration and best practice on sustainable progress. From Eindhoven we coordinate the growing network of HUBs in every city of Europe (and the world).
Your own STIR Academy HUB
A STIR HUB consists physically of a simple classroom and ICT communication facilities. Functionally the STIR HUB is a gateway to inspiration and best practice in the world. Any existing college infrastructure can become a HUB. You can also start your own if you have access to facilities. In Eindhoven we are being facilitated by a local high school.
Inspiration is not enough. The STIR HUB is also the local starting point to form implementation efforts for local change, adapting the ideology and foreign best practice to local workable formats.
The STIR HUB structure is as follows:
The local STIR Academy HUB
STIR College for inspiration
Everywhere in the world people are actively introducing change through vision or need. Such inspiration is shared across the STIR network of HUBs inviting the pioneers to explain their motivation, the essentials to change and the results of their work. The inspiration is not just product or services oriented within the context of business or consumer economies. It can also introduce challenging changes in systems complexities, social innovation, applied knowledge, etc that upsets everything we have known to date. The inspiration forms the basis for creating local innovative work groups.
The STIR College is always open for general, low cost participation.
STIR work groups for innovation
From global inspiration to local innovation is an open, guided work group process. The work group evaluates the possibility to implement the innovations within the local complexity and context. The work groups are open for multidisciplinary participation and narrow down until projects can be defined with those who commit to the implementation.
STIR project teams for implementation
When the implementation phase has been agreed the work groups close in order to formalize and connect commitments, means and resources. Projects have a starting point, an objective and finishing with measurable results.
Not just one way
The international HUB network does not just work one way into the HUBs. Inspirational innovations are appearing anywhere in the world and also in the regional environment of the HUB. They do not alway reach out for globalization due to lack of visibility, language issues, entrepreneurial short comings of pioneers or lack of resources.
STIR HUBs are therefore also a gateway to the rest of the world for local initiatives that have a story to tell or inspiration and proven innovation to share.
Disruptive innovations
Many changes can be considered disruptive innovations. They upset traditional markets and behavior by introducing something totally new. The old establishment has long opposed such disruptions but now is reaching a point that more and more multinationals and local governance use the STIR network and inspirational evidence to strengthen their own transformative positioning. STIR Academy itself is a disruptive innovation and source of inspiration.
International STIR HUB network
STIR Academy has started the European and Global network initiative and now receives the support of the Smart Cities and Communities commission. The STIR HUB structure connects bottom up and top town innovation for sustainable progress within the scope of “global issues, local solutions, global inspiration”. The first HUB was created in Eindhoven (Holland) in 2009 and has been the transformative engine for local change ever since. The expertise has been contained for expansion with the specialization in the field of awareness development, psychology of (transformative) change, multidisciplinary co-creation and sustainable progress through cooperative interaction, primarily focused on “hotspots” (hotspot: complex local issues with sense of urgency).
The international STIR Academy structure interacts with multinationals, subsidy providers and international programs for innovative change. It also provides a framework for interaction and protection of interests of small local SME players who internationalize their ideas through SME cooperative chanels.
STIR provides educational support for multidisciplinary (hotspot) co-creative processes in international networks. Within the model of human complexities of founding father Jean-Paul Close the STIR Academy and all inspirations are positioned in the leadership field of cocreative change for symbiotic harmony and new phases of growth.
Can you see the awareness breakthrough? It is the gateway to a new perception
STIR Academy HUB agreement:
1. Commit to the executive challenge of innovative change
2. Accept the operational and financial structure of STIR Academy
3. Accept the coordination, sustainocratic framework and guidance function of STIR academy international in Eindhoven.
Interested? Contact jp@stadvanmorgen.com (Jean-Paul Close) for detailed agreement.
Smart Cities Europe
Both the sustainocratic ventures AiREAS (healthy cities through air quality) and STIR Academy (sharing best practice and education on multidisciplinary cocreation) have been approved as valid partners in the Smart Cities approach of the European Union. See for yourself….
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Dear Stakeholder,
We would like to thank you for your interest into the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities and the submission of your commitment for action, following the Invitation for Commitments which closed on 15 June 2014.
It is with great pleasure that we accept your proposal as an eligible commitment under this European Innovation Partnership. Your commitment will be an important part in our common effort to build a dynamic market-place for smart city projects and solutions in Europe.
Following your indication, you are invited to join the action cluster K. Please feel free to indicate if you believe that your commitment should also contribute to other action clusters or if you think that your commitment should be fully moved to another action cluster.
Please note that the kick-off of the action clusters and hence the start of the implementation phase of this partnership will happen on October the 9th in Brussels. Further detail will follow soon.
We look forward to working with your organisation in the future.
Yours sincerely,
The Smart Cities & Communities Team
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