Trust Me - Don't Chase the Acorn

Here's poor old Scrat in Ice Age 2 - The Meltdown. He chases the acorns just as desperately as terrified bankers are chasing the vanishing buck. Difference is: squirrels can eat acorns. Pity the poor banker - and all the wage slaves who are (or used to be) paying his bonus...



The idea is this: if all the people in the world who are dissatisfied with their jobs – or wish they had a job – were to become ethical entrepreneurs, we could trigger a huge wave of beneficial social and environmental change. Social and eco-enterprises are one of the keys to grassroots transformation. So ethical entrepreneurs stand to make more than a good living – they could make a huge difference too. If all those people were to join forces and provide each other with a rich mix of ideas, opportunities mutual support and collaborative action, we could explode that wave of change into a global tsunami of transformation.
With the benefits of inexpensive mass access to instant global communications, we have in our hands the means to transform the way business is done. Wikipedia has overtaken almost all other encyclopedias; Linux has bitten out enormous chunks of Microsoft’s world domination in operating systems. The age of digital media has brought radical change within the grasp of everyone with a PC or a Mac and a telephone connection. Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Flickr have more participants than the Fortune 500 – and they’re not only available, free of charge, to us, they ARE us – we make them what they are, just by being who we are and doing what we do!
All these profound and very rapid transformations have been created by large groups of like-minded people, each doing a little of what they are best at and all acting as parts of a super-organism that really can make a significant difference. We live in the Information Age and we own the technology that drives it. That technology is us, our fellow ethical entrepreneurs, our ideas, our passions, our experience, our skills, our daily work, our relationships, our laptops, phones and handhelds. You have probably heard that old line: ‘The best way to predict the future is to design it.’ All of a sudden, we can do just that, if we choose to link up and go for it.
Oh, and each of us gets to do meaningful work, from home if we wish, with people we like, admire, respect and even love – and, in many cases, enjoy more prosperity than ever before...
Is this a no-brainer or what?

This was the view from the West end of Bloomfield House tonight - very impressive 8^)

My kids got a tip for carrying a guest's bags to their room on the very day they (the kids) were behaving more outrageously than ever. That afternoon I found this sign on the side of the road...

Gorgeous and gratis (ish)... 

Coming up Roses

Well here's a turn-up: just when mister bin Laden's cronies are managing to create yet another blight not only on the lives of many Londoners but also on the UK's tourist industry, we discover a major boost to our eco-hotel's beauty and prosperity right on our doorstep. My genius of a wife Kari got into conversation recently with the Parks and Gardens guys here in Bath. She discovered that, in their constant quest for the highly coveted annual Britain in Bloom Award, our local council plants no less than 90,000 bulbs every year. It turns out that it is not economical to save and re-use most of the plants that are used to turn Bath into a blaze of floral glory, so, at the end of each season, they are composted and replaced with new ones. Kari asked if they would mind if we picked out a few of the more robust perennials from the compost heap every once in a while. They were delighted to hear that these plants might live on to flourish another day. The result: the council has contributed to yet another successful local recycling scheme (Bath has also won several awards in the recent past for groundbreaking recycling projects) and Bloomfield House has even more beautiful gardens with which to delight our family and guests - and all for free (if you discount the vast amount we pay in Council Tax and Business Rates)!

The Could Life II - core eco-hotel management team members get down to an intense strategy meeting at Bloomfield House - 'What kind of muffins shall we serve at breakfast tomorrow, Daddy?' These decisions can take hours... 

Open Letter to Steve Jobs

Well, a whole bunch of astonishing synchronicities have taken place since my last posting, all to do with activating the concept of The Could Life on a more ambitious scale. Rather than bore you with the details, I'll simply distil it all down into a letter to Steve Jobs, in the hope that someone out there can arrange to sit him down to read it. Who knows what may then unfold?

Dear Steve,

I was delighted to read your speech to the graduating class of Harvard (as detailed in an earlier posting on this blog). A thought has occurred to me as a result. The combined resources of you, Apple Computer and Pixar International could perhaps achieve something of potentially enormous global, social, economic and historical significance. Imagine combining the resources of Apple and Pixar in the creation of an online learning, inspiration, information-sharing and action-creation system which had the following features:

• It enabled people of all ages and cultures to take a little time out to explore, identify and activate their true vocational dreams
• It connected those who'd discovered their unique potential contribution to society with those who already had great experience of working in the relevant fields through an inter-cultural, inter-generational, interdependent network in which everyone gains
• It offered opportunities for those who had progressed from defining their own individual passion-based lifework to meet, face-to-face, with those who could offer them hands-on mentoring in actualising these dreams
• It thus created the means for them to begin making those powerful contributions, overcoming the limitations of soul-destroying dead-end employment (within the wealthy nations) or crippling socio-economic deprivation (within the poorer nations)
• In a similar way, it linked vocation-workers with potential beneficiaries of such work
• It operated on a business model whereby those with relative personal economic wealth would pay for their vocational learning opportunities, the revenue from these payments being used to subsidise those who were unable to contribute so much financially
• The participation of a growing network of players in this system was stimulated by outstanding and inspiring Pixar movies and facilitated and grown via an Apple-based, global, online communications system
• By this means, eventually, millions of people discovered the route to meaningful deployment of their energy and passion, each in their own unique way giving and receiving optimally in a mutually beneficial web of unlocked potential

This idea is the culmination of a good deal of thought and action on the part of myself and others here in the UK and elsewhere over the last fifteen years or so. I would very much appreciate the opportunity to share more detail with you. In this way, you could play a vital role in creating a legacy that would realise for many people the inspiring reality you outlined in your recent speech at Harvard.

Yours sincerely,

Rob Weston

OK dear readers - anybody who has a link to Steve Jobs, please let me know so we can get this in front of him and help spread The Could Life concept to millions :)

Detergent Sculpture Epiphany

So, I'm seeing, yet again, the most unlikely events reminding me to make no assumptions. And yet again, it's the little ones who are the teachers. We had a young couple from Paris check in to Bloomfield House to spend a week in Bath. She was an international development specialist who had been working in the White House and had already managed a PhD in philosophy by the age of 21. He was a digital media engineer between jobs and contemplating his next career move. They were very bright and very exacting. The American half of her family were huge in Texan oil and they were used to the world's best hotels, with uniformed flunkies ready to jump at the slightest raising of a disapproving eyebrow.

On Day One Monsieur lodged two complaints: the shower in their room, he said, wasn't operating powerfully enough for his liking and, despite our assurance on the hotel's website, he couldn't access the wi-fi broadband in his room. I called the plumber and then our IT consultants and arranged for both problems to be solved that afternoon. The complaints were dealt with promptly but I felt I had to resign myself to a week of high maintenance and stress.

That evening I joined our male Parisian guest on the terrace while he enjoyed a smoke. As we talked, I suddenly spotted, horror of horrors, that the children had, once again, poured detergent into the fountain and, directly behind him, it was pushing out great clouds of foamy bubbles. I was sure that, the minute he turned around there would be an explosion of anger at such unprofessional hoteliership.

'MON DIEU, WHAT 'AS 'APPENED TO YOUR FOUNTAIN?' he bellowed as, inevitably, he turned and spotted the disaster. I explained in my stumbling French that it was impossible to tame five small pranksters and waited for him to summon his wife for a hasty, indignant and premature check-out.

'Zees ees ze sort of thing zat 'appens when you are surrounded by children!' he went on. Eet ees absoluement beautiful. We 'ave been talking of starting a family for some time. I would like to take home with me a photograph of zees magnifique miracle and place it on the wall as an inspiration to my wife and myself!'

Monsieur et Madame spent much of the rest of the week in the company of our children and at one point threatened to smuggle six-year-old old Claudia out of the country to their next destination: their second home in New York. I don't think this happens at the Ritz or the George Cinq.

I look forward to hearing news of their firstborn baby - who knows, it may have been conceived at Bloomfield House...

Current score on Advanced Customer Relationship Management - Kids: 201; Dad: Nil.