{"id":984,"date":"2011-10-22T12:16:43","date_gmt":"2011-10-22T11:16:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=984"},"modified":"2011-10-22T12:16:43","modified_gmt":"2011-10-22T11:16:43","slug":"alex-steffen-meets-ellen-macarthur-well-sort-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2011\/10\/22\/alex-steffen-meets-ellen-macarthur-well-sort-of\/","title":{"rendered":"Alex Steffen meets Ellen MacArthur"},"content":{"rendered":"

To the RGS on Thursday night for a talk by Seattle futurist guru\u00a0Alex Steffen<\/a>,\u00a0and a conversation between him and Ellen MacArthur<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to a NY Times blog<\/a>, Steffen is a \"designing optimist, [who] lays out the blueprint for a successful century<\/em>\", and\u00a0I see that Steffen himself billed the event on his website as a \"brand new talk\", although\u00a0one TED-familiar colleague said that 'longer talk' might have been a better description. \u00a0However, he was new to me as I tend to be guru-deficient. \u00a0But his ideas didn't seem all that new: more repackaged, maybe, and I missed a sense of agency in the talk about what we [all] can do. \u00a0 I felt a little better informed, but not much the wiser.<\/p>\n

The subsequent conversation with Ellen was better. \u00a0I felt this at the time, and my notes confirm it as I read them now. \u00a0She was able to drag him (nicely) onto more solid real-world ground, but the agency focus came and went. \u00a0I wrote down a few of Steffen's aphorisms: \"put the future back in the room<\/em>\" which I won't be using (ever), and \"recycling as a gateway drug<\/em>\", which I just might, if I ever work out what it means. \u00a0I'd have liked more of this conversation, and less guru-speak, and then more time for points from the audience \u2013 tricky though this is at nine at night.<\/p>\n

The event was billed<\/a> in the UK as An evening with Alex Steffen and Ellen MacArthur<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

[The] Ellen MacArthur Foundation and [the] University of Bradford are happy to welcome Alex Steffen, editor of the best selling book \u00a0World Changing <\/em>and leading futurist, to an evening lecture around innovative business practice and positive 21st century perspectives<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

... although this is not quite how Steffen himself described it, announcing,\u00a0(via Twitter<\/a>):<\/p>\n

Londoners - I'm speaking on carbon zero cities at the RGS, next Thurs (20th).<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oddly, no mention of the Foundation. \u00a0Is this why his talk had only an oblique focus (and that is probably being kind) on the Foundation's interest in the circular economy<\/em>. \u00a0 This, and his going on at great length through his powerpoint(less) slides is why I felt rather short-changed. \u00a0This could have been so much better had he focused less on himself and more on the idea the Foundation is championing.<\/p>\n

Ah, well, next time ...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To the RGS on Thursday night for a talk by Seattle futurist guru\u00a0Alex Steffen,\u00a0and a conversation between him and Ellen MacArthur. According to a NY Times blog, Steffen is a \"designing optimist, [who] lays out the blueprint for a successful...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-updates","category-talks-and-presentations"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}