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#progress2015: reflections, thoughts, and more

I was privileged to attend Progress 2015 last Friday (8th May) in Melbourne. It was the second iteration of an event conceived and delivered by Australian Progress (http://australianprogress.org.au) to bring together a 1000 or so Australian changemakers to have critical conversations, plan and collaborate.

The event itself went for 3 days (Thursday to Saturday) - and had an outstanding program. I followed along on Twitter most of the time (search on #progress2015), but was only physically present on the Friday.

As is typically the case with such events, the value is not only in the speakers (Snowden was a personal highlight for me; Singer was there; Naomi Klein via videoconference, etc. - all listed on the http://progress2015.org.au website) but also the participants and the conversation you have with each other.

Having worked for “progress” in some way or another for the last two decades, it was also inevitably a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with old friends and colleagues.

Human connection aside, the event was a brilliant learning and conversation platform. It got my mind ticking over - as I agreed, disagreed, had ‘established wisdom’ challenged, and found issues reframed or better understood.

I expect I’ll keep percolating on many things from my day at Progress and the related twitter conversations, yet I wanted to pin down some of my key ‘takeaways’ from the event - which may or may not be of relevance and interest to others!

A. We need evidence-based social changemaking:

While I missed Peter Singer’s keynote on the Thursday, it was no surprise to me that his thoughts generated discussion, disagreement, and passion! While I disagree with some of where Singer takes the concept of ‘Empathy with Evidence’, the theme of using evidence to guide our choices and action permeated the whole of Progress 2015. This shouldn’t be surprising, as it is really just fundamental change theory! I blogged about my take on Effective Altruism here, before attending Progress http://cameronneil.tumblr.com/post/118325594390/singer-effective-altruism.

B. ‘There is little new under the sun’:

Contrary to a great deal of the ‘technological innovation’ love I heard and read, and a fair dose of what the wonderful Jan Owen calls “Terminal Uniqueness”, much of what underpinned the presentations and discussions about achieving effective progress was old school, fundamental change and learning theory and practice. Yes, we need social innovation to apply these theories and practices to the current bundles of problems and challenges. Yet, there is power and precedent to unlock in getting back to, and understanding, some of these fundamentals.

C. Social innovation is the core of progress:

Technology is not our saviour. It is a powerful tool. We need social innovation to power our movements and organisations – and harness all the tools we have available. My view is that many of the challenges we face at the moment is because technological innovation has outpaced social innovation. We need to value and support social innovation as much as – if not more than – our obsession and love for the latest hardware or application. (To be fair, what I heard when a lot of people talked about technological innovation was actually social innovation, as they were changing or designing the ways people organise and deploy tools … )

D. Inequality and Climate Change are the key challenges:

I missed John Falzon’s contribution on the Thursday morning, but his rallying call around ‘inequality as the common enemy’ came through loud and clear over Twitter – and was picked up in the press. I agree with John (I think his whole speech is available online). I see inequality underpinning so much of what social change movements seek to overcome. It has certainly been the focus of much of the work I’ve done in my life. Alongside inequality as the key challenge are the impacts of climate change and the necessity to stop carbon pollution as quickly as possible (as well as mitigation and adaptation where necessary).

We need to be able to hold both of those challenges as ‘constraints’ on our solutions. For example, we can’t propose or push for climate change actions that increase inequality. Nor can we accept solutions for inequality that risk making climate change worse. I believe we are smart enough to tackle both at once – and that we must.

For me, it seems that a lot of what we need to do to tackle climate change is known (it’s political will that is lacking – and a v well organised opposition team). We have even developed market mechanisms, i.e. a price on carbon, that helps us get things done. But what about inequality reduction? Where is the market mechanism for that? What does it look like?

This is also a test for policy making: 1) Does it reduce carbon emissions and the likelihood of runaway climate change? 2) Does it reduce inequality? … It could also be a test we apply to my next point …

E. Align how we Donate, Purchase, Invest:

Danny Almagor of Small Giants challenged everyone at the Philanthropy session to think about all the ways we can use money to create progress – not just what we donate, or that is available via philanthropy. Whether as individuals or organisations/businesses, this is so very true. What we donate tends to be a relatively small quantum of $ compared to what we spend, and is most certainly less than what we have invested (whether this be superannuation funds, bank accounts, investment funds, shares, etc.). To maximise our efforts, we need to do our best to align where our money flows. (and not just our money – our time that we donate and invest as well!).

Very much related to this, and something I would have loved seen discussed in the Philanthropy session, is how we unlock the corpus of the various social and environmental charitable foundations, so that it is not just the interest earned that is fuelling progress, but also how that interest is derived. The last figure I heard is that there is $9 billion under investment across such charities in Australia. How good would it be to have that $9 billion – or even 10% of it to begin with – invested in for-purpose businesses delivering social and environmental change, with the interest on such investments then providing the fuel for philanthropy?

Other quick reflections:

Energy follows focus – love this! It came up in one of the workshops I was in. We need to get focused and shut down distractions if we are going to win

Social change is a 3 generation endeavour. Anything we achieve today is because of what those generations ahead of us have done. And what will be achieved down the line will be cause of what we do. We must ensure we are tilling the soil and planting the seeds, as much as we are harvesting. “We stand on the shoulders of giants”.

As I said earlier, there is a lot still percolating, but this is my initial summary. I’m interested in the reflections and learning of others, or any comments on what I’ve written.

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