Monthly Archives: December 2015

0 Community Development Online Christmas Interlude

Community Development Online will take a short break after today and resume in three weeks time on Monday 11 January 2016.  I’m taking a break over a period when people are less likely to read blog posts!

This blog will accumulate into a reference resource and so you could take this opportunity to read past posts.  If you do, remember comments are always welcome, especially if you can suggest future topics.  It also helps to know what you find helpful.

You can explore the blog in two ways.  If you look under resources in the main navigation, you will find a series of cornerstone pages.  These list the blog posts in sequence, with brief introductions.  You can see what sequences are about and decide whether to read more detail.  These are almost up-to-date and I shall add recent posts during the break.

If you prefer a more usual blog, you can get access to it in the right hand column.  You can find recent posts using the calendar or explore the categories.  To help you navigate the blog, I have five main category headings:

So, what can you look forward to in Community Development Online, in the New Year?

On Mondays I shall continue my exploration of the circuit questionnaire.  This will become a resource for people using the questionnaire.  If you follow the link, you will find a summary page covering the posts so far.  This sequence will continue a while longer as I’m not halfway through yet.  I’ve completed the branding element of the questionnaire and I’ve made a lot of progress with Products, Services and Causes.  After that I shall cover the three remaining elements, Propositions, Problems and Markets.

On Wednesdays I shall continue with the sequence about spirituality.  I’m writing these posts with churches in mind but contain some themes that might be of interest to a wider audience.  In the New Year, I shall start a new theme within this sequence, exploring how we perceive communities.  This will be less theological and closer to my posts about community development.

On Fridays – I shall continue to offer a mixture of posts on a variety of topics.  This is where I publish reviews of books and websites.  It is also where I can respond to requests for posts on specific topics.

There is plenty of space for more material and as usual, time is a major constraint.  If you would like to write a relevant blog post or even a sequence, let me know.

I’m going to do some work on the website over the break in preparation for some new initiatives that are in the pipeline.  Keep reading and watching the website to find out more!

0 Spirituality in the Radical Agora

I’ve written about the Radical Agora in earlier posts and here I explore the idea in more depth.

The Radical Agora brings together the strands in this blog; community development, marketing and online presence.

I’ve been a community development worker for over thirty years. Apparently, the word community had over 150 definitions in the 1980s and whatever the number is now, it means our understanding of community is contested.  In particular, the local economy rarely figures in assessments of what counts as community.

Agora is Greek for marketplace and I use it because neo-liberals have hijacked the word marketplace. They speak of the marketplace as something in the ether and they use it of transactions between corporations. Let’s dwell on this for a moment and try to understand what’s at stake.

The thing that distinguishes corporations from local businesses is ownership. Corporations belong to shareholders. This means their owners do not run the business. They appoint directors who usually employ a Chief Executive. Their sole task is to increase the value of investments for their shareholders. Profits go to shareholders and often they are tied up in stored wealth.

This is important because this model of ownership has become normative.  The idea that the sole purpose of business is to generate profit does not allow businesses to have other purposes.  Any business person who simply wants to make a living and would plough profit into some benefit for the community will be either suspected of being a secret grasping capitalist or, if they do live up to their declared intentions, they’re not a serious player.

Local businesses may have a variety of ownership models and their transactions are likely to support other local businesses. A greater proportion of their income is likely to be invested in staff.  Paradoxically their small-scale brings greater benefit to the community than profit-generating corporations

I’m using Agora to distinguish between the marketplace based on transactions between bureaucrats that enrich the already rich and powerful and the traditional understanding of marketplace as primarily a place where community develops through financial and other transactions.

The word Radical derives is from radix that means roots. The roots of the marketplace agora are in community, in building relationships. The Radical Agora grows primarily through building relationships.

If the Radical Agora is funded through the local economy, it is sustainable.

Spirituality is important because it describes our presence in the marketplace. We are not there primarily as consumers but as participants in a specific  community.

The marketplace provides space in which unstructured encounters can lead to relationships. It draws people in for all sorts of reasons and they make purchases as they go about their activities.

We all need to be present in these spaces for the benefit of all, assuming these spaces exist. To take part is not solely about financial transactions, although financial transactions are an important way of being present. All activities have an economic dimension and as they draw people into participation in the Agora, they build community and support its infrastructure.

We have been careless about what makes our communities live. We have allowed outsiders to invade and take away community in the name of consumerism. We are compelled to visit leisure centres full of shops on the outskirts of our cities, making purchases that mainly benefit those who own the centres and shops.

The challenge is how to re-build our communities. That will be the next theme after the Christmas break!

0 Price and Profitability

Pricing Causes

Marketing need not result in a sale, where a sale is a financial transaction.  So, do causes have nothing to do with price and profitability?

There are a few things to bear in mind:

If there is a financial transaction then the same rules apply as for products and services.

Pricing Products and Services

Pricing products is not the same as pricing services. If you are selling a product, it is likely there are similar products on the market and their pricing is likely to impact yours. If you have a unique product, you may be able to charge what you like, at least until someone comes up with something similar or an improvement!

Services usually have more freedom to find their own price. The main thing here is not to charge by the hour. Be clear about the benefits and charge for them. The main constraint may be your reputation but do not let modesty restrict your prices.

Remember if you provide a service, the number of hours you devote to each client is limited. This means you will be able to provide the service to a limited number of clients over a given time period. So, if you need to raise £2500 per month you can do this by increasing the number of clients or increasing your prices. The former means more work for you and so at some point will hit a limit.

Products and services can be combined and either or both can be combined with causes.

Profitability

The questions in the circuit questionnaire perhaps do not do justice to profitability but here they are with my comments.

How much does it cost you to make the product / provide the service?

First, the cost to you to provide the product or service is important, especially if your price is below the cost. However, the important thing is the benefit from the product or service and this may have little relation to the cost.

Another point to consider is time may be as important as the cost. A coach may have low costs but time may be a major constraint. Is it possible to reduce time per client whilst increasing the benefit? If the benefit increases, so can the price!

How big are profit margins?

Profit margins the difference between costs and the price per unit. However, where time is crucial, you need to calculate how many clients you can manage and work out how much you need to charge to meet your needs. Products could have low margins but that may be OK if you can sell lots of them.

What other ways might there be of providing this product / service at different price points to suit different types of customers? Let’s get creative!

This is a good idea up to a point but there is also the need to have confidence in your marketing. If you have a good product or service, well marketed, it is possible potential customers will find the money, even if it seems steep at first hearing. This will work if you are confident your offer will return something of greater value than their initial outlay.

In summary, your pricing depends on the value of your offer and your confidence in that value. You need both!

0 Fundamentalist Economics

Is it true scientists and engineers are more prone to being recruited as jihadis?  Paul Vallely in his Guardian article, Are scientists easy prey for jihadism? suggests maybe it is.  This is not an easy question to answer but perhaps we see  fundamentalist economics at play here!

Engineers solve convergent problems.  These can be highly complex but if you crunch the numbers, the likelihood is they will converge on one or a few answers.  Furthermore, once you get it right, others can reproduce your answers and there may be consensus about the correct answer.

This approach contrasts with divergent problems where more information leads to increasing numbers of answers.  There is no right answer and so everyone has to choose the answers they want to run with.  This means answers are contested and any consensus will be provisional.  The arts and humanities generate divergent problems.

Vallely’s article suggests someone has studied mainly convergent problems might seek convergent answers in all disciplines.  This leads to a fundamentalist mindset, where there is one answer and everyone who disagrees is being deliberately obtuse.

I have two problems with this view:

Are Scientists and Engineers really More Prone to Fundamentalism?

Vallely suggests this problem may originate in universities in the Middle East.  This could be so.  However, if the problem is with convergent problem solving, then any student in engineering or science disciplines would be vulnerable.

First, whilst I appreciate scientific disciplines may be taught in such a way that only convergent problems count, it simply is not true that all scientific problems are convergent.  Indeed physicists sometimes adopt a mystical worldview as they probe the mysteries of relativity and quantum mechanics.

I can appreciate some people who work in IT might see all problems as convergent.  Certainly many people treat website design as if it is!  A moment’s reflection would show website design is far more a human than a technical challenge.  They are communication tools and so good design addresses the infinite range of human perceptions.

Surely, the problem is the other way round?  Many religious people do not understand science.  The fundamentalist mindset is attracted to a worldview where both science and religion produce single correct answers.

Take a look at this passage from Vallely’s paper:

What Rose has done is to highlight three specific traits that characterise the “engineering mindset”: first, it asks “why argue when there is one best solution?”; second, it asserts “if only people were rational, remedies would be simple”; and third, it appeals to those with an underlying craving for a lost order, which lies at the heart of both salafi and jihadi ideology.

These are traits of fundamentalist thinking.  Vallely is right when he says it depends on how scientific subjects are taught.  Correlation does not necessarily imply causation.  Fundamentalists attracted to engineering are just as likely as engineers becoming fundamentalists.

Here’s a cartoon about Religion, Science and the Fundamentalist Mindset.

It is an Economic Problem

So, what explains this correlation (if it exists)?  I think the clue is right at the end of Vallely’s article:

But they will need something that cannot come from western cultural experts. What the report omits to point out is that students will require input from others within their faith – to open up to them the richness of the Islamic traditions that constituted the religion before the arrival of oil-rich salafi fundamentalism.

The key word is “oil-rich”.  Fundamentalism is divisive because it promotes superiority for those who are right and  traditionally wealth is the primary indicator of who is right.

Neo-liberal economic systems treat economics as a science.  When I was at university in the 1970s, economics was a part of the social sciences and as a real scientist, I looked down on social sciences as a subject that had pretensions to scientific rigour.

Certainly, some social scientists envy science’s clarity.  But economics is a divergent system.  Whilst it is possible to play the system if you have enough wealth or power, it still depends on multiple human interactions.

IS Same or Different?

The wealthy use the power of wealth to control others.  Fundamentalism is one way of doing this.  Islamic State (you know who I mean) opposes the West, not because they are different but because they are similar.  The neo-liberal state is a direct competitor to their power base.

Most of us don’t have a stake in this rivalry.  Refugees and those killed as a result of terrorist attacks in the West are victims of a proxy war between two competing ideologies.  The wealthy have a lot to defend and can afford the weapons.

We’re often told IS is not Medieval because they use the Internet and modern warfare but the rich and powerful have always been with us.  They’ve always dealt in certainties because it allows them to divide the world into good and evil.

Vallely is right about the richness of Islamic traditions.  The best in all the religious traditions favours supporting ordinary people who simply want to make a living in the world.

2 Prayer in the Marketplace

Over the last couple of weeks I have explored incarnation in the neighbourhood and incarnation online. Whilst my last post was about working online, my primary focus is spirituality and community development in the local economy. Is there room for prayer in the marketplace?

Let me be clear about what I am not writing about. For many years, a man used to walk up and down Fargate, the main shopping street in Sheffield City Centre, wearing a sandwich board proclaiming that the Kingdom of God was nigh and so we were all doomed. He has many successors and to this day there are often preachers and music groups, reminding us of our sinfulness.

They are one of the few ways the original spirit of the marketplace is still expressed in our modern so-called secular world.  Whilst their practice may be close to my vision of the radical agora where all human interactions focus, it is not what I mean by prayer in the marketplace. It is not that they offer an alternative to shopping so much as they contribute to the mix of activities that should be present in any city centre.

So too are the churches, including Cathedrals that offer a place for prayer, a space to take time out and sit quietly. Perhaps they support prayer in the marketplace but what they offer is not exactly what I mean.

Prayer in the Marketplace

So, what do I mean by prayer in the marketplace? What is prayer? There are many definitions and my Christian friends are likely to disagree with me. Prayer is simply being present. It is being aware of what is happening around you. It is in essence being incarnate, present and in the flesh.

The marketplace is the community in which businesses operate. Our neo-liberal economy has worked tirelessly over many years to drain common spaces of community. Spending no longer benefits the immediate neighbourhood, as multi-nationals extract money from circulation.

So, prayer is being present in this travesty of a marketplace and being aware not only of the destruction wreaked on our communities by unaccountable corporations but also of the green shoots of community fighting back.

The marketplace is, for communities, their heart. Maybe the heart is torn from many neighbourhoods but what else can replace the marketplace?

Sheffield as an Example

Look at Sheffield. The post-war rebuilding resulted by the 1960s in Sheffield City Centre being the best in the UK outside of London. Then they built Meadowhall, an out-of-town shopping centre, and since then the city centre has struggled to fight back. The corporations moved out of the centre and into Meadowhall. Many towns within about an hour’s drive of Meadowhall suffered a similar decline.

Not only are the corporations unreliable but they create what are sometimes called clone towns. Go anywhere and you find the same shops. Places lose their distinctiveness and become vulnerable to rapid decline once the corporations decide the town can no longer support their presence.

Being present, allows us to see all this and where there are green shoots, initiatives that need support. More than that it is those who are present who see new potential and can call on the authorities to change policies.

For example, if business rates are high, expecting the return of the corporations, perhaps local authorities can make premises available to local businesses on more affordable terms.

When we walk through our streets, we must be aware of the human need around us. Some of this need is obvious but how many people are there because they are seeking community, in the only place they know to look?

When you’re alone and life is making you lonely
You can always go, downtown
When you’ve got worries all the noise and the hurry
Seems to help I know, downtown

0 Just How Important are Features?

Products and Services

We’re often told it is benefits that sell a product or service. Nevertheless, it is easy to forget and try to market a product or service’s features. Usually, prospects are not interested because they do not know they need those features. So, just how important are features?

Features are elements of the design of a product or service. If you sell your product or service with through its benefits, there comes a point where your prospective client or customer will ask: exactly how are you going to deliver on your promised benefits?  This is where features come into play.

Features can make a product or service special but it is important not to overdo it. For example, if you are selling a coaching service, you might offer two sessions per month. It might be tempting to think three or four sessions would be more attractive. It might but remember there is a limit to the workload your client can take on. You don’t want to overload your client and it is also more work for you!

Types of Feature

Your clients or customers need to know what they will receive for their money. An attractive list of features presented at the right time, ie once the prospective client or customer has understood the benefits, can go a long way towards making the sale. So, your features might include:

Pricing

Pricing is a special case. It is a feature but you may not need to include it if it is likely to vary according to the needs of the client. You may also wish to include incentives, such as discounts, which you can introduce as you get to know your prospective customer.  Prices can also include variations dependent on the payment method.

Be clear why your features are special and what they offer that other similar products or services don’t.

Causes

Causes are different because usually the beneficiary is a third-party. So, the benefits are not primarily for the supporter. If someone is going to donate, however, they will want to know where the money is going and how it will be used.

Therefore these features are of two kinds. Some will relate to the delivery of the benefit to the beneficiaries. Or if the cause is a campaign, how the campaign is to be carried out and what support can be contributed to the campaign.

The other type is features for the supporter or donor. These might be things like reports, access to information, training for direct action, etc.

So, sign up for our direct action workshop, £20! The benefit is two-fold, the person who pays attends a workshop and the resulting direct action may bring about beneficial changes. Similarly, the features will be two-fold. The person who pays gets a workshop (and possibly lunch!) and perhaps joined up because a feature of the workshop is that the direct action is non-violent.

Remember this three-way structure of benefits and features. We normally consider a transaction as two-way. A business sells something to a customer who needs it. However, it is likely in almost all transactions, there are third-parties, those who have a stake in the transaction.

Implicit Causes

Where there is a cause, the beneficiaries are likely to be obvious. In a natural disaster, the beneficiaries are the main point. For some causes there are beneficiaries but they are not readily identifiable, eg climate change impacts everyone’s life, a general benefit.

But a transaction between a wholesaler and retailer for example, includes the retailer’s customers. These customers clearly have a stake in the transaction and where they have expectations of the products, in terms of quality or environmental impact, there may be a cause in there too.

And consider any commercial transaction where there is no cause articulated, there still may be hidden causes, such as additives to foods or environmental impact. The customers may not articulate interest in this aspect but it can have implications for their wealth and well-being.

The point is maybe the features of any product or service includes an implicit cause and that is the well-being of stakeholders. We see this already in some products, eg “this cosmetic was not tested on animals” is a feature of the product and relates to a particular cause that concerns some of its users.

Clearly this is a complex area and requires further exploration.

0 Hermeneutics in the Marketplace

The Greek God Hermes gave his name to the study of how ancient texts speak to the present.  Hermes was the God of doctors, merchants, travellers and thieves – as far as I can remember.  As such it is fitting we encounter hermeneutics in the marketplace; perhaps there is no better place for it!

Christian academic theology comprises two main activities:

The hermeneutical challenge is to avoid two approaches that do not do justice to either the text or present day human beings:

What we need is a materialist reading of the texts.  This may seem odd.  Surely these are spiritual texts?  They are spiritual but if you think that means these texts are not materialist then you have not understood the meaning of spirituality.

The Christian story is not one of humanity becoming more like God; a path leads to totalitarian readings.  It is the story of God becoming human and so showing us how to be human.

Hermeneutics belong in the marketplace because the Old and New Testaments are preoccupied with money and community.  The marketplace is where these texts test us.  Even the relatively few texts about sex are usually primarily concerned about money and inequality.  Sexual exploitation is an economic activity after all.

The challenge we all face is how to live in community.  We all face temptation to use financial power to our own advantage.  This can be subtle, appearing to be the usual way of doing things.  One major difficulty, when challenging neo-liberal assumptions, is to most people it is simply the way things are.  They meet any challenge with incomprehension, which usually manifests as an attack on some unrelated issue.

Hermeneutical Circulation

One well-known way of allowing ancient texts to challenge our assumptions is by using the hermeneutical circulation.  Here reflection follows each activity and informs the next.  It circulates from action to reflection to action and each turn of the cycle brings us somewhere new.  (The word cycle is often used but it implies a return to the same place.)  The texts aid reflection by introducing new perspectives.

A simple way of doing this is a three-step reflection:

Snaps – I have just experienced something, does it remind me of a story or any passage in Scripture?

Starters – turn to the passage or passages you identified and find out as much as you can, especially what they meant when written and how people have interpreted them since.  (This is exegesis!)

Spin-offs – do these studies lead to new insights that might change my next action?

I’ve prepared this post in support of my sequence of posts about spirituality in the marketplace.  It is also a precursor to my review of a book about Christian understanding of economics that should appear next week.

1 Incarnation Online

Obviously, incarnation online is a contradiction.  Last Wednesday I discussed why being physically present, “in the flesh” or incarnate is important.

And last Friday, I explored one aspect of this in more detail.  Imbricated roles explores degrees of overlap of physical presence with the formal role of community development. The possibilities range from living in the neighbourhood through to development work without setting foot in the neighbourhood.

The post lists several meaningful ways a development worker can operate without physical presence, including online development work.

Incarnation Online?

Incarnation means “in the flesh”, so is it possible to be truly present online? I market my business as Community Development Online, is this a practical possibility?

On the face of it, it is impossible to be present in any meaningful sense if your relationship is solely online. There is always value in visiting a neighbourhood, even once, to get a sense of how things are and to meet the people.  We pick up many visual and other clues from people and even a video link cannot offer the same experience.

However, this needs to be balanced with the unparalleled access we have via the Internet to people and communities all over the world. It extends our reach and makes sharing experiences all over the world possible.

So, let’s approach this from another angle.

Walking Alongside

I mentioned in last Wednesday’s post that incarnation is “walking alongside” in the sense that followers of Jesus embody Jesus in the practical things they do to support people around them.

George Lovell’s non-directive consultancy for community and church workers, known as AVEC, supported many workers from all over the UK in the 70s and 80s. Lovell did not visit every community he helped. He was able to get alongside practitioners, who were the people present in their communities.

They were people committed to a particular neighbourhood and so were present there. Where the coach or consultant walks alongside the development worker, communicating online does not make a great deal of difference.

Trust

The big issue for any business is trust. The local business builds trusting relationships, perhaps over years.  It is more difficult online. There are many methods websites use to help visitors know like and trust an online business, eg telling personal stories, sharing testimonials, blogging, videos. Whilst these all have their place, the one thing that can really build relationships is personal contact; besides Skype there are many online conferencing facilities.

There are many successful businesses offering coaching over a huge range of activities and it means a coach can extend their reach to practically anywhere in the world.  There is little evidence this is inferior. The skills of the coach are far more important than proximity of coach and client.

Yes, using the Internet to deliver coaching services does mean there is less personal contact. This can be a disadvantage but there are advantages too. Working together on a document or website, may actually be easier online.

One strength of working online is there is less temptation, especially prevalent among development workers, to take over the role of the local person.

Perhaps this is a poor image of God! Many religious people do see God as distant and walking alongside, despite the Christian understanding of God in flesh, living and dying with us.

We must remember everything we encounter online is a machine, not a living thing. Its purpose is to help us live our lives and not replace them with worlds we create in our heads.

The postal service in the past supported relationships that might have ended had they not been able to communicate. The web is a bigger more complex and more seductive version of the same thing.