Monthly Archives: March 2016

3 Resources for the Local Economy: Local Currencies

In this final post before the Easter break (back in a fortnight), I’m visiting perhaps one of the most common resources for the local economy, local currencies.  Perhaps the two best known examples are the Brixton Pound (perhaps the first) and the Bristol Pound, which is the first city-wide local currency in the UK.

It is worth looking at both sites as they are good examples of how to convey a complex idea; inspiring the visitor with the vision for the scheme as well as the practical information they need to take part.  There’s always room for improvement but both sites get most things right.

Under the next four headings, I shall explore local currencies and the contribution they make to local economies.

Equivalent to Pounds Sterling

This may seem an odd starting point but it is important to understand local currencies.  They are not the same as Local Economic Trading Schemes (LETS).  A LETS creates a new currency that is completely self-contained.  It is not possible to value it in pounds sterling or any other currency.  I suppose bureaucrats might attempt to assign a value to LETS, eg to enforce benefit rules, but essentially LETS are ways of tracking transactions between people; they form self-contained economies independent of the mainstream.  This is not a criticism of LETS, it merely distinguishes them from local currencies.

One Local Pound (usually designated by preceding the word pound with the name of a place), is equal to one pound sterling.  It is essentially a voucher system.  You buy them with sterling and can sell them, receiving sterling in exchange.

Practicalities

So, I could pay with a five-pound note and receive Bristol pounds in my change.  I can refuse them if I choose.  I might refuse them as I don’t live in Bristol and so unable to spend them.

Usually these schemes work in units of £1 equivalent.  So if I purchased something worth fifty pence with a Bristol pound, there’s no reason I shouldn’t receive 50p sterling change.  It works so long as the trader and the customer are happy to do this.

Some of the schemes use local pounds to pay for council tax or include them in employees’ wages.  This is possible where all parties agree.  Shops can easily declare them in tax returns, simply add them to the total income or expenditure in pounds sterling.

I understand some schemes have a more complex system where they sell local pounds at the rate of £11 local for £10 sterling.  The £11 local received are still equal to £11 sterling.  The exchange rate the other way is £9 sterling for £10 local.  If you do the maths you will see this balances the books.  The person who loses would be someone who ended up with more local pounds than they first purchased.  This is an incentive to stay in the scheme.

Retains Money in the Local Economy

So, why bother?  The aim of the scheme is to keep money in the local economy.  They are designed to enable businesses and customers to keep money circulating locally whilst still participating in the wider economy.  Over time, businesses can collaborate to make sure more of their trade remains local.  Businesses can for example, offer local pounds to their local suppliers.

It does not benefit local economies to be cut off entirely from the rest of the world.  After all, local economies grow as new money enters it.  The problem for many localities is the flow of money out of their economy is greater than the inward flow.  Money leaving the economy largely goes to global corporations who salt it away in offshore accounts, avoid taxes and in effect take money out of circulation.

This means local businesses use local currencies and not local branches of multi-national corporations.  Local businesses are likely to use local suppliers and collaborate with other local businesses.  They are dependent on the flow of currency locally and so many can see the advantages of developing a local system that increases the flow of currency through their businesses.

This means customers may need some incentive to use local pounds.  Why should they bother?  After all, it restricts what they can spend their money on to local businesses.  But this is an opportunity to educate everyone about the economy and how it works.  Just as the first retail co-operatives usually included a library and meeting room because they needed to educate their customers, so local currencies need to see their scheme as to some degree educational.

Helps Traders Identify Local Customers

One big advantage, easy to overlook, is it helps businesses find local customers.  Anyone using their local currency is likely to be local and so has the potential to become a regular customer.  One thing few people realise is the role of friendship in business.  Where a business owner can befriend their local customers, they are likely to build long-term business relationships with them.

This can be as simple as the trader, knowing their regular customers’ habits and being able to prepare their usual in advance.  Brief conversations accumulate over the years and a network of friendships, can support the core activity of a business.

This can be supported with special offers for customers paying in the local currency.  Examples can be found on both the Bristol and Brixton sites.

Use of Mobile Phones

Banknotes are a simple way of promoting a local currency and can be an opportunity to promote the area.  The Bristol notes for example include hidden away an image of the dreaded Bristol crocodile that apparently inhabits its waterways, eating who knows who.

However, most schemes have a means of banking their currency, using a local credit union for example, thus allows some interesting schemes using texting.  Note this is not an app, you simply pay by texting.  Both Bristol pounds and Brixton pounds use this payment method.

If you know what you owe, you can set up the text whilst queueing at the till.  The text goes to a special account that returns a confirmation text to the customer and to the retailer.  This is a good example of how online methods can support local trading.

Can you think of other advantages or indeed disadvantages of local currencies?  Do you use them?  If so, what difference have they made to your life?

0 The Digital Revolution

During my lifetime there has been a digital revolution.  Until mechanical computers most measurements were analogue.  I suppose people didn’t think about it, it was just the way you measured things!  Perhaps it is easiest to think about a clock face.  The hands move around the dial and cover every possibly position in each circuit.

Analogue and Digital

I can remember when digital watches first appeared.  You had to press a button to tell the time!  Analogue watches were always superior not only because they don’t need a button but also they are easier to read.  We read the angle between the hands and that is enough unless we need to speak the time.

The ticking of a clock perhaps divides time into discrete units but a single tick does not have to equal one second.  We still tell the time by glancing at the dial.

It is only through computers we have found a credible alternative to analogue measurements.  Today it seems natural to think of measurements as many small packets (quanta) of whatever we measure.  Quantum mechanics suggests space is granular because there are minimum amounts of distance, for example.

Machines can read analogue measurements but they are harder to manipulate.  Usually they convert them to digital and digital calculations usually offer a close enough approximation to analogue.  If we need more accuracy, we simply divide things up into finer grains.

If you are reading this on a computer screen, everything you can see is digital.  All the words, images, colours … all break down into digital, noughts and ones.

Programs and Applications

A single digital digit is a bit.  It has one of two values, 0 or 1.  Usually, computers process bits in groups of 8, called a byte.  (4 bits is a nibble, but you don’t need to know that!)  As each bit in a byte can be 0 or 1, a byte can have 256 values.  This is ample to represent the alphabet and various other punctuation symbols.

These are the basic building blocks from which everything else we see on the screen can be built.  It was a major breakthrough, when someone worked out computer programs can be expressed in bits.  So, the same noughts and ones that code as symbols and images on the screen, program the machine to generate that particular screen.

Programming Languages

Programming languages have similarly evolved.  It is in theory possible to program using noughts and ones.  However, no-one is likely to get very far.  Perhaps the earliest languages were assembly languages, where there is a one-to-one equivalence between the language and the basic digital code.  It is possible to program in assembly languages and they are perhaps still used to program new languages.  But there is little need for them.  Most people who code use a higher level language such as Algol or Basic or C!

But even that is no longer the limit.  These days most of us get by using little if any code.  With an application, such as a word processor, most of us have no need for code.

Notice how each step becomes the foundation for a new step.  Something new opens the door to innovative uses; applications change the real world and change is not always predictable.  Maybe the paperless office has not come about in the way some anticipated.  But compare a typical office today with an office 20 or 30 years ago.

Professionals and Amateurs

One big change is everyone types.  There was a time when touch typing was a valued skill.  Maybe it still is.  But most of us use keyboards and never bother to train in touch typing.  I didn’t and I mostly type by looking at the screen with only an occasional glance at the keys.

So a reporter used to write copy by hand and pass it to a typist.  Now they do their own typing, possibly in the place where the action is happening.  Everyone has a screen and uses it.

What I want to underline here is our relationship with machines has changed the way we work and how we relax.  Not only can we select how we entertain ourselves, not constrained by what’s on a few channels but also we use machines to generate entertainment in ways we were unable to a few years ago.  Most of us carry a video camera, even if we don’t use it.

We always use tools as to extend our bodies and now we have increased potential.  This has happened to the extent that many of us can do things that previously specialists did.  Whether the specialist was a touch typist or a film producer, we can do it because the potential is in our grasp.

The specialist these days must show they can do it better than we can or save us time by doing it for us.

The amazing thing is digital technology, ultimately on billions of noughts and ones, powers these innovations.  It is important to hold this in mind as we turn to the topic of artificial intelligence.

How has the digital revolution supported local economies?

0 Keeping Your Promise

Every exchange in the marketplace involves at least one promise.  “In exchange for the price of this product or service I shall do this …” The promise is the product or service shall deliver the stated benefits.  The potential customer needs to know not only what the promise is but also that the vendor can meet the promise.

This second is a significant challenge.  How do you prove you capacity to meet your promise?

As usual, I shall use my business to show how to answer the questions in the circuit questionnaire.

How does my promise uniquely solve the customer’s problem?

Organisations with marketing problems are all different.  The organisation may not be aware of their problem  and so choose the wrong solution.  They need to know what the problem is and so it is worth spending time identifying and clarifying it. I take a systemic view of website design because online problems are often a symptom of deeper organisational problems.

People aware their website is a liability can find their problem is one or more of their capacity, vision, management structures or who-knows-what.  They need to address these problems and not prematurely opt for the first solution that comes along.  There’s no point in approaching a website designer if the problem is in your organisation.  Website developers often find their clients difficult because the client does not understand the problems their organisation faces.

It’s better to think strategically from the beginning but wherever you’ve got to, it’s never too late to start over and get the website working for your organisation.

Some people may say, isn’t this an example of the tail wagging the dog?  Do we really have to change so much because we have a website?  This is the wrong question.  You need to look at why you need a website and make the organisational changes you need to meet that benefit.  Get that right and the website will slot into its rightful place.

The Promised Outcome

I take a systemic approach, working with clients to look at their organisation’s objectives and what it needs to change to meet them.  The website is one tool among many that can support overall objectives.

Nobody wants a website.  They are a lot of work.  Many organisations need a website because it is an essential part of their marketing strategy.  So it is important to understand their marketing strategy and where their website fits in.

For local markets, a website can be immensely helpful in support of in-person marketing.  This is what makes local marketing so exciting, it is essentially getting out there and meeting people.  So, your website needs to be fully integrated into your real life marketing strategy.  If your website is a liability either you don’t need one or its role has not been thought through.

So, my promised outcome is to help an organisation understand their marketing strategy and then plan an integrated online and in-person approach.  This includes strategy implementation, including building online presence if required.

Why the Customer will get the Promised Outcome

Whilst the Internet opens up new opportunities for organisations with something to promote, its power often uncovers their underlying weaknesses.  Holistic web design helps you design your organisation so that it takes advantage of marketing opportunities on and offline.

Your Internet presence can increase your organisation’s capacity.  This means with a similar but better targeted contribution of time and resources, your organisation will do more.  I use a non-directive consultancy approach, which means

The right solutions can take time to emerge.  Part of my role is to support the client during the usual period of being stuck (and help them get stuck in the first place – organisations are brilliant at finding reasons not to stare into the abyss!)

The goal is to help the client understand their organisation and what might work.  I challenge the hidden assumptions people make that limit their capacity to respond to their market.

Automate, Simplify and Scale

With an online presence, organisations can find support for their marketing strategy in three ways:

I’m not sure either title fully conveys the promise but perhaps this shows how difficult it is to express complex ideas.  The pages on my website aim to support my in-person marketing approach.  They help me explain the difference between the two approaches and show how they might benefit the client’s organisation or business.

Maybe I will come up with better titles as my work progresses.  However, this is not essential because I have other opportunities to promote my offers before a potential client sees the title.

Do you know of other ways to prove capacity to fulfil your promise through online and in-person marketing?

0 Spiritual Awareness

I can remember Alistair Hardy’s book, “The Biology of God”, published in 1966.  I must have read it in the early seventies and I read it because it had the word Biology in the title.  If memory serves it relates stories of spiritual awareness and argues that spirituality is biologically determined.  This does not imply the truth of any particular tradition, just that there are biological reasons why we have such experiences.

Awareness

David Hay mentions Hardy in his paper “The Spirituality of Adults in Britain – Recent Research” , one of the references in Gordon Ferguson’s recent comment on my post Spiritual Assets.  Gordon writes:

Spirituality is not just about ‘paying attention’ or awareness, but about the response to what the attention reveals – spirituality is relational. David Hay called spirituality ‘relational consciousness’ … and contrasts it with individualism.  The individual stops with just the attention and then leaps straight to the political.

In my reply I suggested paying attention, or awareness, is an essential precursor to caring or love or empathy.  I’ve given this more thought and wish to shift my ground somewhat.

Awareness is a single act, not the first step in a chain of activities that results in caring.  Gordon refers to a Wikipedia entry about the Ethics of Care.  This mentions Tronto’s four ethical elements of care: attentiveness, responsibility, competence and responsiveness.  I don’t think this is a sequence, they are four elements that need to be in place for care to happen.  The problem with such lists, apart from the polysyllabic psychobabble, is they break down what is essentially a single act.

Caring or Loving?

Gordon argues:

The response that spirituality brings is one of ‘care’. … I think ‘care’ is better than ‘love’ since the word ‘love’ has been far to abused and misused. ‘Care’ is also the term used by feminists – it is men that leap straight to the political – women, routed in caring community, are more sensible.

So, the argument seems to be paying attention brings something to mind and then the observer makes a choice to take a political or a caring route.  Gordon implies caring can be followed by politics but politics alone does not hack it.

The inadequacies of the English word love have often been highlighted.  New Testament Greek has three words for love.  Translating all these using one word makes nonsense of some passages.  I’m not sure any of the three readily translates as caring but there you go.  I would not use caring to describe this response or outcome of awareness.

Obedience

The word I would use to describe the response to awareness is obedience.    There is another issue with translation here.  The word obedience has a Latin root that means to listen.  The opposite of obedience is not disobedience but it is to act inappropriately as a result of not paying attention.  Obedience is not about doing as you are told but it is to respond appropriately to the situation, which might include someone barking orders at you.

Awareness demands obedience.  When I walk past someone begging in the street, I see them and avoid them.  If I was truly aware of their humanity I would do something for them.  So, paying attention or awareness is not passive, it demands obedience and that obedience is at the same time caring and political.

Christians would argue you can see this radical obedience in the stories of Jesus.  We see it too in the painstaking experimental approach of the scientist and where those who see something is wrong set out to fix it.  Sometimes circumstances force awareness onto someone, who might lose a loved one and fight to make sure the cause of their loss does not endanger others.

Mutual Affection?

One special case is those who notice how our landscapes slowly change over the decades.  The elderly may reminisce, indulge in nostalgia but I suspect many wrestle with working out how the world has changed.  We do not see how money leaves the local economy because many of us do not remember a time when it was different.  This motivates those who do see it and there are many ways to the same conclusion, to seek ways to change the status quo and find ways to retain money locally.

Is this the same as Hay’s “relational consciousness”?  Well holy obedience is certainly relational, it is a life lived for the good of community, nurturing the relationships that build community.  But as Hay puts it:

Spirituality demands more than functionality and organisation, it can only flourish in an atmosphere of mutual affection.

3 A Brief History of Computing

Today I’m moving to a new topic, still under the general heading of spirituality. The new theme is the relationship between spirituality and computing. Whilst I will dwell on the Internet in later posts, it is important to understand what computing actually is. Hence I offer today a brief history of computing.

A computer is something that computes. What we call computers are a special case of something far more important to human society. People compute and one big advantage they have over machines is they (usually) understand what they are doing.

Indeed there would be no computing at all if people didn’t do it. So, everything we might call a computer is in fact an aid to human computing. Without us machines would have nothing to do!

Number Systems

Number systems are not machines but they are a great help to computing. They help us follow consistent rules and that means it is possible for machines to follow them.

People still use many simple number systems today. Various tally systems (sometimes called five barred gates) through to elaborate counting systems such as the one in the video, are still used and always will be.

Many counting system are based on letters of the alphabet. The Roman number system is the best known letter-based system. It is still used on some clocks and ordered lists. The main problem was some complex calculations, eg division!

I understand the Arabic number system originated in North India, developed by Hindus. The Christian Church of the East took it into the heart of the great Islāmic empire in the Middle East. From there Islam carried it into North Africa and from there to Spain. Europeans first encountered it as the Arabic number system.

We can see in this story the degree of collaboration between different cultures, as they improved their computing skills.

Engineers also benefitted from mathematical progress. Until pocket calculators and personal computers, engineers, scientists and teachers often carried a slide-rule in their pockets. These used logarithms and at school we had to understand them, laboriously converting maths problems into logs, adding or subtracting and then converting them back again.

Computing Machines

The other thing we might associate with these times is computing machines. The abacus was essential because the Roman numeral system made paper calculations too difficult. The abacus was actually rather efficient and big computations could be done by simply linking together several abaci and their human operators.

We should not make the mistake of thinking people were unable to carry out complex calculations. Computation might take longer and need a lot of people but it could be done.

Another mistake to avoid is the idea that there is straight line evolution of computers. Many machines in the early industrial revolution were programmable. Punch cards controlled some looms, for example, just like the earliest computers.

Indeed Ada Lovelace, the world’s first programmer, helped Charles Babbage program his first difference engine and it is likely programmable looms inspired her approach.

Babbage’s difference engine was in principle the first computer, although in practice it was difficult to build because he could not manufacture the parts to the required tolerance.  His later analytical engine proved impossible to build for the same reason.

Later developments included mechanical and electromechanical calculating machines.

Early Computers

The earliest computers used valves and later solid state circuitry. The problem was heat and while in principle it was possible to reduce the size of a university computer to that of an orange, it would need to kept in liquid nitrogen! Silicon chips in the late seventies changed all that and paved the way to personal computing, the Internet and mobile phones.

Next time I’ll look in more depth at how computers work.

In the meantime, share any thoughts or ideas about the history of computing here.

0 What Makes an Offer Unique?

It is an advantage if you can show how your unique offer differs from everything else out there. This may be easy if you are piloting a new idea, less so if it is a market with lots of competition.

Hairdressers, for example, probably find little potential for differentiating their offer. Even so, some may develop a reputation for some style or service and so they can promote that as their unique feature. Also for something like hairdressing, it will suffice if it is unique locally! There is a limit to how far customers are likely to travel.

To distinguish your offer from your competitors is not necessarily a claim to be better than they are. Making the distinction between what you offer and what others offer can help potential customers decide which they prefer.

A unique offer does not necessarily sell! You might come up with an offer that is brilliant on paper but no-one wants it. If your unique offer does not sell, the chances are your marketing strategy is at fault, perhaps the design of your offer, pricing, the way you present its benefits and features.

What make an offer unique ?

Sometimes it is possible to come up with a brand new idea. But even so you may need to distinguish your offer from competitors addressing the same problem with different offers. So, let’s review possible ways in which an offer might be unique.

Organisation or Website?

Understanding organisations is far more important than understanding the Internet. For a client seeking help with the Internet, their success depends on their whole organisation. Change is much more than moving from being without a website to being with one. It has implications for all aspects of how they work.

Creation of a website is not a big job and increasingly clients are able to do this for themselves. What they need is guidance through the early months and help with learning to live with a demanding website.

People may need help to build their website and this will remain so as new possibilities are discovered almost daily. But ongoing support is of greater value. You don’t know on day 1 what particular problems your business is going to face. Whilst websites are fairly similar, organisations are all different and one organisation may have completely different issues to another with a similar website.

Leave a comment, especially if you can think of other ways in which an offer can be unique.

0 Resources for the Local Economy: Gift Vouchers

Resources for the Local Economy is a new occasional series where I shall introduce websites about interesting schemes in support of the local economy.  The first in this series is gift vouchers.

The website is Goodmoney and you will find the home page if you click on the link.  (Note: websites change from time to time and so if you read this post in the distant future, the site will not necessarily match what I write!)

The first big positive is the home page explains the gift voucher scheme and nothing else.  At the top of the page there is a brief introductory text explanation and a video.  Beneath the video there are three buttons, to press, depending on how you wish to respond to the message.  Best proactive suggests it is usually best to have a single call to action.  However, the three possibilities are logical and clear.  Is it confusing to have three to choose from?  It would be interesting to look at conversion rates for this page.

The Turquoise box below the buttons seems a bit superfluous and would benefit from having links to the ethical supermarket and online store.

The next three sections correspond to the highlighted words in the introductory text.  Links from the introductory text to these sections would be helpful.  Five benefits for local businesses follow these sections.

Next are three buttons and one of these is different from the first three.  Usually when links repeat down the page, they are the same.  This allows people already decided to follow the link at the top and the undecided can read more and then encounter the same buttons again afterwards.

Overall this is a good home page and clearly conveys the gift voucher scheme and its benefits.  There may be a few navigation issues but if the page converts, they may not be too serious.  I would certainly recommend this as a site to visit not only for its core idea but the simple, clear way they conveyed it on the site.

What we don’t see on the website is the complementary in-person marketing that will be going on in Brighton and Hove.  My guess is the website supports a primary in-person marketing strategy.  Judging by the number of participants in the gift voucher scheme, it is building support.  It would be interesting to see some statistics on the site.  I gather it is early days and so these may follow at some point.

If you read the About page, you will find the gift voucher scheme has two purposes.  First, it directly supports the flow of money in the local economy.  Also Goodmoney are using the scheme to build their local business membership.  It sounds as if they have plans to launch other forms of support as their membership grows.

This type of scheme will work when people visit businesses and explain the advantages of joining the scheme.  As the number of participant businesses grow, this will make the scheme more attractive and evidence of income from the scheme will also be helpful.  Another advantage personal contact has over depending solely on online registration is opportunities to identify barriers to joining the scheme.  The reasons why potential customers might not invest in it can be varied and not necessarily what the developers of the scheme expect.

Research into the barriers to the scheme can result in changes to the marketing and perhaps to the scheme itself.

This is a brilliant idea, that could be extended to other areas.  It is clearly described on the website and it seems it is being effectively marketed locally.

If you are aware of other resources supporting the local economy, please share them in the comments.  My aim is to encourage the sharing of ideas and so I plan to review the idea itself as well as how it is conveyed online.

3 Spiritual Assets

In the last six posts I have drawn on my experience of community development to discuss the six kinds of asset identified by Asset Based Community Development (ABCD).

Maybe they don’t mention spiritual assets because all assets are spiritual. However, spirituality is important to help us find assets in our communities.

One common mistake is to think of spirituality as something inchoate, out there. Spirit floats around, influencing us in certain difficult to define ways.

Paying Attention

This is fantasy, not spirituality. I’ve suggested in a previous post that spirituality is paying attention. Perhaps we could say spirituality draws our attention to things and embodies meaning in things. Science often gets the blame for disenchanting the world. Science works because scientists pay attention.

No, it is the false spirituality that opposes the spiritual and material that disenchants the world.

It is easy to plan bleak housing estates through utilitarian analysis, where everyone gets exactly what they need to be happy. It doesn’t work and never has.

So, what does work? People live meaningful lives in communities where people work together to contribute to their local economy. The neo-liberal mindset associates wealth with the corporations, who draw wealth out of our neighbourhoods. They don’t see the sustainable wealth rooted in every neighbourhood.

Unstructured Meeting Places

The first priority of every neighbourhood is to provide the spaces in which community takes place. Unstructured meeting places allow people to identify problems and new opportunities. It is where care for those who need it can be worked out.

This is not to say we must isolate every neighbourhood from the world. Each neighbourhood has its unique combination of assets and these form the offers it makes to other neighbourhoods. Residents work in other neighbourhoods and contribute to their local economies.

We must see the economy not as corporations and financial markets. An economy that supports everyone is fractal. Each small part has smaller parts that contribute to the whole. This way we have an economy able to withstand fluctuations; the failure of one business should have a limited impact.

Spirituality and Economics

It is interesting that as we understand spirituality as immaterial and somehow out there, we do the same to economics. These days we conceive it as something that happens between stock exchanges and mediated by machines. We see “boom and bust” market fluctuations and think they are a law of nature.  “Boom and bust” is inevitable if unaccountable people gamble on financial markets.

How can we help local economies resist the fluctuations generated by the formal economy? There are experiments with local currencies and other approaches to make an economic space in which local economies can grow.  These are the means to can capitalise on previously unrecognised local assets.

If they are going to work, it means we need to pay attention to the local assets that can build each neighbourhood into the new national localised economy.

If you know of any experiments designed to support local economies, why not share them here?