open letters

[chris macrae]

Dear Friends and Colleagues, On Sunday, George was awarded the Tiziano Terzani Prize for his 2012 book Financial Turmoilpublished in Italy by Hoepli. I thought you might be interested in an example of his latest comments about the European financial crisis, which are adapted from a press conference he held in Udine, Italy.  QUESTION: The impression in Europe is that we are going through a very far-reaching and deep crisis, possibly the last crisis, because Europe is losing ground against the Far East and South America. And it could really mean that we are losing our sovereignty. Do you think that Europe will be able to regain the economic and political strength to be a leader in the world, or is this really the end? Do you think that Europe will be a world leader again? Or do we have to prepare for a reversal of growth? SOROS: I share your concern about the gravity of the crisis. I have taken it very seriously. As a believer in an open society, I have made it my first priority for the last few years. This book [Financial Turmoil] is a testament to my concern. I do not think that the euro crisis is the end of Europe. We must not allow it. The EU as it was originally conceived was the embodiment of the values and principles of an open society, and it had the potential to exercise a beneficial influence in the world in promoting those principles. It is a great loss for the world that the EU has become totally preoccupied with its own internal problems. For the full text go to: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-resistible-fall-of-... -------------------------------------------------------------- latest mail to taddy blecher 2015   Wonderful news taddy Can i check a few ideas with you?    1 Your relationship with Khan or Khan type academies? How close is it and is skoll connecting you and khan? It occurs to me that most universities with a future need to make a khan type lab accessible to all students - where students help create missing content modules. Students should be involved in this process even more than being examined wherever 10 times more productive (and up to million times more collaborative) communities are being designed. Are you taking "peer to peer" in this direction. Youth entrepreneur competitions could also  see one of the most important prizes being putting up www.khanacademy.org type content wherever mobilising social knowledge is pivotal to success of the entrepreneur model   2 MoocYunus is an extraordinary visionary (and his life's work is without parallel probably second only to mandelaof living heroes) but last weekend's meeting at grameen headquarters reveals little current capacity to lead the open education revolution . n 2013 this seems o be over to your partners and sir fazle abed - and wherever khan type labs - to fast forward the entrepreneurial revolution of free education needed before complete economic meltdown. Would you consider me sponsoring a visit so you meet sir fazle as main reason to coming to dhaka? We can always try and get the japan ambassador and yunus on same trip but its sir fazle and the abed family who is the key -and unlike yunus tech wizards cluster around sir fazle - cashless banking's future economic revolution for developing world is already something brac is crazily far ahead in   3 There are a few more wild cards within what I can see. Coursera is different in that it could get new training to million youth waves rather than one at a time. But there is no evidence of extreme pro-youth curricula being where the investor (John Doerr) wants coursera to go. Whether peer pressure from skoll on doerr can change this I dont know but frustratingly when I asked yunus to join in putting peer pressure on Doerr who he knows well he said he was too busy and it wasnt his sort of approach.   4 Muddled up in all this is MIT. If you are ever on a us trip that can add a boston leg please tell me as I can arrange an itinerary that shows how much of the futures most exciting apps are being co-created by mit students whose alumn network is number 1 in creating jobs that progress society   5 When it comes to some particular practice areas -eg green energy then our friendship in london with the sainsbury family and the www.ashden.org awards can be pivotal in getting this total chain transformation of knowhow up there - from clean energy, food and water security, zero waste. The other friend of my father who is critical if you are ever passing through London is the CEO of pearson who as well as nudging The Economist back to seeing the future of education and economics as wholly inter-related is desperate for a new strategy for the future of her text book division 5a Behind on plans to celebrate The Economist's 170th birthday and dad's 9th - there were up to 5 mgoal conferences in second half of 2013 where education could have been brought in as the last chance to link in - so far nobody I know is doing this even though I know the organsiers in most cases usaid first global edu conference washington dc august paris 5000 www.convergences2015.org september wise qatar end of october - the one conference where I dont know the organisers social business summit malaysia - where yunus believes he chnages the futures microcreditsummit philippines -where yunus is still celebrated even though the knowledge circulated by this summit is now wholly polluted by errant large funds   5b africa is difficult for me; unlike 30 yeras of my work in asia,  I still feel I can map 20 of Africa's true heroes but they are in many different places and only kenya has a cluster that might let me help them to stage a meeting if you were visiting- I feel the most underused resources may be mo ibrahims goals and the fact that he has inspired a 100 journalist satellite broadcaster who are dedicated to searching out good news of african industries being designed by and for africans 5c I would bet a lot on Jack Ma being the most important open player to get to in china but dont lnow how to establish contact   please tell me -if any of the above is interesting- what can we do together on it or have you got all you need already linked in?   chris   Jeff in london region and I used to work on the biggest change project price waterhouse clients ever dared do in 1990s - he taking the lead role at partner level; Shafqat in dhaka connects wizard youth and is helping skoll and brillaint bring ilab to dhaka -peter ryan takes true microcredit to places in africa too rural for most people to even try  anyone else we should be copying in to future of pro-youth education now? From: Taddy Blecher b>To: Mostofa Zaman <[e-mail]>  Cc: Christopher Macrae <[e-mail]>  Sent: Thursday, 16 May 2013, 1:15 Subject: Re: Update Re: Dearest Mostofa, how did your meeting go? Dear Mostofa and Chris, Please forgive the delayed response.  We were at the World Economic Forum in Cape Town presenting on the future of Universities and discussed some of these ideas.  Also, we have been hosting the Rockefeller Foundation and the launch of their Digital Jobs Africa initiative to create 1 million digital youth jobs over the next 7-years.  They have put $100 million into it. We also just launched our Impact Sourcing Academy with their support. We are working on a massive youth online platform using mobile i will keep you posted on progress. I truly truly appreciate you both passing on our letter to Prof Yunus. We truly hope he will consider becoming a Patron of these initiatives which will educate a major number of youth and get them into jobs. Prof Yunus is correct in saying it may not make sense travelling to Dakar at this stage for a 1-hour meeting.  We will meet together at another Forum somewhere in the world. Once again, I truly am grateful for your intervention and support!

 

here are my main lessons from academic year 012-013 as far as they linkin into yunus and youth

 

1 help us create a youtube collection - go to youtube - search moocyunus ; for more on how to help yunus surveys of free university help edit the attached- imagine it was a wiki- what would you edit in as do next actions and collaborations

 

2 http://normanmacrae.ning.com/forum/topics/khan-academy-links

mark would it be practical to ask khan if has a page of links to every way of connecting with khan academy - I have only just found that he has a cluster of youtube pages -so far they have over quarter of a billion views on the academy's journey to

Our mission to provide a world-class education for anyone, anywhere.

 

3 as far as I know there are only 2 states that supported yunus competitions who have a live coursera partnership - NC at chapel hill and georgia tech

 

3a fortunately the university of Melbourne is both a courser partner and an active yunus m-medicine partner- and grameen nursing college has already published a full 3 year curriculum

 

4 the biggest question raised by ofcvc (and how over 100 historically black universities can linkin to youth and yunus) for me is which of the weekend's 21 final projects would be re-energized if they know of khan and yunus-skoll-khan joint mission-

the three I know would be are

 

*Albany state financial literacy training meets credit union far the most significant project to what grameen America meets free university could be

 

the two serious attempts for students to have their own portal

www.makedu.com morgan state

savannah state campus xchange

 

4.1 mark- did you spot any other projects that would be particularly energised by yunus mission?

4.2 bhuiyan- could you tell me main email contact of these 3 projects so that I can ask if they have any file they want massively discussed online and included as possible case as friends of yunus are surveyed on 12 minute training modules they believe millions of youth most need to action

 

5 2 projects presented at udc that could help with the impossible of getting dc universities collaborate for one day a year are

-Zambia as a model for coop-agriculture- this is something various dc embassies would join in if the invitation was made by the right source

-leveraging the mayors offer to linkin resources of living social to project on sustainable tourism for native americans - that student knows how to network collaboration more than anyone student I have seen this year

-at dc its a shame we haven't made links between Obama's 4 billion dollars of social lab experiments in community broadband

 

6 the year hasn't quite finished with MIT coming to a peak during second week of may

6a its a shame that mackey's conscious capitalism hasn't been linked in yet

7 the second half of the year sees 4 millennium goal summits where education's future is pivotal

-august usaid dc

-september paris 5000 convergences meet

-october ? WISE qatar

-november microcreditsummit phillippines

-do you know any other summits whose coordinators need relentless quizzing as to whether they value yunus free uni mission?

 

chris

 http://normanmacrae.ning.com/

 

 

 

Extract of Muhammad Yunus Vision Skoll April 2013     When Khan stands up and talks about his Khan Academy, or I read about him or listen to his speeches- it always come to my mind: we won't need Oxford any more! - the whole world will be one big Oxford, we need only one global university --- the best!?!

2012's Two pro-youth gamechangers in education   basic curricula can now be distributed to millions of youth simultaneously , free, online - the coursera model youth can individually try out exercises online 365/24/7 - these are  designed by topic clusters as per a text book and are linked to training modules - Khan Academy model   please note exact tools, dynamics of both of these platforms and other platforms are changing very fast - for example khan's impact may vary from its basic free service to  swarming skype tutors by practice area around the content it has put up 365/24/7  . To keep uptodate, we offer a monthly newsletter tracking free online education's gamechangers . We also welcome collaboration around a "youtube tag" we call moocyunus

[chris macrae]

is google part of the journey to free university

what confuses me with google is there is no home page -let alone a map of clicks-  to all its collaboration spaces-

google.org is hard to keep up with all its app areas; mainstream google varies by continent - why isn't there a round the world of google collaborations - for example google Africa is led by a world leading collaboration strategist whose previous life helped to give birth to ushahidi and ilab in Kenya

 

I am also just trying to understand whether google chrome links to education are just ads or uniquely collaborative - please help evaluate http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/education/devices/?utm_source=...

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[chris macrae]

Dear Carrie Rich

 

I was in Dhaka at the weekend visiting Grameen for my 11th time. My father, Norman Macrae, was The Economist's pro-youth economist and in 2005 he sent me on understanding what the net generation needs to learn from Bangladesh as his last project. The Economist celebrates its 170th anniversary this year s being founded to end hunger and entrepreneurially end capital abuse of youth.

 

While interviewing Dr Sultan at Grameen Kalyam I heard that you are helping to arrange leadership/mentor tours to Grameen

 

Would it be possible to meet to see if Norman Macrae Foundation and Global Good Fund have any common interests?

 

 My main reason for the weekend visit was to help Yunus with research for the free university idea he keynoted at 10th Skoll world championships. The fact that he already runs a real Nursing College that is lowest cost makes health one of the areas friends of Yunus can quickly take a lead on in making the virtual free university of health optimal for youth. I know Lord Sainsbury's daughter whose green energy prize network first most famously inspired by Yunus Grameen Shakti believes the free university for energy needs also to be an early area where pro-youth curricula are optimized. Three remembrance parties of my father have so far been organised around the world so as to linking in those passionate about pro-youth education and the internet primarily as as an educational revolution not an appendix of advertising

 

I am committed to the belief that education can change the world. In fact all of my father's and my work was changed back in 1972 when we first saw youth experimenting with online networks, and I went on to spend 4 years working at what was then called the UK National Development Project for Computer Assisted learning

sincerely

chris macrae

Norman Macrae Foundation Bethesda MD 301 881 1655

http://normanmacrae.ning.com/

 

[chris macrae]

Dad's signature curriculum - entrepreneurial revolution - began at The Economist in 1972 after he and i saw youth experimenting with early digital networks in 1972 (UK national dev project computer assisted learning - my first job!) - for both of us the internet's million times more collaboration tech would make 21st c most productive time for youth provided it was designed as an open educational revolution not an extension of mass ads

I have spent much of the 3 years before my dad's death and since searching out who are the movers and shakers dad would most trust affordable learning of entrepreneurial revolution to. Now these appear to be Sir Fazle Abed, Taddy Blecher, yourself, Jack Ma and Monica Yunus -and when it comes to currencies dad's friend Soros

could we meet to discuss this? I could meet anywhere in europe, asia, usa if you have a slot  - my sense is the marketing war over open education is going to happen very fast -and needs to because every time I meet Sir Fazle he says his health cant keep up with the cross-cultural challenges. Probably because he takes these more seriously than anyone I have the privilege to meet.

while I want to put a free online curriculum of ER up on somewhere like www.khanacademy.org I dont believe in replacing the need for a best book in any course that creates jobs around youth

another advantage is much of the curriculum is there in The Economist in dad's writings between 1972 and 1992 but needs contextual interpretation -for example although ashoka's bill drayton coined social entrepreneurs being directly inspired by father's survey of Entrepreneurial Revolution Xmas Day 1976, my father wouldnt agree with 95% of whom Bill Drayton advocates funding for - economically his 1984 book hoped we collaborate in searching out 30000 community service microfranchises to be the most openly scaleable ones not the ones configured around individual saints; similarly even though dad helped schwab while the wef was mainly some skiing and a few meetings, dad wouldnt agree with the expensively uneconomic pr and ego circuit that wef has become

after surviving world war 2 as a teenager in navigating planes over bangladesh and myanmar, dad was tutored by keynes whose last 3 pages of general theory conclude elderly famous  macroeconomists pose the greatest risk to youth's futures because they alone design/compound man made systems- so while ER is an inquiry into what millions of youth first need as affordable learning so they can create jobs, it also needs to get back to the sort of mediating of economics that James Wilson founded and which the 1943 centenary biography of The Economist clearly diarised. 

Can a global viewspaper help optimise future value exchange potential of 7 billion peoples lifetimes unless it mediates pro-youth economics- we have reached year 170 of testing that question

Sincerely chris macrae washington dc 301 881 1655 Norman Macrae Foundation http://normanmacrae.ning.com

[chris macrae]

Dear Carrie

 

A little context before I try and answer your 3 questions and make introductions

 

My view of the future which started in 1972 when my father the pro-youth economist of The Economist first saw students experimenting with early digital networks is that the maps and system designs of massive collaboration and bottom-up community sustainability need total change of economics, professions, what we value students learning. Back in 1972 dad branded Entrepreneurial Revolution as the genre of net generation innovation - most of the draytons (social entrepreneur), gifford pinchots (intrapreneur), schwabs (world economic forum) of this world directly borrowed (not always mathematically correctly!) from dad's work to brand their own networks

 

I have worked on 7-year research projects for dad as part of my life. These took an urgent change in direction after 9/11 - studyingwww.considerbangladesh.com became dad's last live project. Since his death worldwide remembrance parties to The Economist's Unacknowledged Giant can help linkin the massive collaboration around youth which we have mapped since 1972 as urgently needing

I have spent a lot of last 6 years with mostofa a bangladeshi villager now based in dhaka searching out which processes that any of yunus worldwide agents could converge on investing in youth and massive collaboration models linked to yunus greatest millennium goal purposes> normally anyone travelling to dhaka will find that mostofa can add to their appointments diary  if you explain what practice area matters to you- we trued to start a branch of www.the-hub.net around him but then realised it was safer in every way for him to be a one person hub 

 

Contextually, urgent in 2013 I see 3 processes as most exciting as worldwide youth investment processes if they can be linked in:

A) what yunus calls making a free online global university best in world for youth jobs and racing to end poverty - see top 30 second video announcement  he made at recent skoll world championships

 

B) social business student competitions including openly celebrating what microfranchise models work

 

C) inter-everything network spaces - ie whatever else is needed especially by youth entrepreneurs in terms of hubs and real social labs and virtual mainly student owned portals so that collaboration ideas can be incubated and their cases can figure prominently in the open online curriculum

 

regarding each yunus contact, they tend to have complex diaries and their own favorite modes of communication

1 Dr Bhuiyan is based in Tuskegee University Alabama having connected over 100 historically black southern universities around a common entrepreneurship course over last 12 years. He has arranged 2 types of student competitions:

a general annual competition hosted out of atlanta since 2000 - see www.ofcvc.org

with yunus since 2011 -he has invited all of a states universities, principals, state government education leaders to come and celebrate one day of student pitching ideas - georgia sept 2011 was first, north carolina and oregon 2nd and 3rd ; alabama 4th ; new hampshire end of this september will be 5th; i have copies dr yunus email but his favorite communication mode is his mobile phone [phone]

Of course its up to the two of you but I would strongly recommend you get involved in yunus new hampshire competition - to see the process as well as see dr bhuiyans contacts including both the judge and sponsor networks. At the moment I think its true to say dr bhuiyan knows how to run a superb event on day itself- but the before and after connecting of students who might one day become usa's most passionate social business entrepreneurs doesnt have resources or structure yet. I have tried to help bhuiyan linkin a competition around the 3 states dc, md, va - and so far failed. we have some pieces that are worth discussing -surely youth across these 3 states merit one day when their best social business ideas are celebrated by everyone with yunus as master of ceremonies

2 I have also copied naila but she doesnt use email much -it would be great (I think) if you could meet on one of her occasional visits to DC:

practically she understands what friends of yunus strengths and weakness are in technology having worked at grameen phone from the start- over in usa when one of yunus friends needs 40 cinemas filling for a new film it is naila telecentres that get the crowds in; however as per my last mail her own work in usa has taken a focus in terms of womens and family healthcare in the baltimore region; interestingly she borders the catchment area of john hopkins who is both a yunus and www.coursera.org partner- the connections between your interests in health care, hers, john hopkins, and yunus free nursing college could be made better and better- although the head of grameen america vidar jorgenssen also has the day job of organising america's most commercial conferences in healthcare but it seems he prefer to compete with other yunus agents rather tahn get involved in the type of collaboration I am trying to map; however naila has spent quality to one with vidar in ways I havent and I am sure she could give a more nuanced judgement- as an example of another extraordinary dot to fill- obama's 4 billion dollar community broadband program chos the clintons state of arkansas as its social lab for telemedicine- the leader of these is very friendly with anyone wanting to share knowhow on radical improvement to health service economics and delivery this can bring but yunus historic agents appear to busy to connect

2a I have also copied taddy blecher whose networks out of south africa are 10 years ahead of anyone (I have ever searched) in real free universities

2b i have also copied rodoflo - i first heard of him while doing some judging for MIT100k - he wants to linkin all of mit's youth's connections to jobs act-crowdfunding global good- i think the cumbersome laws of crowdfunding may have been problematic but it could be worth seeing if what his network is searching for parallels what your is- MIT has hundreds of brilliant youth entrepreneurs that yunus has become badly separated from due to strange incidents in the who's who of village phones networking since 1996

3 when you compare what makes yunus work uniquely successful- and unique in its bangladesh origins -he has twice and potentially a third time with nurses inspired thousands of professionals to go and work in the villages

-first bankers(in days 1976-1996) when there were no communications other than rickshaw- actually these unbankers formed centres that configured local markets around poorest members and shared knowhow

-second energy (solar and cooking stoves) since 1996 and with the access to mobile communications that george soros helped yunus invest in -making grameen phone bangladesh's largest company but no longer necessarily a social institution due to all sorts of issues about who owns the equity of the grameen brand which were neither understood by those who advised yunus or lawyers in government

-third potentially mobilising  nursing as 21st century's most trusted information and service networkers

within that you asked for my views on energy

I know lord sainsburys daugher who with prince charles and a bbc nature correspondent funded www.ashden.org the microenergy oscars- one would have thought that the combination of her friends and yunus (and one or 2 people in china who are desperate that grassroors microfranchise clean energy) could race to put up a free energy curriculum but in actuality yunus has not structure to do online education so for him it remains more of a dream even though the relatively young bangladeshi expatriate khanwww.khanacademy.org  has much of the technology platform needed

 

what makes grameen energy brilliant , as well as what needs protecting against the vicious politics is mainly misunderstood

0 initial advice from neville williams on how hard politicians making scaling microsolar

1 planting 1000+ solar engineers

2 extraordinary logistics models getting all of the stuff distributed barefoot

3 training of curriculum - eg 15 day course to train up energy maintenance girls in village

4 before the idiotic us embassy wikleaks that made yunus out as stooge of west, yunus would have by now been trading microenergy knowledge all across china - what in 2006 he called his growing up with 2 giants strategy - at a political level us can only do harm to future of open bangladesh at moment - only japan of the embassies i have been round seems able to mediate this

please do question where you need more details -there are a lot of local oddities - eg sam daley harris for long yunus greatest us networker at results and microcreditsummit has left day to day connecting of these networks, claims to be interested in energy but if his new citizens empowerment network has a scalable model to that end then I havent been able to understand how to linkin

cheers

chris macrae

  Sent: Wednesday, 22 May 2013, 20:38 Subject: Re: got lost sorry Re: grameen visit

Dear Chris, 

Confirmed for May 30th at 3:30. 

1.  I do not know Dr. Bhuiyan.  He sounds like a good person to know and we'd be grateful for an introduction.  I'd be interested in learning more about the social business competition as well.  

2.  W4E looks like a great organization.  What are your thoughts about the potential intersection point here?  As it turns out, I'll be teaching health care again in the fall, this time a course about leadership to graduate student nurses through an online platform at George Washington University (I figure that I'll eventually work with all of the George's in town).  

3.  I'd be interested in learning more about your perspective with regard to the energy models.

Best wishes,  Carrie 

On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 12:59 PM, christopher macrae a style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline !important; cursor: text !important;" href="mailto:[e-mail]" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">[e-mail]> wrote:

carrie- yes apologies - lets try 3,30 may 30

 

in reading your 2012 report etc, 3 early discussion points