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The Tipping Point Numbers for Social Change

Digital Citizen 1 Comment

These are targets every person or group trying to instill social change needs to know to gauge the likelihood or their success.

Recent research has shown that for true social change to occur, you’d need 7-10% of a population to hold an unshakable belief to be able to change the belief of that population within a reasonable amount of time. This is as long as there isn’t another group with another unshakable belief opposing it, like a different religion (Discovery News, August 6 2011). Combine that with the 1% you need to start a movement (Microtrends, by Mark Penn) and you’ve got two real targets for any organization seeking to create lasting social change. There’s none of those around these days, are there? 🙂

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The Better 30 Day Song Challenge for Facebook (A Variation)

Digital Citizen 4 Comments

There is a Facebook Community (sort of like a wiki on Facebook after enough people are part of it) called the 30 Day Song Challenge, with over a million users who “Like” it! The idea is that you share a song of certain meaning to you each day on your Facebook profile. It’s a great idea, this song a day sharing thing. I’ve created a few myself earlier this year without knowing about this concept, with the 28 great love songs in February and Top 10 Bob Dylan songs leading to his 70th birthday in May 2011. Both were intended to be theme focused, though, unlike this meme that is more about variety.

However, despite being about variety, the 30 themes for the Facebook 30 Day Song Challenge were a bit too similar, repetitive, anti-climatic and dated for my liking, and also not universal enough:

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When South Viet Nam Fell, Its People Rose to Be More

Digital Citizen 7 Comments

On April 30th, 1975, South Viet Nam fell as the Viet Nam War ended. Thirty-six years on as I write this, though, its people have risen mightily to become more than they could have ever been if left to develop in Viet Nam had the War ended differently.

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Some Thoughts and Statistics on the New Seaport Farmers’ Market in Halifax

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The new Seaport Farmers’ Market in Halifax is almost in full swing now. It is now open 3 days a week, Fri-Sun, and much longer each day than the half day before at the old market that was open just once per week Sat morning. The future intent is for the new market to be open 6 days a week, though the farmers will only be there for 3. The other 3 days will only have craft sellers. It’s a nice big space and I love it, although I hear the busking musicians are disgruntled due to the open space leaving all of them to be heard so they have to compete to get above each other (The Coast, Sep 9 2010). Hey, I like the music and appreciate its contribution to the ambiance of a farmers’ market, but it’s a new farmers’ market building, not a concert hall.

I love the additional selection and larger stands, though I have to curb myself on the cooked food. It smells and tastes great, but just see how much raw food you can get for the same amount of money on a cooked plate, and you’ll not only see the value of labour to your food costs, but also where many of those cents to your food dollar that’s not going to the farmers end up going. Going there with someone who might expect you to buy something, which includes yourself, is also going to be costly with all the potential little craft trinkets you can buy for significant others, kids, etc. It’s great to see all the stuff, but is hard to resist. So far, I have bought nothing other than raw food from the farmers.

I’ll leave with some statistics about the farmers’ market scene in Nova Scotia and the Seaport Farmers’ Market, from various sources like The Coast paper and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).

  • 40 Nova Scotia Farmers’ Markets Sep 2010, few opened all week
  • New farmers’ market is in an R-2000 building (NRCan designation) that uses 85% less energy and 50% less water than old market
    R2000-standard PDF
  • New farmers’ market is twice the size of old market (which is still open) at 4,000 sq feet
  • 10,000+ visitors per Saturday (August figures, but is still as crowded as far as I can tell)
  • Total vendors increased by at least 50% between new and old markets opening, though not all are food vendors
  • NS Community Supported Agriculture farms (CSAs) and farmers’ market bring in about $90M a year (and growing) to farmers (includes prepared foods, possibly crafts, so can’t just take it against farm gate)