some people say I’m privileged they say
I’m always you know in the right spot at
the right time it’s this coincidence I
don’t think so you know as I got older I
really don’t find my life journey so far
as a blend of coincidences I understood
more and more over the years what was
guiding me and you know why things
happen the way they did and the internet
really contributed its fair share to it
understanding the Internet really helped
me to understand myself much much better
but first things first
I’m a native German I’m born into a
middle-class family I was the first one
in our family who cut to university I
studied economics and I was also somehow
the black sheep of the family because I
didn’t walk down the safe and secured
way my parents always wished I would so
I played pretty well basketball I was
part of the German national team but I
stopped it when it became too commercial
I didn’t feel like being used after my
studies I got a wealth I got offered a
well-paid job at a German TV channel but
I reject it because you know I didn’t
want to commit myself for something I
wasn’t convinced of and frankly speaking
I was never ever convinced to work for
anyone so I always did my own thing and
it was always about connecting people
and it was always about building bridges
so I never walked down a steady straight
line but I feel that I always had an
unflappable sense of direction
after my studies I took one year off I
bought a one-way ticket to New York to
visit my aunt and to explore the u.s. I
somehow got stuck in the northern Bay
Area in Sausalito to be more precise
it’s just when you cross the Golden Gate
Bridge the next stop it was there when I
met an Austrian and he answered my
question is this Pete private with he
said it’s all yours so I took him at his
words and one year later we got married
it was him actually who introduced me to
the world of networks he introduced me
to the well which was really the very
first online community the well was
launched in 1985 in 1987 I got my first
email account there and this was you
know a whole 7 years before the internet
got pictures the well actually they had
the office just one street below where
we are living and every time you know
when we got this sweet sweet smell of
grass up where we were I know we were on
so I never I was never ever interested
in all this technical stuff of the
network part what I really wanted to
understand was what makes this Internet
so much different from what we had
before and I was really lucky to be
there at the well at the well because
they were really a bunch of people who
where digital natives in a much more
radical sense than the date of birth
birth would imply so in conversations
with them it was really really easy for
me to get lost and you know to forget
about set agendas and any fixed kind of
outcomes it was very easy just to follow
the dynamics of these open conversations
and this was the time when I really fell
in love
with open processes you know I was open
I was kind of curious and I always had
my set of values where every action very
every project I was working on was based
upon so my projects they brought me to a
hundred and twenty countries on this
planet I worked with governments I
worked with big institutions I worked in
war zones and so-called safe ground I
worked with top managers I worked with
head of states but also with very very
ordinary people to illustrate all this I
tell you
little story and the story is about the
NATO summit 2012 in Chicago
Stephanie Barb’s
German woman she was by then head of
public diplomacy at NATO
she asked me in preparation of the
summit if I would help her to connect
this closed very closed organization
NATO with online activists in the Middle
East and Afghanistan and I said wow this
is a bold move I got a couple of
sleepless nights because I’m not really
a friend of NATO but finally I agreed
and you know I took this job
so there I was in between these two
worlds on the one side there was NATO
with 14 levels of hierarchies from the
humblest employee up to the secretary
general Rasmussen these days everything
was really mapped out on the other side
when my people you know these online
activists in the Middle East and
Afghanistan who had access to
communities when NATO had no standing it
wasn’t really easy to convince them to
support Stephanie in their efforts but
Stephanie had made some really
remarkable statements in an interview we
did beforehand so where she laid out how
she was planning to connect these two
very very different world
this would challenge NATO in its
organization and she was ready to take
this challenge and she really got things
going so within these 14 hierarchies she
set up a matrix organization of 30
people from various departments within
NATO these 30 people they were all
really excited and curious you know on
our mission to connect these two worlds
four and a half months before the summit
we launched the platform we NATO we
started out with a live stream between
Stephanie and Joey Ito joey ito is I
would say truly one of the guys was
always at the forefront of the internet
movement he’s a close friend of mine and
he’s currently head of the MIT Media Lab
so these two they had a live stream and
they were we’re discussing a book this
was the day when the NATO machinery
started rolling the classic PR
department kicked in the NATO
ambassadors kicked in every part every
department involved kicked in and they
simply over rolled with their hierarchy
and with everything you know they were
so well trained in they simply over
rolled the matrix within a day or two
this entire we NATO sink crashed and it
crashed because of reason we were
discussing before at NATO usually only
two people were entitled to give public
statements so we knew if we didn’t
succeed that our thirty people within
the net within the metrics weren’t
allowed to give comments to you know
make their own remarks in real-time to
this online community it wouldn’t work
and this is exactly what happened so
actually this we NATO it went on until
the summit in Chicago but I left the top
earlier
Steffie lost her job after the summit
and this whole thing went on in the very
traditional polished Nate away but
looking back actually for me this way
NATO wasn’t a failure it really
straightened out things in my head for
the project for a new project
I was already worth working on and this
was a project which is in rural India I
call it John buck hassle John Barr is a
small small village in the heart of
India like 1,100 people living there in
this village you know the parents kill
their girls because they can’t pay that
are we women they don’t have any rights
the tribals are tremendously suppressed
by caste and the average family owns
less than one euro a day in this village
I have built a skatepark this is almost
surreal why a skate park why
skateboarding you might ask
skateboarding or skateboarding culture
is all about counterculture it’s against
mainstream it’s all about disobedience
it’s all about resilience in finding
your own way everything what we don’t
have in this village so my simple
assumption was what this skatepark set
up as an open process disrupt this
village enough to drive change two and a
half years later I can say yes it can
this skatepark has built bridges over
deep deep chasms it really has banished
it has broken down cars barriers
we are almost at you know gender
equality at least when we look at the
skatepark and it has really brought up
activities and programs one could never
ever thought of from the beginning today
I hear parents say that their kids have
for the very first time in their lives
toys that the language has really become
more precise has become more defined the
number of fights has went down and this
was really astonishing for me to see
over the last couple of weeks because we
are going to some rough times that the
tribals and the other stand together
when me or the skatepark really become
under attack so I think this is proof of
concept what have I done well we have
defined or I’ve defined a couple of
golden rules one rule is girls first
this is a very simple thing whenever a
girl goes to the skate park and says
girls first she would get a skateboard
no discussion the second rule is no
school no skateboarding this really
swept the kids into the school since we
are there the government school got
three new teachers and above all my job
and everything and everyone who is
working with me our highest priority our
biggest premise is really that we walk
our talk that we do what we say and that
we really treat everyone egle equal and
within this frame set our job is nothing
but to observe to observe what is
happening and whenever one kid or one
villager is starting to move
we again bring in our network and design
together with this kit or with this
family or with this village
a very individual learning path so we do
not work with predefined programs I
actually believe that current government
aid is failing because they work a lot
with these programs which are defined
for the villagers and not with them so I
personally I have to find my drop in
this village that it that I really do
become obsolete one day
so whenever the villagers are ready to
move for themselves by themselves this
is the day when I leave hopefully off to
the next open process wherever or
whatever it might be
thank you
[Applause]
I’m always you know in the right spot at
the right time it’s this coincidence I
don’t think so you know as I got older I
really don’t find my life journey so far
as a blend of coincidences I understood
more and more over the years what was
guiding me and you know why things
happen the way they did and the internet
really contributed its fair share to it
understanding the Internet really helped
me to understand myself much much better
but first things first
I’m a native German I’m born into a
middle-class family I was the first one
in our family who cut to university I
studied economics and I was also somehow
the black sheep of the family because I
didn’t walk down the safe and secured
way my parents always wished I would so
I played pretty well basketball I was
part of the German national team but I
stopped it when it became too commercial
I didn’t feel like being used after my
studies I got a wealth I got offered a
well-paid job at a German TV channel but
I reject it because you know I didn’t
want to commit myself for something I
wasn’t convinced of and frankly speaking
I was never ever convinced to work for
anyone so I always did my own thing and
it was always about connecting people
and it was always about building bridges
so I never walked down a steady straight
line but I feel that I always had an
unflappable sense of direction
after my studies I took one year off I
bought a one-way ticket to New York to
visit my aunt and to explore the u.s. I
somehow got stuck in the northern Bay
Area in Sausalito to be more precise
it’s just when you cross the Golden Gate
Bridge the next stop it was there when I
met an Austrian and he answered my
question is this Pete private with he
said it’s all yours so I took him at his
words and one year later we got married
it was him actually who introduced me to
the world of networks he introduced me
to the well which was really the very
first online community the well was
launched in 1985 in 1987 I got my first
email account there and this was you
know a whole 7 years before the internet
got pictures the well actually they had
the office just one street below where
we are living and every time you know
when we got this sweet sweet smell of
grass up where we were I know we were on
so I never I was never ever interested
in all this technical stuff of the
network part what I really wanted to
understand was what makes this Internet
so much different from what we had
before and I was really lucky to be
there at the well at the well because
they were really a bunch of people who
where digital natives in a much more
radical sense than the date of birth
birth would imply so in conversations
with them it was really really easy for
me to get lost and you know to forget
about set agendas and any fixed kind of
outcomes it was very easy just to follow
the dynamics of these open conversations
and this was the time when I really fell
in love
with open processes you know I was open
I was kind of curious and I always had
my set of values where every action very
every project I was working on was based
upon so my projects they brought me to a
hundred and twenty countries on this
planet I worked with governments I
worked with big institutions I worked in
war zones and so-called safe ground I
worked with top managers I worked with
head of states but also with very very
ordinary people to illustrate all this I
tell you
little story and the story is about the
NATO summit 2012 in Chicago
Stephanie Barb’s
German woman she was by then head of
public diplomacy at NATO
she asked me in preparation of the
summit if I would help her to connect
this closed very closed organization
NATO with online activists in the Middle
East and Afghanistan and I said wow this
is a bold move I got a couple of
sleepless nights because I’m not really
a friend of NATO but finally I agreed
and you know I took this job
so there I was in between these two
worlds on the one side there was NATO
with 14 levels of hierarchies from the
humblest employee up to the secretary
general Rasmussen these days everything
was really mapped out on the other side
when my people you know these online
activists in the Middle East and
Afghanistan who had access to
communities when NATO had no standing it
wasn’t really easy to convince them to
support Stephanie in their efforts but
Stephanie had made some really
remarkable statements in an interview we
did beforehand so where she laid out how
she was planning to connect these two
very very different world
this would challenge NATO in its
organization and she was ready to take
this challenge and she really got things
going so within these 14 hierarchies she
set up a matrix organization of 30
people from various departments within
NATO these 30 people they were all
really excited and curious you know on
our mission to connect these two worlds
four and a half months before the summit
we launched the platform we NATO we
started out with a live stream between
Stephanie and Joey Ito joey ito is I
would say truly one of the guys was
always at the forefront of the internet
movement he’s a close friend of mine and
he’s currently head of the MIT Media Lab
so these two they had a live stream and
they were we’re discussing a book this
was the day when the NATO machinery
started rolling the classic PR
department kicked in the NATO
ambassadors kicked in every part every
department involved kicked in and they
simply over rolled with their hierarchy
and with everything you know they were
so well trained in they simply over
rolled the matrix within a day or two
this entire we NATO sink crashed and it
crashed because of reason we were
discussing before at NATO usually only
two people were entitled to give public
statements so we knew if we didn’t
succeed that our thirty people within
the net within the metrics weren’t
allowed to give comments to you know
make their own remarks in real-time to
this online community it wouldn’t work
and this is exactly what happened so
actually this we NATO it went on until
the summit in Chicago but I left the top
earlier
Steffie lost her job after the summit
and this whole thing went on in the very
traditional polished Nate away but
looking back actually for me this way
NATO wasn’t a failure it really
straightened out things in my head for
the project for a new project
I was already worth working on and this
was a project which is in rural India I
call it John buck hassle John Barr is a
small small village in the heart of
India like 1,100 people living there in
this village you know the parents kill
their girls because they can’t pay that
are we women they don’t have any rights
the tribals are tremendously suppressed
by caste and the average family owns
less than one euro a day in this village
I have built a skatepark this is almost
surreal why a skate park why
skateboarding you might ask
skateboarding or skateboarding culture
is all about counterculture it’s against
mainstream it’s all about disobedience
it’s all about resilience in finding
your own way everything what we don’t
have in this village so my simple
assumption was what this skatepark set
up as an open process disrupt this
village enough to drive change two and a
half years later I can say yes it can
this skatepark has built bridges over
deep deep chasms it really has banished
it has broken down cars barriers
we are almost at you know gender
equality at least when we look at the
skatepark and it has really brought up
activities and programs one could never
ever thought of from the beginning today
I hear parents say that their kids have
for the very first time in their lives
toys that the language has really become
more precise has become more defined the
number of fights has went down and this
was really astonishing for me to see
over the last couple of weeks because we
are going to some rough times that the
tribals and the other stand together
when me or the skatepark really become
under attack so I think this is proof of
concept what have I done well we have
defined or I’ve defined a couple of
golden rules one rule is girls first
this is a very simple thing whenever a
girl goes to the skate park and says
girls first she would get a skateboard
no discussion the second rule is no
school no skateboarding this really
swept the kids into the school since we
are there the government school got
three new teachers and above all my job
and everything and everyone who is
working with me our highest priority our
biggest premise is really that we walk
our talk that we do what we say and that
we really treat everyone egle equal and
within this frame set our job is nothing
but to observe to observe what is
happening and whenever one kid or one
villager is starting to move
we again bring in our network and design
together with this kit or with this
family or with this village
a very individual learning path so we do
not work with predefined programs I
actually believe that current government
aid is failing because they work a lot
with these programs which are defined
for the villagers and not with them so I
personally I have to find my drop in
this village that it that I really do
become obsolete one day
so whenever the villagers are ready to
move for themselves by themselves this
is the day when I leave hopefully off to
the next open process wherever or
whatever it might be
thank you
[Applause]
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