Fractal Ownership Applied: Day 2
November 4–8, I’m at the #human-centric design week of our NGI Venture Builder Program (Next Batch Application is now open. Apply!). We are meeting with local communities and companies. The goal is to build an MVP co-designed within the community, create a community of local co-workers — and present it back with them to an audience at the end of the sprint.
This is Day 2: Analysis.
In recent years, I managed to cultivate one coping mechanism: run. If it wasn’t clear yet: this bootcamp is designed to get us out of our comfort zones. I’m so way out, it feels like a never ending bungee jump. So, I run.
Today is about analysis of the observations yesterday. While I run along the beach, the pictures and people of yesterday pass my mind. I smell oil in the air. There are no cars driving yet. The refinery is on the other side of the hill, and oil is in the air. The air we share across the globe. It stinks sick-making. There is no reason for that oil refinery to be here. Read on: during the day, I will learn there is even a second oil refinery on this same island.
The oil-smelly breeze passes by. It makes me present. I see that I’m passing by an abandoned place… then another one. On the best locations along the beach. Even the abandoned space is beautiful in a way. I realize, in order to analyze, I’ll need to work with people who know this place. Because I have no clue: Why? How come?
8:00 sharp is daily. We meet on the beach. Each group shares their observations of yesterday. We help each other with a few tips on who to meet today, how to create or fish for insights. The mentors share some additional research they did to help the teams. If you have a safe place, being out of your comfort zone, the endless bungee jump, becomes enjoyable.
There’s a lot of potential value in and near Milazzo that can be connected: Newtron the electric retrofitter of cars; way too many cars that could all use an electric retrofit; or better yet: more electrically retrofitted buses and less cars; the properties of the Fondazione Lucifero; hotels alongside the beach; in use or abandoned properties, can all use a solar upgrade, and are in need of more people making use of them, “as if” owning them. And of course all those cyber-physical assets will be digital energy assets in Electraseed Fund…
I’m rushing to solutions, worse: I’m rushing to our solution. Today is about analysis. Start over.
There is so much value in Milazzo. It needs cooperation to realize that value. Yesterday’s observations also reveal: it seems to be an accepted reality that cooperation doesn’t happen, and won’t happen here. Analyze this.
But before, I take some time with the mentors, to analyze our team situation. It is super insightful.
Granita Siciliana e Una Pazza Idea
One of our local guides gives me a hint (and two beautiful songs about La Follia): best place to analyze neighborhood of Fondazione Lucifero is to go for lunch in the neighborhood. So we head to Il Faro.
Although I’m determined to talk to the owner of Il Faro, a tourist who comes by to ask what it is what we’re having, changes my mind. After the Granita, I head around the corner and join the tables of two tourist couples.
This is the analysis together with them: One of them is a German plant engineer, and it is very clear why the refinery is here: When the sun isn’t shining and the wind doesn’t blow, and people still need electricity, is when the fossil fuel powered power plant delivers electricity. He tells me there is even another refinery on the island: Augusta. Ok, true that baser power plant is needed. But that power plant certainly is not in need of two oil refineries.
Also let’s not forget about storage, and Newtron’s “third life plans” for the used batteries from their retrofitted cars: stationary storage. So an oil powered base station is a very unsuitable solution, when we’d have a mostly renewable energy based system that is decentralized and cellular.
Later in the evening I find a short documentary about Augusta, which is really worth watching. A great analysis that reveals many points like the deadlock within the community, because industrial workers are afraid of losing their job. But there are also many who say: “Why should I die because of your work?” And this:
In times of commemoration we say: Let’s have a moment of silence… There is a silence that remembers, but there is a silence that is shameful.
I turn to the other couple: they are older back packers, also German. And the analysis flows: The commune has no money. The privatization trend in the EU has made the situation even worse. Investors are mainly not from the country (note to self: who are the investors of the two oil refineries?). Hence, the money flows back to them and does not remain in the local community. This is true for multinational corporations, as well as big hotels, and malls. The women says, 20 years ago when they came by ferry to Milazzo, there would be 5–6 woman on the beach advertising their bed & breakfast. Now everything goes through Booking.com. They debate: But internet and those websites also help with language barriers — however, it is still the big hotels that win more than the smaller ones.
Power law, I note: The rich get richer. Later at night I find this article: “Uncertainty kills the long tail: demand concentration in peer-to-peer marketplaces.” How can we make tech work for the masses, “empower the long tail” really without creating the monopoly effect that current tech platforms cause?
Uncertainty.
We head back to the hotel, and the owner greets us with a cafe on the house. There are some ideas floating around, I need a map. He hands me one. “Do you have a bigger one?” “No… the tourist office doesn’t either. They have nothing. No money, no…”
No money.
“No money” is an illusion: We’ve been used to it being handed out to us by employers, banks, ATMs— that we stopped seeing: there is no money, unless we create value. There is no money, unless we spend it — for: accounting for the value that we share amongst each other. Money is a tool. Money is an agreement. Money is a social contract. No money, is not an excuse. It took me 3 years to really grasp this. Speaking of changing mental models — there must be more effective ways!
No prospects.
The hotel owner continues, and he knows his statistics: very high unemployment of the younger generations, it is 75% with females. Sicilians between 18–34 years have no perspective. Hence they leave Sicily. Now, that explains why the coolest places, like the ones at the beach, or the one night club up the hills is abandoned.
No trust.
He carries on: “We don’t trust that something can change. So there is no action. But we need a plan for the future — without losing our Carpe Diem spirit… Trust is lost. So people think ‘why I have to invest in future?’”
At night I read about Falcone and Borsellino, “two Palermo prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino began and ended in Sicily’s capital, where the two were born. Both men spent their early years in the same neighborhood and although many of their childhood friends grew up to become Mafia characters, they both fought on the other side of the war as prosecuting magistrates. They were both assassinated in 1992 with the use of car bombs within months of each other.” The bomb was half a ton, and explosion so massive that it registered on earthquake monitors.
The TIME magazine is cited as having reported that “the pair nearly brought Cosa Nostra to its knees with a new methodical approach, as brilliant as it was brave, to unlocking the Mob’s code of silence.”
The article continues: “Was there a deal between the Mafia and the State?” and concludes with a citation of Professor John Dickie, an expert on Mafia who has been described as “an Englishman who can write about Mafia better than an Italian”:
I hope this is not going to be another interminable Italian mystery.
If the truth never comes out, why speak?
After a long, way tooo long analysis (I should be asleep 3 hours ago! but this was just too captivating), the theme emerges:
Silenzio siciliano
At the end of the day, it becomes clear…to improve our situation we need a coping mechanism: communication tools that allow us to talk about complex situations, that break the silence, in a playful way. After all, we want to value the Sicilian way of life:
La dolce vita.
