Pastry, Hope, and Social Responsibility

I spent last week in Paris, attending my first ChangeNOW. Held in the Grand Palais, the conference featured a packed schedule of speakers and panels on a half-dozen stages, scattered through an exhibition hall filled with organizations doing incredible work around the globe. I was there with some of my colleagues at threshold.world to exhibit our impact measurement and storytelling platform, b.world. Here are some brief takeaways from the conference and the trip as a whole:

"The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits." — Milton Friedman. Entrepreneur and philanthropist Alexandre Mars opened his talk with that quote before demonstrating that Friedman’s is an outdated opinion. Businesses can and should be responsible for more than mere profit. The pursuit of endless growth contradicts the natural world. As Satish Kumar reminded us, there is a deep link between humans and humus. We are inescapably responsible for our planet. Building enterprises that tread lightly on the earth is entirely possible. Operating via restorative relationships with partners and resources rather than maximizing extraction is entirely possible. Environmentally and socially ethical business is entirely possible.

There is so much to be hopeful about in this world. It is very easy to lose touch with that sometimes, especially living in Washington, D.C. right now, but spending a few days in an environment like ChangeNOW is an incredible reminder that so many people are building up the planet rather than tearing it down. 

Every developer should spend a few days every year demoing their software at a large conference. 10+ hours a day on your feet, showing off your work to dozens of potential customers, curious passersby, and even (perhaps especially) the mildly hostile. It’s easy for developers to sink into our day-to-day work, losing perspective on what matters for real users of the tools we work on. Shove yourself out of that comfort zone! Try to explain your software in accessible language. Do it again. Again. Not only will you get better at talking to new people, you’ll start to see which parts of your work work and what parts are causing friction. I left Paris with a long list of things to add, change, or even remove entirely from the platform. 

Being monolingual is terribly embarrassing. I had just enough French to try to speak to some folks while I was over there, but my vocabulary and accent are both so insufficient that most folks would switch to English themselves. A la poubelle. I have an 825+ day streak on Duolingo in French, but time is clearly not enough. 

Natalie Portman and I have a similar taste in books about ecology. She, along with M. Kumar, spoke at the conference’s closing ceremony. When asked for a book recommendation for the audience, she recommended the excellent Robin Wall Kimmerer. Not her latest, The Serviceberry, or her pivotal work Braiding Sweetgrass, but her first book: Gathering Moss. It’s a spectacular little book on the mechanisms of that elegant and primal family of organisms that deserves far more praise. Both Padme and I recommend it highly!

Paris is a beautiful city for a morning person... whether you want to be one or not. On my final day, somebody set off the hotel fire alarm at 6 AM. Jarring wakeup aside, it was a spectacular excuse to get out the door sooner. The streets of the 16th arrondissement were silent except for echoing pigeon-coos. I made it to the Trocadéro before sunrise, and found less then a dozen people there. I crossed the Seine and wandered the park around the Eiffel Tower, entirely empty, finding a secluded bench to write my morning pages from. Then I took a long loop down along the river, returned to the 16th, and bought some fresh pastries at the corner boulangerie near my hotel. I then ate those pastries back in the Trocadéro. Getting to walk through such iconic places in this empty state was a rare experience, and one I'll treasure for a long, long time.

My colleague Dan posed the question and I found it unexpectedly challenging to answer. Action sparks hope, and hope inspires action. Maybe there's a more action-oriented version of the question: in a world desperate for change, where should you begin?

Attending ChangeNOW, being around such inspiring people, was a great privilege. It was such a thrill to represent my team and our work on b.world there and to receive so much great feedback about the platform. Now to get back to work.