The event started with short presentations from Dr. Aleksandra Weber (EUCON - European Institute for Conflict Management), Prof. Hugo Kehr (Professor of psychology at TU München), Jörg Schallehn (Vermögensakademie GmbH), George Zoche (Transnational Republics), Jan Wildeboer (Red Hat / Linux Evangelist), and Stephan Doesinger (Doesinger & Partner).
All the presentations treated the financial crisis topic really differently and from different point of views. Prof. Hugo Kehr talked about his latest study ”From the monetary quarterly target to a motivating vision”. He explained why a vision is more motivating and helping you more through a crisis than setting a monetary quarterly target (e.g. vision: being an innovator in a specific branch versus target: reducing production costs by 10% in the next 3 months). His conclusion is that a vision keeps you flexible and motivated, because you can adjust your strategy when needed, while a monetary quarterly target makes you inflexible. Motivation is very important, especially during times of crisis.
Jan Wildeboer talked about ”Open Source is the answer: The power of communities”. He explained that communities can rise pretty fast and can also become pretty strong. But these communities fall apart when losing interest or when a common target is reached. An example of a strong and influential community is the “One Laptop Per Child” initiative where 40 companies came together “to create educational opportunities for the world’s poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop”. (Source: laptop.org)
Stephan Doesinger talked about his project ”Open Source Architecture: The € 99,000 Eco-home Initiative”. The main idea behind this initiative is offering an online open source platform with architecture plans of houses that costs not more than 99,000 EUR. An affiliate program with local construction companies ensures that these houses can be built all over the world and the newest technology (solar energy, heat engineering etc.) will be integrated.
Another interesting but also discussion-provoking presentation was held by George Zoche about ”Where is the money? Let’s create a new currency!”. He introduced the Transnational Republics and how they try to overcome the financial crisis by creating an own, gold-covered currency. In 2001, Georg Zoche initiated Transnational Republics, a community with its own Central Reserve Bank, own currency and own passports. More about this currency and his presentation can be found here (in German only):
- bank.utnr.org
- presentation
Some of the speakers emphasized that the environmental crisis is way bigger and more important than the financial one. Both crisis share the same problem: they are global but are faced by national goverments all over the world. The whole world needs to work together globally as a community to overcome both, the financial and enviromental crisis.
If you would like to attend the MissionFuture Emergency Sessions in Munich, please find the next meetings below:
- Emergency Session 3, Wednesday, October 29th (during “Mediadays Munich”)
- Emergency Session 4, Wednesday, November 5th (on the eve of the “Welt-des-Vermögens” Symposiums)
More information about the MissionFuture can be found here: missionfuture.trendpool.com