There are many models of alternative education and each has its place.

Shai Reshef founded University of the People in 2009 and I think this is a model that we should sit up and take a look at.

Here is what UofP says about itself.

Economic and geographic constraints exclude millions of people from higher education. With the aid of technological developments and the help of volunteers, however, access to a tuition-free online education is within reach courtesy of University of the People.
University of the People is a nonprofit venture that is beginning to revolutionize higher education by providing universal access to tuition-free online education, even in the poorest areas of the world.

I love the way Reshef looks at what he has started, not as competition with other institutions, but a model that fits a space where nothing is being offered.

We’re not here to be an alternative to Ivy League universities, we are here to be an alternative for people who have no other option to get access to higher education. We hope that this model will be duplicated and adopted by universities and governments of developing countries to educate even more people around the world. We’re not reinventing the wheel. We’re just taking everything that’s out there, wrapping it together and creating a university out of it. Everyone can do this.

Imagine just for a moment if each and every traditional university had a people’s university arm!

And I am not so sure that this would even be a difficult task.

It is incredible what we can learn from others and never seem to get a chance to.

This is also the magic of a TED conference.

TED puts a group of people together for 6 days and stands back to see what happens.

Yasser and I hooked up on a bus and started talking education and change.

I had no idea, before I met Yasser, that there was an International Electronic Sports Federation based out of Saudi Arabia.

But it is with education that Yasser and I share similar ideas.

What Yasser is talking about is re-thinking the education paradigm around learning relationships and teachers rather than institutions.

Not a new idea but an idea that has fallen by the wayside since the industrial revolution.

I was fortunate to be able to talk to Yasser about all of this on Nightline.

And then there is Yasser’s attempt to go to Singularity University, he needs your help to get there.

Yasser also wants to put on another hat and advance desalination using solar energy!

I keep asking myself what if we hadn’t been sitting beside each other on a bus and started talking?

It truly is amazing what people around us are thinking and doing, too bad we don’t take the time to get to know the people we bump into.

Each interview has offered me something personally.

But my conversation with Tony Deifell was nothing short of extraordinary.

Tony offered up, in 45 minutes, the tools to look at what we are doing and move forward!

Now this is not to suggest that Tony put forward a DIY career guide, not at all.

What Tony did was offer us a means of refocusing our perspective.

And I believe it is our fluid perspective that gets us into trouble.

The problem is our perspective doesn’t periodically force us to reassess what we are doing or why and that leads us astray more often than not.

Have a listen to my conversation with Tony Deifell.

After speaking to Tony I was excited. some of the little pieces of projects I had been working on made sense.

I had a new idea.

And what was really incredible was that earlier in the day I was listening to a CBC podcast of Ideas with an interview of Alexandra Morton talking about Salmon and Orcas and she was saying the same thing as Tony!

Projects take us in all sorts of directions.

Seeing Beyond Sight is one of those projects that makes you sit back and think about what you are doing and then how and why.

Passion is infectious and so much a part of much of what we do, get the passion/action mix right and it just works.

Why do you do what you do is another one of those projects that has left me, again, looking at what I am working on and reminded me that simplicity is often the key to success.

DEcomplexify when and where you can, OFTEN.

And then Tony linked what he has been doing with blind photography and understanding why we do things to the world of journalism with the big thaw.

It is in the intersecting points of this interview, with what I am doing, that the gift moment rest.

We spend a lot of time at tasks that are certain to be mundane.

Our job is to take the routine and push it forward and look at how we can reapply the communication we are part of forward in a different  maybe even new context!

Sometimes it is not what but how that becomes the real gift.

This is a great t-shirt for one reason and one reason only.

The Elmo shirt unlike any piece of clothing I own transports people young and old to a place and time where they were happy!

Sesame Street is a happy place.

The characters on Sesame Street are happy and above all provoke you to suspend reality for a moment and enter a world where Big Bird talks to a Grouch in a trash can and a Cookie Monster exists.

But Elmo is in a class of his own!

Admit it, as you are reading this you hear Elmo’s voice, and his laugh!

As in the grocery store 4 different children could be heard shouting to their parents look Elmo!

He is only on my shirt! But the image evoked a physical and psychological reaction.

The best reaction today was a 5 year old girls at the grocery check out who blew a kiss to the Elmo on my shirt!

Priceless.

Elmo has an enormous amount of power that we all want to tap into, but how?

Never underestimate the power of Elmo.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It would seem I am not the only person asking this question.

AdAge has recently published a report online titled ‘Study Brings New Meaning to the words Media Diet’ where the question of how much media are you willing to part with was posed.

The results were rather striking.

If you had to surrender your cable, your mobile phone or internet, which would you choose? Well, 8% of respondents in our exclusive AdAge/Ipsos Observer study were having none of it — saying they would rather forgo eating than give up a media consumption device.

Here is what the larger survey said.

Have we unleashed a monster by creating an environment that has forced us to become so dependent on media?

Are academics, like myself, who are pushing students towards the electronic and smartphone world just fueling the looming problem?

There is without question a place and time for being connected but when we cannot unplug and go old school, with minimal disruption, we have a problem.

Are we ready to address the problem?

TEDx Dubai was all about igniting the passion in people to not only talk about issues but to actually get out there and do something about it.

Five people, all with full time jobs that are not related to conference organization, pulled off the impossible as far as I am concerned and I am proud to have been part of it!

TEDx Dubai was not about money, in fact it cost each of the organizers money, out of our pockets to put this conference on.

TEDx Dubai was about giving the community permission to start to DREAM-DO-BE the change in your own corner of the world.

I am happy to say that while many people did not get it, they are asking when all the video will be available, they are asking when the next event will happen, they are asking about a follow up.

TEDx Dubai was and is not about Giorgio and me pushing and pulling people to do things it is about you saying , MY TURN!

While many people are still stuck in the old economy thinking of what is physically in it for me there are many who have embraced the TED and TEDxDubai idea.

This email arrived a few days ago.

hello james

a fellow Dubai TEDxer has made some drastic changes to her life because of TEDx and i though i tell you about it her names is Gaby Feile she is German you might know her from the great blog she wrote about TEDx right after the conference, she just quit her job in the  Monarch hotel Dubai because for her she just couldn’t relate to it after TEDx and he farewell party was yesterday she had a garage sale for her furniture and gave all the money for Masarat and her 8 days academy and she is leaving soon to spain to work with an NGO that help children by the way she is not the only person who i heard about who did some thing similar of thinking of it

im thinking of starting TED night at the shelter either to show TED videos each night a certain theme of life stream other TEDx conferences my question is how can i know about upcoming TEDx conferences i tried searching online i couldn’t find much about them?

So, what is the take home here?

Go out and do that one thing this week that is going to change the way someone thinks about anything, just make it something you care about!

Don’t you just love how we all sit around and yammer about what we should do or what we could do?

And what do we do? 8 out of 10 times we do NOTHING!

But what if you simple idea becomes infectious?

What if your simple idea could change the world, build communities, unite like minded people, help the environment, cost NOTHING and put a huge smile on a person’s face?

No I am not talking about Disney, I am talking about www.freecycle.org!

May 1st 2003 Deron Beal sent out an email to give away a bed, free, just come and get it!

Fast forward to 2009, 6,846,000 people are members of the freecycle movement.

And it all started with the idea of giving something away instead of trashing it or selling it.

I suspect our economic system has corrupted us all to some degree, we seldom give things away just because we can,  we are always looking for the catch or the payback.

Freecycle.org is a pay it forward scheme that could actually hold a key to the reformation of our global commercial systems.

Care more, think more, have more!

Deron Beal walked me through the idea of freecycle.org.

A conversation with Deron Beal of Freecycle.org.

In the waiting room I struck up a conversation with Mr. Julian Miller of MillerExecutive Search.

Nothing new about talking to people in a waiting room except that the conversation started with the simple sentence, from him to me, “I wish I could get away with wearing that shirt”.

The shirt is a classic James with 12 colours and hidden animals, very loud and very me, it was tempered with a sea blue blazer.

Julian got me thinking, about the image package.

Why can I get away with meeting senior executives looking like I am just about ready to catch surf while others have to wear suits that cost more than my monthly grocery bill?

I wonder if we don’t create and perpetuate expectations that demand a certain veneer, in this case clothing style?

I am certain that Julian and I were able to sustain the attention of the executives we met yet I am 100% certain I was more comfortable. I am also certain that my presentation was taken with every bit the importance as the next guy’s.

So I suspect the lesson is build your image, work it and make it sustainable!  Whether you are walking the dog or meeting a CEO your image needs to be clear, palpable and consistent.

Mine is.  I walk into a room and instantly become the surf guy everybody knows. Interesting how colour attracts people. I walk onto a pool deck and again I am there in a big way without saying a word.

I suspect we need to be taught how to create, manage and sustain our non verbal communication as manifest in our body language and clothing, not to mention hair… Yet another area that our education seems to let us down.

Don’t worry too much there is still hope, I am here!

Business worldwide is knuckling down and CEOs seem to be running for cover.

We have a huge opportunity to educate, inform and spread ideas and the physical things that go along with them.

TWITTER, TWITPIC, FACEBOOK and PODOMATIC are increasingly becoming the center of my work, education, social reality.

What I find surprising is that these easy, free, global tools are not being more widely used to help the flow of ideas.

I suspect the problem from the perspective of large organizations is they simply have too many grey haired people trying to figure out how to enhance the pension fund!

Social networking seems to still be the island of the young and funny enough those who have a lot to lose, many are on the cutting block of Yahoo, Sony, Banks…

Now is the time to look at social networking and apply it there is a who new angle to enterprise waiting to be pushed forward.