POPULARITY
4 episodes with Participatory budgeting
4 episodes with Participatory budgeting
4 episodes with Participatory budgeting
4 episodes with Participatory budgeting
2 episodes with Participatory budgeting
2 episodes with Participatory budgeting
2 episodes with Participatory budgeting
2 episodes with Participatory budgeting
2 episodes with Participatory budgeting
Support for Donald Trump is slipping lately, at least in part because of the President's violations of democratic rules and norms. In a New York Times/ Sienna College poll, a majority of respondents disapproved of Trump's recent actions, including moves to eliminate government programs enacted by Congress, deport legal immigrants who have protested Israel, and ignore Supreme Court rulings. This episode we're joined by Suzette Brooks Masters, a thought leader, political strategist and Senior Fellow at the Democracy Funders Network. She says that for American democracy to thrive, it's not enough to defend the existing system against attack, because the system doesn't work well for most people. She's been researching ways to invigorate democratic practice, including citizen's assemblies and participatory budgeting – frameworks that give ordinary people a bigger say in government. And she advocates for storytelling that envisions positive, possible futures. 00:00 Introduction and Current Political Climate00:40 First 100 Days of the New Administration01:35 Guest Introduction: Suzette Brooks Masters02:08 Imagining Better Futures for American Democracy03:36 Challenges and Opportunities in Democracy05:57 Why the Right Sees Democracy as Under Attack 11:31 Bridge Building and Civic Engagement16:44 Innovations in Democratic Processes22:59 Telling a Different Story About the Future30:57 Conclusion and Final ThoughtsLEARN MORESuzette Brooks Masters' articles for The FulcrumImagining Better Futures for American Democracy reportBecoming Futures Ready: How Philanthropy Can Leverage Strategic Foresight For Democracy report ABOUT THE SHOW The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.orgSupport our work Connect on social:Instagram @makingpeacevisibleLinkedIn @makingpeacevisibleBluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!
Today we bring you Story #6 in our Week of Citizening. We’ve already shown you how people are rethinking democracy through libraries, labor, and school boards. Now we’re headed to a place often overlooked but brimming with democratic possibility: West Virginia. See the visuals and links to all these stories here: https://newsletter.baratunde.com/p/dont-wait-for-better-leaders-become We’re told politics is about picking the lesser of evils. Ordering off a fixed menu. But what if we left the table… and headed for the kitchen? That’s what the folks behind West Virginia Can’t Wait are doing. And it’s a clear sign that democracy is evolving. They’ve passed legislation that’s rare even in liberal strongholds They don’t run candidates but communities They help hold elected officials accountable and offer ongoing support This is what Jon Alexander calls the shift from Consumer Democracy to Citizen Democracy. Not just new processes like Citizens’ Assemblies or Participatory Budgeting (though we love those too) — but real people getting a grip on the systems we’ve got, starting from where we are. “One of the things I’m most proud of in my career is helping to demystify politics. It’s just everyday work for everyday folks.” — Rosemary Ketchum, West Virginia Can’t Wait This isn’t happening in some liberal stronghold. This is Appalachia — a place many assume to be too red, too rigid, too far gone. But that’s just not the whole story. I’ve seen firsthand the level of commitment and creativity in Appalachia through my recent travels there for my PBS America Outdoors show. Trust me, these stories are happening in all sorts of underestimated places.
In the last handful of years, NYC has been doing something called Participatory Budgeting, which allows us to vote for which projects we'd like to see funded in our district. It's mostly small budget proposals for schools or parks or community groups. It's a nice idea, though I'm not sure how well it works in getting things funded. I got an email for this round of projects recently and in looking at the choices, I noticed there were some arts projects included this time. And I also noticed that my first inclination was not to vote for them. But if I don't vote for kids to have a theatre program, who will?To keep reading Arts and Charity visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog.This is Episode 443Song: Brother Can You Spare a Dime?Image by Jocelyn Wu via UnsplashTo support this podcast:Give it 5 stars in Apple Podcasts. Write a nice review!Rate it wherever you listen or via: https://ratethispodcast.com/strugglingartistJoin my mailing list: www.emilyrainbowdavis.com/Like the blog/show on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SongsfortheStrugglingArtist/Support me on Patreon: www.patreon.com/emilyrdavisOr on Kofi: http://ko-fi.com/emilyrainbowdavisor PayPal me: https://www.paypal.me/strugglingartistJoin my Substack: https://emilyrainbowdavis.substack.com/Follow me on Twitter @erainbowdMe on Mastodon - @erainbowd@podvibes.coMe on Blue sky - @erainbowd.bsky.socialMe on Hive - @erainbowdInstagram and PinterestTell a friend!Listen to The Dragoning here and The Defense here. You can support them via Ko-fi here: https://ko-fi.com/messengertheatrecompanyAs ever, I am yours,Emily Rainbow Davis
If you had $1.5 million to build something for your community, what would you spend it on? Voters in Albuquerque will decide just that with the ‘set aside' fund from Council District 6, thanks to the idea of ‘Participatory Budgeting.' What does that mean exactly? City Councilor Nichole Rogers is spearheading the movement in her district for the first time. She joins Chris and Gabby this week to explain why she's doing it, how people are getting involved with plans, and the projects currently on the table. Could this set a trend? Voting for the community-inspired projects is open through April 19th, 2025. Learn more about them and how to vote here. We appreciate our listeners. Send your feedback or story ideas to hosts chris.mckee@krqe.com or gabrielle.burkhart@krqe.com. We're also on X (Twitter), Facebook, & Instagram at @ChrisMcKeeTV and @gburkNM. For more on this episode and all of our prior episodes, visit our podcast website: KRQE.com/podcasts. Also, check out the video version of the podcast on our YouTube channel. Our show also airs on television! Tune into Fox New Mexico on Wednesdays at 10:35 p.m. MST.
District 6 Albuquerque City Councilor Nicole Rogers comes in to discuss, "Participatory Budgeting", public bathrooms, Tingley lakes preservation and upkeep, and "Tiny Homes" for Seniors with TJ on News Radio KKOB See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
During the second part of our conversation, Shane Epting told me more about how participatory budgeting and how he thinks it’s a useful tool that can be used by municipalities […]
As an outspoken abolitionist of policing and prisons, Prof. Melina Abdullah has championed defunding the police using a concrete, practical, and deeply democratic method of participatory budgeting.
Once there was a girl whose powerful voice would inspire people to fight for equality. Her name was Isabella Baumfree, but we know her now as Sojourner Truth. She was a Black woman born into slavery in Dutch-speaking rural New York in 1797. She escaped to freedom after nearly 30 years of being enslaved, was one of the first Black women to successfully sue a white man, and later changed her name to Sojourner, becoming a abolitionist and suffragist fighting for equality and women's rights. [This episode originally aired February 2021.] About the Narrator Organizer and trainer D'atra “Dee Dee” Jackson is Co-Founder of the Durham Chapter of Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100). Dee Dee has had her hand in efforts and actions such as bringing Participatory Budgeting to Durham, Justice for Reefa campaign, and Black Mama's/Black August Bail Outs. Now, as the National Director of BYP100, she dreams of freedom, Black worlds, and building a movement of ungovernable and strategic lovers of Black liberation. Credits This podcast is a production of Rebel Girls. It's based on the book series Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls. Executive Producers are Jes Wolfe and Katie Sprenger. This episode was produced by Isaac Kaplan-Woolner. Sound design by Elettra Bargiacchi and final mix by Mattia Marcelli. Corinne Peterson is Production Manager. This episode was written by Gina Gotsill. Proofread by Ariana Rosas. It was narrated by D'atra Jackson. Original theme music was composed and performed by Elettra Bargiacchi. For more, visit www.rebelgirls.com. Until next time, stay rebel!
Bio Luke Hohmann is Chief Innovation Officer of Applied Frameworks. Applied Frameworks helps companies create more profitable software-enabled solutions. A serial entrepreneur, Luke founded, bootstrapped, and sold the SaaS B2B collaboration software company Conteneo to Scaled Agile, Inc. Conteneo's Weave platform is now part of SAFe Studio. A SAFe® Fellow, prolific author, and trailblazing innovator, Luke's contributions to the global agile community include contributing to SAFe, five books, Profit Streams™, Innovation Games®, Participatory Budgeting at enterprise scale, and a pattern language for market-driven roadmapping. Luke is also co-founder of Every Voice Engaged Foundation, where he partnered with The Kettering Foundation to create Common Ground for Action, the world's first scalable platform for deliberative decision-making. Luke is a former National Junior Pairs Figure Skating Champion and has an M.S.E. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan. Luke loves his wife and four kids, his wife's cooking, and long runs in the California sunshine and Santa Cruz mountains. Interview Highlights 01:30 Organisational Behaviour & Cognitive Psychology 06:10 Serendipity 09:30 Entrepreneurship 16:15 Applied Frameworks 20:00 Sustainability 20:45 Software Profit Streams 23:00 Business Model Canvas 24:00 Value Proposition Canvas 24:45 Setting the Price 28:45 Customer Benefit Analysis 34:00 Participatory Budgeting 36:00 Value Stream Funding 37:30 The Color of Money 42:00 Private v Public Sector 49:00 ROI Analysis 51:00 Innovation Accounting Connecting LinkedIn: Luke Hohmann on LinkedIn Company Website: Applied Frameworks Books & Resources · Software Profit Streams(TM): A Guide to Designing a Sustainably Profitable Business: Jason Tanner, Luke Hohmann, Federico González · Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers (The Strategyzer series): Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur · Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want (The Strategyzer Series): Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Gregory Bernarda, Alan Smith, Trish Papadakos · Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play: Luke Hohmann · The ‘Color of Money' Problem: Additional Guidance on Participatory Budgeting - Scaled Agile Framework · The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses, Eric Ries · Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change 2, Kent Beck, Cynthia Andres · The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering: Brooks, Frederick Phillips · Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, Scott McCloud · Ponyboy: A Novel, Eliot Duncan · Lessons in Chemistry: A Novel, Bonnie Garmus, Miranda Raison, Bonnie Garmus, Pandora Sykes · What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing, Oprah Winfrey, Bruce D. Perry · Training | Applied Frameworks Episode Transcript Intro: Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I'm Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. Ula Ojiaku So I have with me Luke Hohmann, who is a four time author, three time founder, serial entrepreneur if I say, a SAFe fellow, so that's a Skilled Agile Framework fellow, keynote speaker and an internationally recognised expert in Agile software development. He is also a proud husband and a father of four. So, Luke, I am very honoured to have you on the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. Thank you for making the time. Luke Hohmann Thank you so much for having me, I'm very happy to be here, and hi everyone who's listening. Ula Ojiaku Yes, I'm sure they're waving back at you as well. I always start my conversations with my guests to find out about them as individuals, you know, so who is Luke? You have a BSc in Computer Science and an MSc in Computer Science and Engineering, but you also studied Cognitive Psychology and Organisational Behaviour in addition to Data Structures and Artificial Intelligence. AI is now making waves and is kind of at the forefront, which is interesting, you had the foresight to also look into these. So my question is, what took you down this path? Luke Hohmann Sure. I had a humble beginning in the world of technology. I worked for a large company, Electronic Data Systems, and it was founded in the mid 60s by a gentleman named Ross Perot, and it became a very, very large company. So my first job at Electronic Data Systems was working in a data centre, and we know what data centres are, but back then, data centres were different because they were predominantly mainframe-based data centres, and I would crawl underneath the floor, cabling the computers and cabling networking equipment. Now, when we think networking, we're really thinking one of two kinds of networking. We think of wireless networking or we think of some form of internet networking, but back in those days, there were varieties of network protocols, literally the standards that we use now weren't invented yet. So it was mainframe networking protocols and dial ups and other forms of networking protocols. From there, I worked my way from beneath the ground up. I had some great managers who saw someone who was worthy of opportunity and they gave me opportunity and it was great. And then eventually I started working in electronic data systems and there was, the first wave of AI came in the mid 80s and that's when we were doing things like building expert systems, and I managed to create with a colleague of mine, who's emerged as my best friend, a very successful implementation of an expert system, an AI-based expert system at EDS, and that motivated me to finish off my college degree, I didn't have my college degree at the time. So EDS supported me in going to the University of Michigan, where as you said, I picked up my Bachelor's and Master's degree, and my advisor at the time was Elliot Soloway, and he was doing research in how programmers program, what are the knowledge structures, what are the ways in which we think when we're programming, and I picked up that research and built programming environments, along with educational material, trying to understand how programmers program and trying to build educational material to teach programming more effectively. That's important because it ignited a lifelong passion for developing education materials, etc. Now the cognitive psychology part was handled through that vein of work, the organisational behaviour work came as I was a student at Michigan. As many of us are when we're in college, we don't make a lot of money, or at university we're not wealthy and I needed a job and so the School of Organisational Behaviour had published some job postings and they needed programmers to program software for their organisational behaviour research, and I answered those ads and I became friends and did the research for many ground-breaking aspects of organisational behaviour and I programmed, and in the process of programming for the professors who were in the School of Organisational Behaviour they would teach me about organisational behaviour and I learned many things that at the time were not entirely clear to me, but then when I graduated from university and I became a manager and I also became more involved in the Agile movement, I had a very deep foundation that has served me very well in terms of what do we mean when we say culture, or what do we mean when we talk about organisational structures, both in the small and in the large, how do we organise effectively, when should we scale, when should we not scale, etc. So that's a bit about my history that I think in terms of the early days helped inform who I am today. Ula Ojiaku Wow, who would have thought, it just reminds me of the word serendipity, you know, I guess a happy coincidence, quote unquote, and would there be examples of where the cognitive psychology part of it also helped you work-wise? Luke Hohmann Yeah, a way to think about cognitive psychology and the branch that, I mean there's, psychology is a huge branch of study, right? So cognitive psychology tends to relate to how do we solve problems, and it tends to focus on problem solving where n = 1 and what I mean by n is the number of participants, and where n is just me as an individual, how do I solve the problems that I'm facing? How do I engage in de-compositional activities or refinement or sense making? Organisational behaviour deals with n > 1. So it can deal with a team of, a para-bond, two people solving problems. It can deal with a small team, and we know through many, many, many decades of research that optimal team structures are eight people or less. I mean, we've known this for, when I say decades I mean millennia. When you look at military structure and military strategy, we know that people need to be organised into much smaller groups to be effective in problem solving and to move quickly. And then in any organisational structure, there's some notion of a team of teams or team engagement. So cognitive psychology, I think, helps leaders understand individuals and their place within the team. And now we talk about, you know, in the Agile community, we talk about things like, I want T-shaped people, I want people with common skills and their area of expertise and by organising enough of the T's, I can create a whole and complete team. I often say I don't want my database designer designing my user interface and I don't want my user interface designer optimising my back end database queries, they're different skills. They're very educated people, they're very sophisticated, but there's also the natural feeling that you and I have about how do I gain a sense of self, how do I gain a sense of accomplishment, a sense of mastery? Part of gaining a sense of mastery is understanding who you are as a person, what you're good at. In Japanese, they would call that Ikigai, right, what are the intersections of, you know, what do I love, what am I good at, what can I make a living at and what do people need, right? All of these intersections occur on an individual level, and then by understanding that we can create more effective teams. Ula Ojiaku Thank you. I've really learned something key here, the relationship between cognitive psychology and organisational behaviour, so thanks for breaking it down. Now, can we go quickly to your entrepreneurship? So there must be three times you started three times a company and you've been successful in that area. What exactly drives you when it comes to establishing businesses and then knowing when to move on? Luke Hohmann Sure. I think it's a combination of reflecting on my childhood and then looking at how that informs someone when they're older, and then opportunities, like you said, serendipity, I think that's a really powerful word that you introduced and it's a really powerful concept because sometimes the serendipity is associated with just allowing yourself to pursue something that presents itself. But when I was young, my father died and my mum had to raise six kids on her own, so my dad died when I was four, my mum raised six kids on her own. We were not a wealthy family, and she was a school teacher and one of the things that happened was, even though she was a very skilled school teacher, there were budget cuts and it was a unionised structure, and even though she was ranked very highly, she lost her job because she was low on the hiring totem pole in terms of how the union worked. It was very hard and of course, it's always hard to make budget cuts and firing but I remember when I was very young making one of those choices saying, I want to work in a field where we are more oriented towards someone's performance and not oriented on when they were hired, or the colour of their skin, or their gender or other things that to me didn't make sense that people were making decisions against. And while it's not a perfect field for sure, and we've got lots of improvement, engineering in general, and of course software engineering and software development spoke to me because I could meet people who were diverse or more diverse than in other fields and I thought that was really good. In terms of being an entrepreneur, that happened serendipitously. I was at the time, before I became an entrepreneur in my last job, was working for an Israeli security firm, and years and years ago, I used to do software anti-piracy and software security through physical dongles. This was made by a company called Aladdin Knowledge Systems in Israel, and I was the head of Engineering and Product Management for the dongle group and then I moved into a role of Business Development for the company. I had a couple of great bosses, but I also learned how to do international management because I had development teams in Israel, I had development teams in Munich, I had development teams in Portland, Oregon, and in the Bay Area, and this was in the 2000s. This is kind of pre-Agile, pre-Salt Lake City, pre-Agile Manifesto, but we were figuring things out and blending and working together. I thought things were going pretty well and I enjoyed working for the Israelis and what we were doing, but then we had the first Gulf War and my wife and I felt that maybe traveling as I was, we weren't sure what was going to happen in the war, I should choose something different. Unfortunately, by that time, we had been through the dot-bomb crisis in Silicon Valley. So it's about 2002 at the time that this was going on, and there really weren't jobs, it was a very weird time in Silicon Valley. So in late 2002, I sent an email to a bunch of friends and I said, hey, I'm going to be a consultant, who wants to hire me, that was my marketing plan, not very clever, and someone called me and said, hey, I've got a problem and this is the kind of thing that you can fix, come consult with us. And I said, great. So I did that, and that started the cleverly named Luke Hohmann Consulting, but then one thing led to another and consulting led to opportunities and growth and I've never looked back. So I think that there is a myth about people who start companies where sometimes you have a plan and you go execute your plan. Sometimes you find the problem and you're solving a problem. Sometimes the problem is your own problem, as in my case I had two small kids and a mortgage and I needed to provide for my family, and so the best way to do that at the time was to become a consultant. Since then I have engaged in building companies, sometimes some with more planning, some with more business tools and of course as you grow as an entrepreneur you learn skills that they didn't teach you in school, like marketing and pricing and business planning etc. And so that's kind of how I got started, and now I have kind of come full circle. The last company, the second last company I started was Conteneo and we ended up selling that to Scaled Agile, and that's how I joined the Scaled Agile team and that was lovely, moving from a position of being a CEO and being responsible for certain things, to being able to be part of a team again, joining the framework team, working with Dean Leffingwell and other members of the framework team to evolve the SAFe framework, that was really lovely. And then of course you get this entrepreneurial itch and you want to do something else, and so I think it comes and goes and you kind of allow yourself those opportunities. Ula Ojiaku Wow, yours is an inspiring story. And so what are you now, so you've talked about your first two Startups which you sold, what are you doing now? Luke Hohmann Yeah, so where I'm at right now is I am the Chief Innovation Officer for a company, Applied Frameworks. Applied Frameworks is a boutique consulting firm that's in a transition to a product company. So if this arm represents our product revenue and this arm represents our services revenue, we're expanding our product and eventually we'll become a product company. And so then the question is, well, what is the product that we're working on? Well, if you look at the Agile community, we've spent a lot of time creating and delivering value, and that's really great. We have had, if you look at the Agile community, we've had amazing support from our business counterparts. They've shovelled literally millions and millions of dollars into Agile training and Agile tooling and Agile transformations, and we've seen a lot of benefit from the Agile community. And when I say Agile, I don't mean SAFe or Scrum or some particular flavour of Agile, I just mean Agile in general. There's been hundreds of millions of dollars to billions of dollars shoved into Agile and we've created a lot of value for that investment. We've got fewer bugs in our software because we've got so many teams doing XP driven practices like Test Driven Development, we've got faster response times because we've learned that we can create smaller releases and we've created infrastructure that lets us do deployments automatically, even if you're doing embedded systems, we figured out how to do over the air updates, we've figured out how to create infrastructure where the cars we're driving are now getting software updates. So we've created for our business leaders lots of value, but there's a problem in that value. Our business leaders now need us to create a profit, and creating value and creating a profit are two different things. And so in the pursuit of value, we have allowed our Agile community to avoid and or atrophy on skills that are vital to product management, and I'm a classically trained Product Manager, so I've done market segmentation and market valuation and market sizing, I've done pricing, I've done licensing, I've done acquisitions, I've done compliance. But when you look at the traditional definition of a Product Owner, it's a very small subset of that, especially in certain Agile methods where Product Owners are team centric, they're internal centric. That's okay, I'm not criticising that structure, but what's happened is we've got people who no longer know how to price, how to package, how to license products, and we're seeing companies fail, investor money wasted, too much time trying to figure things out when if we had simply approached the problem with an analysis of not just what am I providing to you in terms of value, but what is that value worth, and how do I structure an exchange where I give you value and you give me money? And that's how businesses survive, and I think what's really interesting about this in terms of Agile is Agile is very intimately tied to sustainability. One of the drivers of the Agile Movement was way back in the 2000s, we were having very unsustainable practices. People would be working 60, 80, death march weeks of grinding out programmers and grinding out people, and part of the Agile Movement was saying, wait a minute, this isn't sustainable, and even the notion of what is a sustainable pace is really vital, but a company cannot sustain itself without a profit, and if we don't actually evolve the Agile community from value streams into profit streams, we can't help our businesses survive. I sometimes ask developers, I say, raise your hand if you're really embracing the idea that your job is to make more money for your company than they pay you, that's called a profit, and if that's not happening, your company's going to fail. Ula Ojiaku They'll be out of a job. Luke Hohmann You'll be out of a job. So if you want to be self-interested about your future, help your company be successful, help them make a profit, and so where I'm at right now is Applied Frameworks has, with my co-author, Jason Tanner, we have published a bold and breakthrough new book called Software Profit Streams, and it's a book that describes how to do pricing and packaging for software enabled solutions. When we say software enabled solution, we mean a solution that has software in it somehow, could be embedded software in your microwave oven, it could be a hosted solution, it could be an API for a payment processor, it could be the software in your car that I talked about earlier. So software enabled solutions are the foundation, the fabric of our modern lives. As Mark Andreessen says software is eating the world, software is going to be in everything, and we need to know how to take the value that we are creating as engineers, as developers, and convert that into pricing and licensing choices that create sustainable profits. Ula Ojiaku Wow. It's as if you read my mind because I was going to ask you about your book, Software Profit Streams, A Guide to Designing a Sustainably Profitable Business. I also noticed that, you know, there is the Profit Stream Canvas that you and your co-author created. So let's assume I am a Product Manager and I've used this, let's assume I went down the path of using the Business Model Canvas and there is the Customer Value Proposition. So how do they complement? Luke Hohmann How do they all work together? I'm glad you asked that, I think that's a very insightful question and the reason it's so helpful is because, well partly because I'm also friends with Alex Osterwalder, I think he's a dear, he's a wonderful human, he's a dear friend. So let's look at the different elements of the different canvases, if you will, and why we think that this is needed. The Business Model Canvas is kind of how am I structuring my business itself, like what are my partners, my suppliers, my relationships, my channel strategy, my brand strategy with respect to my customer segments, and it includes elements of cost, which we're pretty good at. We're pretty good at knowing our costs and elements of revenue, but the key assumption of revenue, of course, is the selling price and the number of units sold. So, but if you look at the book, Business Model Generation, where the Business Model Canvas comes from, it doesn't actually talk about how to set the price. Is the video game going to be $49? Is it going to be $59, or £49 or £59? Well, there's a lot of thought that goes into that. Then we have the Value Proposition Canvas, which highlights what are the pains the customer is facing? What are the gains that the customer is facing? What are the jobs to be done of the customer? How does my solution relate to the jobs? How does it help solve the pain the customer is feeling? How does it create gain for the customer? But if you read those books, and both of those books are on my shelf because they're fantastic books, it doesn't talk about pricing. So let's say I create a gain for you. Well, how much can I charge you for the gain that I've created? How do I structure that relationship? And how do I know, going back to my Business Model Canvas, that I've got the right market segment, I've got the right investment strategy, I might need to make an investment in the first one or two releases of my software or my product before I start to make a per unit profit because I'm evolving, it's called the J curve and the J curve is how much money am I investing before I well, I have to be able to forecast that, I have to be able to model that, but the key input to that is what is the price, what is the mechanism of packaging that you're using, is it, for example, is it per user in a SAS environment or is it per company in a SAS environment? Is it a meter? Is it like an API transaction using Stripe or a payment processor, Adyen or Stripe or Paypal or any of the others that are out there? Or is it an API call where I'm charging a fraction of a penny for any API call? All of those elements have to be put into an economic model and a forecast has to be created. Now, what's missing about this is that the Business Model Canvas and the Value Proposition Canvas don't give you the insight on how to set the price, they just say there is a price and we're going to use it in our equations. So what we've done is we've said, look, setting the price is itself a complex system, and what I mean by a complex system is that, let's say that I wanted to do an annual license for a new SAS offering, but I offer that in Europe and now my solution is influenced or governed by GDPR compliance, where I have data retention and data privacy laws. So my technical architecture that has to enforce the license, also has to comply with something in terms of the market in which I'm selling. This complex system needs to be organised, and so what canvases do is in all of these cases, they let us take a complex system and put some structure behind the choices that we're making in that complex system so that we can make better choices in terms of system design. I know how I want this to work, I know how I want this to be structured, and therefore I can make system choices so the system is working in a way that benefits the stakeholders. Not just me, right, I'm not the only stakeholder, my customers are in this system, my suppliers are in this system, society itself might be in the system, depending on the system I'm building or the solution I'm building. So the canvases enable us to make system level choices that are hopefully more effective in achieving our goals. And like I said, the Business Model Canvas, the Value Proposition Canvas are fantastic, highly recommended, but they don't cover pricing. So we needed something to cover the actual pricing and packaging and licensing. Ula Ojiaku Well, that's awesome. So it's really more about going, taking a deeper dive into thoughtfully and structurally, if I may use that word, assessing the pricing. Luke Hohmann Yeah, absolutely. Ula Ojiaku Would you say that in doing this there would be some elements of, you know, testing and getting feedback from actual customers to know what price point makes sense? Luke Hohmann Absolutely. There's a number of ways in which customer engagement or customer testing is involved. The very first step that we advocate is a Customer Benefit Analysis, which is what are the actual benefits you're creating and how are your customers experiencing those benefits. Those experiences are both tangible and intangible and that's another one of the challenges that we face in the Agile community. In general, the Agile community spends a little bit more time on tangible or functional value than intangible value. So we, in terms of if I were to look at it in terms of a computer, we used to say speeds and feeds. How fast is the processor? How fast is the network? How much storage is on my disk space? Those are all functional elements. Over time as our computers have become plenty fast or plenty storage wise for most of our personal computing needs, we see elements of design come into play, elements of usability, elements of brand, and we see this in other areas. Cars have improved in quality so much that many of us, the durability of the car is no longer a significant attribute because all cars are pretty durable, they're pretty good, they're pretty well made. So now we look at brand, we look at style, we look at aesthetics, we look at even paying more for a car that aligns with our values in terms of the environment. I want to get an EV, why, because I want to be more environmentally conscious. That's a value driven, that's an intangible factor. And so our first step starts with Customer Benefit Analysis looking at both functional or tangible value and intangible value, and you can't do that, as you can imagine, you can't do that without having customer interaction and awareness with your stakeholders and your customers, and that also feeds throughout the whole pricing process. Eventually, you're going to put your product in a market, and that's a form itself of market research. Did customers buy, and if they didn't buy, why did they not buy? Is it poorly packaged or is it poorly priced? These are all elements that involve customers throughout the process. Ula Ojiaku If I may, I know we've been on the topic of your latest book Software Profit Streams. I'm just wondering, because I can't help but try to connect the dots and I'm wondering if there might be a connection to one of your books, Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play, something like buy a feature in your book, that kind of came to mind, could there be a way of using that as part of the engagement with customers in setting a pricing strategy? I may be wrong, I'm just asking a question. Luke Hohmann I think you're making a great connection. There's two forms of relationship that Innovation Games and the Innovation Games book have with Software Profit Streams. One is, as you correctly noted, just the basics of market research, where do key people have pains or gains and what it might be worth. That work is also included in Alex Osterwalder's books, Value Proposition Design for example, when I've been doing Value Proposition Design and I'm trying to figure out the customer pains, you can use the Innovation Games Speed Boat. And when I want to figure out the gains, I can use the Innovation Game Product Box. Similarly, when I'm figuring out pricing and licensing, a way, and it's a very astute idea, a way to understand price points of individual features is to do certain kinds of market research. One form of market research you can do is Buy-a-Feature, which gives a gauge of what people are willing or might be willing to pay for a feature. It can be a little tricky because the normal construction of Buy-a-Feature is based on cost. However, your insight is correct, you can extend Buy-a-Feature such that you're testing value as opposed to cost, and seeing what, if you take a feature that costs X, but inflate that cost by Y and a Buy-a-Feature game, if people still buy it, it's a strong signal strength that first they want it, and second it may be a feature that you can, when delivered, would motivate you to raise the price of your offering and create a better profit for your company. Ula Ojiaku Okay, well, thank you. I wasn't sure if I was on the right lines. Luke Hohmann It's a great connection. Ula Ojiaku Thanks again. I mean, it's not original. I'm just piggybacking on your ideas. So with respect to, if we, if you don't mind, let's shift gears a bit because I know that, or I'm aware that whilst you were with Scaled Agile Incorporated, you know, you played a key part in developing some of their courses, like the Product POPM, and I think the Portfolio Management, and there was the concept about Participatory Budgeting. Can we talk about that, please? Luke Hohmann I'd love to talk about that, I mean it's a huge passion of mine, absolutely. So in February of 2018, I started working with the framework team and in December of 2018, we talked about the possibility of what an acquisition might look like and the benefits it would create, which would be many. That closed in May of 2019, and in that timeframe, we were working on SAFe 5.0 and so there were a couple of areas in which I was able to make some contributions. One was in Agile product delivery competency, the other was in lean portfolio management. I had a significant hand in restructuring or adding the POPM, APM, and LPM courses, adding things like solutions by horizons to SAFe, taking the existing content on guardrails, expanding it a little bit, and of course, adding Participatory Budgeting, which is just a huge passion of mine. I've done Participatory Budgeting now for 20 years, I've helped organisations make more than five billions of dollars of investment spending choices at all levels of companies, myself and my colleagues at Applied Frameworks, and it just is a better way to make a shared decision. If you think about one of the examples they use about Participatory Budgeting, is my preferred form of fitness is I'm a runner and so, and my wife is also a fit person. So if she goes and buys a new pair of shoes or trainers and I go and buy a new pair of trainers, we don't care, because it's a small purchase. It's frequently made and it's within the pattern of our normal behaviour. However, if I were to go out and buy a new car without involving her, that feels different, right, it's a significant purchase, it requires budgeting and care, and is this car going to meet our needs? Our kids are older than your kids, so we have different needs and different requirements, and so I would be losing trust in my pair bond with my wife if I made a substantial purchase without her involvement. Well, corporations work the same way, because we're still people. So if I'm funding a value stream, I'm funding the consistent and reliable flow of valuable items, that's what value stream funding is supposed to do. However, if there is a significant investment to be made, even if the value stream can afford it, it should be introduced to the portfolio for no other reason than the social structure of healthy organisations says that we do better when we're talking about these things, that we don't go off on our own and make significant decisions without the input of others. That lowers transparency, that lowers trust. So I am a huge advocate of Participatory Budgeting, I'm very happy that it's included in SAFe as a recommended practice, both for market research and Buy-a-Feature in APM, but also more significantly, if you will, at the portfolio level for making investment decisions. And I'm really excited to share that we've just published an article a few weeks ago about Participatory Budgeting and what's called The Color of Money, and The Color of Money is sometimes when you have constraints on how you can spend money, and an example of a constraint is let's say that a government raised taxes to improve transportation infrastructure. Well, the money that they took in is constrained in a certain way. You can't spend it, for example, on education, and so we have to show how Participatory Budgeting can be adapted to have relationships between items like this item requires this item as a precedent or The Color of Money, constraints of funding items, but I'm a big believer, we just published that article and you can get that at the Scaled Agile website, I'm a big believer in the social power of making these financial decisions and the benefits that accrue to people and organisations when they collaborate in this manner. Ula Ojiaku Thanks for going into that, Luke. So, would there be, in your experience, any type of organisation that's participatory? It's not a leading question, it's just genuine, there are typically outliers and I'm wondering in your experience, and in your opinion, if there would be organisations that it might not work for? Luke Hohmann Surprisingly, no, but I want to add a few qualifications to the effective design of a Participatory Budgeting session. When people hear Participatory Budgeting, there's different ways that you would apply Participatory Budgeting in the public and private sector. So I've done citywide Participatory Budgeting in cities and if you're a citizen of a city and you meet the qualifications for voting within that jurisdiction, in the United States, it's typically that you're 18 years old, in some places you have to be a little older, in some places you might have other qualifications, but if you're qualified to participate as a citizen in democratic processes, then you should be able to participate in Participatory Budgeting sessions that are associated with things like how do we spend taxes or how do we make certain investments. In corporations it's not quite the same way. Just because you work at a company doesn't mean you should be included in portfolio management decisions that affect the entire company. You may not have the background, you may not have the training, you may be what my friends sometimes call a fresher. So I do a lot of work overseas, so freshers, they just may not have the experience to participate. So one thing that we look at in Participatory Budgeting and SAFe is who should be involved in the sessions, and that doesn't mean that every single employee should always be included, because their background, I mean, they may be a technical topic and maybe they don't have the right technical background. So we work a little bit harder in corporations to make sure the right people are there. Now, of course, if we're going to make a mistake, we tend to make the mistake of including more people than excluding, partly because in SAFe Participatory Budgeting, it's a group of people who are making a decision, not a one person, one vote, and that's really profoundly important because in a corporation, just like in a para-bond, your opinion matters to me, I want to know what you're thinking. If I'm looking in, I'll use SAFe terminology, if I'm looking at three epics that could advance our portfolio, and I'm a little unsure about two of those epics, like one of those epics, I'm like, yeah, this is a really good thing, I know a little bit about it, this matters, I'm going to fund this, but the other two I'm not so sure about, well, there's no way I can learn through reading alone what the opinions of other people are, because, again, there's these intangible factors. There's these elements that may not be included in an ROI analysis, it's kind of hard to talk about brand and an ROI analysis - we can, but it's hard, so I want to listen to how other people are talking about things, and through that, I can go, yeah, I can see the value, I didn't see it before, I'm going to join you in funding this. So that's among the ways in which Participatory Budgeting is a little different within the private sector and the public sector and within a company. The only other element that I would add is that Participatory Budgeting gives people the permission to stop funding items that are no longer likely to meet the investment or objectives of the company, or to change minds, and so one of the, again, this is a bit of an overhang in the Agile community, Agile teams are optimised for doing things that are small, things that can fit within a two or three week Sprint. That's great, no criticism there, but our customers and our stakeholders want big things that move the market needle, and the big things that move the market needle don't get done in two or three weeks, in general, and they rarely, like they require multiple teams working multiple weeks to create a really profoundly new important thing. And so what happens though, is that we need to make in a sense funding commitments for these big things, but we also have to have a way to change our mind, and so traditional funding processes, they let us make this big commitment, but they're not good at letting us change our mind, meaning they're not Agile. Participatory Budgeting gives us the best of both worlds. I can sit at the table with you and with our colleagues, we can commit to funding something that's big, but six months later, which is the recommended cadence from SAFe, I can come back to that table and reassess and we can all look at each other, because you know those moments, right, you've had that experience in visiting, because you're like looking around the table and you're like, yeah, this isn't working. And then in traditional funding, we keep funding what's not working because there's no built-in mechanism to easily change it, but in SAFe Participatory Budgeting, you and I can sit at the table and we can look at each other with our colleagues and say, yeah, you know, that initiative just, it's not working, well, let's change our mind, okay, what is the new thing that we can fund? What is the new epic? And that permission is so powerful within a corporation. Ula Ojiaku Thanks for sharing that, and whilst you were speaking, because again, me trying to connect the dots and thinking, for an organisation that has adopted SAFe or it's trying to scale Agility, because like you mentioned, Agile teams are optimised to iteratively develop or deliver, you know, small chunks over time, usually two to three weeks, but, like you said, there is a longer time horizon spanning months, even years into the future, sometimes for those worthwhile, meaty things to be delivered that moves the strategic needle if I may use that buzzword. So, let's say we at that lean portfolio level, we're looking at epics, right, and Participatory Budgeting, we are looking at initiatives on an epic to epic basis per se, where would the Lean Startup Cycle come in here? So is it that Participatory Budgeting could be a mechanism that is used for assessing, okay, this is the MVP features that have been developed and all that, the leading indicators we've gotten, that's presented to the group, and on that basis, we make that pivot or persevere or stop decision, would that fit in? Luke Hohmann Yeah, so let's, I mean, you're close, but let me make a few turns and then it'll click better. First, let's acknowledge that the SAFe approach to the Lean Startup Cycle is not the Eric Ries approach, there are some differences, but let's separate how I fund something from how I evaluate something. So if I'm going to engage in the SAFe Lean Startup Cycle, part of that engagement is to fund an MVP, which is going to prove or disprove a given hypothesis. So that's an expenditure of money. Now there's, if you think about the expenditure of money, there's minimally two steps in this process - there's spending enough money to conduct the experiments, and if those experiments are true, making another commitment to spend money again, that I want to spend it. The reason this is important is, let's say I had three experiments running in parallel and I'm going to use easy round numbers for a large corporation. Let's say I want to run three experiments in parallel, and each experiment costs me a million pounds. Okay. So now let's say that the commercialisation of each of those is an additional amount of money. So the portfolio team sits around the table and says, we have the money, we're going to fund all three. Okay, great. Well, it's an unlikely circumstance, but let's say all three are successful. Well, this is like a venture capitalist, and I have a talk that I give that relates the funding cycle of a venture capitalist to the funding cycle of an LPM team. While it's unlikely, you could have all three become successful, and this is what I call an oversubscribed portfolio. I've got three great initiatives, but I can still only fund one or two of them, I still have to make the choice. Now, of course, I'm going to look at my economics and let's say out of the three initiatives that were successfully proven through their hypothesis, let's say one of them is just clearly not as economically attractive, for whatever reason. Okay, we get rid of that one, now, I've got two, and if I can only fund one of them, and the ROI, the hard ROI is roughly the same, that's when Participatory Budgeting really shines, because we can have those leaders come back into the room, and they can say, which choice do we want to make now? So the evaluative aspect of the MVP is the leading indicators and the results of the proving or disproving of the hypotheses. We separate that from the funding choices, which is where Participatory Budgeting and LPM kick in. Ula Ojiaku Okay. So you've separated the proving or disproving the hypothesis of the feature, some of the features that will probably make up an epic. And you're saying the funding, the decision to fund the epic in the first place is a different conversation. And you've likened it to Venture Capital funding rounds. Where do they connect? Because if they're separate, what's the connecting thread between the two? Luke Hohmann The connected thread is the portfolio process, right? The actual process is the mechanism where we're connecting these things. Ula Ojiaku OK, no, thanks for the portfolio process. But there is something you mentioned, ROI - Return On Investment. And sometimes when you're developing new products, you don't know, you have assumptions. And any ROI, sorry to put it this way, but you're really plucking figures from the air, you know, you're modelling, but there is no certainty because you could hit the mark or you could go way off the mark. So where does that innovation accounting coming into place, especially if it's a product that's yet to make contact with, you know, real life users, the customers. Luke Hohmann Well, let's go back to something you said earlier, and what you talked earlier about was the relationship that you have in market researching customer interaction. In making a forecast, let's go ahead and look at the notion of building a new product within a company, and this is again where the Agile community sometimes doesn't want to look at numbers or quote, unquote get dirty, but we have to, because if I'm going to look at building a new idea, or taking a new idea into a product, I have to have a forecast of its viability. Is it economically viable? Is it a good choice? So innovation accounting is a way to look at certain data, but before, I'm going to steal a page, a quote, from one of my friends, Jeff Patton. The most expensive way to figure this out is to actually build the product. So what can I do that's less expensive than building the product itself? I can still do market research, but maybe I wouldn't do an innovation game, maybe I'd do a formal survey and I use a price point testing mechanism like Van Westendorp Price Point Analysis, which is a series of questions that you ask to triangulate on acceptable price ranges. I can do competitive benchmarking for similar products and services. What are people offering right now in the market? Now that again, if the product is completely novel, doing competitive benchmarking can be really hard. Right now, there's so many people doing streaming that we look at the competitive market, but when Netflix first offered streaming and it was the first one, their best approach was what we call reference pricing, which is, I have a reference price for how much I pay for my DVDs that I'm getting in the mail, I'm going to base my streaming service kind of on the reference pricing of entertainment, although that's not entirely clear that that was the best way to go, because you could also base the reference price on what you're paying for a movie ticket and how many, but then you look at consumption, right, because movie tickets are expensive, so I only go to a movie maybe once every other month, whereas streaming is cheap and so I can change my demand curve by lowering my price. But this is why it's such a hard science is because we have this notion of these swirling factors. Getting specifically back to your question about the price point, I do have to do some market research before I go into the market to get some forecasting and some confidence, and research gives me more confidence, and of course, once I'm in the market, I'll know how effective my research matched the market reality. Maybe my research was misleading, and of course, there's some skill in designing research, as you know, to get answers that have high quality signal strength. Ula Ojiaku Thanks for clarifying. That makes perfect sense to me. Luke Hohmann It's kind of like a forecast saying, like there's a group of Agile people who will say, like, you shouldn't make forecasts. Well, I don't understand that because that's like saying, and people will say, well, I can't predict the future. Well, okay, I can't predict when I'm going to retire, but I'm planning to retire. I don't know the date of my exact retirement, but my wife and I are planning our retirement, and we're saving, we're making certain investment choices for our future, because we expect to have a future together. Now our kids are older than yours. My kids are now in university, and so we're closer to retirement. So what I dislike about the Agile community is people will sometimes say, well, I don't know the certainty of the event, therefore, I can't plan for it. But that's really daft, because there are many places in like, you may not for the listeners, her daughter is a little younger than my kids, but they will be going to university one day, and depending on where they go, that's a financial choice. So you could say, well, I don't know when she's going to university, and I can't predict what university she's going to go to, therefore I'm not going to save any money. Really? That doesn't make no sense. So I really get very upset when you have people in the agile community will say things like road mapping or forecasting is not Agile. It's entirely Agile. How you treat it is Agile or not Agile. Like when my child comes up to me and says, hey, you know about that going to university thing, I was thinking of taking a gap year. Okay, wait a minute, that's a change. That doesn't mean no, it means you're laughing, right? But that's a change. And so we respond to change, but we still have a plan. Ula Ojiaku It makes sense. So the reason, and I completely resonate with everything you said, the reason I raised that ROI and it not being known is that in some situations, people might be tempted to use it to game the budget allocation decision making process. That's why I said you would pluck the ROI. Luke Hohmann Okay, let's talk about that. We actually address this in our recent paper, but I'll give you my personal experience. You are vastly more likely to get bad behaviour on ROI analysis when you do not do Participatory Budgeting, because there's no social construct to prevent bad behaviour. If I'm sitting down at a table and that's virtual or physical, it doesn't matter, but let's take a perfect optimum size for a Participatory Budgeting group. Six people, let's say I'm a Director or a Senior Director in a company, and I'm sitting at a table and there's another Senior Director who's a peer, maybe there's a VP, maybe there's a person from engineering, maybe there's a person from sales and we've got this mix of people and I'm sitting at that table. I am not incented to come in with an inflated ROI because those people are really intelligent and given enough time, they're not going to support my initiative because I'm fibbing, I'm lying. And I have a phrase for this, it's when ROI becomes RO-lie that it's dangerous. And so when I'm sitting at that table, what we find consistently, and one of the clients that we did a fair amount of Participatory Budgeting for years ago with Cisco, what we found was the leaders at Cisco were creating tighter, more believable, and more defensible economic projections, precisely because they knew that they were going to be sitting with their peers, and it didn't matter. It can go both ways. Sometimes people will overestimate the ROI or they underestimate the cost. Same outcome, right? I'm going to overestimate the benefit, and people would be like, yeah, I don't think you can build that product with three teams. You're going to need five or six teams and people go, oh, I can get it done with, you know, 20 people. Yeah, I don't think so, because two years ago, we built this product. It's very similar, and, you know, we thought we could get it done with 20 people and we couldn't. We really needed, you know, a bigger group. So you see the social construct creating a more believable set of results because people come to the Participatory Budgeting session knowing that their peers are in the room. And of course, we think we're smart, so our peers are as smart as we are, we're all smart people, and therefore, the social construct of Participatory Budgeting quite literally creates a better input, which creates a better output. Ula Ojiaku That makes sense, definitely. Thanks for sharing that. I've found that very, very insightful and something I can easily apply. The reasoning behind it, the social pressure, quote unquote, knowing that you're not just going to put the paper forward but you'd have to defend it in a credible, believable way make sense. So just to wrap up now, what books have you found yourself recommending to people the most, and why? Luke Hohmann It's so funny, I get yelled at by my wife for how many books I buy. She'll go like “It's Amazon again. Another book. You know, there's this thing called the library.” Ula Ojiaku You should do Participatory Budgeting for your books then sounds like, sorry. Luke Hohmann No, no, I don't, I'd lose. Gosh, I love so many books. So there's a few books that I consider to be my go-to references and my go-to classics, but I also recommend that people re-read books and sometimes I recommend re-reading books is because you're a different person, and as you age and as you grow and you see things differently and in fact, I'm right now re-reading and of course it goes faster, but I'm re-reading the original Extreme Programming Explained by Kent Beck, a fantastic book. I just finished reading a few new books, but let me let me give you a couple of classics that I think everyone in our field should read and why they should read them. I think everyone should read The Mythical Man-Month by Fred Brooks because he really covers some very profound truths that haven't changed, things like Brooks Law, which is adding programmers to a late project, makes it later. He talks about the structure of teams and how to scale before scaling was big and important and cool. He talks about communication and conceptual integrity and the role of the architect. The other book that I'm going to give, which I hope is different than any book that anyone has ever given you, because it's one of my absolute favourite books and I give them away, is a book called Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. Comics or graphic novels are an important medium for communication, and when we talk about storytelling and we talk about how to frame information and how to present information, understanding comics is profoundly insightful in terms of how to present, share, show information. A lot of times I think we make things harder than they should be. So when I'm working with executives and some of the clients that I work with personally, when we talk about our epics, we actually will tell stories about the hero's journey and we actually hire comic book artists to help the executives tell their story in a comic form or in a graphic novel form. So I absolutely love understanding comics. I think that that's really a profound book. Of course you mentioned Alex Osterwalder's books, Business Model Generation, Business Model Canvas. Those are fantastic books for Product Managers. I also, just looking at my own bookshelves, of course, Innovation Games for PMs, of course Software Profit Streams because we have to figure out how to create sustainability, but in reality there's so many books that we love and that we share and that we grow together when we're sharing books and I'll add one thing. Please don't only limit your books to technical books. We're humans too. I recently, this week and what I mean recent I mean literally this weekend I was visiting one of my kids in Vermont all the way across the country, and so on the plane ride I finished two books, one was a very profound and deeply written book called Ponyboy. And then another one was a very famous book on a woman protagonist who's successful in the 60s, Lessons in Chemistry, which is a new book that's out, and it was a super fun light read, some interesting lessons of course, because there's always lessons in books, and now if it's okay if I'm not overstepping my boundaries, what would be a book that you'd like me to read? I love to add books to my list. Ula Ojiaku Oh my gosh, I didn't know. You are the first guest ever who's twisted this on me, but I tend to read multiple books at a time. Luke Hohmann Only two. Ula Ojiaku Yeah, so, and I kind of switch, maybe put some on my bedside and you know there's some on my Kindle and in the car, just depending. So I'm reading multiple books at a time, but based on what you've said the one that comes to mind is the new book by Oprah Winfrey and it's titled What Happened to You? Understanding Trauma, because like you said, it's not just about reading technical books and we're human beings and we find out that people behave probably sometimes in ways that are different to us, and it's not about saying what's wrong with you, because there is a story that we might not have been privy to, you know, in terms of their childhood, how they grew up, which affected their worldview and how they are acting, so things don't just suddenly happen. And the question that we have been asked and we sometimes ask of people, and for me, I'm reading it from a parent's perspective because I understand that even more so that my actions, my choices, they play a huge, you know, part in shaping my children. So it's not saying what's wrong with you? You say, you know, what happened to you? And it traces back to, based on research, because she wrote it with a renowned psychologist, I don't know his field but a renowned psychologist, so neuroscience-based psychological research on human beings, attachment theory and all that, just showing how early childhood experiences, even as early as maybe a few months old, tend to affect people well into adulthood. So that would be my recommendation. Luke Hohmann Thank you so much. That's a gift. Ula Ojiaku Thank you. You're the first person to ask me. So, my pleasure. So, before we go to the final words, where can the audience find you, because you have a wealth of knowledge, a wealth of experience, and I am sure that people would want to get in touch with you, so how can they do this please? Luke Hohmann Yeah, well, they can get me on LinkedIn and they can find me at Applied Frameworks. I tell you, I teach classes that are known to be very profound because we always reserve, myself and the instructors at Applied Frameworks, we have very strong commitments to reserving class time for what we call the parking lot or the ask me anything question, which are many times after I've covered the core material in the class, having the opportunity to really frame how to apply something is really important. So I would definitely encourage people to take one of my classes because you'll not get the material, you'll get the reasons behind the material, which means you can apply it, but you'll also be able to ask us questions and our commitment as a company is you can ask us anything and if we don't know the answer, we'll help you find it. We'll help you find the expert or the person that you need talk to, to help you out and be successful. And then, and I think in terms of final words, I will simply ask people to remember that we get to work in the most amazing field building things for other people and it's joyful work, and we, one of my phrases is you're not doing Agile, if you're not having fun at work, there's something really wrong, there's something missing, yeah we need to retrospect and we need to improve and we need to reflect and all those important things, absolutely, but we should allow ourselves to experience the joy of serving others and being of service and building things that matter. Ula Ojiaku I love the concept of joyful Agile and getting joy in building things that matter, serving people and may I add also working together with amazing people, and for me it's been a joyful conversation with you, Luke, I really appreciate you making the time, I am definitely richer and more enlightened as a result of this conversation, so thank you so much once more. Luke Hohmann Thank you so much for having me here, thank you everyone for listening with us. Ula Ojiaku My pleasure. That's all we have for now. Thanks for listening. If you liked this show, do subscribe at www.agileinnovationleaders.com or your favourite podcast provider. Also share with friends and do leave a review on iTunes. This would help others find this show. I'd also love to hear from you, so please drop me an email at ula@agileinnovationleaders.com Take care and God bless!
In this episode, Benjamin Scheffold, senior manager of Agile transformation at Deloitte shares his top tips for success in the three key phases of a participatory budgeting event. He also explains why preparation, adaptation, communication, and repetition are critical for everyone involved. Like what you hear? Connect with Benjamin on LinkedIn. Explore SAFe courses here.
In this episode, discover how the Boston Ujima Project is reimagining philanthropy, community engagement, and economic models to empower artists and communities of color in Boston. Learn about their innovative approaches to decision-making, solidarity economy, and supporting businesses. You can find full transcripts, links, and other information on our website.Follow @thisishowwecare on Instagram and sign up for our newsletter for additional practices and prompts from Ujima Project
Let's talk about a new way to allocate resources for Portland. Maria Sipin is working with the Community Budgeting for All campaign and they just launched a petition drive to get participatory budgeting (PB) on the November 2024 ballot in Portland. They want to take 2% of the city's General Fund (about $15.6 million) and put it in the hands of everyday people. In this conversation, you'll learn what PB is and how it's different than the traditional, top-down budgeting process.Links:https://www.communitybudgetingforall.com/
In recent decades, political institutions have witnessed a gradual erosion of trust among their constituents, a trend exacerbated by the economic and financial crisis. According to the European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS), over the past 20 years, vote turnout in both Western and Eastern democracies has dropped by an average of 10 percentage points.Within the European Union, which has faced criticism from citizens, non-governmental organizations, and other civil society groups, the challenge of greater involvement in European policy-making is consistently highlighted. From 2002 to 2010, the percentage of Europeans expressing dissatisfaction with politics increased from 31% to 43% (EPRS).Participatory budgeting (PB) emerged as a solution to rejuvenate democratic participation, reinforce civil society, modernize public services, and combat corruption in the EU. According to the EPRS, the number of participatory budgeting experiments in the EU surged from 55 to over 1,300 between 2005 and 2012, engaging more than 8 million EU citizens.Currently, PB is primarily employed at the municipal level, where citizens are invited to propose and vote on initiatives to be executed through the local budget. Although there are instances at regional and national levels, this practice has yet to be implemented on a European scale.In the context of the H2020 project DEMOTEC, listen this Euractiv Virtual Conference to discuss PB and its potential at an EU level. Some questions to be discussed include:- How will PB work in practice concerning specific policies at an EU level?- How can PB complement representative democracy? Is it a valuable tool for improving citizens' trust in EU institutions?- What challenges are associated with implementing such a process at an EU level?This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program under Grant Agreement no 962553.This website reflects only the author's view and the Research Executive Agency or European Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.
Public luxury available to all, or private luxury available to some? Shownotes George Monbiot (Website): https://www.monbiot.com/ George Monbiot bei X: https://twitter.com/GeorgeMonbiot?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor Communia- Zentrum demokratische Wirtschaft (Website): https://communia.de/ communia & BUNDjugend (Hrsg.) Öffentlicher Luxus. 2023. Karl Dietz Verlag. (pdf deutsch): https://dietzberlin.de/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Oeffentlicher_Luxus_digital.pdf Let's socialize - Vergesellschaftung als Strategie für Klimagerechtigkeit (Vergesellschaftungskonferenz): https://vergesellschaftungskonferenz.de/ Workshops von Communia: https://communia.de/oeffentlicher-luxus-workshops/ Furter Shownotes Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World Economy. Tooze, A (2021) New York: Viking.: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/669575/shutdown-by-adam-tooze/ George Monbiot talk on Public luxury at the 2021 ISEE, ESEE & Degrowth International Conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWRRPed4Ds0 Planetary boundaries (Stockholm Resilience Center): https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries.html The grant Banks of Newfoundland (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Banks_of_Newfoundland Nitrate crisis in the Netherlands (Government of the Netherlands): https://www.government.nl/topics/nature-and-biodiversity/the-nitrogen-strategy-and-the-transformation-of-the-rural-areas Trussonomics (The Guardian): https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/a-humiliating-end-to-trussonomics NHS funding (British Medical Association): https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-workforce/funding/health-funding-data-analysis Red Vienna (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Vienna George Monbiot on NHS funding (The Guardian): https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/11/patient-a-and-e-tories-nhs-hospital-government-funding Food crisis (World Food Programme): https://www.wfp.org/emergencies/global-food-crisis UN Resolution; Eliminating World Hunger (UN Website): https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/hunger/ Trends in Global Hunger Development (Global Hunger Index): https://www.globalhungerindex.org/trends.html Quantitative Easing (Forbes): https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/quantitative-easing-qe/ Universal Basic Services: https://universalbasicservices.org/ Commons (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons Land reform (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reform Democratic socialism (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism Salvador Allende (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Allende William Davies (Website): https://williamdavies.blog/ William Davies (Goldsmith College): https://www.gold.ac.uk/politics-and-international-relations/staff/davies/ Colin Crouch (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Crouch Chicago Boys (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Boys Women's suffrage (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage Murray Bookchin (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Bookchin Kate Raworth (Website): https://www.kateraworth.com/about/ Rojava (Wikipedia): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rojava Rojava: https://www.freeocalan.org/main Porto Alegre (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porto_Alegre Participatory budgeting (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_budgeting Goldsmith, William W. and Vainer, Carlos B. Participatory Budgeting and Power Politics in Porto Alegre. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. 2001: https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/articles/participatory-budgeting-power-politics-porto-alegre Related Episodes S02 | E59 Lemon und Lukas von communia zu öffentlichem Luxus: https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s02/e59-lemon-und-lukas-von-communia-zu-oeffentlichem-luxus/ S02 | E57 Jenny Stupka zum Kampf um Vergesellschaftung: https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s02/e57-jenny-stupka-zum-kampf-um-vergesellschaftung/ S02 | E48 Heide Lutosch, Christoph Sorg und Stefan Meretz zu Vergesellschaftung und demokratischer Planung: https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s02/e48-heide-lutosch-christoph-sorg-und-stefan-meretz-zu-vergesellschaftung-und-demokratischer-planung/ Keywords #GeorgeMonbiot, #JanGroos, #Interview, #FutureHistories, #Podcast, #DemocraticPlanning, #EconomicPlanning, #Markets, #Polycrisis, #ClimateCrisis, #LandReform, #Ecology, #PlanetaryBoundaries, #PublicLuxury, #Socialization, #UniversalBasicServices, #JustStopOil, #FridaysForFuture, #ExtinctionRebellion, #Movements
So, you're running your first participatory budgeting event and you're nervous. What's the best way to demystify the event for everyone involved? Deema Dajani, Product Management Director at Scaled Agile has some suggestions in today's episode. Like what you hear? Connect with Deema on LinkedIn. Explore SAFe courses here.
Marcus Mills was the Green Party candidate running in 2023 to represent the 3rd Ward in Minneapolis, MN. His policy platform prioritizes Housing Affordability, Education Equity, Energy and Environment, Community Safety, Bridging Intergovernmental Gaps, Local Small Business, Food Justice and Edible Greening, and Participatory Budgeting. He gained valuable experience from this campaign that will help him when he runs again in 2025. You can read more at mills4millcity.org. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theandrewmillershow/support
Durham Participatory Budgeting UpdatePublic art on bus shelters, technology in schools, park improvements, and new lighting and security cameras for public housing. These are just a few of the projects made possible so far with funding from Participatory Budgeting in Durham. In this CityLife episode, host Beverly Thompson talks with Andrew Holland and Carmen Ortiz, who manage that innovative program, about how it gives residents the chance to have direct input on how their tax dollars are being spent. About CityLifeCityLife, a talk show that features information on current City issues and upcoming events, airs daily on Durham Television Network (Spectrum ch. 8, Frontier ch. 70 and AT&T U-verse ch. 99) and on Roku, Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV on the free Boxcast app. For more information about the City of Durham, call (919) 560-4123, like on Facebook, and follow on Twitter, Instagram, and Nextdoor. City Life is now an audio podcast! Find it on iTunes or wherever you get your podcast.
Imagine if, when you were in middle school, an Ivy League professor came to your school and told you that you were going to be part of an experiment. You were going to get to decide how the money in your school was spent. What would you want to spend it on? How would you convince your classmates that your idea was best? Furthermore, would you even believe what this professor was telling you? Jonathan Collins is a professor of political science at the Watson Institute, and has recently been turning this hypothetical into a reality for students in the Providence area. He's been helping to design and evaluate what are known as participatory budgeting projects, and they're not just for students. In towns and cities around the world, everyday people are being let into the budgeting process of their communities. The effects have been profound, both on the local budgets, and on communities that have long felt marginalized and disempowered. "There's just something magical that can happen when there's skin in [the] game…the moment that you give them an opportunity to feel that they are a part of the stakes? I think the possibilities are endless," explained Collins. On this episode Dan Richards talks with Jonathan about participatory budgeting — where it came from, what it looks like on the ground, and how it might help strengthen our democracy, one community at a time. Learn more about the Watson Institute's other podcastsLearn more about participatory budgeting in Rhode IslandLearned about PAVED, Browns democratic innovation research initiativeTranscript coming soon to our websitePhoto credit: Nick Dentamaro
Bloomdaddy presents the latest installment of Everybody Has a Story, and invites Cleveland City Councilman Kris Harsh to talk Participatory Budgeting.
Cleveland Councilman Kris Harsh visits the show to talk about the numerous issues surrounding the concept of a so called "participatory budgeting" process that has been proposed in Cleveland and tried in other cities across the country.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/1570677/advertisement
How do you get numerous stakeholders with different priorities and limited budgets to agree what to fund and how? Hint: the answer involves everyone in one room and some Monopoly money. In today's episode, Vanessa Martens, Agile coach and SPCT candidate with Cprime, shares her experience and key observations leading a participatory budgeting event with an insurance company in Africa.
Participatory Budgeting: How to Create Your Best Budget Yet Nonprofit leaders, are you looking for a better way to budget this year? A process that actually builds morale instead of squashing it? Sounds too good to be true, right? It doesn't have to be! In this episode, Stephanie discusses the participatory, or collaborative, budgeting process. She does a deep dive into what exactly participatory budgeting is, and equally, if not more importantly, what it is NOT. Hint: it is NOT a free-for-all. Participatory budgeting is an innovative way for nonprofits to include their team in a process that has often been part of a power dynamic in organizations. This approach helps leaders to dismantle this power structure present in the organization where one party holds all the money and the power. It's also an excellent way to boost morale and buy-in as well as encourage accountability and transparency. While collaborative budgeting is an excellent strategy for nonprofits to implement, that's not to say it doesn't come with its challenges. Stephanie has worked with countless nonprofits throughout this process and has seen her fair share of the challenges they face. With her expertise and guidance, she has helped these nonprofits overcome these obstacles. Now, she's sharing these proven strategies with you! EPISODE SUMMARY On today's episode, you'll learn strategies to help you create a more collaborative budgeting process including: What participatory budgeting is (5:00) What participatory budgeting is NOT (7:05) What to do before putting a single number on a spreadsheet (9:00) How to include team members in the budgeting process (11:45) How to avoid getting back 15 different spreadsheets that all look differently (13:00) How to keep morale high during this process (15:15) Challenges with participatory budgeting (18:45) Creating a line item wish list (21:30) Tips for making participatory budgeting successful (23:00) TEASERS “Nobody knows those line items in those departmental budgets better than the people who are actually running those programs.” “What is most important here is transparency.” “What we need to take away from this is that not every single thing that people suggest and people want is going to happen.” “We are actively working to dismantle the innate power structure present in the organization where one party holds all the money and the power.” “We want to have more meaningful dialogue organization-wide on the direction that the organization is going.” RESOURCES FREE Cash Forecast Spreadsheet: https://100degreesconsulting.com/cash Keep up to date with the podcast: https://www.instagram.com/100degreesconsulting/ Follow Stephanie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stephanie.skry/ Connect with Stephanie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanieskryzowski/ Visit the podcast page: https://100degreesconsulting.com/participatory-budgeting
Luke Hohmann I am a four time author, three time founder, a keynote speaker and internationally recognized expert in Agile Software Development. Coming from Silicon Valley, I know how often founders focus on building companies to flip. My passion is building companies that make the world better. At FirstRoot, Inc. our mission is to create the next generation of impact investors. We want to get $1K into 1M schools globally and watch what happens when youth control $1B in capital. The Every Voice Engaged Foundation is a 501c3 nonprofit that helps citizens, governments and nonprofit organizations collaboratively solve problems that are unsolvable without civic engagement. EVEF has been a leader in the Participatory Budgeting movement, helping citizens prioritize hundreds of millions of dollars through Budget Games. Conteneo, Inc. was acquired by Scaled Agile, Inc. With our extraordinary development team, we created the Weave, Strategy Engine and Knowsy® decision agility platforms. In partnership with The Kettering Foundation (www.kettering.org), Conteneo created Common Ground for Action, the first scalable platform for deliberative decision-making. At Applied Frameworks, we make the world better by helping our customers create sustainably profitable businesses. My most recent book, Software Profit Solutions, is co-authored with Jason Tanner and shares key insights from our experience to help transform businesses through profitable, sustainable software solutions. Join our newsletter linked in my profile above for periodic Profit Streams updates and to be notified when the book is available! https://profit-streams.com/book We talk about: What is system thinking and how is it used? What are some of the tools one would use to navigate the “Fog of uncertainty”? When should one think about raising prices? When does software eat Hardware? What is Solution Life-cycle management? Connect with Luke https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukehohmann/ Website https://appliedframeworks.com/
At this week's Round Table, Jack, Kenisha, Madeline, Maya spoke with Drashti Brahmbhatt, Participatory Budgeting Project Management Director at the NYC Civic Engagement Commission. We were fortunate to have Drashti discuss The People's Money and its goals for bringing New York City one step closer in having everyone's voices heard in government on the very day the campaign launched! The People's Money is NYC's FIRST citywide Participatory Budgeting process through which New Yorkers across the five boroughs have an opportunity to vote on how $5 million of the city's budget should be spent on ideas in their communities. Drashti recognizes that people's experiences with government in the countries they've immigrated from colors the ways in which they look at government. As a city of immigrants, she believes The People's Money has the potential to influence their initial outlook on New York City's government for the good. The power that comes with having a database of ideas created by, and funded by, New Yorkers is truly inspirational and can be what is needed to instill long lasting change to our city. The People's Money campaign launched on May 10 and so far, people are really enjoying the concept of having the economic power to bring about growth and change in their communities. Looking ahead into the future, we would love to see far more funding devoted to The People's Money in order to ensure that all the prevalent issues in our city don't go unnoticed and get addressed. One of the best things about The People's Money is that anyone age 11 or older of any immigration status can participate and get involved in democracy in New York City. As such, there's a path for the engagement of people who aren't traditionally seen or heard when it comes to voting and civic participation, which is really exciting. Needless to say, young people are a vital target in this campaign and we are excited to engage as many young people as we can between now and when the campaign closes on June 25. Please be sure to vote and encourage everyone you know to vote at on.nyc.gov/pb Thank you for listening! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nextgenpolitics/message
In this episode, I'm talking with Luke Hohmann, founder and CEO of First Root, a company dedicated to helping improve the financial literacy taught in schools and getting children used to handling money – by giving them money to handle. Luke originally founded a software company that created a program on which you could run Participatory Budgeting, a collaborative process used by global brands and major cities to manage the finances of large projects. Luke realised that, if we wanted to create a better society for ourselves and our children, then these key lessons should be taught at school. As well as getting used to making financial decisions, the children learn what a good citizen looks like and how they can positively contribute to a community. In our conversation, we cover such topics as: how to run a participatory budgetary process, which teaches the value of money and accountability for decisions made; the 4Cs of 21st Century Education (Creativity, Critical Thinking, Communication and Collaboration) ; and how this all fits into a business context. At the end of the day, if we can all learn how to work together with something as emotive as money, we can work together on anything. If you want to know more about Luke, then take a look at the following links Luke's Website Luke's Linkedin Profile If interested in sponsoring a school So do check those out but for now sit back, relax, think about how you might be able to handle money better and, most of all, enjoy.
Today our guest is Cyndi Tercero-Sandoval the Family and Community Engagement Manager at the Phoenix Union High School District. We talk with Cyndi about Participatory Budgeting, a way to empower students and give them a voice in how the budget is spent. Cyndi explained the intentional process that Phoenix Union has undertaken to implement participatory budgeting, which has started to increase student engagement and connection in some really creative ways. This process has not only increased student voice in the budgeting process, but also in school improvement, safety, and curriculum decisions throughout the district. To learn more: EdWeek Article - Letting Students Decide Where Money Should Go: How One District Did It: https://t.co/cnsEldUJO1 Website: https://www.participatorybudgeting.org Twitter: @TerceroCyndi Cyndi Tercero-Sandoval is an advocate of student voice, civic leader, community activist and humanitarian. She currently serves as the Family and Community Engagement Manager for the Phoenix Union High School District, where she has been enriching the lives of our youth for over 29 years. She serves as the McKinney-Vento and Foster Point of Contact and is responsible for establishing and coordinating district-wide dropout prevention, intervention, and reengagement strategies for opportunity youth who have been historically disenfranchised or marginalized. Cyndi is considered a resident expert in dropout prevention initiatives and student support services. She has received several awards for her work with youth and was recognized as an Obama White House Champion of Change in 2016. She was named a Community Luchadora for being a fighter of social justice and human rights in 2017 and was recognized for being a pioneer in empowering youth voice in 2018 with a North American Participatory Budgeting Network Award. She was most recently recognized as a 2023 EdWeek Leader to Learn from for her work in implementing Participatory Budgeting in her district. She is very active in the community and serves on several boards that focus on improving youth outcomes. She has a passion for enhancing and advancing the lives of our youth by elevating student voice in all areas of education by empowering students to act as change agents. She believes schools and districts can incorporate student voice in a multi strategy approach ranging from intentional classroom-based efforts to schoolwide participatory budgeting focusing on strategies that empower students to work in partnership with campus and district adult leadership. She understands that the community school partnership model is essential to the philosophy of educating the whole child. She engages with community agencies through collaborative action to provide supplemental services to students and families, provide additional opportunities for engagement for youth (i.e. leadership development, life skills, social justice, civic engagement, etc.), and support the school district's mission of preparing every student for success in college, career and life. Cyndi is a native of Arizona. She currently resides in Peoria with her husband and two children.
TODAY'S GUEST Shari Davis is a TED speaker, a participatory budgeting facilitator, and as she defines it, a recovering local government employee. She joined the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP) after nearly 15 years of service and leadership in local government. As director of youth engagement and employment for the City of Boston, she launched Youth Lead the Change, the first youth participatory budgeting process in the US, which won the US Conference of Mayor's City Livability Award. We spoke at the end of February, and I was very excited to talk to Shari because of her work on participatory budgeting, which seems to be one of the most promising new ways for everyday citizens, from all walks of life, to supervise and have a say in how public funds are being spent. Participatory budgeting has the potential for having an enormous impact on corruption, on efficient use of funds, on creating better, more efficient and more impactful programs, and also a huge effect on how people feel about their government. And all of this is already happening around the world, so I was very excited to hear about this from someone who's really leading this movement. It was really fun to chat with Shari. She clearly has a lot of practice at connecting with, and including many different kinds of people. And so she puts you right at ease and she uses humor effectively. But it was the topic of the conversation that was really amazing to hear about. ( * Please note: this episode was originally recorded under they/she pronouns. ) EPISODE SUMMARY In this conversation we talk about: How her early involvement in martial arts as a kid really shaped her attitudes towards practice, responsibility, and community. How she initially got involved in the city government in Boston, eventually leading the youth department and bringing together resources and services for the youth of the city into one place. How she was asked to lead Youth Lead the Change. How the city earmarked $1M to be spent however the youth decided it should be spent, using the power of participation to make better decisions, and how that whole process unfolded. The US democracy's fatal flaw and how a lot of decisions happen in non-transparent, closed-door ways, ways that deepen inequality and division. How to run and lead a successful inclusive participatory budgeting project, whether you're a local government, a school, a non-profit or a national government, and why that makes such a huge difference. What stayed with me is this idea that by bringing people together and putting them in the right kind of process, and then paying attention and designing the process itself, how much better decisions are. Talking to Shari was really energizing and hopeful, and this is one of our goals with every conversation we bring you including several conversations we already have lined up for you with thinkers, designers, makers, authors, entrepreneurs, and activists who are working to change our world for the better. So if you're interested in these types of hopeful conversations, follow this podcast on your favorite podcast app, or head over to remakepod.org to subscribe. And now let's jump right in with Shari Davis. TIMESTAMP CHAPTERS [4:48] Life During Covid [9:26] Early Childhood Guiding Forces [16:22] A Journey From Martial Arts to Government [22:29] Democracy's Fatal Flaw [26:51] Youth Lead the Change [34:56] Participatory Budgeting Project [43:04] Inclusive Design [45:16] Traveling Into the Future [49:54] Where Hope Lives [53:02] A Short Sermon on Change EPISODE LINKS Shari's Links
In this episode Professor Goldsmith interviews Dr. Hollie Russon Gilman, a political scientist and civic strategist researching the intersection of civic engagement, digital technology, and governance. They discuss Gilman's work assisting with participatory budgeting processes, her democracy research at the Harvard Ash Center, and how - and when - to provide more inclusive opportunities for civic engagement. Music credit: Summer-Man by KetsaAbout Data-Smart City SolutionsHoused at the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University, we work to catalyze the adoption of data projects on the local government level by serving as a central resource for cities interested in this emerging field. We highlight best practices, top innovators, and promising case studies while also connecting leading industry, academic, and government officials. Our research focus is the intersection of government and data, ranging from open data and predictive analytics to civic engagement technology. To learn more visit us online and follow us on Twitter.
TODAY'S GUEST Max Rashbrooke's TED Talk on upgrading democracy has touched a nerve, and has been viewed over 1 million times in a matter of months. He's a Wellington-based writer and public intellectual, with twin interests in economic inequality and democratic renewal. His latest book is Too Much Money, about wealth disparities in New Zealand, and his previous books include Government for the Public Good: The Surprising Science of Large-Scale Collective Action. Max is a Senior Associate of the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies. His work appears in outlets such as the Guardian and Prospect magazine. EPISODE SUMMARY In this conversation we talk about: How moving from a wealthy school to a failing school in a low income neighborhood opened his eyes to his own privilege and the extent of poverty in the world. How he became fascinated with the problem of entrenched and compounded inequality and lack of mobility as a financial journalist in London during the financial crisis. The dangers of increasing inequality and immobility, and how it leads to a mistrust in institutions, an attraction to populist authoritarianism, and a crisis for democracy. How he proposes to upgrade democracy for the digital age, by increasing participation and incorporating tools like citizen assemblies, online consensus building, and participatory budgeting. And why having faith in our fellow citizens and in the power of the government to do good is essential to healing democracy in our lifetime. I really enjoyed talking to Max, and hope that you'll enjoy his excellent introduction to the growing movement of more participatory democracy. Max is one of dozens of great conversations with thinkers, activists, and makers who are trying to remake our lives in some meaningful way. If you don't want to miss them, please make sure you subscribe in your favorite podcast player. And now let's jump right in with Max Rashbrooke. TIMESTAMP CHAPTERS [3:31] Life During Covid [7:06] Early Life Lessons [13:03] A Journey to Economic Inequality [17:00] Compounded Inequality [18:34] A Lack of Progress [20:13] A Lack of Trust [22:31] The Rise of Authoritarianism [24:53] A Mistrust of Institution [28:08] Defense of Democracy [32:05] Upgrading and Renewing Democracy [35:59] Citizens Assemblies [40:06] Political Brands [41:45] Online Consensus Building [46:02] Participatory Budgeting [48:43] The Delegation of the Vote [54:11] A Mindset of Faith [57:52] Working Together [1:00:25] A Short Sermon EPISODE LINKS Max's Links
For this interview I spoke to Eli Zeger (@ezeger16), a writer, editor, and musician. He is also a worker-owner at Ampled and a member of the Exit to Community Collective. He recently published a piece for the Zora Zine titled Appetite for Redistribution: Budgeting for All talking about how blockchains and quadratic funding could be used to facilitate and scale participatory budgeting .During the interview we spoke about the history of public campaign fund matching in NYC, how the local NYC election system used to be more democratic until the Cold War, and how adding quadratic funding mechanisms could be a powerful tool for democracy. More from EliRanked Choice Voting in NYCPublic Matching Funds in NYCHow to make voting more truly representativeIf you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Support the show
What happens when residents are empowered to decide together how to spend public money in their own communities? This is the foundational premise of "participatory budgeting." It aims to deepen democracy, build stronger communities, and make public budgets more equitable and effective. The first participatory budgeting efforts began in 1989, in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Today, there are over 3,000 participatory budgeting processes around the world, most at the municipal level--including here in Cleveland.rnrnIn the wake of major federal legislation, public investments are finding their way to state and local municipalities. For example, in September, nearly $12 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds were approved by Cuyahoga County Council. Here in Cleveland, Participatory Budgeting Cleveland (PB CLE) is a grassroots effort and coalition which hopes to make budgeting moments like these a more democratic and transparent process.rnrnErika Anthony, Executive Director of Cleveland VOTES will lead a conversation at the Happy Dog in Cleveland's Gordon Square District on new ways to deepen residents' civic engagement. Joining the conversation is Councilwoman Stephanie Howse; Michelle Jackson of PB CLE; and Kenny Medrano, the Former Director of Participatory Budgeting (District 26, NYC).
I interview Luke Hohmann, CEO & Founder of First Root. Participatory Budgeting (PB) is a democratic process in which a group of students determines how to invest a shared budget to improve a school. PB authentically motivates students to learn and practice the “Four Cs” of the 21st Century curriculum: creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration — all while teaching design thinking, civics, and jump-starting their journey to increasing financial literacy. Students experience actual agency and stewardship over their futures, learning through their own experiences how money works. Participatory Budgeting creates several benefits for students, schools, and their communities: Gives students a chance to experience democracy in action by providing students with concrete evidence of the benefits of getting involved Helps students engage in all aspects of design thinking as they create, refine, vote, and fund proposals Strengthens the school community by creating alignment and positive interactions among all stakeholders: students, teachers, parents, and administrators Creates self-confidence and civic pride as student-generated proposals are implemented Develops financial literacy skills, including budgeting and financial planning Luke is one of the world's leading experts on applying Participatory Budgeting at scale in communities and business settings. Before founding FirstRoot, Luke started Conteneo, an enterprise software platform based on game theory for collaborative decision-making. The author of four books, Luke has been cited as an inventor in more than a dozen patents and is an internationally recognized expert in Agile Software Development. Feedback Leave an anonymous voicemail on SpeakPipe.com/FTapon Or go to Wanderlearn.com, click on this episode, and write a comment. More info You can post comments, ask questions, and sign up for my newsletter at http://wanderlearn.com. If you like this podcast, subscribe and share! On social media, my username is always FTapon. Connect with me on: Facebook Twitter YouTube Instagram LinkedIn Tiktok Pinterest Tumblr My Patrons sponsored this show! Claim your monthly reward by becoming a patron at http://Patreon.com/FTapon Rewards start at just $2/month! Affiliate links Start your podcast with my company, Podbean, and get one month free! In the USA, I recommend trading crypto with Kraken or FTX.us Outside the USA, trade crypto with Binance and get 5% off your trading fees! For backpacking gear, buy from Gossamer Gear
This episode I'm in conversation with Jennifer Lumpkin and Molly Martin, two Cleveland Community Organizing powerhouses. We're talking about the role of expanding democracy and what that has to do with viewing education as a living system. We get deep into the specific structure that they are working to promote called Participatory Budgeting. Why are we talking about Participatory Budgeting on a podcast about education? First off, civics education is severely lacking and we can't expect ourselves to help ourselves into a new system if we don't understand how the old system functions. But, maybe even more importantly, PB is a way to think about flattening the hierarchy and distributing power, which is pattern we see over and over again in living systems, and if we want to mimic our systems (like Education!) after a living one, we might as well learn some structures that work well to flatten them, like PB! I hope you'll listen and be as inspired as I was after talking to these two, then share it with a friend and rate and review it. It means so much! Today's Guests: Jennifer Lumpkin is a community organizer and supporter in coalitions and efforts across the City of Cleveland. Jennifer founded Creative Community Builders, LLC in 2016 after organizing in Cleveland and Washington, D.C. with a foundation on legacy farming and intercultural solidarity. Her organizing and partnership practice, My Grow Connect, is rooted in supporting the development of sustainable communities through creative relationship building, cultural organizing and mindful resource connections. Molly Martin works for the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless to support the organization's advocacy and organizing work and their mission to eliminate the root causes of homelessness. Molly grew up in Cleveland and is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the University of Virginia Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. She is passionate about homeless civil rights, housing justice, and deepening anti-racist commitment through policy advocacy and community organizing. She is an Advisory Board Member of Cleveland VOTES, a democracy-building organization strengthening our community's civic muscle, and she is a Coordinating Committee Member of Participatory Budgeting Cleveland, a grassroots coalition of Cleveland residents actively organizing for a participatory budgeting process in Cleveland. LINKS CLEVELANDERS: GET INVOLVED WITH PB CLE GENERAL PB CLE INFORMATION MORE GENERAL: PARTICIPATORY BUDGETING PROJECT PB IN SCHOOLS! JOIN the WE ARE VERBS community! (Try it out for only $1 with the code PODCAST at checkout!) REGENERATIVE ED PATREON
House Warming Podcast, Episode 012: Building the Foundation for the Future City that We Need to Be with Maria Hadden, Alderwoman of the 49th Ward In this episode, Sarah Bury talks with Alderwoman Maria Hadden about the environmental legislation she has supported, including an order to assess the cost of bringing back the Chicago Department of Environment. Alderwoman Maria Hadden was born in Columbus, Ohio, and her parents Skip and Toni taught Maria two foundational lessons. 1) Be curious and ask questions. It's important to understand how things work and why. 2) Problems that affect any of us, affect all of us. And that if you see something wrong and you're able to help, you should do what you can to make it right. After graduating from The Ohio State University with a BA in International Peace and Conflict Studies, she moved to Chicago. She chose Rogers Park because of its affordability, welcoming community culture and proximity to the lake. A weekly regular at The Heartland Cafe, in Rogers Park, Maria found community.Rogers Park was the first place Maria lived in Chicago, where she purchased her first home and where her activism blossomed. When the housing bubble burst in 2007, and the developer of her building fled the country, Maria helped organize her neighbors to save their homes. Maria has been organizing with the community ever since.Maria has been a leader in the 49th Ward through her advocacy, her art, and her work with Participatory Budgeting in Chicago. She lives with her partner, Natalia, and their rescue dog. Maria is a photographer and artist who leads screenprinting workshops for young people. She took over The Art Patch Project from longtime Rogers Park activist Chris Drew and believes art is an important medium for activism and personal expression.Before becoming Alderwoman, Maria Hadden was the Executive Director of Our City Our Voice, a national nonprofit organization she founded to enable communities and government across the country to redesign democracy for more empowered and equitable participation. Her expertise in public participation is grounded in grassroots organizing efforts for social change.Before launching her own organization, Maria was a founding board member of The Participatory Budgeting Project, where she worked for 8 years with communities and government officials in the Midwest and South to create and facilitate democratic processes around public budgets. In this role, Maria has also worked with Aldermen throughout Chicago to design participatory budgeting processes around Aldermanic menu money, school budgets and TIF funds.Maria currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Black Youth Project (BYP) 100, and Voqal. BYP is an organization of activists aiming to create justice and freedom for all Black people through the principles of leadership development and inclusivity using Black, queer, feminist lens. Voqal is a nonprofit that uses technology and media to build an educated, empowered and engaged public. Maria also:Participated in a cohort on inclusive innovation in America's Cities for The Aspen Institute where she worked to bridge the gap between innovation in cities and marginalized and underserved communities.Is an active member of the New Economy Coalition helping to create deep change in our economy and politics.Serves on the Social Capital Committee of the Cook County Commission on Social Innovation.Works on the local level with organizations fighting for progressive causes like Network 49 and United Working Families.The Illinois Environmental Council 2021 City Council Scorecard can be found here: https://ilenviro.org/chicago-scorecard/Support the show
140 Grit and your Startup with Luke Hohmann Founder and CEO of FirstRoot, Inc. Our mission is to create the next generation of impact investors. Our unique go-to-market strategy supports all stakeholders as youth use participatory budgeting to invest real money in their schools. Youth learn the 5 C's of modern education: creativity, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and civics as they experience true agency and stewardship over their futures, learning through their own experiences how money really works. We want to get $1K into 1M schools globally and watch what happens when youth control $1B in capital. Previously a SAFe® Framework Contributor and Principal Consultant, Luke was Founder and CEO of Conteneo, Inc. (acquired by Scaled Agile, Inc.) where he worked with an extraordinary dev team to create the Weave, Strategy Engine and Knowsy® decision agility platforms. The author of four books, numerous articles and cited as an inventor on more than a dozen patents, Luke is an internationally recognized expert in Agile Software Development. Luke co-organized the first Agile conference in 2003, has served on the Board of the Agile Alliance and in partnership with the Scrum Alliance produced the "Collaboration at Scale", the world's largest monthly webinar devoted to helping organizations with 10 or more Scrum teams in 2 or more locations scale agility. Luke is a highly sought after speaker has as keynoted such conferences as the Agile Alliance conference, Agile Australia, Lean-Agile Scotland, Agile New Zealand, the Austrian Innovation Forum, the CXPA and the SAFe Summit. Luke's is the co-founder of Every Voice Engaged Foundation, a 501c3 nonprofit that helps citizens, governments and nonprofit organizations collaboratively solve problems that are unsolvable without civic engagement. EVEF has been a leader in the Participatory Budgeting movement, helping citizens prioritize hundreds of millions of dollars through Budget Games. In partnership with The Kettering Foundation (www.kettering.org), Conteneo created Common Ground for Action, the first scalable platform for deliberative decision-making. A former United States National Junior Pairs Figure Skating Champion, Luke likes playing with his four kids, his wife's cooking and long runs in the Santa Cruz mountains. Luke's an old school Silicon Valley entrepreneur. Instead of building companies to flip, he builds companies that make the world better! We talk about For the different stages of a company's growth, how can they collaborate using games to get results? How can a company go about finding the right Investment Banker? How important is teaching financial literacy? What is project based, learning-by-doing? And much more Connect with Luke Hohmann (5) Luke Hohmann | LinkedIn lukehohmann@yahoo.com firstroot.co
When the news broke of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, it was chilling to many people to learn that 40 percent of that small city's budget was allocated to public safety - a budget allocation that utterly failed to keep the children and teachers at Robb Elementary school safe. What might have been a better way to spend that city's precious funds? After Uvalde, and in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd, residents of many US cities asked that same question. They're turning to a tool called participatory budgeting that gives residents and taxpayers real decision-making power over their cities' budgets. It's already spread to more than 7,000 cities around the world. This week, Laura speaks with Shari Davis and Kristania De Leon, co-directors of the Oakland and NYC based Participatory Budgeting Project, and Shaun Glaze, research director of the Black Brilliance Research Project in Seattle. Participatory budgeting makes a real difference, they say, and at a moment when US democracy itself is hanging by a thread, the experience of participating in budget-making is beginning to validate people's belief in voting. Could this model bring power to people where they live?“Participatory budgeting is about transforming the relationship that people can have with government and with community-led decision making so that we make really good, fiscally responsible decisions that reflect community spending priorities.” - Shari Davis“How do we actually start to move in a way that allows us to meet our needs together, build relationships and see value in the collective?” - Kristania De Leon“Communities have this expertise. They know what they need. Let's make sure that we are honoring that expertise and turning that into action.” - Shaun GlazeGuests:Shari Davis, Co-Executive Director, Participatory Budgeting ProjectKristania De Leon, Co-Executive Director, Participatory Budgeting ProjectShaun Glaze, Research Director, Black Brilliance Research Project We are listener & viewer sponsored. Full episode notes including related articles and LFShow episodes to watch and/or listen to are posted at https://Patreon.com/theLFShow. Patreon Members receive access to the FULL UNCUT CONVERSATION. The show airs on 300+ Public Television households across the U.S., on over 40 community radio stations and as a podcast.
In this episode we're speaking with Luke Hohmann. Luke is an executive and a software engineer that has dedicated the majority of his career to participatory budgeting. As founder of the First Root organization, Luke and his team created software for schools to let it's students decide what to spend resources on by engaging them in budgets, purchasing, and management. These are great lessons for children to prepare them for the real world. Have a listen to see what the students ended up buying. The answer will astonish you in some cases. Luke also implements his participatory budgeting style into small Government, letting it's cities and towns resident's control a portion of the budget. It's the ultimate democratic tool!Check out Luke's company at http://www.firstroot.co
TODAY'S GUEST Shari Davis is a TED speaker, a participatory budgeting facilitator, and as she defines it, a recovering local government employee. She joined the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP) after nearly 15 years of service and leadership in local government. As director of youth engagement and employment for the City of Boston, she launched Youth Lead the Change, the first youth participatory budgeting process in the US, which won the US Conference of Mayor's City Livability Award. We spoke at the end of February, and I was very excited to talk to Shari because of her work on participatory budgeting, which seems to be one of the most promising new ways for everyday citizens, from all walks of life, to supervise and have a say in how public funds are being spent. Participatory budgeting has the potential for having an enormous impact on corruption, on efficient use of funds, on creating better, more efficient and more impactful programs, and also a huge effect on how people feel about their government. And all of this is already happening around the world, so I was very excited to hear about this from someone who's really leading this movement. It was really fun to chat with Shari. She clearly has a lot of practice at connecting with, and including many different kinds of people. And so she puts you right at ease and she uses humor effectively. But it was the topic of the conversation that was really amazing to hear about. ( * Please note: this episode was originally recorded under they/she pronouns. ) EPISODE SUMMARY In this conversation we talk about: How her early involvement in martial arts as a kid really shaped her attitudes towards practice, responsibility, and community. How she initially got involved in the city government in Boston, eventually leading the youth department and bringing together resources and services for the youth of the city into one place. How she was asked to lead Youth Lead the Change. How the city earmarked $1M to be spent however the youth decided it should be spent, using the power of participation to make better decisions, and how that whole process unfolded. The US democracy's fatal flaw and how a lot of decisions happen in non-transparent, closed-door ways, ways that deepen inequality and division. How to run and lead a successful inclusive participatory budgeting project, whether you're a local government, a school, a non-profit or a national government, and why that makes such a huge difference. What stayed with me is this idea that by bringing people together and putting them in the right kind of process, and then paying attention and designing the process itself, how much better decisions are. Talking to Shari was really energizing and hopeful, and this is one of our goals with every conversation we bring you including several conversations we already have lined up for you with thinkers, designers, makers, authors, entrepreneurs, and activists who are working to change our world for the better. So if you're interested in these types of hopeful conversations, follow this podcast on your favorite podcast app, or head over to remakepod.org to subscribe. And now let's jump right in with Shari Davis. TIMESTAMP CHAPTERS [4:48] Life During Covid [9:26] Early Childhood Guiding Forces [16:22] A Journey From Martial Arts to Government [22:29] Democracy's Fatal Flaw [26:51] Youth Lead the Change [34:56] Participatory Budgeting Project [43:04] Inclusive Design [45:16] Traveling Into the Future [49:54] Where Hope Lives [53:02] A Short Sermon on Change EPISODE LINKS Shari's Links
Newly elected Finance Commissioner of Saratoga Springs, NY, Minita Sanghvi, joins Hudson Mohawk Magazine for a live interview with HMM hosts and producers Cathy Silber and Brea Barthel about the city's pilot project in participatory budgeting.
The Soul Pole returns home to the Central District! Participatory Budgeting process getting ready to roll Ketanji Brown Jackson changes the face of the Supreme Court Focus on the Black family - What makes a Black man "Cool" or "Square" BLM under fire about $6M mansio
What happens when a group of kids are given a substantial amount of money to make change in their school? Do they spend it on chips and candy? Or do they invest in the things that will really help make a difference in other kids' lives? Learn the answer from this podcast with FirstRoot CEO Luke Hohmann as we examine the journey of kids and adults who learn what it takes to really prioritize and invest in a big idea through participatory budgeting. Find out more and learn how you can help! www.firstroot.co Support the show
Luke Hohmann is the Founder and CEO of FirstRoot, Inc., a Benefit Corporation devoted to creating great economic equality. Our unique go-to-market strategy supports all stakeholders as youth use participatory budgeting to invest real money in their schools. Youth learn the 5 C's of modern education: creativity, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and civics as they experience true agency and stewardship over their futures, learning through their own experiences how money really works. We want to get $1K into 1M schools globally and watch what happens when youth control $1B in capital. Previously a SAFe® Framework Contributor and Principal Consultant, Luke was Founder and CEO of Conteneo, Inc. (acquired by Scaled Agile, Inc.) where he worked with an extraordinary dev team to create the Weave, Strategy Engine and Knowsy® decision agility platforms. The author of four books, numerous articles and cited as an inventor on more than a dozen patents, Luke is an internationally recognized expert in Agile Software Development. Luke co-organized the first Agile conference in 2003, has served on the Board of the Agile Alliance and in partnership with the Scrum Alliance produced the "Collaboration at Scale", the world's largest monthly webinar devoted to helping organizations with 10 or more Scrum teams in 2 or more locations scale agility. Luke is a highly sought after speaker has as keynoted such conferences as the Agile Alliance conference, Agile Australia, Lean-Agile Scotland, Agile New Zealand, the Austrian Innovation Forum, the CXPA and the SAFe Summit. Luke is the co-founder of Every Voice Engaged Foundation, a 501c3 nonprofit that helps citizens, governments and nonprofit organizations collaboratively solve problems that are unsolvable without civic engagement. EVEF has been a leader in the Participatory Budgeting movement, helping citizens prioritize hundreds of millions of dollars through Budget Games. In partnership with The Kettering Foundation (www.kettering.org), Conteneo created Common Ground for Action, the first scalable platform for deliberative decision-making. A former United States National Junior Pairs Figure Skating Champion, Luke likes playing with his four kids, his wife's cooking and long runs in the Santa Cruz mountains. Luke's an old school Silicon Valley entrepreneur. Instead of building companies to flip, he builds companies that make the world better! www.firstroot.co https://twitter.com/lukeohhmann (https://twitter.com/lukeohhmann) https://www.facebook.com/luke.h.hohmann/ (https://www.facebook.com/luke.h.hohmann/) https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukehohmann/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukehohmann/) This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: AdBarker - https://adbarker.com/privacy Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy
Luke Hohmann is the Founder and CEO of FirstRoot, Inc., a Benefit Corporation devoted to creating great economic equality. Our unique go-to-market strategy supports all stakeholders as youth use participatory budgeting to invest real money in their schools. Youth learn the 5 C's of modern education: creativity, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and civics as they experience true agency and stewardship over their futures, learning through their own experiences how money really works. We want to get $1K into 1M schools globally and watch what happens when youth control $1B in capital. Previously a SAFe® Framework Contributor and Principal Consultant, Luke was Founder and CEO of Conteneo, Inc. (acquired by Scaled Agile, Inc.) where he worked with an extraordinary dev team to create the Weave, Strategy Engine and Knowsy® decision agility platforms. The author of four books, numerous articles and cited as an inventor on more than a dozen patents, Luke is an internationally recognized expert in Agile Software Development. Luke co-organized the first Agile conference in 2003, has served on the Board of the Agile Alliance and in partnership with the Scrum Alliance produced the "Collaboration at Scale", the world's largest monthly webinar devoted to helping organizations with 10 or more Scrum teams in 2 or more locations scale agility. Luke is a highly sought after speaker has as keynoted such conferences as the Agile Alliance conference, Agile Australia, Lean-Agile Scotland, Agile New Zealand, the Austrian Innovation Forum, the CXPA and the SAFe Summit. Luke is the co-founder of Every Voice Engaged Foundation, a 501c3 nonprofit that helps citizens, governments and nonprofit organizations collaboratively solve problems that are unsolvable without civic engagement. EVEF has been a leader in the Participatory Budgeting movement, helping citizens prioritize hundreds of millions of dollars through Budget Games. In partnership with The Kettering Foundation (www.kettering.org), Conteneo created Common Ground for Action, the first scalable platform for deliberative decision-making. A former United States National Junior Pairs Figure Skating Champion, Luke likes playing with his four kids, his wife's cooking and long runs in the Santa Cruz mountains. Luke's an old school Silicon Valley entrepreneur. Instead of building companies to flip, he builds companies that make the world better! www.firstroot.co https://twitter.com/lukeohhmann (https://twitter.com/lukeohhmann) https://www.facebook.com/luke.h.hohmann/ (https://www.facebook.com/luke.h.hohmann/) https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukehohmann/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukehohmann/) This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: AdBarker - https://adbarker.com/privacy Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy
TODAY'S GUEST Max Rashbrooke's TED Talk on upgrading democracy has touched a nerve, and has been viewed over 1 million times in a matter of months. He's a Wellington-based writer and public intellectual, with twin interests in economic inequality and democratic renewal. His latest book is Too Much Money, about wealth disparities in New Zealand, and his previous books include Government for the Public Good: The Surprising Science of Large-Scale Collective Action. Max is a Senior Associate of the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies. His work appears in outlets such as the Guardian and Prospect magazine. EPISODE SUMMARY In this conversation we talk about: How moving from a wealthy school to a failing school in a low income neighborhood opened his eyes to his own privilege and the extent of poverty in the world. How he became fascinated with the problem of entrenched and compounded inequality and lack of mobility as a financial journalist in London during the financial crisis. The dangers of increasing inequality and immobility, and how it leads to a mistrust in institutions, an attraction to populist authoritarianism, and a crisis for democracy. How he proposes to upgrade democracy for the digital age, by increasing participation and incorporating tools like citizen assemblies, online consensus building, and participatory budgeting. And why having faith in our fellow citizens and in the power of the government to do good is essential to healing democracy in our lifetime. I really enjoyed talking to Max, and hope that you'll enjoy his excellent introduction to the growing movement of more participatory democracy. Max is one of dozens of great conversations with thinkers, activists, and makers who are trying to remake our lives in some meaningful way. If you don't want to miss them, please make sure you subscribe in your favorite podcast player. And now let's jump right in with Max Rashbrooke. TIMESTAMP CHAPTERS [3:31] Life During Covid [7:06] Early Life Lessons [13:03] A Journey to Economic Inequality [17:00] Compounded Inequality [18:34] A Lack of Progress [20:13] A Lack of Trust [22:31] The Rise of Authoritarianism [24:53] A Mistrust of Institution [28:08] Defense of Democracy [32:05] Upgrading and Renewing Democracy [35:59] Citizens Assemblies [40:06] Political Brands [41:45] Online Consensus Building [46:02] Participatory Budgeting [48:43] The Delegation of the Vote [54:11] A Mindset of Faith [57:52] Working Together [1:00:25] A Short Sermon EPISODE LINKS Max's Links
Luke Hohmann is on the #Readingwithyourkids #Podcast to introduce us to First Root, an innovative way to help kids become financially literate. Luke tells us the the heart of First Root is Participatory Budgeting: youth are given a real money budget and work together to decide how to invest it. In the process, they learn core life skills in financial literacy, civics, and design thinking. Click here to visit Luke's website - https://firstroot.co Click here to visit our website - www.readingwithyourkids.com
Luke Hohmann is a serial entrepreneur who's done and been through several phases of business in his career! Luke is the Founder and CEO of FirstRoot, a benefit corporation devoted to creating economic equality. His last company, Conteneo, was an enterprise collaboration software company that helped large enterprises administer more than $3B using Participatory Budgeting techniques. If you're looking for an internationally recognized entrepreneur in Agile Software Development, whose mission is to create financially literate children capable of transforming their communities as they become financially independent adults through creativity, communication, critical thinking, collaboration, and civics. Luke is definitely your man! Deal Techniques Entrepreneurs use different approaches in deal-making. These approaches pass through different processes, and they all have different outcomes. In this episode, we'll be talking about one of the techniques used by entrepreneurs, called Participatory Budgeting. This is an episode you don't want to miss! What Is Participatory Budgeting And How Does It Affect Deals?! Participatory budgeting is the process through which corporations and investors use collaborative techniques to establish budgets. In this process, the members of the group involved are the decision-makers. It helps create better motivation, boost morale, and create better work environments that end in job satisfaction. Processes Involved In Participatory Budgeting Participatory budgeting involves money and how it's spent. Like many other deal techniques, it has specific guidelines and processes that needs to be followed to enjoy sufficient success. Investors are mandated to provide and guide the members through the processes. They are also expected to provide a curriculum on personal finance and civics. It doesn't matter if you're starting or already have a multimillion business; everyone has a budget. The budget is never enough because human imagination is unbounded and human resources are limited. Learning how to navigate those choices is the most central activity. The following are the five Ds involved! Discovery Phase This is the first phase. The members involved go out and talk to other people to identify the problem. Results must be compiled and recorded. Dreaming Phase This particular phase is for the members involved. It's a phase for them to DREAM! Investors ask them questions like, “what would you do if you had this money?” Design Phase Members are taught how to develop their ideas into actual proposals. It involves teaching them design techniques and answering questions of feasibility, viability, cost, approval, etc. Decision Phase This is the phase where the members decide - they vote on what to do with the available resources, and when the vote is concluded, they DO! The members actually see their ideas put into action using The Five Ds! Are You An Entrepreneur Or An Aspiring Entrepreneur? Understand These Facts Before Jumping On That Deal! If you're trying to sell, hiring an external firm or investment banker doesn't guarantee sale. You should negotiate deals in comfortable settings and conditions. Understand the transaction can be structured so that the total amount to be paid is available to enable both parties to succeed, but that doesn't necessarily mean the money is changing hands in the deal process. Be clear on where you are and what you're bringing to the table. Don't skimp on your legal team- make sure your contracts are well intact. Get a good lawyer - someone you trust and has experience in corporate law. Don't be difficult to work with. To learn more about Luke, head here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/firstroot Luke would love to give away the Digital Copy of my book Success Left A Clue. Head here to download https://www.robertriopel.com To connect with Corey for more: Website: https://www.coreykupfer.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreykupfer Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CoreyKupfer Twitter: https://twitter.com/coreykupfer
Luke Hohmann is the Founder and CEO of FirstRoot Inc.. FirstRoot Inc's teaches students financial literary by giving them real cash and the chance to make a real impact in their school. With a structured program to guide them on their decision making process, students are able to learn through their own experiences how money really works.Join us as Luke he shares about the power of participatory budgeting in any organization, just how he managed to achieve an 80% to 100% participation from the students, and why he structured his company as a Benefit Corporation. Resources:https://firstroot.co/ - Check out FirstRoot and its programs! Actionable Take-aways:1. The more you work, the more opportunities you create for yourself. Like Luke, you may find your next business idea from your existing business. Always be open to new ideas and challenge the status quo. 2. Allow your customers to have a bigger stake or a chance to be more involved in the business. When they see that their actions have a direct impact, they will become more loyal to you in the long run. 3. If you are looking to start a company that prioritizes doing good for the public and society, do some research or ask a lawyer as to what is the best corporate vehicle you should incorporate. Luke decided to incorporate FirstRoot as a Benefit Corporation and this has allowed him to prioritize the good he wants to do for society over maximizing profits.
This one is a slow burn folks! We got Shari Davis of the Participatory Budgeting Project and they came to drop some wisdom and provide people the tools to personalize the revolution wherever you may be! From Shari's love of the force from a bad ass feminist, to the weak penalties for insurrectionists, this episode has hope and heart! Follow Us: Twitter: @SithtyMinutes @AAA_Photog @LooksJediToMe @PBProject Instagram: @SithtyMinutes @PaulaBear92 @RBW3000 @General_Leia_The_Pup Show Notes: Interview Fires, Floods, and Heatwaves are just the beginning IPCC Full Report Climate Change is in the Defense Budget Exxon Lobbyist describes Congress Bribes Fire on the Water Melting Glaciers PB in Brazil Black Brilliance Research Report Participatory Budgeting in School Districts Judge Presses DOJ on Restitution Fees DeRay McKesson's Court Case Private Jet Insurrectionist Democracy Beyond Elections Why Outing can be Deadly
Luke Hohmann, a serial entrepreneur and Founder of First Root, shares how a simple technique called participatory budgeting can positively impact an entire community.Liz Dudley, a Social Studies Teacher based in New York City, shares her experience with participatory budgeting and its impact on her students and school community toward increased engagement, discourse, and leadership.Listen and learn how participatory budgeting can enable, engage and empower your corporate, civic, social, family or education communities.Learn about the guests and their programs on our (Re)Learning Leadership website.Visit Agile Leadership Journey for more on how we build better leaders.
On this show we take a unique dive in to something called Participatory Budgeting with guest Luke Hohmann. Don't know what that is? Well stay toon and learn more about what it is and if maybe you should have something to do with it. It is a different approach that even triggered a lot of thought on our part.Luke Hohmann bio:Luke Hohmann is Founder and CEO of FirstRoot, a Benefit Corporation devoted to creating great economic equality. A serial entrepreneur, Luke's last company, Conteneo, was an enterprise software company that helped global companies manage investment portfolios using Participatory Budgeting. Luke is now leveraging the experience he gained working with some of the world's largest companies to help prepare our children for their future by bringing Participatory Budgeting into schools to teach financial literacy, civics, and design thinking.Make sure to check our FirstRoot at https://firstroot.co/Make sure to keep the conversation going on our social medias as well as on here.YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDecidingFactor Facebook ► https://www.facebook.com/TheDecidingFactorPodcastInstagram ► https://www.instagram.com/thedecidingfactorpodcastTwitter ► https://twitter.com/tdf_podcastMake sure to share your thoughts on here and our social media. Also find out more about us at www.thedecidingfactorpodcast.comSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/thedecidingfactor)
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