Rowan's blog

Brain size correlates to size of social network

Lets start with the monkeys...

I've just been watching David Attenborough's 'Funky Monkeys' documentary on TV. I learned that monkeys brain sizes directly correlate to the size of their social group, or social network.

One explanation is that the larger groups, (for example a hundred monkeys living together) are more complex, therefore a monkey must be exceptionally smart and politically savvy to rise to become an effective group leader. Groups that become unmanageably large split into smaller groups. Scientists can accurately determine the size of the monkey's social group directly from its brain size, before even knowing what kind of monkey it is.

How does this correlation between brain size and social network size relate to humans?

According to Dunbar's number, the size of human social networks has been approx 150 for at least tens of thousands of years (incl. today's online groups). Our brain sizes have also stayed much the same. Dunbar theorized that "this limit is a direct function of relative neocortex size, which limits group size ...the limit imposed by neocortical processing capacity is simply on the number of individuals with whom a stable inter-personal relationship can be maintained." David Wong wrote a pretty entertaining article about it.

However some humans social networks are much larger than average - and some people care about far more than 150 people. Based on the thinking in David Wong's article, that would be a good thing!

One factor that could explain this is that some people are extroverts (as opposed to introverts), so they might naturally hold more information about 'people' in their brains (instead of other kinds of knowledge).

Another idea is that some humans have 'outsourced' a large quantity of information (potential extra brain size?) to collaborative information storing and sharing facilities on the internet (e.g. storing / relying on knowledge in Wikipedia instead of trying to remember it in our heads, or storing information about people in databases or sites such as Facebook). Might this be our way of evolving faster than standard biological evolution (our brain size) permits?

Yet another factor might be that some people choose to believe in all people being equally important, even the people we don't yet know. In other words, choosing to see the humanity in, and therefore have consideration for, every person in the world.

So, I am pondering whether the combination of: a. an individual's biological brain size/intelligence + b. their personality type (extrovert or introvert) + c. the amount they leverage the 'global outsourced intelligence' of the internet + d. the degree to which they choose to be considerate of every human  correlate to the size of their social network?

What do you think? Are any assumptions wrong/debatable? What other factors would be involved? Wouldn't it be good if humans perceived all humans as being a broader, but equally important part of their network? Will tools like Facebook and LinkedIn help?

Exmoor

Exmoor is one of the last remaining 'wild' parts of England - and a remarkably civilized wild place it is too.

I spent many childhood holidays on a farm just down from the moor on the south side. Dad and I returned to visit the farm, farmers family, the rare Exmoor ponies on the moor (the oldest, purest breed and most primitive of the Brisish native ponies), Doone Valley (setting of Lorna Doone), Tarr Farm Inn, The Royal Oak at Withypool and other favorite haunts. 

The narrow, deep Devon lanes force you to slow down a bit. It was much needed.

Friday in Dubai

It's the weekend in Dubai (working weeks are Sunday to Thursday). Louise & I decided to ease into the place by first checking out the western side of the east/west clash. We'll immerse ourselves in the eastern side tomorrow.

Today we:

Swam in a pool, in a country where water is the same price as petrol (approx Dh1.50 for 1L).

Went to Dubai Mall (the world's largest shopping mall based on total area).

Saw the ice rink, and a live shark in the mall.

Saw lots of Emiratis in national dress:

Saw the world's tallest building, Burj Khalifa (which is significantly taller than the previous tallest building, Taipei 101 which we went up last week). The pic below puts Burj Khalifa in perspective against 'ordinary' large skyscrapers:

Got a welcome soaking from the water show at 6pm between Dubai Mall and Burj Khalifa.

Later on I met a couple of camels on the beach:

When I took off my shoes and let the ocean lap around my feet I was shocked to find the sea was hot. I don't mean 'warm' like Thailand (in the 20-28 degree range). I mean hot, over 30 degrees. It was 'hot bath' hot. 

This place feels very foreign and surprising!

All the pics from today are on Flickr, starting here.

Looking forward to exploring the eastern side of the Dubai east/west clash tomorrow.

Managing change in the digital environment

I don't often talk about my work on this blog, but initiatives at work over the past few months have renewed my interest in managing change, which I do want to talk about - and request your support with!

At work, my role is Digital Strategist / Leader for IBM, Growth Markets (officially within 'Brand System', working closely with Demand Programs and Market Management, which all sit within IBM Marketing and Communications). Back in June 2009 I started to work on overarching digital strategy guidance for the Growth Markets - and the business process management around it.

Digital: Strategic approach

An implementable strategy covering all Growth Markets would not produce optimal results, since the market conditions in countries such as China, India, Korea, Sth Africa, Russia, Poland etc are fundamentally dissimilar (incl. IBM prospect/clients use of digital tools, media and technologies). Also, local objectives are different in each country - in fact the breadth of IBM's offerings mean IBM's objectives are different for each audience within each country. So I created a 'Digital Planning Roadmap' which each country / Program team can follow to build a solid, locally relevant digital strategy & locally implementable plan.

The idea is that this digital plan should sit, embedded in the centre of the broader local marketing plan. Digital tools/tactics relevant to the audience in the market would be interwoven into the overall contact strategy for that audience. (I should add that this was already happening in many places, but a consistent approach had not been formulated.)

Digital: Business process management

Ideally, many parts of the business would be involved in the creation and implementation of a locally developed digital plan (because digital is relevant to many parts of the business). Therefore, the next step was to create a Cross-functional Digital Lead in each market. This person's role is to drive effective, coordinated use of digital in their market cross-function using the 'Digital Planning Roadmap' approach - and optimise their country's use of digital over time. Essentially, this person will be the 'Digital change agent' in their market.

A global 'Digital Community of Practice' has been set up to enable and support these individuals, utilising Enterprise 2.0 collaboration technologies (plus the good old conference call)! The objective of this de-centralised community is "to eliminate redundant efforts, to amplify learnings and best practices across IBM and to build the critical mass of talent and energy that will command more focus and funding".

The number of community members has passed 60 140 1,000 and is ever-growing - as is the wealth of experience, expertise and guidance the community members are able to share with one another. It has been very exciting to bring this to life and it is gratifying to watch the community start to develop its own momentum as community members use the forums to reach out to one another.

Why am I requesting support / information?

I just read Rawn Shah's article in Forbes: "Enterprise 2.0 Changes What Kind Of Leader You Need To Be". His article prompted me to write this post, because, while I think it is fair to say I meet his definition of "one of the new leaders" (not necessarily people with titles and management authority; rather ones who fuel group efforts to produce results), this is something I want to get better at. If you happen to be doing something similar, I would love to compare notes!

I am in my element when I:

• can work on a big game-changing opportunity (in this case, 'how do we embed Digital into the marketing mix to best effect, to meet our specific objectives')
• have the freedom to develop / sell the approach and 'rally the troops' (in this case, global as well as Growth Markets marketing teams)
• am facilitating the process (making things easy).

BUT I would not call myself an expert in large-scale organisational change management. I am hungry to learn more.

Long term, I'm keen to hone my leadership and change management skills so that I can make a larger impact with projects that involve digital (my area of specialty) and change management within IBM & the corporate world. I'd also like to be able to contribute in the area of animal protection (my other passion) / social issues.

I'm starting a Graduate Certificate in Change Management at the Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM) in Sept. Meanwhile I found a wealth of information on the topics of digital and change management (shared below)*. If you share my passion for this area and/or know of people, organisations, blogs, initiatives etc that I might be interested in, please leave a comment / get in touch!

Many thanks.

*Resources on Digital and Change Management (in no particular order):

• Presentation - Managing change in the digital environment (IdeaGarden)
  
• Lots of presentations on Change Management on Slideshare
  
• Groups covering Digital and Change Management on LinkedIn
• Ashoka (Innovators for the public)
• Ashoka - article on Games for change
• Games for change
• Altimeter Group blog
• Groundswell blog
• Drink Digital - talks
• Heart of Change (book) site
• McKinsey Quarterly
• Social change group on Vimeo (I created the group, please add relevant videos)!
• 'Tribes' by Seth Godin

Note: The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent the positions, strategies or opinions of my husband, my dog or any company including employers or clients.

Bock

I put down my dear Basil (an event horse) in October when his incurable melanoma started causing him pain. RIP Basil. It took a few months before I could start to think about riding again.

In February I started part-sharing Bock, a magnificent dressage horse. He has lovely paces and is well schooled. I'm learning a lot with him, as well as being thoroughly entertained by his cheeky personality!

More pics here.

For those of you not familiar with dressage - at the very highest level it looks like this:

Saving the Asian Elephants

The highlight of our Thailand trip was staying at the Elephant Nature Park, approx one hour north of Chiang Mai.

Asian Elephants are currently on the move towards extinction. There are only 3,000 Asian elephants in total left in Thailand. The wild Asian elephants are protected by law, but the life and treatment of domesticated (working elephants) in Asia is not protected in any way. These magnificent beings are often treated very poorly.

The Elephant Nature Park was founded by award winning conservationist Sangduen ‘Lek’ Chailert. She began rescuing injured and mistreated Asian elephants in 1992, and in 2003 (with the support of a Texan millionaire) was able to establish a permanent home for them in a beautiful lush valley.

There are now over 30 rescued elephants at the park. They are free to choose a family, form small herds and live amongst people who love and respect them. They are not expected to work or perform. Instead they are able to wander the park, feeding at their leisure, bathing in the river and playing together in the mud pit. Each elephant has a distinct character, which becomes more evident as they come to regard the park as their home and leave their past behind.

Visitors to the park help feed and bathe the elephants. If you stay overnight as we did, you may get to walk around the park in the morning, meet many of the elephants and hear about their working lives. Most of their stories are unfortunately heartbreaking.

I was in awe of all the elephants; their wise eyes, huge heavily grounded bodies, their gentle natures and their ability to forgive humans for the pain and suffering we, as a race, have put them through.

Personally, I fell in love with Mae Khum Kaew (also spelled Mae Kham Gaeo). She was radiant and gentle. Even her skin was soft!

You can read her story here. Read all the elephant’s stories via the links on this page. 

Creating the Elephant Nature Park was a huge achievement by Lek. Unfortunately there is much more work to be done to save and improve the lives of Asian Elephants. Lek Chailert is working on a variety of additional projects:

• Lek is in the process of setting up more properties for rescued elephants including 2,000 acres of land in Surin.
• She set up Jumbo Express, an outreach program that endeavors to improve the lives of domesticated elephants as well as offer free medical assistance and education to their mahouts and people they work for.
• Lek speaks out about the cruel practice of the 'Phajaan' or training crush, the horrific, violent traditional method of ‘breaking in’ an elephant to be ridden and worked. This practice is still used widely in Asia. Lek is campaigning against this, in favour of training methods that use positive reinforcement. For those of you reading this and thinking ‘Monty Roberts for elephants’, I agree there are strong similarities between Monty and Lek’s missions. With Lek's blessing, I emailed Monty’s office introducing Lek to him and inviting him to contribute his support to her excellent work.

What you can do to help:

1. Visit or volunteer at the Elephant Nature Park (you can go on a day or overnight trip from Chiang Mai or you can volunteer at the park for a week or two).
2. Volunteer as part of the Surin Project.
3. Foster an elephant (this makes an excellent gift). 
4. Make a donation to support the activities of the Elephant Nature Foundation.
5. Shop at the online Ele store (more great, socially responsible gifts).
6. Help raise awareness and funds (there are lots of ideas to get you started here)!
7. Join the Elephant Nature Foundation. 
8. If you’re in the USA, join the Serengeti Foundation which supports ENF. 
9. If you are in the UK and want to help, contact ENF UK.
10. Join the ENF Facebook Group.
11. I recommended the organisation set up Flickr Groups for: Elephant Nature Park, Surin Project, Elephants that need saving. Will update with links if/when available. ***UPDATE: ENP Flickr Group is now live.***
12. Read the recent media articles about Elephant Nature Park and please talk about the plight of the Asian Elephant. This National Geographic video featuring Lek is an excellent resource to share. The more awareness and people involved, the better!
13. Join 'Elephants in Crisis' (EIC), and ElephantVoices, two other organisations doing excellent work.
14. Discuss the plight of elephants, potential solutions, pilot projects etc in the 'Professionals Protecting Elephants LinkedIn Group'.

Note: If you are in Asia

• Please do not support elephant street begging, elephant painting or elephant shows.
• If you feel you must go trekking on the back of an elephant, please take a long hard look at the elephant’s health and enthusiasm for its work before you pay for the trek. If you really think about it, you may prefer the idea of walking beside a free elephant to riding on a working one!

Some of my photos from the Elephant Nature Park can be viewed in my 'Thailand' set on Flickr, starting here.

Thailand

Our time in Thailand was wonderful, varied and energising. I’ll share the highlights:

Chiang Mai

A really small, easy city to navigate, I loved it! We squeezed past telephone boxes and trees and food stalls on wheels positioned in the middle of narrow pavements. We saw monks in orange robes walking past Porsches. There were great smells and ancient temples, friendly helpful locals with big smiles and easy jokes. The East / West clash there is fabulous!

I dragged poor Ben around many temples:

Then the Saturday and Sunday walking markets:

I was impressed by the improvement in treatment of dogs since I was last in Thailand, almost 11 years ago. Almost all the temples had donation boxes and took care of the local dogs, including medical care, food and water.

The highlight of the whole holiday was an overnight visit to Sangduen "Lek" Chailert’s Elephant Nature Park. This warrants a separate blog post.

While staying at the Elephant Nature Park we walked up to a local village. Someone bought something from a local store and the store owner invited us to go up to her house to see her orange trees! We bounced around in the back of her vehicle up a pot-holed dirt track and, once there, were treated to delicious small sweet oranges, huge refreshing rambutans - and the most incredible view. This is the view from their house!

We had a marvellous (and cheap) massage at the Chiang Mai Women’s Prison (part of a rehabilitation program run by the prison). Whoever taught the women prisoners massage knew what they were doing.  It incorporated some yoga-like stretching and a little bit of chiro. If you’re ever in Chiang Mai I’d highly recommend it!

The best meal I had in Chiang Mai was chicken noodles in coconut curry from a local eatery on the corner of Jhaban & Inthaworot Streets. It cost 15 TBH (that’s about 50 cents in Australian dollars).

We took a morning tour to Wat Phra That Doi Suthep (the temple on the top of the hill overlooking Chiang Mai) which turned into a full day tour as what seemed like half the population of Thailand decided to visit that temple that day. This meant massive traffic jams up and down the mountain and a Rubik's Cube style puzzle of gridlocked vehicles at the Karen hilltribe village we visited on the way back!

Inside Wat Phra That Doi Suthep:

We later learned that 2nd January was a very auspicious day to go to that temple and receive a blessing from the head monks. Hopefully this will stand us in good stead for 2010 if not the whole tweens / teens decade!

While in Chiang Mai we stayed at 3Sis Vacation Lodge which I’d highly recommend for its friendly service, oasis-like feel, fantastic location and reliable good food.

Railay, Krabi

Railay is a rock-climbers paradise. It also felt a bit like a human-zoo after the friendly, polite, authentic Thai-ness of Chiang Mai! We arrived by longtail just before an enormous thunderstorm. Thankfully that cleared overnight and Ben had a good day’s climbing with friends who had already arrived in Railay.


I explored ‘Diamond Cave’ which was huge, full of bats and did actually have sparkly bits.


Koh Phi Phi

The following morning we caught the ferry to Phi Phi. We were welcomed at Ton Sai by our good friends Mish & Pete, who importantly briefed me on how to bagsie the best sun-loungers between the pool and the beach at Phi Phi Cabana Hotel (photos below).

We said goodbye to Mish & Pete and took a longtail round to the peaceful Toh Ko Beach Resort. The huts and place itself are very basic but the peace was wonderful; three days of eating, sleeping, reading, lying in the hammock, snorkeling, shade-baking, watching the numerous crabs burrow into the sand around us... we really relaxed.

Then, back to Ton Sai.

I'd recommend the tour of Phi Phi Lei with the Adventure Club. Our group of six was lucky enough to be taken out by Andrew (founder of Adventure Club), an English guy who has been there for many years and knows the islands and reefs like the back of his hand. In addition to visiting Maya Bay and snorkeling among all the usual beautiful reef plants and fish, we saw a huge eel, small and large black tip reef sharks (up to 6 foot) and small and large turtles. Ben dived under a gap in the cliff (I chickened out and swam around)!

We stayed at Phi Phi Cabana which is the hotel with the best view in Ton Sai.

The food at the hotel was very average, but we did find some good fare along the beach at Ciao Bella.

Spent a lovely relaxed day on the sun-loungers at Phi Phi Cabana between the sea and the pool. We had regular dips in the sea and the pool and Ben even stayed still long enough to read a book while I just gazed at the view!

Phuket

We spent 24 hours at a five star hotel at the end of our trip. This is pretty unusual for us! Apart from the obvious financial comparison, we usually prefer small boutique hotels and homely B&B’s to large five-star star hotels. However the Indigo-Pearl looked unique and very architecturally interesting. We’re glad we went!

The Beach Club is at a much nicer beach than we’d imagined.

 

We enjoyed the company of a (predictably) friendly golden retriever who seemed to spend it’s life wagging it’s tail up and down the beach between pats from guests and dips in the sea to watch – and every so often pounce on – the little fish in the shallows. 

Our upgraded suite was fabulous. The Indigo-Pearl was built on the site of a Thai tin mine. All the elements and materials from the mine have been kept and worked into the design of the place. The whole, huge place really was a feast for the eyes. Every detail in our suite was worth looking at, down to the bolt-toilet-roll-holder!

Spent the afternoon at two of the three pools; the Infinity pool and the pool with the bar. Noice!

Breakfast at the ‘Tin Mine’ restaurant was a standout - the variety of food served was astonishing. In addition to all the possible western & eastern foods you could imagine eating for breakfast – American style waffles to bircher muesli to noodles with yellow sauce, herbs and chilli, they had ‘areas’ of items. For example they had a pastries area with over 16 different types of mini pastries, a manned cheese bar and a manned cold meats counter.

A fantastic trip!

All the photos are up on Flickr now.

NSW Government releases 'Animal Welfare Code of Practice'

The NSW Government has released 'Animal Welfare Code of Practice - Breeding dogs and cats', designed to strengthen animal welfare standards. 

Great work Minister Macdonald!

Ian Macdonald: “(The Code of Practice) clearly outlines minimum standards that must be met by commercial breeders planning to sell a litter, and industry best practice requirements that breeders should aspire to meet. Most breeders already meet the high standards set out in the code, but those not meeting the new standards must now lift their game.”

This is a great start. I would also like to see:

1. Government review the Animal Cruelty Act and enforce MUCH higher penalties/jail time to person/s who commit acts of cruelty to animals.

2. Pet owner licenses become mandatory. I think pet owners should have to take a test (like a driving theory test) covering health care, animal psychology, positive training methods, plus information specific to the type of animal / breed they are planning to own. I think if people understood things like; Labradors are HIGH ENERGY or Golden Retrievers will pine if left on their own outside, then far fewer animals would suffer - or end up in the pound.

It seems strange to me that humans have to take driving tests to operate a car, but don't have to pass any form of education / training to be 100% responsible for a fully dependent living being.

What do you think?

How cat has earned Japanese city millions

This is brilliant Read the SMH article "How cat has earned Japanese city millions".

Cute lion

Two guys reared this lion from a baby in England but the authorities would not allow them to keep it once it reached maturity so they were forced to give it up.

They took it back to Africa and placed it in a wildlife sanctuary, a year later they went to see it. They were told it would not remember them. Watch the WMV file: Download D2_-_friend.wmv (there's no sound).

:)