Great piece on complex business models by Clay Shirky

In 1988, Joseph Tainter wrote a chilling book called The Collapse of Complex Societies. Tainter looked at several societies that gradually arrived at a level of remarkable sophistication then suddenly collapsed: the Romans, the Lowlands Maya, the inhabitants of Chaco canyon. Every one of those groups had rich traditions, complex social structures, advanced technology, but despite their sophistication, they collapsed, impoverishing and scattering their citizens and leaving little but future archeological sites as evidence of previous greatness. Tainter asked himself whether there was some explanation common to these sudden dissolutions.

The answer he arrived at was that they hadn’t collapsed despite their cultural sophistication, they’d collapsed because of it.

from http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/04/the-collapse-of-complex-business-models/

Les Beaux Arts de Paris

While wandering through Paris on Saturday I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to briefly visit the École des Beaux Arts de Paris building (I guess this would translate as "school of fine arts").

It's located in the very center of Paris, right in front of the Louvre museum across the Seine. I regularly pass right by it but never had the opportunity to get inside until now. It's usually reserved to students and other people are not allowed to get inside.

This Saturday was different, entry was permitted thanks to a small exhibition taking place within the school. I got to take pictures of huge room located inside the building... Too bad I'm not an art student :-)

The day I almost was an activist

I woke up at 7am this morning an joined some of my hockey pals to try and deploy a wide banner on Paris' Concorde bridge. Waking up was tough, I fell asleep again and missed the first deadline. I eventually joined 3 people near the Condorde bridge, where we finalized our banners.

Our aim was to protest against the demolition of our fieldhockey pitch, scheduled to take place in June. If we can't stop it, our pitch will be replaced by a brand new rugby stadium, at a cost of around 150 million euros. The vote to decide whether or not to go ahead is taking place tomorrow at Paris' city hall.

The plan was for people to deploy banners on most of Paris' bridges, from the Alexander 3 bridge to the Pont-Neuf and plenty of others. The Alexander 3 banner was deployed first and led policemen to quickly go and have it removed. We deployed ours about 10 minutes later, but policemen were there almost as soon as we put the banner in place. They were very nice, politely asking us to remove it - though they didn't allow me to go and take a picture of it from below first. Anyway, a least I asked!

Then a security guard from the city arrived. He was much less nice and asked for our names, birthdate and addresses. I'm not quite sure what they will do with it but apparently freedom of speech or not I might still land in front of a judge... Time will tell :-)

Most important lessons from the day:

* Paris in the early morning is very nice, the light of the morning sun made my day (it's raining now)
* When you try being a protester, planning is key. For instance we didn't have someone dedicated to taking pictures, which was a bit stupid
* When at a landmark, the police gets on stage fast. Like, real fast.
* Coordination matters a lot. The first banner got deployed and shut down before ours was ready. This gave the police more time to get organized and react.

Below are a couple pictures of the banner after it was removed, and another of people displaying it at their window in a flat close to the stadium.