Stephan Chambers on large-scale change: Skoll World Forum 2011
Stephan Chambers of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship welcomes guests to the 2011 Skoll World Forum. He shares his thoughts on large-scale change.
When I arrived this afternoon, and I did what I think is called a run through. They said whatever you do, don't bounce, sway or tap. But I don't think they'd heard Baaba Maal.
Thank you Baaba Maal, its wonderful to open our forum part of such beauty and intensity produced by someone who manages along side what you just heard to do a host of really very impressive things amongst some being the UN envoy for the millenium development goals and the UNDP use envoy, thank you.
And good evening and welcome to Oxford. Welcome back to those of you who. I've been to this amazing event before. To those of you missing the SheldonianThat peculiar sensation in your legs is your blood circulating. Welcome friends, its my great delight to welcome you to the 2011 Skoll World Forum.
Our theme this year is large scale change and this will mean many things this week, and it's one of the glories of your event that we don't yet know all the things that it will mean. It'll take us into discussions of large abstractions and larger challenges, very specific questions and highly detailed answers.
We will in panels and conversations, formal and informal dealings, all be engaged in trying to inch forward our views of the change we want. I think though, that there are some things we already know about Large scale change. We know the change we are talking about is intentional. Its what we want to cause to happen.
We know that it's positive, its how we want to improve the world, and we know that it's important. It's changing things, that must be changed in order for our planet and its inhabitants to coexist and survive. We know that it's by ensuring that we're clear on the questions that we find answers, and we know that knowing how to measure the answers will tell us if they're right or not.
And that's a big agenda and it explains why your program ranges from brain and bio-diversity to finance and leadership from, innovation to heroism, and design. The world is everything that is the case, wrote the philosopher. is everything that is the case. In a place like Oxford, simple things are complicated.
For those of you who don't work here, this is a good thing. We make ideas like justice, equality, health, nutrition, immunity, government happiness, truth, very very complicated and this is good. This is good because the world is abundantly, fantastically, prodigiously complex and we cant always yet imagine what our responses to this complexity ought to be.
And the scape for the not yet imagined is vast and sometimes the this is upsetting or chastening as it was this month in Japan, as it was in Haiti, as is continues to be in Libya. Sometimes though, the not yet imagined, is the reason we rejoice in complexity and unpredictability in the peculiar path of our networks and our imaginations.
And here in Oxford, there are people working on the most important questions of our age. Energy pollution, health, disease, and the origins of life and the origins of the universe, on the meaning of meaning, and on the massively various manifestations of culture. And this week, it is your privilege to join those people to work on hard problems.
However, in Oxford there is always a however, not all problems are hard as Slavoj Zizek wrote recently about Wikileaks, "We can no longer pretend we dont know. What everyone knows, we know. And we need to know in public what we know in private and your forum is the means for you to demonstrate what we know.
In private, I think we know that the world is connected. Nothing that happens here will leave those elsewhere unaffected. Time has been called on business as usual. The big challenges are urgent. Single agency solutions are inadequate. Governments, aid agencies, businesses, individuals cannot meet those threats alone.
Solutions require collaboration and they require cash. Science, technology, information, measurement are all critical components of necessary solutions. Both success and failure are vital teachers. We know all all of this, but we continue to behave as nations, companies and individuals as if we didn't.
And we're here at Skoll, to change the tone of this global conversation to create new news and to make sustainable humanity.
We have had [xx] once already this evening, and in a much mellower mood that gnomic philosopher also said, if what we do now makes no differnce in the end, then all seriousness of life is done away with. We are very lucky that Jeff Skoll contributes meaning fully to serious solutions. He is the reason we're here, and he requires no introduction from me.
Ladies and gentle men, just stop
Thank you Baaba Maal, its wonderful to open our forum part of such beauty and intensity produced by someone who manages along side what you just heard to do a host of really very impressive things amongst some being the UN envoy for the millenium development goals and the UNDP use envoy, thank you.
And good evening and welcome to Oxford. Welcome back to those of you who. I've been to this amazing event before. To those of you missing the SheldonianThat peculiar sensation in your legs is your blood circulating. Welcome friends, its my great delight to welcome you to the 2011 Skoll World Forum.
Our theme this year is large scale change and this will mean many things this week, and it's one of the glories of your event that we don't yet know all the things that it will mean. It'll take us into discussions of large abstractions and larger challenges, very specific questions and highly detailed answers.
We will in panels and conversations, formal and informal dealings, all be engaged in trying to inch forward our views of the change we want. I think though, that there are some things we already know about Large scale change. We know the change we are talking about is intentional. Its what we want to cause to happen.
We know that it's positive, its how we want to improve the world, and we know that it's important. It's changing things, that must be changed in order for our planet and its inhabitants to coexist and survive. We know that it's by ensuring that we're clear on the questions that we find answers, and we know that knowing how to measure the answers will tell us if they're right or not.
And that's a big agenda and it explains why your program ranges from brain and bio-diversity to finance and leadership from, innovation to heroism, and design. The world is everything that is the case, wrote the philosopher. is everything that is the case. In a place like Oxford, simple things are complicated.
For those of you who don't work here, this is a good thing. We make ideas like justice, equality, health, nutrition, immunity, government happiness, truth, very very complicated and this is good. This is good because the world is abundantly, fantastically, prodigiously complex and we cant always yet imagine what our responses to this complexity ought to be.
And the scape for the not yet imagined is vast and sometimes the this is upsetting or chastening as it was this month in Japan, as it was in Haiti, as is continues to be in Libya. Sometimes though, the not yet imagined, is the reason we rejoice in complexity and unpredictability in the peculiar path of our networks and our imaginations.
And here in Oxford, there are people working on the most important questions of our age. Energy pollution, health, disease, and the origins of life and the origins of the universe, on the meaning of meaning, and on the massively various manifestations of culture. And this week, it is your privilege to join those people to work on hard problems.
However, in Oxford there is always a however, not all problems are hard as Slavoj Zizek wrote recently about Wikileaks, "We can no longer pretend we dont know. What everyone knows, we know. And we need to know in public what we know in private and your forum is the means for you to demonstrate what we know.
In private, I think we know that the world is connected. Nothing that happens here will leave those elsewhere unaffected. Time has been called on business as usual. The big challenges are urgent. Single agency solutions are inadequate. Governments, aid agencies, businesses, individuals cannot meet those threats alone.
Solutions require collaboration and they require cash. Science, technology, information, measurement are all critical components of necessary solutions. Both success and failure are vital teachers. We know all all of this, but we continue to behave as nations, companies and individuals as if we didn't.
And we're here at Skoll, to change the tone of this global conversation to create new news and to make sustainable humanity.
We have had [xx] once already this evening, and in a much mellower mood that gnomic philosopher also said, if what we do now makes no differnce in the end, then all seriousness of life is done away with. We are very lucky that Jeff Skoll contributes meaning fully to serious solutions. He is the reason we're here, and he requires no introduction from me.
Ladies and gentle men, just stop
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