We have launched our new blog @hubberlin.wordpress.com   

All our files, pics and vids have been transferred already!

See you at our new URL!!

Since the beginning of the year, we have been running OpenSpaces for our Hub members. We have discovered recently that a lot of members are too busy or too tired to attend another meeting in the evening.

Thus, we took the OpenSpace concept and adapted it to the working environment at The Hub Berlin. As principles I introduced the Pioneers of Change principles and off we went for a Hub market place offline from 9 to 5 last Friday.

The market place – Needs and Offers

A Hub member’s offering…

Lunchtime: Sexy Salad Club

Coffee Break: SoulCoffee

Some of the harvest can be found on Twitter (#hubmarkt), as well.

Another sustainable initiative took place last Friday, 27th of March at the selfHUB Berlin. This time we prepared a Clothes Exchange Evening. The idea of this event born in the Sustainability HUB Lunch and was proposed by Ellie from Better Cotton Initiative.

This one was one of the cool ideas that came out from that meeting…let it be written, let it be done!

The idea of the event is simple: You bring in any item of clothing and simply pick up other clothes which you may prefer. So you can have new clothes for free and save the earth’s resources, and of course have a good time at the selfHUB.

We bought some drinks, snacks and flowers and DJ Soulambassador (aka Jens the Super Host) selected some nice music too so the atmosphere was really nice.

We managed to gather quite a lot of clothes and then the fun began…

We improvised a changing room in the meeting room close the kitchen; we all had fun trying all the clothes. I have to admit that I’m really happy with my “new” shirt and scarf, and I guess that Wiebke is happy too with her turquoise (correct me if I’m wrong) dress.

I hope to have a bigger and better Clothes Exchange Event very soon and why not, a worldwide event with a clothes exchange event at all the HUBs at the same time.

For more photos, please, visit

Iñigo Blanco

Am 2. Tag bin ich erst um 12:00 angetreten und habe einen bunten Blumenstrauss an Web 2.0 Vorträgen genossen.

Als erstes wurde mit dem selbsternannten Videopunk von DerWesten mit Videos gespielt.

Danach folgte eine Präsentation rund um die Frage “What happens, if we bring games + news together?”

In der Kalkscheune hatten dann die 1000 Leute nicht wirklich alle Platz und somit bin ich in der Session mit vielen freien Stühlen zu “Blogging in Africa” gelandet. Ich weiss gar nicht, warum wir nur so wenige waren?! Ich fand es dort hochinteressant, am Beispiel von Kenia haben wir die Blogger-Szene in Afrika kennen gelernt. Wer nach Blogs in Afrika sucht, Global Voices ist ein guter Startpunkt.

Und dann gab es noch 2 Veranstaltungen zu meinem derzeitigen Lieblingsthema BILDUNG “Aufgewachsen im Netz” und “Ne(x)t Generation”. Hier nur schnell ein paar Statements und Fragen aus beiden Vorträgen:
- Lernen im Netz geht an der Schule vorbei
- Brauchen wir Medienkompetenz als Schulfach?
- Warum kann Schule nicht lernen?
- Primärer Ort für Lernkultur sind die Netzwerke des Social Web
- Statt “Wege aus der Kreidezeit” “Ist die Schule noch zu retten?”
- Lernen 2.0: Das neue Schulsystem muss sich im Netz/mit dem Netz bilden
…und ich konnte so einige Links für mein Projekt “Zukunft geht zur Schule” einsammeln, die zur Weiterverarbeitung bei Mister Wong gespeichert sind.

Heute flogen vor allem in der Kalkscheune die Flyer durch die Gegend:

Die neue taz gibt es ab 18. April auf dem tazkongress 09

Ja, wir auch! Obama kommt nicht zum Politcamp – muss er auch nicht.

Aktion Mensch – das Magazin: Faire Wirtschaft? Geht doch! Genossenschaften

With about 40 participants on the “Social Business” dialogue evening in the Hub, the self eG proved its power to bring together people from various secftors.

Norbert Kunz and Ralf Weiß introduced the topic “Social Business” with their expertise. With iq-consult, Kunz enables young people to found their own business. The second speaker, Ralf Weiß from akzente consults large companies on Corporate-Social-Responsibility (CSR). Clear is: it is not clear what Social Business is, and whether there even needs to be a definition. Ralf Weiß presented the example of Noble-Peace-Prize-Winner Muhammad Yunus working together with BASF chemicals. Is this only good marketing? Is the BASF collaboration real Social Business, as there is the grandfather of Social Business involved?

Norbert Kunz stated clearly, that a Social Business’ main aim is improving social aspects of society. It is not creating profit from clever and innovative products. “Bill Gates’ Microsoft is not a Social Business, because Software avoids much waste.” However, Kunz stressed that he cannot coin the term Social Business, but that arbitrariness must be avoided in order to distinguish between charity and CSR: “It’s on Social Businesses to fulfil society’ s needs, whereas demands are fulfilled by the “regular” profit-driven market economy.”

Afterwards, the “Social Business Café” allowed for a dialogue and sharing of the experience of all participants. Hans Jürgen Döring, a new member of the self eG, shared the following in his table group: “The importance of a Social Business definition was stressed, but I think of a seal, maybe also a legal Social Business status for companies in the future”. Julia Homilius from stratum GmbH, a CSR research and consultancy company, is sure that CSR and Social Business belongs together. In her table group, she brought the topic of a CSR seal forward, to ensure sustainability. She does not see a clear separation of CSR and Social Business: “The aims are basically the same.”

There are two lines of argumentation: Some see a strict separation from charity and CSR, others see Social Business as an in-between solution of charity and CSR. The self eG looks forward to another dialogue, to bring forward the Social Business idea in society, or as Döring says: “Social Business is not a short-term topic, no trend. There needs to be more dialogue among different groups of society.”

Auch auf der re:publica fliegen die Flyer.

Mitgenommen habe ich heute:

Twitter Rekordversuch: die gesamte Bibel in Kurzform

Die Wechsel-Wähler WG Party

Bloggen vom Grünen Parteitag – 5 Blogtickets zu gewinnen

Heute war ich zum ersten Mal auf der re:publica in Berlin. Morgens ging es bei strahlendem Sonneschein, ohne Laptop und mit meinem Steinzeithandy (Siemens S35) auf die Konferenz der Blogger, Podcaster und Twitterer.

Als ich im Friedrichstadtpalast zum Check-in ankam, habe ich zunächst mal Pippa aus dem Hub getroffen, die sich zur Zeit damit beschäftigt, wie sie das Konzept der School of Everything für sich nutzen kann.

Im grossen Saal des Revuetheaters empfing mich dann erst einmal die Nachricht auf der grossen Leinwand, dass das WLAN ausgefallen ist – um mich herum reihenweise iPhone Nutzer. Beruhigend, dass nicht nur bei uns im Hub das WLAN streikt

Und dann ging die Frontalbeschallung los: 9 Stunden Redner (ja vor allem männliche, wobei im Publikum erstaunlich viele Frauen waren) auf der Bühne. Und als das Internet wieder ging gab’s auch ne grosse Twitterwall:

Am Ende des Tages gab es dann noch “Deutschland sucht…den SEO” – die Kandidaten konnten sich per SMS oder über Twitter qualifizieren (wobei auch hier das Internet nicht immer mitspielte)

P.S.: Die re:publica bei tagesschau.de

Last Tuesday was my first Circle Conversation at the selfHUB, the topic: Sustainability. I was very excited about the opportunity of preparing and hosting (along with Frauke Godat) this event. Brand new methodology for me and for most of the guests too. Finally we met 18 people from different nationalities and backgrounds (even somebody joining from Taiwan!).

We prepared the chairs in a circle and for the centre: some nice flowers, talking objects (a stone, wooden sticks and a ball with the shape of the world) and We Are What We Do postcards. Just the person holding the talking object can speak, the others will be listening. We also prepared some food and coffee, we are talking about a HUB lunch after all

When everything was prepared I used some crotales (music instrument) for calling the people to gather into the kitchen. Before we introduced the burning questions and the background information for calling this conversation, Frauke read the principles and practices:

THREE PRINCIPLES:
The circle is an all leader group.
1. Leadership rotates among all circle members.
2. Responsibility is shared for the quality of experience.
3. People place ultimate reliance on inspiration (or spirit), rather than on any personal agenda.

THREE PRACTICES:
1. To speak with intention: relevance to the conversation in the moment.
2. To listen with attention: respectful of the learning process for all members of the group.
3. To tend the well being of the circle: remaining aware of the impact of our contributions.

Source www.peerspirit.com ©2001 Baldwin/Linnea. Extracted from Baldwin’s book, Calling the Circle, the First and Future Culture.

In this kind of conversation the silences are also important, they are important to think what the others are saying and think how you can contribute to the group. Not always the silent moments are uncomfortable, they might be even useful. It is also important taking the time into account so you can spare the time properly.

In the first part of the conversation we talked about what does sustainability mean to us, different ideas came out, it’s not simple defining Sustainability, each one had their own idea and opinion:

Long-term commitment, balance, Is it better to act locally or globally?, Think big for big things, self awareness that we are a world-citizen so everything we do has a repercussion, long-term commitment, are we prepared for the big change?, continuous improvement, will you live without your ipod…?, Why to buy bio-food if it much more expensive?, fair trade, money incentives, alternative materials, art related initiatives…

We continued the conversation with the following question: How do we live sustainability at the selfHUB?

We talked about different aspects (the mission and role of the selfHUB regarding to be sustainable, e.g. using recycling paper…) but mainly about the heating and the old windows we’ve got. This seems to be our main problem, because we loose too much energy. The point is that building is somehow protected by the council and we are not allowed to make changes like that.

For me, it was a very rich and meaningful conversation. For the check-out everyone who participated at the conversation tried to reach to a conclusion, so everyone got a profit from the circle.

We all agreed that this conversation must have continuity. In the last few weeks I’ve been gathering ideas, using the loo-communication board, the blog, chatting with the people involved in the selfHUB… , so hopefully some of them will come true.

This is my commitment: I’m going to try to practice what I preach, I’m going to DO (instead of too much thinking and not acting) and I will try to transform the selfHUB into a more eco-friendly space.

So, this is one of those days that I feel HUB! And that’s a great feeling!

Iñigo Blanco