Government Quality Promo Video

My friends and colleagues have been asked to do some blogging in behalf of quality and organizational improvement in the public sector. This is a brief promotional video I created with the excellent Visual Communicator software, and my $99 Logitech quickcam. As the slogan says, Government Quality - all that you deserve, more than you may expect.

Imagine...

We are hopelessly mired in the Iraq war. Whether you believe we were justified in starting it or not (and I believe we were not), there is no way we can justify continuing. Those who would characterize supporters of immediate cessartion of hostilities as "surrendering to the enemy" or "assuring that we lose," do not really understand the possible outcomes of this conflict. What would "winning" mean in Iraq? Is winning even possible? In my view, we can not "win" in the way that most Americans, and certainly the Administration's remaining supporters, would define victory.

America has squandered an immense fortune on the war. We have lost thousands of courageous volunteer soldiers, and seen many many more come home crippled both physically and emotionally. Our great nation has spent an incredible amount of its political capital and energy in the pursuit of stability and democratization in Iraq.

What if there was another way to proceed. What would an army waging PEACE look like? Who would be in it, and what would it do? By what rules of engagement would such a force interact with enemy groups or nations?

If tens of thousands of ordinary people, all dressed in simple white clothing, landed in Baghdad, and began to go about the tasks of just helping common Iraqis with the activities of daily living - food, clothing, shelter - what would happen? Would the peaceful warriors be murdered? Would they be captured and beheaded? If the army of peace took no political stance, advocated no faith, and simply stood for loving one's neighbor as we do ourselves, how would the Iraqis respond?

Is this Gandhi's dream, or Dr. King's dream? Do we need a new dreamer to imagine the possibility, and bring it to life?

One bean

At the age of 54, I suddenly developed a liking for coffee. No one can explain this. I always disliked the taste. Too bitter, to acidic, too thin, too strong. The only coffee I had previously enjoyed was a small pot I got at a cafe just off Ipanema Beach in Rio de Janeiro.

So now that I like coffee, I make it myself. I have a small electric grinder. I use a French Press to brew it perfectly.

When my perfectly brewed coffee is steaming in my large mug, I clean up and throw away the grounds. Staring at the large layer of spent beans in the bottom of the Press, I think about the energy that it takes to bring this drink to me. Coffee is not grown anywhere near my home in the mid-Atlantic region. Each bean requires energy to grow and mature. The beans are picked, packed, shipped from their remote origin to some place near me. Mine come from Dunkin Donuts, and started life probably in Central America. A long journey. More energy goes to roasting the beans, a necessary step to make them usable for coffee.

What is the energy cost of my cup of coffee? What did it really take to produce each bean, and get them to me.

It occurs to me that in an era of diminishing oil, and significantly rising prices, we will someday see labels on food and other products that give the emergy cost. It will be like the calories and nutritional value on food labels now. We forget that calories are units of energy too. The growing local food movement, and the movement towards once again living close to the source of what we consume, are leading indicators of this trend. All things being equal, we should choose a product with a lower energy cost. In time, we will.

Assuming I am neither the first nor the only person to think about the "energy cost of food," I Google search the phrase. I find one article. It is by professors at the University of Florida, in 1993. Look it up. Use a bit of energy to finnd it and read it. The percentage of our total energy use that just goes into transporting our food is astonishing. Of course this is just as true for the cheap goods from China and elsewhere, that we Americans love.

What will the balance of trade become, when rising energy costs level the fact of cheap foreign labor? Will America see a re-emergence of manufacturing when it becomes cost-effective to compete with local production once again?

Maybe one day we will have hothouse hydroponic farms in abandoned buildings in every town, and some clever entrepreneur will be able to grow coffee in the Garden State.

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