A great deal of my work as a writer and public relations practitioner is about processes and networks. When I feel like I'm the only one who works this way I visit Eva Schiffer's net map blog, occassionally she and I exchange comments.
Eva created net map in 2006, she's a post-doctoral fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute.
Today's meeting at Endeavor went well, as well as these kinds of meetings can go. Sometimes I feel like I have meetings just to confirm what happened during previous meetings and to plan subsequent meetings.
Of course mapping out the players and their roles in various projects has to be recapped and confirmed, again and again. Now we wait for a written deal offer that everyone can agree on.
I can always spot the interns at Endeavor. They are young, seem a bit nervous, look around the room a lot and dress like they are in a transitional collegiate to professional phase. Sometimes the shoes are just wrong.
I take on pro bono public relations clients on a case by case basis. My plate is very full right now and I am currently not taking on more work. I will consider offering free (and very brief) consultation services to a civic movement related to Northwest Africa because the region is my area of specialty and focus (numerous fields and disciplines). Larger issues on the African continent are obviously related and as my involvement in Northwest Africa grows I may update this post.
If you'd like to contact me about pro bono public relations consultations please take the time to read this blog and my other websites. Public relations practitioners have widely divergent areas of expertise. If you don't take the time to get to know what I do and the capacities in which I work, there's no need to contact me. There's a good chance that I maybe totally irrelevant to your public relations needs.
I support (short list):
Environmental stewardship
Civic society building
Humanitarian aid projects that are highly structured and provide case studies
Education
Diplomatic solutions
I like (short list):
Strong leaders and team players
Proactive personalities
Sense of larger purpose and vision
Focus
Determination
Commitment
I have little or no interest in:
Causes
Awareness campaigns
Noise-makers
Soap boxes
The first two on the last list are, perhaps, a bit surprising to some. The problem with causes and awareness campaigns is that they are too often used by noise makers as soap boxes.
I earn my living from the "glamorous" side of food and public relations. Which means that I have to keep working at my paying jobs in order to volunteer my services to civic society building. I live well beneath my earning capacity to support my volunteer efforts.
After almost two weeks and twenty-two email exchanges between seven people, there will be a meeting of the minds at Endeavor in less than two weeks.
I've never seen the cast of HBO's Entourage there. I've been told that the office scenes are filmed in a studio in Burbank (not really).
This post is to map out network players and resources, it's not an official statement of any kind of key partnerships. I'm often asked how I form my networks for projects. I make key contacts who can either become involved as stakeholders or point me to someone who can be more involved. Forming key partnerships for big projects involves lots of players.
This morning when I logged into my facebook account there was a message from Mouffouk Med Ouis who is currently based in The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Tindouf sub-office where the Sahawari refugee camps are. Yesterday, he registered with the Algerian Competences Association.
World Food Corps Seedbank along with UNICEF Algeria has helped to implement more than 1,000* family and school gardens in Sahawari refugee camps. We still have a long way to go, there are 158,000 refugees.
Last month I exchanged emails with Dr. Van Cotthem about argan trees in Algeria. As it turns out he has friends at Forest Conservation Services (Bureau de la Conservation des Forêts) in Tindouf who are planting lots of young trees to expand the beautiful forest.
Argan trees are native to North Africa, it's simply not true that they are only found in Morocco. Tindouf, Algeria is an isolated region near the Algerian-Moroccan border. In the 1980s when I first read Paula Wolfert's Moroccan cookbook I suspected that argan trees also grew in Algeria, but had no way of finding out.
Argan trees play an important environmental role, some of us are hoping that it can play an economic role in the region as well. Alleviating poverty is more than providing food aid or helping people grow fresh vegetables in small gardens; there has to be economic activity in the region. People need hard cold cash to better their lives, to send their children to school, buy clothes, buy more food, buy technologies that can reduce domestic workloads for women, and so on.
It's working in Morocco, why not in Algeria? It took many years to implement an environmentally viable and economically sustainable argan oil industry in Morocco. Sometimes it's better to be second and I'm also hoping that working with new structures, such as ACA and Mohamed Gache(representative for Zone 6)** will at the very least lubricate the bureaucratic process.
The argan tree is important to the local economy. Every part of the tree is useable and provides a source of income or food: the wood is used for fuel, the leaves and fruits provide forage for goats, and the almond oil extract obtained by women is used in cooking and traditional medicine. The argan tree thus provides support for some 3 million people.
Two years ago, I received a small sample of argan oil as a gift from Chef Adel Chagar of Chameau Restaurant. He's of Moroccan and Algerian heritage. Initially I was a bit miffed by the parsimonious portion. But after he told me the story of how he obtained pure, uncut argan oil I was grateful for whatever I could get.
Photos courtesy of Dr Van Cotthem
Les Forestiers de Tindouf
Services de la Conservation des Forêts à Tindouf
Related reading:
Souhila Berka: research scientist, Genetique et Amelioration des Arbres Forestiers. Institut National de Recherches Forestieres (INRF)
Contribution à l'étude des effets du déficit hydrique sur la physiologie des plantules d'Argania spinosa
Effets de quelques traitements physico-chimiques et de la température sur la faculté germinative de la graine d'Arganier = Influence of some physical and chemical treatments and of temperature on the faculty of germination of Argan seeds (A copy of the paper is available for about 14€)
Dr. Van Cotthem's post about argan tree is Algeria (French and English)
Another post by Dr. Van Cotthem about Argan trees in Algeria (French) and another (French)
|
Valorisation et perspectives de développement durable de l’Arganier en Algérie |
CRSTRA |
MORSLI Abdelkader |
( Avec des chercheurs hors Laboratoire ) |
http://www.crstra.dz/
Centre
de Recherche Scientifique et Technique sur les Régions Arides (The
Scientific and Technical Research Centre on Arid Regions)
Argan Oil as a Geographic Indication
*I have to get an updated number from Dr. Van Cotthem.
** Mohamed Gahche represents Zone 6 in the Algerian parliament. Zone 6 covers represents Algerians who are no longer living on the African continent. His base outside of Algeria is in the States. Giving official government representation to Algerians in the diaspora is part of the larger plan of turning the African brain drain into brain circulation.
My first personal computer was an Apple II (who remembers binary operations?). In my junior high math class we had TRS-80s. In seventh grade I learned how to type using a manual typewriter, a few years later we had typewriters with LCD displays and now I email book chapters to my proofreader in New York City in MS Word format. She makes track changes and emails them back to me in Los Angeles.
I logged into facebook this morning and my chat box popped up. It was Omid Habibinia, an Iranian media researcher living in Switzerland. He's worked as journalist for the BBC in London and as a media researcher for the IRIB Political Branch. I assume Omid knows spin.
Omid and I talked a bit about developing countries, forming national identities around a purpose, national morale, African continental development, the global zeitgeist to help Africa, and on. Specifically we talked about the role of diaspora networks within this larger context. Diaspora networks that connect external and internal resources and experts function more than as structural bridges, they add transparency to the mix of African development. Transparency and expertise= trust, confidence and hope.
Just a few minutes ago I received an email from Farid Bensebaa, an executive at Algerian Competences Association and a project leader at the National Research Council of Canada about an online Algerian Encyclopedia.
This morning while I was logged into my facebook account my chat box popped up, it was Shadi Alkasim, a journalist and radio producer for the United Nations stationed in Liberia. He told me that currently his only connection to the online world was his cell phone. I told him, "I remember reel to reel tape". We shared a good laugh.
We started to chat about the role of ICT in African development and Algerian Competences Association (one of several African diaspora networks that are reshaping African continental development), Shadi kept losing his internet connection and our conservation came to an abrupt end.
Later in the day when I logged back into facebook I found a post on my wall* by Mohamed Siddig** who works for the United Nations in Sudan. He had read my blog posts about my friend Sidi-Amar and wanted to brainstorm about a dream of his, a documentary about Tuaregs.
Sidi-Amar Taoua and Mohamed ag Ewangaye (Tuareg artist and educator, who contributed a paper for the book Art of Being: Sahara Nomads in a Modern World) invited me to visit them in Agadez, Niger. I told them I would, if and when I could. They told me in a good natured way that they would hold me accountable for my promise.These kinds of invitations are heartfelt and have lasting meaning, I can't take them lightly. It's beyond friendship, they also want their stories to be told to the outside world. It's human nature to want to be known and it can possibly help them with their goals for self-sufficiency and civic society building. These days, almost everyone needs a public relations expert.
The Fowler exhibition and the book seemed to be steps backwards into outdated models of cultural anthropology. I'm not questioning the well-meaning intentions*** of everyone involved, I'm questioning the mode and structure of interaction. I won't go into the standard spiel about western paternalism, objectification and exoticizing. When relationships begin with an imbalance of choices, tools, resources and networks- lopsided power issues are inevitable. Those with resources can dictate the nature of interaction and control the documentation, i.e., shape and write history.
More later about later about documentaries, information transfer, and the wild, wild new world of instant communication...
*An application used by friends in a network to post notes to each other.
** No relation to the actor Alexander Siddig. I asked.
*** I lied, I am questioning the self-serving intentions of some of the players. I'm questioning the rules of engagement and using other cultures to further political or academic agendas or ideologies. I'm questioning lack of transparency.
My friend Christina Al-Sudairy was kind enough to mention World Food Corps Seedbank in her online newsletter.
Great Causes
We recently had the pleasure of meeting the lovely Susan Ji-Young Park. She and famous Algerian Chef Farid Zadi (who we'll be featuring next month) are on the board of Slow Food Pan-Arab, a division of Slow Food International. Susan is also the California Coordinator for World Food Corps Seed Bank, a program Chef Zadi also avidly supports. A program which gives you the opportunity to help countries suffering from dessertification grow fresh foods.
To find out how you can collect seeds from the foods you eat and where to send them, please visit Susan's WFCS blog. She has also created visual aids for teachers who are interested in implementing this wonderful community building and experiential learning project in their classrooms.
I didn't ask Christina to do it. She took it on her own to read my websites and formulated the copy herself. I appreciate that most of my friends are proactive. We communicated via facebook and we talked about our mutual friends, how our networks are connected.
In any network, the higher one goes the more likely one will run into the same small group of people. They've been working in a field for a very long time and meet at various symposiums and conferences. Many have known each other for decades, they started off in the business together and grew up together in it and metaphorically went to school together. These kinds of experts and specialists make wonderful mentors.
Mentoring is part of someone's legacy, these days it's often politically incorrect and economically unnecessary to force one's children to go into the family business. When people invest their lives in big projects or visions they want to see it continued after they're gone. They look for fresh talent to nurture.
I have my own trajectory, so it's not a simple matter of being handed a torch or a route on a map, not that anyone has offered. The ability to adapt information transforms them into tools.
Clifford Wright wrote a big, fat cookbook about Mediterranean Food History. He invited me to a dinner party and introduced me Russ Parsons of the Los Angeles Times.
Russ Parsons works with Charles Perry (whom I've met) at the LA Times. Charles is on the board of trustees at the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery with Anissa Helou.
Anissa Helou is a Lebanese author. She's been wonderful about introductions and pre-buzz. I have found many times that when I approach a new contact the response would be, "I already know about you, Anissa told me". Pre-buzz means that the door is already partially opened.
Raymond Sokolov of the Wall Street Journal is also on the board of trustees at Oxford. Ray knows Rachel Laudan who knows Charles Perry, and so on.
Rachel Laudan is an historian of science turned historian of food. She's writing a big fat book on world food history. I touch base with her occasionally with questions or to share information from my areas of expertise in food history (North African and Northeast Asian). She's been wonderfully generous in sharing her network connections with me.
One of these days I'll draw out a net-map to test the theory of six degrees of separation throughout all my networks.
All these writers who have many more years of experience than I do are connected to others. And no, they don't hand over their little black books to me. Even if they did, I'd still have to figure out relevance, if any, to my own projects and plans. So far, however, whenever I've asked for an introduction they've always said, "yes".
I'm at the point in my career and old enough (*ahem*) to mentor children and younger people in their 20's and early 30's. In Los Angeles where networking bleeds into almost every aspect of social interaction I've created a number of filters for reducing relationship SPAM.
In real life I rarely mention the name of the talent and literary agency I'm with or the "glamorous" national magazine that published nine of my recipes. Big brand piggybacking is a useful tool that I utilize often, but in terms of everyday contact I find that it creates an excessive amount of noise in my life.
For all the human tragedies I have to think about for my other public relations capacities, this window into the petty "trying to get something for nothing" aspect of human nature is one of the biggest depressants in my life. Thankfully, it's rather easy to avoid by keeping my mouth shut. If I seem curmudgeonly about this, well, I grew up in Los Angeles, a city that has it's own notion of friendship based on disposable usage. L.A. is the global hub for social SPAMeisters.
Mentors are not substitute parents, Santa Claus, sugar daddies, therapists, sources of unconditional love or jackpots. Nor are they one night stands. In Los Angeles I see a lot of SPAM networking, mass marketing or speed dating kind of behavior. The time, effort and energy it takes to do that can be focused on creating relevant networks and nurturing them.
One of the follies of youth in a public relations practitioner is selective culling of relationship dynamics. A big stack of business cards or linkages to lots of names on an online networking site are meaningless unless those relationships are cultivated and nurtured.
A solid public relations practitioner is also a visionary. By nature we're the type of people who dream about possibilities. So, look at that big stack of names and dream about outcomes, but understand that reaping the benefits and sustaining those rewards requires nurturing positive and mutually beneficial relationships. Otherwise, 5, 10, 20, or 30 years down the line that stack of business cards and names will still be the equivalent of having a copy of the Yellow Pages.
I don't have any intentions of turning this post into a lecture. These days I find myself being asked the same questions about public relations that I asked when I was starting out. I point these youngsters (did I really use that word?) to this blog, if they read it at the very least I know that they're not grabbing at any port in a storm and I'm not wasting my time.
Advancements in information and communication technologies (ICT) have changed the world of networking. The speed, the geographic range and the basic contact information available via digital transfer is mind-boggling. All these benefits are not without costs. The sheer amount of information results in information overload, we all need filtering devices.
Building solid network relationships helps cut through the noise. Any public relations practitioner who services specialty organizations, products or brands and presents a template public relations proposal with key names penned in like Mad Libs is taking the client for a ride. PR practitioners spin words for a living, the most facile ones perform alchemy. They do it for clients and can give it to clients.
Nurturing solid network relationships speaks volumes about credibility. Developing long tail relationships also reflects on personal investment and commitment. Over the years I've developed a big international network of writers and journalists (this is just one network I have). I don't send out mass press releases, I focus on their areas of expertise and interest. I don't pester them with irrelevant information, i.e. I don't add to the noise in their lives.
I'm feeling unusually pedantic today and my mood is reflected in this post. I'm volunteering my public relations services to a tiny bureaucracy that's causing me unnecessary stress. Basically, nurturing networks is about good manners.
I'm leaving out miscellaneous tasks such as appointment and meeting coordination.
This week I have to finish up a public and media relations outline for World Food Corps Seedbank. Normally, these things don't take much time. It's simple enough to work from templates (the PR cat is out of the bag). But I'm also working as a coordinator for WFCS and I am increasingly convinced that regional and national coordinators for WFCS should be skilled public relations practitioners. There's quite a bit of strategic planning involved with coordinating a large state like California. The primary reason that my workload here is much bigger than normal for a coordinator is that I'm the first one. I don't have a map to follow or references to give. I'm in effect paving the path here, creating templates and blue prints. And I want the tools I create to be useful and efficient, transferable and applicable across a range of contexts.
I find myself working with lots of different organizations and infrastructures at the micro and macro levels: NGO's, government organizations, and education infrastructures. Yes, bureaucracies are that complicated. And a coordinator needs solid public relations skills to implement WFCS in schools efficiently and quickly.
I'm on the agenda for the next California School Garden meeting. Besides the posters I made for teaching children about WFCS, I have to create a power point presentation to teach teachers about implementing WFCS. This is, of course, related to a media kit I'm creating for WFCS. The same task accomplishes multiple goals.
All of these materials have to be approved by Dr. Van Cotthem. I spend a lot of time reading his news and research aggregator blog on desertification, drought and poverty. I also keep up with general news, government policies, and so on.
Strategic planning, forming key partnerships, and connecting synergies is also part of my work as a public relations practitioner. After I've completed my materials for WFCS I'm working on two papers about African continental development and another on regional development in Northwest Africa.
Algeria has emerged as one of the leaders in African continental development. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was invited to the G8 summit because of the country's role in The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) The five initiating heads of state were given a mandate by the African Union "to develop an integrated socio-economic development framework for Africa".
I'm reading lots of strategic plans, research materials, policy papers, etc.. that are relevant to these issues and frameworks.
Information and communication technologies (ICT) have changed the nature of development worldwide. The big hope for African development is turning the brain drain into brain circulation. All entities involved are more or less in agreement that it's absolutely vital to tap into diaspora networks.
In this context, UNIFEM, UNDP, the Office of the Special Coordinator for Africa and the Least Developed Countries (OSCAL), the UN ICT Task Force and the UN Fund for International Partnerships (UNFIP) in collaboration with the Government of Uganda, plan to launch the initiative in Africa on the occasion of the second meeting of the Global Advisory Committee.
The outcome of the meeting in Kampala will be presented during the upcoming meeting of the UN ICT Taskforce, in September 2003, and will inform the ongoing process of the World Summit for the Information Society (WSIS).
Objectives
The main objective of the meeting is to launch the programme of action of the Digital Diaspora Initiative in Africa, expanding the constituency of support by bringing on board other stakeholders from governments, civil society, donors and the private sector; and forging synergy between the efforts of the GAC, DDNA and the Gender Caucus of the WSIS
What are diaspora networks? In layman terms they're basically people going back to help their country of origin. This is a very strong human drive, going back to help. A network gives structure to these endeavors. I'm thinking in very broad strokes here, the details will be fleshed out in my articles.
We know that the global zeitgeist to help Africa and to help Africa help itself is here. WFCS, G8, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Oprah Winfrey, various United Nations organizations, internal African organizations and diaspora networks.
When I think about strategic planning and forming key partnerships I think of all these entities and infrastructures as narrative arcs. When two of them come together there's a great story. A great story is compelling and credible because it's relevant to an audience, plausible and verifiable. When many of these elements connect synergies a great novel has been written, in essence we've captured the zeitgeist.
My professional work also involves what might be called "the glamorous side of food". Besides writing about it, developing recipes, writing cooking class materials and so on, I also work in building global brands for cookbooks, food products and food personalities.
Last week I went to Raleigh Studios to meet with a producer about a budding celebrity chef who is represented by Endeavor Talent and Literary Agency (think HBO's entourage. By the way, I've been to that famous office for a meeting and I'll remind you not to believe everything you see on television).
At the meeting it was decided that the producer would write several pitches and shoot a reel for "budding celebrity chef". A follow-up meeting will be scheduled with the production company and Endeavor to make sure that everyone is on the same page and then we'll decide on strategies for moving forward.
I'll give more details as the project moves forward.
Oddly enough, I rarely talk about my work in "the glamorous side of food" in real life with most people I know. So, why am I posting on my blog for the whole world to see? Theoretically anyone with an internet access can read this blog and about "my life in food". But the fact of the matter is, most people who know me in real life don't bother to read this blog unless they are working with me on a project. And if they're working with me on a project I don't have to explain the relevance or irrelevance of this to them.
