Ken Carroll: Introduction

Ken_Carroll · July 12, 2015, 4:15pm

Very pleased to have found this forum. Haven’t had time to do a deep dive yet - but having skimmed the surface it looks like I am in the right place.

A little about me. I’m British, 48 years old, living in the Netherlands (not too far from Amsterdam) with my German girlfriend our two girls aged 6 & 8 who now consider themselves as Dutch!

I left a large international broadband operator last year after feeling I needed to to get out and work on something more meaningful in the larger context of things. You can view my professional history on linkedIn here.

After taking a summer off to spend some quality time with my kids (was good timing as last year was a cracking summer) I started to look at what to do next.

Maybe it is being the father of two little girls, or maybe it has come with age, or maybe it is because we are living in such dynamic and exciting times…whatever the root cause I find myself thinking about the world, the possibilities, how it looks like it is developing, and how I think it should be.

Initially I started to look at ideas around how to improve parenting (since I would love to be able to do things better)…but the more I looked into it the more I felt that helping to improve parenting involved helping to improve multiple social systems and the world in general.

So this lead me to look at the problems facing the world. This led me to look into problem solving. But problems only seem important if they are big obstacles that stand between you and a goal. So this led me to think about what are our goals…and what is the bigger vision - which led me to see out the ‘futurist’ community…and hence my joining this forum.

So here I am. I’m now working on a concept I’m calling a BUMPConductor, where BUMPs = Big Unsolved Meaningful Problems worth solving (www.BumpConductor.Com). The general idea is to build a collaborative problem solving platform. I’m at an early stage, gradually building momentum, and getting out to seek out and engage like minded individuals on a similar mission who are open to collaboration to achieve a bigger vision.

Right, think this will do for a start. Look forward to getting to know you all over the coming months.

Cheers,

Ken

Radivis · July 12, 2015, 10:05pm

Welcome to the Fractal Future Network, Ken! It’s very inspiring that it seems that your search for meaning has brought you to the futurist community and to this place, eventually. Yes, we live in very dynamic and exciting times, which open up new possibilities to solve age old – and some new – problems.

It’s great that you want to improve parenting! Raising children the right way is a really challenging task that rarely gets the attention and dedication that it would deserve (which is one of several reasons why I don’t have kids myself ;))! Personally, I see my ideas and projects as my children, with the principle of spreading the right memes instead of genes. Of course, I want to have an as possible impact on the world as possible.

You also seem to have realized that everything is connected to everything else. One thing leads to the other, and your personal story is certainly following a rather unique path in the myriad of paths between multiple systems and disciplines. I wonder how you found the ‘futurist’ community and which persons, groups, and ideologies you already have come in contact with.

Your BUMPConductor project seems to be based on a very logical and promising concept. The crowds are certainly one of the greatest largely untapped resources available at our time. If we can engage them in the right way, we can literally move mountains! But of course, engaging them is difficult, which is a rather common experience among enthusiastic futurists, so improving our strategies seems to be imperative at this stage. Anyway, I would like to hear more about your ideas and plans for your BUMBConductor project.

Your background in business is quite interesting. I wonder whether you’ve already heard about the book “Reinventing Organizations”, which presents a lot of thoughts and practices coming from truly revolutionary organizations. It’s certainly a book I can’t recommend highly enough!