Why I shall be attending SOMESSO

Coming to London twice in less than two months is shocking for me but there is no way I will miss SOMESSO on 15th May at the Emirates Stadium.

Regular readers will know I have a particular view about the economy and that while I may not be someone with a great grasp of what makes the financial markets tick, I do know that things have to change across multiple dimensions. The word I often hear is that we need a socialized economy – not not socialIST – where the rights of citizens are not only taken into account but also provide a sustainable way of going forward. I think most will agree that the industrial age model of the 20th century has played out.

One of the key thinkers in this regard is Umair Haque of Havas Media Lab, someone I have quoted in the past and whose radical ideas I find appealing. He is slated to attend and I’m keen to hear his latest ideas. To give you a flavour of where he’s up to, check this post where he explains the risks of the current Obama strategy:

1) Obama has discarded the advice of nearly every eminent economist in the world.
2) To go with the advice of “his” team.
3) Because access to him is apparently controlled tightly by Summers and Geithner.
4) So Obama is bubbled from the growing disbelief at his lack of economic literacy.
5) A plan that is likely to result in massive looting is blindly sailing ahead.
6) Policy is clearly biased in favour of those who can afford to buy it. Hence, banks win — again.
7) And it doesn’t matter if policy works or not — so we get perverse policy after policy.

You know what? Hiring some kids to revolutionize media is how Obama won an election. But the failure to do the same across the government is going to be how he blows his presidency.

Here’s the point: the same toxic managerial dynamics that poisoned the Bush presidency are already at work in the Obama administration’s economic policy-making. And that’s not a very good sign.

Ugh! So now we have a clue as to the risks – or at least one man’s view what those look like but what of the solutions? Here’s a flavour of some solution elements in what he calls Finance 2.0 Manifesto:

Here’s what radical innovators are doing to ignite the next financial revolution.

Macrocurrencies — a global currency linked to energy.

Whisper bullhorns — as the StockTwits guys were kind enough to point out, StockTwits is very much on it’s way to becoming a whisper bullhorn.

Anti-ratings — open source credit ratings.

At first glance, these ideas seem whacky but they have a common thread – innovative technology. Haque is not alone. Robert Shiller says that we’ve got the mortgage system wrong, basing it upon the notion that house prices will always rise. The UK experience since 1973, the year I first entered the housing market shows that to be a fallacy but the fright that has been given to the US government and taxpayers is such that we may yet see new solutions emerge. Check this conversation with Shiller recorded by McKinsey.

The backdrop to some of these ideas is that some people believe our economies may never look the same as they have done in the past – at least not in the next generation of living memory. They might well be right. Here is some of the reasoning from a conversation between Joshua Cooper Ramo and Rick Newman:

We live in ways that are unsustainable. The policies we rely on to make us safe are not only failing, but backfiring. The financial crisis is a perfect example of that. The world has become too complicated to make sense to most people, or to people relying on ideas that are several hundred years old.

Solutions are much harder to find in conventional economic thinking which is why Haque and Ramo are so interesting. That’s why I am going to SOMESSO. I want to understand more of the thinking behind the solutions – one of which is to consider diversity and open source rather than concentration and closed source.

When you think about it, that fits nicely with a theory I have long held that all empires fall. Depending on your political historical lens, you can argue it is because of the repressive closed nature of those empires, tied to a mistaken belief in omnipotence that ignores the broader (diverse) picture. If these people are remotely correct then it also fits with my thinking about the commoditization of the profession and how it needs to respond through the development of community and inclusive modes of communication. It has a direct bearing on the idea that creative innovation is a significant factor in determining the profession’s future, dovetailing well to the reforms both Francine McKenna and Richard Murphy espouse.

SOMESSO is not a cheap deal but then the speaker list besides Haque is excellent. I say that advisedly because this is NOT your ‘usual suspects’ although some names may be familiar.  There is also the promise of an interesting pre-event day on Enterprise 2.0. More details will follow.

If you are a professional, want to know what the world may look like in the coming years and need to understand how you can respond then this is one event I highly recommend. I don’t say that too often.

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Tagged as: McKinsey & Company, opensource, Robert Shiller, SOMESSO, Umair Haque