alan wells

On the way back from San Diego a few weeks ago, I had a conversation with my friend Tom that made the last few hours of the drive fly by. As always, our conversation covered a lot of ground, but one thing we talked about was what makes a person interesting, what draws the line that we know to exist between those people that seem to have something of substance to talk and think about, and those that seem to be walking the world on autopilot. I think I can summarize our conversation graphically better than verbally, in the style of indexed.

This is a question that’s been floating around in my head for a while: Why California?

As in, why is California home to the tech industry, Hollywood, many top-tier universities, lots of influential thinkers and writers, the country’s most environmentally progressive laws, and an explosive start-up and entrepreneurial industry, among other things. I have to say that as a native Californian, it’s a comfort to be roaming the international blogosphere and see my home state mentioned so frequently.

I started asking this question because as I started to do more reading about business, sustainability, design and other things that interest me, it seems like a disproportionately large number of the interesting things I read about are happening in California. Granted, I’m tech-oriented and environmentally conscious so I think that’s a big reason why many things I read about are coming from California, but that still begs the question of why California is the center for these things in the first place.

A quick scan of California’s Wikipedia article gives many possible answers:

- 3rd largest state in the US
- Most populous state in the US
- Mediterranean climate
- Diverse geography
- Coastal geography
- Home to the largest agricultural industry in the US
- 10th largest economy in the world, if it was a country.

The metrics that make California notable in the global economy are well-known in the modern world. However, in Bill Bryson’s book, Made in America, he quotes an historian that explains that the native languages in California encompassed a diversity that surpassed that of the entire European continent. Now, I’ll be the first to agree that California’s diverse geography and climate may be the original source for our wealth and prosperity, but I doubt that this diversity in climate and geography can’t be matched by the entire European continent.

The fact put forward in Bill Bryson’s book makes me think that the answer to my question can’t be in the people here. The fact about native language variation makes me think that whatever people happen to be here enjoy a rare life of diverse culture and prosperity, that there must be something about this place that is the source for this, or makes this possible, for native people and immigrants alike.

I think the key to answering my question lies in the fact that California not only has diverse geography and climate, but something about this combination encourages specialization, niches, and therefore promotes biodiversity. From an ecological perspective, biodiversity is one of the world’s most valuable resources. Wikipedia defines it as “the variation of taxonomic life forms within a given ecosystem, biome or for the entire Earth.” Tropical places are often fountains of biodiversity because their climates allow for the construction of complex ecosystems with many trophic levels and niches. But California isn’t tropical. So how do we explain the fecundity of our state? Certainly, the relatively mild weather in California helps, but I think it is this combined with the huge variation in geography that accounts for the diversity here. If you drive the length of the state, you can drive through almost every climate zone from alpine to near tropical, mountain to coastal. This complexity allows an almost infinite number of ecological niches – which in turn leads to a high level of biodiversity.

And now the conceptual jump – I think that high biodiversity in natural ecosystems can be mirrored and reflected by an equivalent level of diversity in human enterprises, and I think that California is proof of that. The success that we Californians enjoy is just a continuation of success that other species in this area have been enjoying for millions of years. The biggest implication of this: we need to protect those other species to maintain our own success, as our wellbeing depends upon their survival. I think that’s a big issue for business in California to tackle, but I think it will be essential to our future as a state.

More accurately, this would be a job decision update, as I was fortunate enough to have some really awesome opportunites dropped on my doorstep. Last week, I decided to move forward with a job at SNP. I’ll be doing a lot of things there, including some web design and web 2.0 kinds of things, but so far the people have proved to be great co-workers and I’m enjoying the work.

When I look at my generation I see a generation jaded by a flawed political system and short-sighted corporations.I see a generation that wants to make a difference if they could only find a way to do so without feeling like the problems are hopelessy large and out of their control.I see a generation that is creative, talented, and good-hearted, but lacks the framework and tools to apply these qualities to the world at large.I see a generation failed by the eduaction system we were raised in that has not given us the tools to fix the problems we will inherit.I see a generation with the potential to change the world as they move from school to careers in a huge variety of fields and locations.I think that the energy of my generation is an untapped resource and that although the problems of the world are intimidating, if we can find a way to connect people’s passions with problems that need solving there is plenty of energy and talent to make the changes that need to be made.I’m interested in design, sustainability, entrepreneurship, collaboration, and most interested in the synthesis of all of the above. Call it idealism or naiveté, but I whole-heartedly believe that we can change the world and help to ensure that our planet remains livable for the next generation. But there’s much to be done, so lets get going!

A big part of the reason that I cut short my stay in Australia was to return here, finish school as soon as possible, and begin to pursue some professional opportunities that were going to have to wait for my return to California. After being back since the morning of Superbowl Sunday, I’ve figured out the school thing; I’ll be able to graduate in June after one more quarter of school, with a degree in Ecology and a degree in Design with an emphasis in sustainable design. I’m very excited to be finishing up, and to have both degrees guiding me toward a sustainable future.As for the professional opportunities, to say they’ve been knocking at my door would be an understatement… breaking down the door with a battering ram seems like a more accurate analogy. In this past 3 days I’ve been offered 3 jobs with 3 different companies (two startups and one established), and have been developing plans for 2 of my own corporations, one non-profit and one for profit. When I left Australia I felt like it was a very significant example of the idea that we are defined by in life as much by what we choose not to do as what we choose to pursue. This goes hand-in-hand with my recent realization that I’m at a point in my life where everything has an opportunity cost (to use an economist’s jargon). That is to say that I am interested in so many things that I can’t possibly do all of them, and picking one means that I’m leaving something else unexplored. I’m not sure when I became interested in enough things that there simply aren’t time for them all – I don’t remember feeling like everything had an opportunity cost when I was a freshman in college, but sometime in the last two years I became interested and passionate about enough things that I just can’t do them all.My current job opportunities are a perfect example – all of them are good options and have benefits, both financial and educational, but I’m finding it hard to figure out which one is the best option. I’ll talk to some friends and people more experienced than I in a quest to find out what the right questions to ask are, but I think it’ll come down to gut feeling – the same gut feeling that brought me back to California 11 months early, and that seems to be working out just fine so far…So I pose this question to anyone that might be reading: Does everything your life feel like it has an opportunity cost? How do you choose which doors to open – and, equally important – which doors to close?

During my short stay in Australia, I found myself in a fairly unique position in a culture so saturated with media and advertisements. When I went grocery shopping, it was really disorienting because I knew none of the brand names or product labels. In Australia, I didn’t watch TV and preferred my iPod to the the radio, and read the books I had brought with me and not local newspapers and magazines. So I was almost completely unexposed to advertisements or other media publicity about the brands sold there. I never really thought about it in the states, but I take for granted that all the brands on the shelves look familiar, and the brands I buy here are often based on choices, sometimes informed but mostly arbitrary (what my parents bought, what my friends bought, what I grew up with, etc), that I made long ago and pretty much just stick to my habits. And who can blame a consumer? If you had to reanalyze all the available products at your local grocery store every time you went shopping you’d go crazy and also waste tons of time. So what’s the point of this story?Well, lacking any other basis for comparison, and being an environmentally conscious person, I decided that I would choose the brands based on sustainability and environmentally friendliness. Now this is harder in Australia that Californai because organic and earth-friendly products are not nearly as available, but I did what I could. I bought biodegradable detergent, recycled paper products, and bamboo fiber towels. When no good option was available I tried to not buy at all or buy the item with the least wasteful packaging or most recyclable materials.This got me thinking: not everyone is fortunate enough to be able to displace themselves into a new environment to force the breaking of consumption habits long enough to consider new priorities in consumer choices. But what if you could reset the brand knowledge of people without displacing them to new and unfamiliar places? I think maybe this is all it would take to make a huge change in consumption habits, if everything suddenly became unfamiliar and people were forced to reconsider their choices, many would voluntarily choose products that are better for the planet if given the chance. I don’t know how you’d go about doing this “reset” but I think the concept is interesting nonetheless.OK, so fast forward a few weeks, I’m back in the states, grocery shopping at Nugget Market (I definitely missed gourmet grocery stores in Australia), and I’m cruising around putting my usual items in the basket. And then it occurs to me, why not try to continue the trend I started in Australia, and try to break my buying habits? What would I buy here if I was looking at it with virgin, un-brainwashed eyes? So I tried to look at each product area with a more open mind, and to seek out some of the brands I’ve heard of as making sustainability efforts. I think it worked, at least a little bit. I ended up with some things I would have overlooked in favor of the familiar old brands and logos. For the milk dilemma, aware of both the impact of non-recyclable cartons and plastic jugs, I was pleased to find Strauss Family Creamery organic milk available in reusable glass bottles. For other dairy products, I bought organic, and with an eye for reducing packaging (buying quart yogurt instead of individual servings). For shampoo and conditioner, I couldn’t find Aveda, a company I admire because of their well documented sustinability efforts, but I did find herbal, organic products from a company I think is more earth friendly than your average haircare product company. Those are just a few of the choices I made, I don’t need to bore you with the contents of my grocery cart, but I leave you with this question:What would you buy if none of the familiar, main-stream brands were available? What would you buy if you based your choices on earth-friendliness instead of advertising or old habits?

I love this video. After travelling alone for 3 weeks, I forgot how great hugs are.

So I spent Thanksgiving break away from UCD (has to be done sometimes) and went to Copenhagen to visit my Mom. It was great to get out of town for a while, and for someone interested in design, Copenhagen is a great place to spend some time. I’ve got some thoughts to share about Danish design and things of that nature, but they’ll have to wait until after my final project for my web design class is turned in on Thursday. Until then, here’s one of my favorite pictures from the trip.

So I’ve finally done it, I’ve set up a blog. I hope to record my own thoughts and musing here mostly for my own records, but perhaps someone else might find something interesting here to read as well.