Amy Magnus: Volunteer, Illustrator, PhD

by Susanne | Nov 10, 2020 | News, Volunteers

Have you noticed the “Strong Town” illustrations on our website? These were done by our very talented volunteer, Amy Magnus.

The big secret is that Amy is just beginning to flex her pen as an illustrator. In her other life, she is the founder of the Yellow Springs Science Castle, a nonprofit that advocates for greater agency in education and more play in work. As executive director of the emerging museum, Amy hosts popup events that introduce children to advanced science, math and technology through art, invention, and play.

She is a 20 year veteran of the United States Air Force and spent her career researching human computer teaming and computational intelligence. She had tours as a program manager at the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, a visiting scientist at Cornell University, and a research assistant professor at the Air Force Institute of Technology. Amy holds a PhD in Electro Optics from the U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology.

Thank you, Amy!

Birth of a logo: It pays to keep quiet

by Susanne | Jul 28, 2020 | News, Organization, Volunteers

We have a new logo! Like anyone with a new love, we want to talk about it. But, rather than bore you with flowery descriptions, and our not-unbiased opinions, I thought you’d be more interested in seeing the process we went through. After all, it’s not every day you get to see the birth of a logo!

The designer

We were fortunate to snag the services of the very talented Katherine Yamasaki, who generously volunteered her time to help with this and out website redesign project. Katherine is looking for new challenges in her life, after an extensive career in graphic design. So we feel blessed that she was willing to take on what is, after all, another routine graphic design project.

The process

We never talked about it, but as it turned out, we followed a standard design process. Full disclosure: most of us had extensive design backgrounds. So we went through the phases of Definition, Ideation (three rounds), Refinement, Testing, Revision, and Finalizing.

The project took about two months, end-to-end. We had the final concept worked out in about two weeks, tested for a week, explored revisions for another week, and then spent a leisurely month finalizing nit-picking details. It stills feels as though we hit just the right balance of exploring new ideas and chasing rainbows.

Defining

The first thing we did was to think about what we wanted in a logo. That resulted in this moodboard, which capturing some things we were drawn to, specific requirements, and examples of what we didn’t want:

Before you strain your eyes, this is what the “requirements” notes say:

Constraints

It should be simple. (Something that even I can approximate quickly.)
Needs to work in different formats (website, print materials, t-shirts, etc.) There might be slightly different versions to adapt to different constraints and opportunities, but there should be some consistent core element.
Should work in grey-scale, and not use more than two colors. One color is better.
Should work with and without the CCL name. (I’m thinking a graphic rather than a wordmark.)

Concepts

The memes & themes document has a dump of some concepts to draw on. At this moment, these jump out at me:

Improvisation, crisis, spontaneity — asymmetry, something broken coming together, healing
Force multiplier, diversity
Community, social resilience — a unified whole, more than one part
Crisis – jumbles letters? maybe too busy
Leadership is not a single hero
simple graphic – with meaning. It doesn’t need to say everything. Supporting tagline and usage with other materials
“preparing to be unprepared” — training
spontaneous leaders [Spreading social resilience. Empowering spontaneous leaders.]

Concepts that could be more impressionistic than representational:

Gaming — fun, creative, inventive
Scientific

Ideation

Three days after our kickoff meeting, Katherine came back with these sketches:

The team, which at this point consisted of Dinçer Parker (also a strong graphic designer) and myself, found these three particularly appealing:

Katherine returned a few days later with these sketches:

The team, now with the addition of Nate Digre (yet more graphic design experience), found these ideas worth pursuing:

As you can see, we were clearly drawn to the inverted “c,” putting Leadership in the center, the rounded shape, and the wispy brushstroke. (If you look back at the moodboard, you can see that some of these elements were already there — crescent shapes, flowing lines, and the concept of something subtly wrong.)

Katherine explored these ideas in the next few days, but then also came back with some comparative research:

We had three strong winners, and signs of a clear concept:

Refinement

Katherine then took the base concept and started exploring how it would work as a full logo, with the name. You’ll note that, up until now, Katherine is working on paper. Going into Refinement, she has gone fully digital, and, consequently, has to explore typography in a serious way:

Testing

At this point, we recognized that we not only were too invested in the ideas, but also starting to getting mired in nit-picking details that weren’t critical. We were lucky to recruit Adriana Orland and Kyle Brown, both early-career UX researchers, to help us with testing.

We knew we were looking for a simple test, just getting first reactions and impressions. So the first we did was narrow down what we actually needed to test. That led us to settling on one version of the icon, and four alternatives on of the name. The latter were variations of casing (title or all caps) and whether the name was presented on two or three lines:

UsabilityHub kindly extended us a free license. Kyle and Adriana set up a short self-administered test and sent out recruiting messages over their wide professional networks. Over 3 days, they collected 38 responses. This was the clear favorite:

Other results were all that we could hope for. That is, not overwhelmingly positive.

Specifically,

The top reactions to the icon: artistic, dynamic, modern. We were happy with dynamic and modern, but not artistic.
Conjectures about what the company does included consulting firm, design firm. Again, not what we were looking for. (But not surprising given the heavy design-orientation of the team!)
Respondents also found the colors too dark, “conflicts with hopeful message in mission statement”
Several people commented on the drama of the lines, which we reformulated as too much contrast between wispiness of semi-circles with blockiness of the L
Finally, several people mentioned the blocky L as being difficult to interpret

Revision

We were ready to take the insights from the testing, and adjust the design that was emerging. But, Katherine decided to step back and do conduct a thorough comparative analysis. She looked at organizations with similar interests (disaster, leadership, etc.) as well as examining logos that employed different shapes than the circular direction we were adopting:

This was a very valuable exploration, and, if anything, made us appreciate the simplicity and balance of the direction we were already taking. So Katherine set off on a final round of ideation, exploring different ideas for addressing the concerns brought out in the testing:

Once again, the team (now including Kyle and Adriana, but without Dinçer) had a clear favorite:

Finalization

Katherine now did some final adjustments of the shape and lettering, and set about exploring colors:

And came up with four final options:

Where, again, there was a clear winner:

The result

So, with the minute adjustments that are always needed in any design, here is our new logo in color and black and white versions:

Reflections

First, thank you, Katherine Yamasaki, for an amazing job! And thanks to everyone who contributed their thoughts and insights along the way, especially Nate, Kyle, Adriana, and the 38 anonymous people who provided us with their honest reactions.

Second, a confession: I started this process thinking that I absolutely wanted something pictorial that wasn’t based on a wordmark or letters. So I was skeptical when Katherine brought back her first ideas. However, I didn’t want to stomp on any artistic expressions, especially this early in the process and working relationship, so I bit my tongue. Hard.

Then, to my surprise, I started to fall in love. Right here:

I am now head over heels, and thankful that I stayed silent.

PS

As a bonus, we all fell for this little gem immediately, in Katherine’s first round of ideas. Expect to see variations in our future materials!

Help us to understand what spontaneous leaders in COVID-19 need

by Susanne | May 12, 2020 | Research

If you have insights on the needs of grassroots organizing, or are involved in a community effort for COVID-19, we want to hear from you! If you are willing to participate in a 60-minute phone interview with a member of our team, please let us know here.

Additionally, we hope you might help us to find others who understand their needs, including organizers themselves. If there is somebody else you feel we might speak to, please forward this message, or let us know how we can reach them.

We’re particularly interested in efforts where the answer is “yes” to all of the following questions:

Is the effort responding to a need that has come up because of COVID-19?
Is it significantly different from what the group was doing before the pandemic?
Is it being organized by people who had not worked together in any serious way before?

For example:

A group of professional coaches got to talking over professional networks, and are now coordinating volunteers to offer free support sessions to frontline medical workers and their families.
Dog owners who knew each other from the local dog park are organizing pet visits to shut-ins and vulnerable members in their community.
Concerned parents have developed a free food pantry where community members can drop off or “shop” for canned goods and other packaged foods.

Be well, be smart ______ stay apart!

The case for taking disaster seriously

by Susanne | Jan 17, 2020 | Hazards, News, Research

Major disasters are becoming more frequent, and are impacting more people.

Recently, Amy Feldman of All Good Work challenged me for this vague and unsupported statement. That sent me on an industrious search for clear reliable evidence, and through a rabbit warren of government reports, scientific discussions, and disaster data sets.

What I found was that some disasters are indeed becoming more frequent and strike with greater force, more people are at risk for being in harm’s way of all types of hazards, and more of the people in harm’s way are more vulnerable to damaging effects. These increases are driven by environmental changes, population expansion, and greater technological dependencies.

Unpacking the claims

Before we look at the numbers, let’s be a little more specific about what the indicators say.

Some disasters are becoming more frequent and strike with greater force

Globally, in the US, and in California, wildfires and floods are becoming more frequent and affecting larger areas [GAR19, CRS 2019, LAO 2019].
Globally and in the US, major storms and hurricanes becoming more frequent, and catastrophic storms are becoming even larger [GAR19, CRS 2019].
Globally, new biological hazards are emerging constantly, and have increased opportunities to spread [GAR19].
Cascading and compound effects are creating new types of disasters. For instance, NATECH events are incidents where side effects of natural hazards causes cascading technological accidents [GAR19].

More people are at risk for being in harm’s way

Throughout the world, as populations expand, more people are settling, and more capital development is placed, in risk-prone areas [GAR19, CRS 2017].

More of the people in harm’s way are more vulnerable to damaging effects

Globally and in the US, risk-prone areas have not been settled earlier precisely because they are risk-prone, and the people who are settling there are typically those with fewer economic resources [GAR19, CRS 2017].
Generally, modern populations are increasingly dependent on technical infrastructure and public services that are more likely to be disrupted in risk-prone areas [GAR19].

A few points of interest

The numbers of earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes are relatively stable, but they frequently affect larger populations when they occur [GAR19, LAO 2019].
Globally, while the number of people affected by disaster is increasing, the number of disaster-related deaths is decreasing [GAR19].

So, what support did I find for these claims?

Alas, I didn’t find simple hard proof. Disaster is not only a very complex concept, but, by its very nature, chaotic and incoherent. It’s easy to specify measures such as “number of incidents,” “number of people affected,” and “economic costs,” but defining metrics for measurement is far more challenging, and collecting reliable data comprehensively is yet more challenging.

So, while it’s easy to find a smoking gun, there are always questions about why it went off.

That said, let’s take a look at some numbers.

2018

According to the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), “3.9 billion people, or about half the worldwide population, were potentially exposed to natural disasters in 2018. When counting if a region was affected by multiple disasters, this number jumps to 10.7 billion people.” [CRED 2019].

The same source recorded reports of 315 natural disaster events, affecting over 68 million people, and incurring US$131.7 billion in economic losses. Flooding accounted for 50% of the total affected, followed by storms which accounted for 28%. Earthquakes were the deadliest, accounting for 45% of deaths, followed by flooding at 24%.

These numbers are of country-level events.

In 2018, the US had had 66 federally declared major disasters, that is, state-level events. Storms were the most common cause (26), followed by floods (19), and hurricanes (13). Total damage costs reached or exceeded $1 billion (CPI-adjusted) in 14 of the 66 events. Storms again topped the list with 7 events, followed by tornado (3), hurricanes (2), fire (1), and drought (1) [FEMA].

2018 in perspective

Globally, 2018 was a good year. Compared to the previous decade (2008-2017), there were 33 fewer disasters than the annual average of 348, 130.8 million fewer people affected than the annual average of 198.8 million, and US$35 billion less in economic losses than the annual average of US$166.7 [CRED 2019].

In contrast, it was not a good year for the US. There were 30.2 more major disaster declarations than the annual average of 35.8 for the years 1953-2016 [CRS 2017], and 7.8 more billion-dollar events than the annual average of 6.2 for the 1980-2018 period [Smith 2019].

Looking at the data collected by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) for country-level events, it is clear that 2018 was not an anomaly, either globally or for the US. Visual inspection reveals that disasters started increasing in frequency and impact around 1960 and that the rate of increase may have started to slow around 2000. It also shows that the increased numbers of events lies predominately from hazards that are amplified by environmental factors such as climate changes and land use. All types of events show increased impact and costs [EM-DAT].

	Total (Global)	Earthquakes, floods, storms, and epidemics (Global)	Total (Americas)
Reported events (1900-2019)
People affected (1900-2019)
Economic damage in 2016 US$ (1960-2019)

Charts drawn from the EM-DAT database, accessed 2019-12-09.

While these trends could be explained by changes in reporting, data collection, or other factors not related to actual events, expert analysis indicates that numbers and impacts of disasters truly are rising:

From the UN Office of Disaster Risk Reduction:

“People and assets around the world are being exposed to a growing mixture of hazards and risks, in places and to an extent previously unrecorded.” [GAR19]

“Simply put, the concentration of individuals and produced capital in hazard-exposed areas today is greater by an order of magnitude than it was 40 years ago.” [GAR13]

From the US Congressional Research Service:

“Given the variables described in this report that can lead to an increase in the number of declarations, including trends in severe weather patterns, population growth, and development, the upward trend of declarations will likely continue if declarations policies remain unchanged.” [LAO 2019]

Finally, the data also reveal much greater variability in number of disasters from year to year, suggesting greater unpredictability and uncertainty, and a growing need for flexibility in response capacity.

From the UN Office of Disaster Risk Reduction:

“What is evident, is that change is happening more quickly and surprisingly across multiple dimensions and scales than we ever thought possible. This means that although modelling and metrics are important, we can no longer use the past as a reliable indicator of the future.” [GAR19]

References

[CRED 2019] CRED. Natural Disasters 2018. Brussels: CRED; 2019.

[CRS 2017] Congressional Research Service. Stafford Act Declarations 1953-2016: Trends, Analyses, and Implications for Congress (R42702), 2017.

[EM-DAT] CRED. EM-DAT database. Accessed 2019-12-09.

[FEMA] FEMA. Disaster Declarations Summary. Accessed 2019-12-06.

[GAR13] UNISDR. Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction. 2013.

[GAR19] UNDRR. Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction. 2019.

[LAO 2019] CA Legislative Analyst’s Office, Main Types of Disasters and Associated Trends, 10 Jan 2019. Accessed 20 Nov 2019.

[SMITH 2019] Smith, Adam. (2019-02-07]. 2018’s Billion Dollar Disasters in Context [Blog post]. www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/2018s-billion-dollar-disasters-context

The past 20 years offer some striking numbers

The five years with most billion-dollar events in the US

The five costliest US hurricanes on record

The majority of the largest and most destructive wildfires in California

Empowered by co-working

by Susanne | Dec 8, 2018 | Organization

Working alone is hard. Working alone from home and out of coffee shops is hard. Even in Silicon Valley where a million others are doing the same.

So we are thrilled to announce that Creative Crisis Leadership now has another place to work: Thanks to the generous donation of Satellite Inc and the enthusiastic efforts of All Good Work, we have a seat at the Satellite co-working center in Sunnyvale CA.

It’s quiet, bright, right next to the train station, and populated with friendly hard-working people. In other words, a great place to develop that theoretical understanding of improvised leadership we need to move forward with some solid learning experiences.

Thank you,

and you,

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