Rotterdam IAB

Welcome to the wiki (fast editable web communication space) for the Rotterdam IAB. The purpose of this site is give the IAB the opportunity to exchange ideas, thoughts and initiatives in a closed space. Only the IAB and myself know of this page's existense, so it gives us the opportunity to have a similar discussion as we had on Friday morning -- which I think was a deep and worthwile discussion.

To work the wiki, just click on edit at the top and add your comments. (it would be useful to login first (at the top left hand corner) At the moment, this is a secret URL and over the next week I shall see if we can password protect this space or to set up a seperate wiki.

To start things:

- What are your impressions from the 1st workshop?
- What questions did you want to ask but could not?
- Else?

Hi, this is Joel. I guess I have a question under "Else." I find myself still fascinated by how we come up with a Rotterdam solution to the us/them problem. I'm wondering if we can invent a word. Once we had it, we would then seed it into the general populace. It would be the name for the third kind of people we wish to encourage. The word would basically mean "people who don't look like us, but who nonetheless are good guys who share our values." it would have to be a word that couldn't easily be turned against these brave pioneers, marking them as turncoats against their original ethnic group, or "uncle toms." ideally it would be a word that can be swapped across a variety of languages. if it's a dutch word, it probably should be analogous to "autochtonen" and "alochtonen" (somebody please correct my phonetic spelling). but maybe this is an opportunity to encourage bottom-up interaction by asking the immigrants with the right values what they wish to be called.

The other thing that occurs to me may sound frivolous, but isn't, in my experience. Does Rotterdam have a football team? It is any good? If not, what would it take to make them contenders? The reason I ask is that if you have a badly divided population, you literally have to give them something to talk to each other about. You have to give them something that is an icebreaker, something along the lines of "How 'bout them Dammers" (or whatever the name of the team is.) Something positive to share. *Especially* if they routinely kick the crap out of the Amsterdam team. (Sorry, Gerlach.)

smiles, the team is called Feijenoord, and quite popular. Doing real well. (DE)

The closest analogy I can think of globally to the Rotterdam/Amsterdam situation is the Oakland/San Francisco situation. Is there any other city pairing we can think of that similarly has a big port with an image and identity problem because it is always unfairly compared to the chi-chi frou-frou of the precious tourist town? Reason to ask that question is if there is, there may be cheap and easy lessons to steal. For example, the Oakland airport has positioned itself as the preferred destination for the super-cheap renegade start-up airlines, vs. SFO. Come to think of it, the Long Beach airport (Long Beach is the town that gets no respect the major feature of which is the gigunda port for Southern California) has done the same thing relative to LAX.

Joel 0820 Eastern 13 November

The thing that struck me is the inclusive society comment, and I'm less inclined to think in terms of them/us/like us but more of how we inlude them into us. Why do you think the concept of a 3rd group would add. (other than making them more like us?) My quesion is does this deal with the root causes of the relationship problem?

Daniel 19 November (back from South Africa)