The unedited edition of The Engineer's interview with Richard Thaler and Guldborg Hansen

By Pelle Guldborg Hansen

Yesterday, The Engineer - a newspaper with approx. 60.000 subscribers (mostly engineers) - featured a long article about nudging which incorporated an interview with Prof. Richard Thaler (Chicago Booth) and Pelle Guldborg Hansen (Co-Director of ISSP and Chairman of the Danish Nudging Network).

The article as well as the interview was made by Robin Engelhard who is a highly respected science journalist. The interview shows why Robin Engelhardt is highly respected - it is sound, critical and balanced.

If you know how to read Danish (or just how to use google translate), but don't subscribe to The Engineer you may read the unedited edition of the article here.    

Interview with Thaler and Guldborg Hansen in "K-forum"

By Pelle Guldborg Hansen

No doubt that Thaler's visit and ISSP Lecture has succeded in nudging a lot of attention. Thus, we just recieved this from the blogosphere:

http://www.madforlivet.com/bloggen/333-nudge-nudging.html#comments

Also, Wednesday Robin Engelhardt from the newspaper "The Engineer" gave a preview of todays article in that same newspaper at the site "K-forum". You may help him approach 1.000 readers by clicking here:

http://www.kommunikationsforum.dk/artikler/beskrivelse-af-nudge

Nudging got 2 pages in national newspaper Børsen

By Pelle Guldborg Hansen

While working on our 'official reports' from the ISSP lecture by Richard Thaler and the following Policy-hearing we are happy to see that we got two full pages on the events in the national newspaper Børsen. One of these pages were the back-side - the second most important page in any newspaper. However, the event also featured on the frontside as well, so it is hard not to be proud.

You may read the articles (in Danish) here.

(The only two additional things that I would have wished for was a more explicit mentioning of ISSP as well as that the newspaper had got my name right. Fortunately, none of the 200+ in the audience at the ISSP public lecture and the 50+ at the policy hearing got away without this information, since it was mentioned over and over again).

ISSP Public Lecture featured on Videnskab.dk

While others are having "potato" holidays in Denmark, the ISSP team is working intensively on getting the final pieces of Prof. Richard Thaler's ISSP Public Lecture to fit together.

One of our many efforts was to write an Op. ed. which is now online at Videnskab.dk. However, this is just one of the many places that the event with Prof. Richard Thaler gets attention up front. Thus, "Landbrug og Fødevarer"'s online ressource Food & Culture has also brought a small post about it that you may read here, and even Arla Food is now talking about nudging consumers in a more healthy direction.

These few mentionings are, however, just the top of the ice-berg. During the last few days Pelle G. Hansen, Co-director of ISSP, has been talking to a series of journalists. Thus, we know at this point that the newspapers Jyllandsposten, Børsen and Ingeniøren are all running articles about nudging next week. The new radio-station 7/24 will also have a 5-10 minutes snippet about nudging.

Beyond the press
However, this is just the press. The real value and success lies in the fact that October 21 will show that what we sat out to do with the ISSP is actually possible. The social software ISSP-focus group originally choose to work with nudging and establish The Danish Nudging Network because it features both a rich and broad potential for societal impact, while at the same time being controversial and thus in need of public discussion and acceptance.

With the event on October 21 ISSP and the Social Software group has provided the premises for a sound debate on nudging in a unique way. Through the Danish Nudging Network we have succeeded to coordinate the event together with the University of Southern Denmark, the Danish Cancer Society, Aalborg University, DEA, Mindlab, Dansk Kommunikation, Trygfonden and Metropol. Thus, the planning of the event itself has created incredible amounts of trust and social capital between institutions.

That's behind the scenes. In front of it, more than 200 citizens, businesspeople, policy makers, journalist, etc. will be seated. This will mark our achievement at engaging science and research with the broad public. We only hope that we will be able to deliver an experience just as positive and enriching as when we had Naomi Oreskes give the 1st ISSP Public Lecture in 2010.

Policy Impact
However, the ISSP activities on October 21 doesn't end with Prof. Thaler's public lecture. In the afternoon ISSP, University of Southern Denmark, DEA, the Danish Cancer Society, Mindlab, Trygfonden, Dansk Kommunikation, Aalborg University and Metropol have put up a policy hearing about nudging. Despite of the potato holidays approximately 60 central policy stakeholders will attend this venue (we had planned for 50). Our hope is that in this way nudging may be considered as potent new approach in public policy making, while at the same time avoid being hyped.

While we're only a small team, we hope to return next week with a reportage from the event.

ISSP News now has 800 subscribers

Using the synergi of activities the ISSP Newsletter has now reached 800 subscribers. 

The sign-off rate grew a bit to 3.6 %, since 6 subscribers decided that it was time to quit. 5 of the 6 were interested in Regional Sustainability and we take this as a hint to call upon the RS group to deliver more news in the future.

Still, gathering 800 subscribers in 1½ year is satisfactory - and with the ISSP activities about to be revealed, this number is only likely to become much higher.  

ISSP News #10 hits the street

Yes, we said #10! It was an idea that Pelle G. Hansen took with him from PHILOG when he worked with Vincent F. Hendricks (today Philog is better known as Lori-Web and based in Holland) at Roskilde University: creating a platform for stakeholders to engage with each other.

While there is still a lot to do with developing the Newsletter, this issue delivered a particular message: ISSP profiles like to engage their knowledge with the broader society. Thus, the newsletter featured Steen Rasmussen's personal blog as well as ISSP Profile Rachel Amstrong's blog at Wired. It also featured ISSP profile Vincent F. Hendricks' blog in the newspaper Information as well as his book with Pelle G. Hansen on info-storms. Finally, the SAiNT group once again showed its strong commitment to ISSP by featuring a piece by Mats Fridlund on Techno-science.

Oooh, by the way: 789 people received the news!

Richard Thaler's ISSP Lecture passes the 150 mark

As announced we turned to the academic circles. That was a disappointing experience. Even those academic circles within which Richard Thaler has excelled and worked with Nobel laureates didn't show much interest. We did a bit of personal recognizance and found that throughout academia, professors and ass. professors were more interested in the "potato holidays" than attending the lecture.

Turning to students, things didn't improve much at first. Even students attending courses in psychological decision making decided that this wasn't really relevant! Nor journalists covering economics for major newspapers! But then we noticed something we have seen before: those interested in some of the best science and research in the world are not necessarily correlated with the disciplines within which this work takes place. Instead, they are students, professors, citizens, business-makers, politicians, and so on, who are apparently are just interested in solving some of the major challenges that we face as a society.

This is both depressing and encouraging.

On a practical level it is also a BIG challenge because it means that there is no easy way to get in touch with all of these people. Fortunately we're not afraid to take up this challenge. Using social media, blogs, etc. we are finding new ways to get people together - and we've just hit the 150 mark for Richard Thaler's Public ISSP lecture.