In our Media challenge of the month the question arises whether it is important to have many followers or to reach out to the right people, even if the latter are just less than five every time. In order to get some sensibility about quantity or quality we refer to the founder of Sustainocracy, Jean-Paul Close. When he broke through in the understanding of stepping our of a reigning societal format in order to create a new one to which he could invite everyone to join, he initiatlly stood alone. In this short Braincandies speech he refers to this as “crossing a line”.

The video has been seen only about 450 times. Not a lot one would say. It is a challenging message because not everyone is aware of the choice, or considers crossing such a line or wishes to consider a totally new reality. It is unknown, if known it may be frightning, insecure, problematic to let go of the old, etc. Still communities such as AiREAS (regional air quality and human health) are built entirely on the other side of the line and enjoy the presence of different governments, many citizens, innovative businesses and numerous universities. AiREAS started with Close who invited a follower of his initiatives, Marco van Lochem, to join. He accepted. Then he stepped to local government. The city of Eindhoven pointed him towards the local province. By chance the right person, Edwin Weijtmans, was engaged….and the rest is history. The snowball effect did the rest. It was not a matter of massive communication strategies and followers but to find the right people, at the right moment in time, one by one.

It reminds us of the Butterfly Effect which tells us that a minor change somewhere can have huge effects elsewhere, even throughout the world. Actually, it became the basis of the chaos theory which is used also by us to create awareness in a gentle way. So we are in field of “minor changes, huge effects” and our communication has the ambition to reach out to those people who eventually have the multiplier effect.