Publishing "Brazil"
This isn't the best part yet. It lays the foundation.
Today I’m publishing a web page.
It’s a “cover page” for the country of Brazil — providing a panorama of the country’s culture, ecosystems, economy, governance, and history through a detectable (yet not overpowering) impact lens.
This is the first step in a build-out of the GivingTree Knowledge Base.
The next phase will be, on its face, more interesting. It will be to map Brazil’s landscape of impact investing and philanthropic giving, looking at . . .
. . . Who’s investing in what?
. . . Where is capital coming from?
. . . What’s working, and where are the remaining gaps?
But this first phase is very important.
Why?
Three reasons.
1) The Brazil cover page is not a one-off.
I connected my WordPress site to an AI and automation tech stack that allows me to create a cover page for any country with the click of a button.
. . . Okay, that makes it sound a little easier than it is in reality. The AI can’t produce the page with a mere voilà (but check with me again in 6 or 12 months). I still need to comb through research, vet sources, create images, and polish up content.
I can, however, click a button and create a rough draft cover page for any country. So I’m gaining the power to map the whole world’s impact economy. Mwah ha ha ha ha haaaa!!!
Actually, my immediate next step (before the impact money mapping phase) is to go back through my “country cover page” tech pipeline and optimize it, applying everything I’ve learned since I initially set it up.
If I do this now, I can get closer to the click-of-a-button function AND I’ll be in a better mindset to build the tech stack for phase two. So I’ll get the time I “lost” right back and then some.
2) There’s a bigger picture.
Let’s zoom out a bit.
The Brazil cover page is systems thinking (for those of you who like buzzwords).
If we connect the dots of the broader landscape (or create space for the dots to connect), we can see more clearly and make better decisions.
If we understand Brazil as a whole, we can better understand the potential of any given grant, investment, or project.
I don’t claim this cover page is revolutionary on its own, but it sets the stage for something that could be.
Let’s zoom out a little more.
The grand vision for the GivingTree Knowledge Base is that it will be a resource where anyone who’s in the business of making the world a better place can come and find everything they need to do their jobs with the absolute utmost efficiency and effectiveness.
The Brazil page is one step in that direction.
I have lots of ideas.
3) It’s more interesting.
Underlying the page’s information—which is arranged in numerous snippets on Brazil’s culture, ecosystems, economy, governance, history, and future—I have my own unpublished dossier of deeper research.
If I wake up one day inspired to investigate, say, the evolution of 20th-century Brazilian music or the current state of Brazil’s healthcare system, I can open my dossier, polish up some content, and create a new subpage on that topic.
So having this broader landscape available is more fun for me and hopefully more fun for my readers.
Is the perfect the enemy of the good?
I don’t know. Does that mean “the perfect” is the ally of evil?
It’s just how my brain works. I feel compelled to see the entire picture, put everything on the table, see connections, and then push forward.
This approach takes a little more patience, but it’s powerful.
You might know the Einstein quote —
If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.
Food for thought.
This will be a “building in public” project.
If you’d like to follow along, you can subscribe to this Substack (below), find me and GivingTree on LinkedIn, and/or check out the GivingTree website.
Other platforms possibly coming in the future.
See you out there.