Alexander Phillips

Biography

The Founder of Urban Times :-)

My Urban Times Story

It all began with two dudes, Alex and Charlie. Friends who harboured avid passions, but also shared two deep frustrations. The first was the unappealing nature of the graduate job market. We watched as recent graduates struggled to find stable jobs and as many who did, found themselves working jobs that undervalued them and did not match their qualifications. And neither of us were aeronautical engineers or in line for professional football. It seemed to us like all the stable career options involved a degree of corporate drudgery that promised lives devoid of real inspiration. The second quite separate frustration concerned the media. We were sick of the excessive negativity in mainstream media; the gossip, the scandal, the sensationalism and the deconstructive approaches to topics that seemed indicative of a society in paralysis.

Of course there were and are a multitude of wonderful blogs and communities that broke the mould and inspired us – TreeHugger, TED, GOOD, Inhabitat, Hypebeast, Vice, Intelligence Squared, Wired, Freshome, Greenpeace, Popular Science, Mashable, Singularity Hub, i09, Hongkiat, TechCrunch, Vimeo, Grist, Fast Company, National Geographic, Discovery, Wallpaper, Sporcle, WordPress, Wikipedia, Gmail - the list goes on and on.

All of them do what they do marvellously and have admirable, diverse and tight-knit communities. But at first they felt somewhat closed off to us. TED, for example, fills us with knowledge and takes our breath away, but it also demands a $6000 dollar attendance fee. So, typical of many a headstrong youth wanting to stamp their mark on the world, we decided to create our own thing. We say “thing” because at first we didn’t really know what we were doing! From that first decision to write about the things we truly cared about – to explore the possibilities and implications of an optimistic forward-thinking view of the world – we were hooked. After hearing one of our favourite Tanzanian proverb, which translates to “That which is good is never finished”, we have never looked back (you may have even recalled it being in the header of the old style site?)

And then came another realisation. We weren’t alone. Obvious, really. You started reaching out to us from all over the globe. Not just to tell us that you liked our content, or that you shared our beliefs, but that you wanted to join in. This is how Urban Times community was born. So far almost two hundred of you have signed up as authors with over 100,000 people visiting every month. Optimism is contagious. For all our science, genius and heart, we belong to a world hurtling into an unknown future. We know that, as of 2008, over half of our species lived in cities rather than rural areas. And by 2050 this figure will be over 70%. During these urban times our collective actions will define us.

The Socially Responsible Agenda is slowly making its way into the fore, percolating the fabric of our society, but it needs a push in the right direction. In a little over a year, we have grown, to use a much-worn eco-metaphor, from a seed into a healthy young sapling. We want to grow into a giant sequoia. We want to plant more seeds. We want forests amidst this urban world. On our journey we are dedicated to achieving three goals:

1. To provide our readers with the best, most inspiring content in the world. Content that thrills us, informs us, challenges our conceptions and changes our minds.

2. To grow a community of thought-leaders and innovators who tirelessly and passionately uphold our values whilst also holding us to account. A community which will one day be big enough and smart enough to profoundly impact our world. You.

3. To build and refine a platform that streamlines, unifies and maximises the potential of our community. As far as possible we hope to remove the technological hurdle from the user experience. It is and will continue to be, a constant work in progress.