Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Howard J. Brown (Management Consultant)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   delete. I find the arguments to keep convincing, but the consensus here appears to be delete. I will userfy upon request. v/r - TP 00:34, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Howard J. Brown (Management Consultant)

 * – ( View AfD View log )
 * Suggestion about disambiguation: Howard J. Brown (Sustainable Business Advocate) is probably more accurate and helpful than Howard J. Brown (Management Consultant); if the article survives AfD this new name would be more helpful. -- Lwolberg (talk) 06:45, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Suggestion about disambiguation: Howard J. Brown (Sustainable Business Advocate) is probably more accurate and helpful than Howard J. Brown (Management Consultant); if the article survives AfD this new name would be more helpful. -- Lwolberg (talk) 06:45, 14 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete. Fails WP:BIO. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 04:42, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Do not Delete. Meets "notable" requirements. I will justify soon.Lwolberg (talk) 05:09, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Businesspeople-related deletion discussions.  —Tom Morris (talk) 06:21, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Delete No reliable sources, non-notable article.--Cox wasan (talk) 09:17, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. For reliable sources, we have citations in major peer-reviewed literature:
 * Brown's text "Decentralizing Electricity" was one of the earliest works on co-generation and renewable power; it was cited often such as twice in "The energy journal, Volume 5, International Association of Energy Economists, 1984", cited in "Recasting the Machine Age" Village Industries By Howard P. Segal, Univ of Massachusetts Press, cited in Bulletin of science, technology & society, Pergamon Press, 1985, and cited in Harvard Environmental Law Review among many others. Are these notable enough?
 * Reviews:
 * The Energy Journal, 1984: http://www.iaee.org/en/publications/book.aspx
 * Choice: publication of the Association of College and Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association, Volume 21, Issues 1-6. p.838
 * Public power, Volume 42, American Public Power Association, 1984, p.80, American Public Power Association
 * (Lwolberg (talk) 20:17, 14 September 2011 (UTC))


 * Brown's work is archived in Stanford University Archive along with the Fuller archive, see for example Series 17. Media materials, Subseries 1. World Game Studies Workshop (Earth Metabolic Design); Opening lecture, University of Pennsylvania. Also: Presentation by Medard Gabel and Howard Brown.Also Chronofile entries Box 427, Folder 4 Dymaxion Chronofile, Vol. 747, [3 of 7]1980 Nov.-Dec., Chronofile. 1980 Apr. 7 - 1980 Nov. 14. Is being archived by a major university notable?
 * Brown's consulting work was mostly done under non-disclosure, but he was among the first to promote co-generation of HVAC in plastic bottle production, and human-generated power for a Fortune 500 battery manufacturer--I am checking if these can be disclosed. If they cannot be disclosed, the claims are hard to support, but they are real and important.
 * Brown has patents, I am seeing how much they were used, cited, etc. Will these bee considered notable?
 * One of the challenges with Brown is a lifelong tendency to play down his role and elevate those around him; this makes it hard to find his name in publications that he oversaw... I am trying to find some more.

Lwolberg (talk) 14:35, 11 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Even collectively these do not make him notable for WP. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 20:15, 11 September 2011 (UTC)


 * weak Keep his principal book, Decentralizing electricity production," by Yale University Press, is in over 200 WorldCat libraries,needs a check for substantial published reviews. The mere citations to it does not make it or the author notable. As for the patents, similarly, merely having them is not notable , but they need to be checked for citations to them and for exploitation.   DGG ( talk ) 20:41, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
 * One book in some libraries does not make him meet WP:AUTHOR requirements. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 20:53, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Weak Delete. Does not appear to meet WP:GNG although I have to say it is very difficult to assess because there appears to be quite a few people with the exact same name and initial on Google search results. Nothing grabbed me as significantly notable.  Nipson anomhmata   (Talk) 00:11, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

About me- short intro
I am a relative newbie, this was my first new article. I am an expert in Fuller and his ideas, and I work with Fuller inspired people like Howard J. Brown. My primary objective in wikipedia is to improve Fuller articles such as tensegrity, Cloud nine (tensegrity sphere), and more, and I have experience in objective academic writing. (I will post more about myself to my page after this).

Conflict of Interest
I announce that I have a WP:COI on this article. This was not clear to me when I set out to post it. The COI is not from any financial arrangement, but due simply to my relationship with Brown which stems from my work on Fuller. I apologize for not fully understanding COI when I started. I gained that understanding while researching answers to the WP people who wrote here, I have learned more and I understand that this COI is serious and needs to be addressed.

However, the COI is subtle, so I detail here its origin and nature:

My best previous WP contribution is a summary paragraph about synergetics. It reads, "	Synergetics is the empirical study of systems in transformation, with an emphasis on total system behavior unpredicted by the behavior of any isolated components, including humanity’s role as both participant and observer." This edit has remained over the years.

I begin with that to highlight that I "get" what Wikipedia is about, and want to help on Fuller-related material. It was no easy trick to write this objective summary of Synergetics. I succeeded due to my deep knowledge of Fuller acquired by spending years reading Fuller material and corresponding with fellow Fuller experts. I posted this sentence because other narrow interpretations of synergetics had come to dominate the opening, and no one included the role of the observer, etc.

Relationship to Howard Brown
Caveat: I am not posting this to share original research, or convince of notability: I am clarifying my COI.

Bottom line: I do research along with Howard Brown, into Fuller-inspired ideas. So entering an article on him seemed natural, as he seems notable yet overlooked to me, for reasons I will outline below.

Details: In the course of my Fuller studies, one expert with whom I developed a relationship is Howard J. Brown. Most Fuller experts that I correspond with are specialists in narrow, complex technical subjects such as polyhedra, tensegrity, or airsteading. Brown is an exception. He focuses on Fuller's concepts as they apply and impact on society and the economy; his approach also leads him to articulate Fuller's ideas in plain English. Driven to deepen my understanding of Fuller's ideas and history I attended courses taught by Brown and maintained extensive correspondence him in a relationship that has been one of teacher and/or colleague. Recently, as a fellow Fuller expert and technical researcher, Brown asked me to research the weight of resources in the framework of Fuller's concept of global resource availability. Fuller proposed what might be called his Sufficiency Axiom: the world has sufficient resources or "life support systems" to support all humanity. In colloquial terms, "there is enough to go around." Brown suggested to me that the truth of this axiom is clearer when business and economic models are coupled with environmental management strategy. He asked me to research details on this, and I did. This research was -- and is -- done in the same open source spirit of Wikipedia, for the mutual benefit of all of us: no money ever changed hands nor was any agenda of self-promotion ever involved in any way.

So I declare my COI, that's it. Phew, I feel better ;-) I have too little experience to know how serious this COI is--I hope it is like any enthusiast posting on a subject in which they are expert--but I assume the worst until told otherwise. Since I declare COI after creating the article, and two days after the first DELETE requests, I voluntarily desist from strongly advocating, I desist from editing the page.

Notable yes/no
Now I report, not in the spirit of advocating or convincing, but simply to share what I found in response to the delete queries above, I respectfully share here what I found.

Brown is nearly impossible to search for, not only due to his common name as Nipsonanomhmata notes; also, he is a self-effacing person.

Brown is giving a TED talk in October 2011-- TEDx Los Angeles recruited him due to his notable history with Fuller (the same history that attracted me, of course).
 * http://www.ted.com/tedx/events/3644 -- Lwolberg (talk) 05:11, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Brown's most notable successes are his two social ventures, World Game and RPM.

World Game is highly notable, no doubt, and Brown made it happen. Brown's role is clearly notable from Medard Gabel) repeated credits in the published works (see for example Ho-Ping). No other independent venture was crafted from Fuller's social ideas and run with constant input from Fuller. Brown and his partner Gabel translated the World Game into an educational program, gaming product and social venture organization that continued for over 35 years; see World Game for more details (though that article needs a serious update).

The notable nature of Brown's book on Fuller's design science is found here--this is like a positive review by an authoritative source--the listing by the official Buckminster Fuller Institute as a top ten significant resource on "the practice and fundamental principles of comprehensive anticipatory design science and its relevance to contemporary global issues and design practice" [List of resources,] Accessed 12 Sept 2011.

Brown is noted in an independent source as a leader: Wendy Jedlička in her book "Packaging sustainability: tools, systems, and strategies for innovative" lists nine "leaders... in sustainable design". Each has a Wikipedia article--except Brown! Her full list: William McDonough, Medard Gabel, Stewart Brand, Jay Baldwin, Paul MacCready, John Todd (biologist), Hunter Lovins, Amory Lovins. See page 135, Google books.

The noteworthiness of Brown's 2nd venture RPM is hard to detect in conventional methods, as most of its work was done under contract and credited to its customers. Two exceptions:
 * Duracell did take the unusual step of publishing its work with Brown as "Total Environmental Quality Management" in Total Quality Review v4 n3 July/August 1994.
 * Connecticut Business News Journal in 1999 noted RPM's work in sustainability (note the early date!), quoting Brown's employee Gregor Barnum, now Director of Corporate Consciousness for Seventh Generation. (http://www.conntact.com/archive_index/archive_pages/2386_Business_New_Haven.html)

The notability of RPM is hard to catch--there was no cover on Fortune magazine when this small firm was purchased by RETEC of Thermo Electron Corporation. But that acquisition itself is a sign of RPM's noteworthiness, as small management consulting firms are typically not bought out in this way. There is a saying, a consultancy is worth only the value of its copy machines, meaning that it is the people and not the firm that count; but in the notable case of RPM it is the firm and its strategies for increasing resource performance while aligning environment and business needs that was acquired.

Brown's teaching at Yale University Architecture and Planning school is noted as an influence on Harold Linton, Director School of Art College of Visual and Performing Arts George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia. [Accessed 12 Sept 2011]. Brown's teaching at Wesleyan University is noted by the university's official website as critical to the innovative Science in Society Program.

Thanks
'Nuff said, please forgive me for learning as I go along.

Coda: Brown's article should have inbound links from relevant paragraphs from the articles on Buckminster Fuller, Medard Gabel, Environmental Management, and more, but now with my COI I am not sure I can make those links--if the article remains.

Thanks for all your efforts, hope this post is appropriate and helps! -- Lwolberg (talk) 14:12, 13 September 2011 (UTC)


 * delete longwinded desperate attempts to justify articles only emphasize clear WP:COI issues. Fails WP:BIO LibStar (talk) 11:44, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.