Awesome Member of the Week: Patrick McDonnell Encourages You to Define Your Own Success

GOOD is featuring interviews of devoted members each week on good.is. Patrick McDonnell is a civic hacker, urban designer, and all-around creative.

A 'Do' I want to share with the world

Teach People What You Know

I think a lot of people think that coveting knowledge gives them some kind of advantage in the world, and that using that knowledge to get what they want is a good practice. I’ve seen the opposite. Coveting knowledge makes you a miser. Sharing knowledge makes you a sage.

One of the fears I had early on about teaching people what I know was that they’d take it and bank off of it, but the more I teach the more I learn so that I can teach more. Teaching other people makes you smarter.

Book I'd recommend

I just love, LOVE, books that break down how to do things. The one I’m reading right now about marketing is Jab Jab Jab Right Hook - Gary Vaynerchuk. I also love me some science fiction. On that front, I just picked up Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, which is actually more about science practice.

My favorite teacher

Maria Arquero de Alarcon. Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning and at the University of Michigan. That woman is a game changer! Without her...I don’t learn about design, I don’t challenge myself in grad school, and I don’t become who I am now.

My manifesto

Follow the breadcrumbs. Define your own success. Show up. Laugh a lot. Ignore the nastiness. Never give up. Have integrity. Be selfless. Be you!

What you should care about...

Space Exploration! Neil deGrasse Tyson gives a really good commencement speech on how space exploration got the nation to dream, and how reaching for something that’s bigger than ourselves solves a lot of other collateral problems. Plus, the idea of going out into the unknown and learning more about the universe is just so cool! I totally want to be an Astronaut!

My biggest goal for 2014

Make urbanism accessible to the masses!