As a facilitator, I am struck by the quality of the Agile Coach Camp community, the passion and energy that each of the participants is bringing to the gathering and their conversations.
I’m not an Agile coach. As an outsider, I see in this group many people who feel that Agile is more than a vocation, it is a calling. I see a sensitivity to human social needs and a dedication to bending human social and technology systems towards improved value creation. I see a group of people who see themselves as agents of change, and who have the capacity to make the world a better place.
I’m honoured to have been asked to help this group have the conversations they need to have, to become better Agile coaches, build better teams and to become a better community.
On June 1st GovCamp Canada is happening in Ottawa, and a great group of people are already registered and attending: http://govcamp.eventbrite.com/
Thanks to the support of Microsoft and CIPS and with the involvement of a government 2.0, open government and government transformation practitioners and leaders from both inside and outside government, this event provides a unique opportunity to accelerate knowledge and practice as part of a national conversation at multiple levels of government in Canada.
I was honoured that organizer John Weigelt asked me to help by facilitating the unconference portion of the day and moderating the opening panel discussion. I will be looking for participants to propose and lead session topics.
But what do we need to talk about? What are the key issues and topics in the so-called government 2.0 space in Canada, and what can we do to advance the conversation, thinking and practice in Canada?
Please leave a comment and/or tweet with the hashtag #GovCamp with your must-have session topics.
If you haven’t already, please register to attend this event, either in person in Ottawa or via the livestream being provided by our friend Walter Schwabe of FusedLogic.
This is my first post for the Toronto Star’s Your City My City blog. It is reposted from here: http://thestar.blogs.com/yourcitymycity/2010/04/changing-torontos-political-culture.html
Toronto, the city and the region, is being transformed. Like many global urban regions, we are growing rapidly and that growth is changing the face of our community. A recent StatsCan study tells us that by 2031 we can expect the people of the Toronto region to be 63% visible minorities.
We are experiencing rapid and accelerating change on many fronts, but our political culture isn’t keeping pace. If it doesn’t catch up, we risk creating a city plagued by systemic problems stemming from exclusion, political dysfunction and the growth of a permanent underclass alongside a confused dominant class trying to reclaim an idea of Toronto based upon a mirage from its past.
Others have argued, and I agree, that the people who govern our city ought to reflect the diversity of the city itself. All adult permanent residents of Toronto should have the the opportunity to vote municipally and fully participate in civic life, regardless of their Canadian citizenship status. Despite the many commenters to the post by Gelek Badheytsang linked above who find the idea offensive, it is an idea whose time is coming. Newcomers and their children need better on-ramps to civic participation.
Beyond specific political reforms, I argue that we also need a cultural shift.
Torontonians are a reserved people. Visitors often comment on our city’s coolly aloof attitude, while at the same time lauding our diversity and the vibrancy of our multicultural assets. How do we reconcile these two impressions?
My hunch is that the dominant culture’s tolerance of diversity has for the most part been made easy by social distance and relative prosperity. When difficult decisions press us – hard choices forced upon us by limited resources – how well will we perform at reconciling our differences?
It’s not just our leaders who need to change. We need to change. “We have to engage”, John Tory said on this blog post, “WE have to listen to EACH OTHER”. I agree.
I believe that we change the realm of possibilities when we shift the dialogue we have about this city and our place within it. We need to talk about our responsibilities to each other as well as our rights and individual needs and desires. We need a movement for civic engagement powered by people.
We need to have difficult conversations that acknowledge our differences and we need to transcend these differences in ways that help us make collective decisions. We need to recognize that our futures are shared, and we need to seize the opportunity to participate in shaping that shared future.
My vision of the future of Toronto as a livable city is a place where citizenship, civic life and community are re-imagined and reinvigorated, where the potential of our diversity is realized as a strength and an asset for our future prosperity. For the experiment of Toronto to succeed, we as a people must become world leaders in civic engagement and civic innovation that embraces an inclusive diversity.
This will be difficult. This is a job for all of us; not only our City government, our elected officials and our civic leaders. In future posts, I will propose specific ideas for how to realize this vision. I invite you to share your own ideas in the comments.
Here’s an interesting new take on an Apps contest for developers. This one is sponsored by the Province of British Columbia and is being launched in tandem with a climate change data catalogue. The contest is open to residents of Canada, so if you care about climate change and want to show off your skills, check it out.
via igniter.com
Check out this great deck on social innovation by my friend Mike Lewkowitz (@Igniter). It’s a great intro to the concepts of social innovation and social entrepreneurship. Mike and I share a very similar understanding of the state of the world, and the reasons we do the work we do.
via youtube.com
Cool video. Be sure to watch through to the half-way mark.