Excuse my disconnected ramblings, but the many inspirational ideas floating around my mind these days have prompted more questions, and I don’t have the answers. So here they are, in raw form. I hope they spark a conversation.

Community is the framework. BarCamp is a platform. So are mesh, iSummit and NXNE. MaRS is a container. So is Artscape. There is a need for others.

What is the content? Why, it’s the people, of course!

How do these pieces come together? Is some kind of chaotic order emerging from the cacophony of individual voices and organizations with their diverse, and at times conflicting, creative aspirations?

Who will build the superstructure of the Creative City? What is the social infrastructure demanded by creative people of the places where creativity and innovation will arise? How can sustainable investments be made into that social infrastructure in a way that doesn’t try to “manage” these complex and dynamic social systems within a traditional mechanistic industrial- or social-policy approach?

There is a tremendous buzz and a creative vitality building around the city of Toronto. In the future, this period may be seen as the beginning of a renaissance that marked Toronto’s entry into the pantheon of world-class creative cities. Or it may be seen in retrospect as yet another missed opportunity.

Every creative professional owes it to themselves and their community to participate in this renaissance if it is to exist. Create art, teach, start a new business, launch a new product, invest in the creative potential of your community, pass on your wisdom to the next generation, help build something, enter new markets, celebrate our winners, embrace and learn from your failures.

Can we all become city-builders? Can we build our city while at the same time pursuing our individual dreams within it? What is the link between geographic communities and global communities in a World that [may be] Flat? Is creativity a human right? Is there a natural tension between “creativity-as-human-right” and copyright? Can a culture and a society learn to embrace the rebels and the rule-breakers without trying to tame them? Can the creative spark within all of us be looked upon as holy and deserving of respect?

What is the ROI on community-building? Can the economics of open-source software provide some clues?

Technorati Tags: creativecluster, Creativity, democamp, Innovation, Ontario, talent, torcamp, Toronto

Go to David Crow’s post to read the good news about a possible future home for BarCampToronto/TorCamp/DemoCamp at MaRS. Leave your comments on David’s post and make your voice heard. And yes, sponsorships are welcome. All the better to keep the conversations going over post-Demo drinks. Contact David or let me know if you would be interested in offering sponsorship. One rule: no exclusivity and no quid pro quo other than your name being attached to the event. The community is not for sale, but all are welcome to contribute what they can.

Technorati Tags: Canada, democamp, Ontario, barcamp, torcamp, Toronto

[blogging from What Goes on Behind Closed Doors]

Via David Crow:

Guy Kawasaki’s Garage Technology Ventures lands in Canada. This is a very interesting development for the increasingly vibrant Toronto web startup community, particularly with the links Garage has to Silicon Valley and their strategic focus:

“Typically, we are looking for technologies that are capital-efficient,” he said. “This means they require less than $15-million to get to cash-flow positive.”

Seed stage and a software/web technology focus. I for one welcome this new entry to the Canadian scene. Perhaps somebody from Garage Canada might be interested in attending the next DemoCamp?

Technorati Tags: Canada, democamp, Innovation, Toronto, VC

Late notice: Today at 3pm at MaRS….

What Goes on Behind Closed Doors? [pdf]

Registration is $30.

Companies: Celtic House, Growthworks, Siemens Venture Capital, NOVX Systems, MMV Financial

In the ongoing and often heated debate regarding the appropriate balance for copyright law and DRM technology in a world of digital culture, Lawrence Lessig is both touchstone and lightening rod. Lessig posted a video of a talk he gave a year ago at the NY Public Library, with his minimalist slides synced nicely to the audio from the talk. [.torrent] [Google Video] Must-see TV for anyone with an interest in this debate.

I noticed the intergenerational aspect of this debate at iSummit, between the Boomer content-owners and their remixing social-media children, the Millennials. Lessig calls for calm and a ceasefire while the lobbyists, lawyers and activists take the time to understand the creative potential of these new technologies before that potential is regulated away:

We as a culture need to learn how to listen, to understand, to protect the creators that this technology will enable. Not just the creators from the 20th century, but the creators that our children will be when this technology empowers them. So we need to describe and understand their capacity; to understand how they make and create by hearing from them. They need to tell us, how is jazz made? Was there a lawyer sitting next to the jazz artist as he sampled from the works of those who he built on? How was hip-hop inspired? Was it inspired with a catalogue of work that one called up permission to seek, to use, to remake to express a new form of creativity? How is art made? Tell us. Tell us, who use the tools of law to regulate you. Because unless you start showing us…how you create and have always created….then this potential, which is being realized every moment by kids using technology today, will be taken away.

Technorati Tags: Creativity, culture, futureoftelevision, iSummit, copyright, socialmedia, technology

In a knowledge-based economy, the primary economic battleground is for top-tier talent. In the software space, the 800-pound Gorilla in terms of recruitment is Google. I watched Google’s recruiting video recently, and was struck by how Google positions itself and the types of programs that Google uses to attract the best and the brightest in the world.

How can innovative small to medium-sized companies compete in this global battle for talent? The ability to pay high salaries is important, of course, as is oft-cited but rarely delivered “quality of life”. Is every software company going to be able offer free gourmet organic meals, onsite daycare and 20% time for personal projects? No, not likely. But there are opportunities for groups or clusters of businesses to cooperate in partnership with their home-base communities to strategically provide the kind of quality of life benefits that highly mobile global talent is seeking.

Meanwhile, Canada’s job market is tightening, with recent employment figures showing unemployment at a 32-year low. Apparently, we can thank the high price of oil and Canada’s increasing status as a major petro-exporter as a driving force of this. (25,000 people migrated to oil-rich Alberta in the 4th quarter, a pace of migration not seen since 1980). This is good news for Canadians looking for work. But it is making life difficult for those companies that need to attract and retain the best and brightest talent around the world in order to stay competitive in a global marketplace.

The first, and most important, attraction for top creative and technical talent is working on something truly remarkable. Business needs to offer talent the opportunity to create meaning by providing supportive creative environments and smart business models that can leverage the creative energy of the best and brightest. (i.e. Don’t bother paying big bucks to attract star talent if your product is crap.) If you want to understand how to position your business to attract this kind of talent, I highly recommend Richard Florida’s “Rise of the Creative Class“, where he describes the personal and professional preferences of creative talent, as well as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s “Good Business: Leadership, Flow and the Making of Meaning” which describes the psychology of creativity at work.

Technorati Tags: Canada, creativecluster, Creativity, Ontario, Google, talent, technology, Toronto