The ChangeCamp community is growing and continuing to build momentum. After ChangeCamps in Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver and with organizers coming together in Edmonton, Halifax, Montreal and beyond, this felt like a good time to reflect and share what we’ve been doing together and explore some possibilities for the future.
To that end, I hosted a cross-Canada conference call for past and prospective ChangeCamp organizers and allies to share where we came from, what we’ve accomplished and learned and where we might go. Detailed notes are available on the wiki. We are building relationships across Canada so organizers can support and learn from each other. If you are interested in joining us, please join the Google Group.
A Point of Departure
A second goal of this call was to share a synthesis of my own accumulated thoughts, conversations and inspirations over the past six months, describing what I believe is under the hood of ChangeCamp and to describe a vision for what ChangeCamp might become. I am embedding my slides here to share with the wider community.
This vision is speculative, blue-sky and from my own point of view. I am sharing it to begin a deeper discussion and to begin designing the kernel of ChangeCamp. A fuller description of this vision and your comments follow after the jump…
I thought I would finally share the slides from my recent talk at the Ottawa Social Media Breakfast. Thanks to Robin Browne for capturing the audio MP3 which I sync’d to the Slidecast below. Enjoy!
Unfortunately I won’t be able to attend ChangeCamp Ottawa (the first ChangeCamp since we created the format in January) myself, due to the inevitable post-event exhaustion (and likely hangover) from organizing the SpinTO fundraising launch event on Friday, May 15th. The stars just weren’t aligned for this one. But no matter, because Mark Faul, Ian Capstick and many other great Ottawa folks have been doing a great job with minimal advice from me. Which is perfect for me and shows that the model can scale and propagate.
For those who are able to come to the Ottawa SMB, here’s a little preview of what I’ll be talking about:
Social Web, Social Change & the Return of Community.
The social web is making possible new and exciting capabilities, new ways of participating in a global conversation. However, often those interested in social media and online community leave something very important, and very human, behind: our need for face-to-face interaction, to meet people around our shared passions and to have an impact, to create meaning. Drawing from his work creating hybrid online and face-to-face participatory experiences, Toronto-based ChangeCamp organizer and consultant Mark Kuznicki will outline some theory and practice about how the social web meets physical community.
The next generation – Generation Y, the Millennials, the Net Generation – emerges, announces itself and declares its intentions this year.
I talk about these amazing, creative and post-partisan young people a lot in my work – their values, the way they work, their use of media, their learning styles. I usually explain that my role, and the role of my Generation X peers, is to act as translators and brokers between the Boomers and their Millennial children – transferring knowledge, power and capital to a new generation that will become the dominant force in our future. I know my place, and I have confidence in their abilities to fix the crap their parents have left in their wake.
I highly recommend reading my good friend David Eaves‘ article Progressivism’s End co-written with his frequent collaborator, Taylor Owen. The analysis is very strong and it is the most effectively written articulation of what I believe to be the emerging realignment of policy and politics as influenced by web technology, the creative class and the steady transition of power from Boomers to Gen Y.
Because I love it so, a couple of excerpts. On how the Left is killing Progressivism:
Seeing their hard-fought accomplishments under threat, traditional baby boomer progressives began to prioritize the survival of New Deal policies and institutions over the idealistic outcomes they were built to promote. Thus the central paradox of progressivism was born: its older-style advocates, entrenched against innovation and reform, even in the service of progressive values, had unwittingly become the new conservatives.
