Cross-posted from ChangeCamp.ca. 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...

A World in Crisis

I believe that much of what causes us to gather around the word "Change" from such diverse walks of life comes from the reality of the world in which we find ourselves. Our problems are outstripping our capabilities to solve them. They are multiplying and they are complex. Our institutions charged with managing the world on our behalf are straining to keep up to the accelerating pace of change. From financial to economic crises, from climate to broader environmental and social crises, it is becoming clear to many that what has worked for us in the past is no longer working. This global reality poses risks to each of us, the communities we call home and civilization as we know it.

Complexity

Much of this mismatch between our problems and our capabilities to solve them comes from the increasingly complex and hyperconnected systems around us. As individuals, as institutions and as a society we lack the necessary tools and skills to perceive complexity and make sense of it, much less to manage it. We need new tools and new institutions for this new world.

Community, Social Capital and Connectedness

From Putnam we know the importance of social capital to community resilience and success. And yet throughout the industrial age, our communities have become increasingly disconnected. Our suburban model of urban planning separated work from life and people from each other. Professionalization and specialization of everything separated capabilities into silos of competency managed within command and control systems. Mass media and politics separated people into clumsy demographic categories that denied much of our humanity. Our public service model took lessons from mass commercial enterprise and began to look at citizens as customers. We've lost our sense of civic belonging and participation.

The essential challenge is to transform the isolation and self-interest within our communities into connectedness and caring for the whole. - Peter Block: "Community: the Structure of Belonging", p.2

Social Web

Into this vacuum of disconnectedness comes a new world of social connection, participation and collaboration enabled by the social web. The set of new social behaviours enabled by social web technologies are, in the view of Clay Shirky, retrieving some much older patterns of human social behaviour. The return of peer to peer, of leaderless organizations, of the circle as the form of social gathering, of tribes, of reputational authority and of trust are all enabled and embedded within the nature of the social web and the technologies that underpin it.

We are living in the middle of the largest increase in expressive capability in the history of the human race. - Clay Shirky: "Here Comes Everybody", p.106

What is ChangeCamp?

ChangeCamp is both a platform (online and face-to-face) and a community. ChangeCamp is a platform for citizens to convene other citizens in order to transform their communities and help create change. It is a third-space commons for collaboration that sits outside government, private and institutional structures. ChangeCamp activates and engages what community member David Eaves dubbed the Long Tail of Public Policy. [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="532" caption="Long Tail of Public Policy, David Eaves"][/caption]

Methods: Open Space + Social Media + Open Innovation

Embedded within ChangeCamp are three primary memes and methods.

1. Citizen-led large group participatory gatherings similar to Open Space (“ChangeCamps”)
2. Online participation and collaboration using social web technology; same time/place and different time/place
3. Open innovation approaches to value creation: open source, open data, open access, creative commons

A Community of Values and Interests

ChangeCamp is a post-partisan community of citizens interested in using these methods to create change. As a community, we are interested in open government, social innovation, citizen engagement, participatory democracy and public sector renewal. We are interested in exploring the use of social web technology and open innovation approaches as enablers of of positive social change. The ChangeCamp community is both local and national/global, and comprises a network of networks at a variety of scales. David Eaves began an important conversation on the values driving many in the so-called "open movement" with his recent post dubbed A Neo-Progressive Manifesto. While some of the specific values he proposes may be debatable, the themes of human-scale, sustainable, participatory, open, community values and vibrant, creative, remixable and hybrid solutions to public/social problems outside traditional institutions seem to resonate for many drawn to ChangeCamp. Further work and dialogue on these values is important and of interest, but our action does not depend upon a final and definitive exposition of community values.

ChangeCamp Purpose

Given all of the above observations of the context, values and methods emerging within the ChangeCamp platform and community, I would like to propose this statement of purpose for discussion by our community:

ChangeCamp spreads the emerging ideas, tools and methods of a networked society and builds social capital to accelerate community transformation. ChangeCamp is both a platform and a community of action.

The fundamental work of restoring community and facilitating a shift from industrial age to network age institutional structures is the core work that binds together the disparate threads of the ChangeCamp community. That work is focused on making positive social change happen and transforming our communities in line with our values.

A Goal Designed for Action

Enable the organization of 100 ChangeCamps in communities across Canada in September 2010.

This goal is something that Daniel Rose suggested to me in conversation as a useful tool for designing an approach to the future of ChangeCamp. It is intended to be big, bold, actionable and useful for the purposes of creating action and a direction for ChangeCamp. I converted this initial goal into very rough estimates about reach and impact. Assuming 100 participant co-creators at face-to-face events and an online participation platform for ongoing engagement that follows the online community 90-9-1 rule, we can see how achieving such a goal might translate into 1 million Canadians aware and engaged in the activities of community transformation.

A Set of Activities to Achieve this Goal

In order to scale the ChangeCamp platform and community to this level, a program of work to create the enabling framework would be necessary. The actual work in local communities would be undertaken by groups of community organizers, but those organizers need tools and support. An initial scope of activity might include:

• Identify and provide tools, support and training for local organizers
• Develop and publish design patterns for events, both large-scale and small
• Design and develop an integrated online organization and collaboration platform at ChangeCamp.ca
• Build partnerships with organizations with shared interests: citizen engagement, public sector renewal and social innovation
• Deploy social media analytics tools to translate unstructured content into useful information and to measure community engagement and action

Thinking Big

While this vision is large and daunting, I believe that it is achievable. Within our community, we have the talent, networks, methods, skills and capabilities to deliver something truly transformative. I am encouraging us all to think bigger than we normally allow ourselves, to imagine possibility and to bring that imagination of the possible to others. My questions are:

1. Is this vision attractive to you?
2. Can you imagine yourself within it?
3. Is the purpose and goal described worth pursuing?

I look forward to our conversation. You can leave a comment on this post, join the Google Group to discuss, reach me on Twitter (@remarkk) where we are using the hashtag #ChangeCamp or email me at mark@remarkk.com.

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!

For those in the Ottawa area, I will be speaking at Social Media Breakfast Ottawa 9 on Wednesday, May 6th. Thanks to Simon Chen and Mark Faul for inviting me to Ottawa in the lead-up to ChangeCamp Ottawa on Saturday, May 16th. 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 City of Toronto's Web 2.0 Summit held November 26th and 27th will go down in history as the moment that Government 2.0 landed in Toronto.  The truly historical moment was Mark Surman's keynote at lunch, with an audience that included Mayor David Miller.  Surman posed three challenges to the City:

1. Open our data. transit. library catalogues. community centre schedules. maps. 311. expose it all so the people of Toronto can use it to make a better city. do it now.
2. Crowdsource info gathering that helps the city.  somebody would have FixMyStreet.to up and running in a week if the Mayor promised to listen. encourage it.
3. Ask for help creating a city that thinks like the web. copy Washington, DC’s contest strategy. launch it at BarCamp.

The Mayor responded immediately by pre-announcing that TTC routing data would be opened up in Google Transit format in June of 2009, and said that, while he couldn't promise that the City would be ready to process the output, that Toronto's web geeks should go ahead and do a Toronto version of FixMyStreet and that City would listen. This is huge. The moment was the culmination of a lot of our hopes and dreams for a city that understands the power of open, the meaning of participation and a signal of a more effective and responsive government of and for the people of Toronto. Will Pate and I have offered our assistance to make this vision a reality and we hope others will join us. Mark's presentation was excellent and highly recommended.  I have embedded the slides here, but you should go to Mark's blog for the full audio presentation (and audio of Mayor Miller's response) for the full effect.

Well Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin don't get the last laugh. It turns out that the community organizer could kick the 9/11 hero's ass and take down a helicopter-armed rogue moose-hunter for good measure. When Rudy and Palin scoffed at Obama's background as a community organizer, I instinctively bristled. Tuesday night showed what community organizing can do. Not only did Obama take the electoral college in a landslide, but the 50-state strategy made red states like North Carolina blue while turning many others purple. He did it with huge turnout, a dominant position among emerging voter blocks like youth and ethnic voters and with techniques learned from the trenches in Chicago. Only a community organizer could pull this off. The stories from the field about the Obama vs McCain ground game show the difference. Obama's field offices were reported full and buzzing with volunteers from all over the country. McCain's campaign offices were mostly empty and dull, or closed. Then there's the Obama campaign's web strategy, which will go down in history as the first mass scale and most effective use of the social web for political or any other form of organization. But it's just the beginning, and there is so much yet to be written! Change.gov shows that Obama fully intends to take his massive email and sms lists, the lessons learned from the campaign and his community organizing instincts together with a new call and program around National Service to really transform the meaning of politics, community and country. The clues are there, and I just can't help but stare in awe and amazement. For those of us who dreamed of the potential of marrying bottom-up social movements with a new kind of leadership style, it's hard to process that our moment may really truly be now. All of a sudden, the work of community organizing just got a new and rather Presidential luster. For those of us who work in the field where social web and real-world issues meet, it's going to be a very busy time indeed.

Yesterday in Toronto, I co-hosted and facilitated an open forum on the future of Canada's open internet with Matt Thompson of http://savetheinternet.com and Steve Anderson of http://saveournet.ca/. The intent of the gathering was to engage Toronto's tech/web/media community around the issue of network neutrality and to launch a coalition and campaign to preserve and enhance Canada's digital future. In March, the net neutrality issue finally made the front pages and broadcast media in Canada, triggered by news of Bell Canada's throttling of third-party Internet Service Providers' peer-to-peer traffic. The unilateral action was seen by advocates of a neutral and open Internet as anti-competitive and a dangerous precedent, and it triggered a backlash against Bell Canada. Bell confirmed advocates worst fears in May, when it launched its own online video store after having throttled P2P traffic, much of which is dedicated to video - both legal and otherwise. Thompson provided some excellent background on the issue drawing from his experience on the U.S. campaign around network neutrality, which is well advanced compared to the debate in Canada. Matt shared the U.S. focused viral video, Save the Internet!, which won a 2007 Webby People's Voice Award: Thompson presented a clear description of the principles underlying the neutral and open web and its importance to Canada's future as an innovative economy and a free society. He also articulated a nuanced understanding that the last-mile monopoly providers (principally Bell and Rogers in Canada) aren't evil, they are merely doing their job and lobbying for rules that are in their shareholders' interests. He described that what is really missing in Canada is everybody else - all the many stakeholders that are damaged by a set of norms that currently allows for discrimination of content on the web by these monopoly providers. Canada needs a plan. Thompson made a passionate plea that the real underlying issue is that the government of Canada's laissez faire approach ("we don't regulate the Internet") shows that Canada has no plan for its digital future. It has no vision about the infrastructure for everything else, and how we're going to compete in a global digital future when other countries have long passed us by in terms of broadband policy, infrastructure speed, access and costs. Compare this situation against Barack Obama's Technology policies. and it's clear that there is a political opportunity to show leadership on the technology file. SaveOurNet.ca promises to be a vehicle for everybody else. SaveOurNet.ca is intended to act as a broad, inclusive coalition of strange bedfellows: freedom of speech activists and technology entrepreneurs; unions and third-party ISPs; large technology companies and broadcasters. SaveOurNet.ca needs our community's help. Effective awareness campaigns like the Save the Internet video, coalition building, media relations, community engagement, participation in CRTC hearings and direct lobbying of elected officials requires dedicated resources - volunteers alone won't do it. Big players are being lined up to support the effort, including major public sector unions and companies like Google Canada and Teksavvy. But the campaign needs a vote of confidence from Canada's web/tech/media and other communities of interest to trigger the pooling of additional resources from larger organizations and foundations. In fundraising terms, SaveOurNet.ca is looking for Angels.

What You Can Do:

1. Sign onto the coalition at http://SaveOurNet.ca/, either as an individual supporter or as an organizational supporter.
2. PLEASE DONATE what you can to the seed fund for SaveOurNet.ca, and then blog about it, share it on Facebook, send to your networks and communities, talk about it.
3. Contact your MP's office and arrange for a sit-down chat about the issue during their summer hiatus from Parliament. Just booking the appointment will force your MP to get briefed on the issue, which is the first step in educating our elected officials and raising it on the political agenda come the fall.