Mark Kuznicki and fellow ChangeCampers …. thank you for such an admirable amount of work and investment of personal time.

The ChangeCamp: Next post up at www.changecamp.ca is a jumping off point for the rest of this post.

A few thoughts come to mind …

I agree that the big, hairy, audacious goal is the right way to go and spreading ideas are the primary goal. Just having 1 million Canadians understand the ideas of personal empowerment & accountability, the resurrection of active citizenship, open source, open innovation, social media, scaled up forms of social capital etc. is a formidable, worthy goal.

To achieve this, I agree that you need a clear “kernel” as Mark describes or what I might term as a memetic strategy.

We talked about two ideas in that first ChangeCamp planning meeting that I think are worth resurfacing.

“ChangeCamp in a box” – perhaps this just means exploring each ChangeCamp’s participants for a connection to another community and then following them there with facilitation support and local PR.

How many ChangeCamps happen if each person who has thus far participated in one is recruited/persuaded/supported to facilitate one with the largest community that they might personally rally?

We also talked about collaborating with educational channels. I would like to think that students from senior high school years, through to colleges & universities would activate freely around these themes but that may be more difficult than I imagine.

I wonder if funding and scaling go hand in hand. Perhaps it is too early to worry about that. The classic start up issue – spend your time & energy building the initiative or spend your time & energy looking for money. Seth Godin, I think suggests putting off dealing with the funding issues as long as possible and I think this is a critical issue.

It is critical because I believe that the elephant(s) in the room (or not in the room as the case may be) are the paid political and bureaucratic classes in this country.

They are entrenched in closed social networks designed to maintain their status quo.

There are a few effects from this:

- they are a filter for the movement that ChangeCamp is trying to lead. By directing your activities “outside” of traditional institutions you maybe steering around the biggest potential to advance ChangeCamp goals. If you for example, attempted to have ChangeCamps within traditional institutions (i.e. government departments, political parties, etc) you might quickly set off rapid memetic effects and faster adoption across the country.

- as soon as you get money involved, you enable regular citizens to abdicate. I feel that there is an armchair ethic in Canada. Folks pay their taxes, cut cheques to the paid politicos & bureaucrats in charities & non-profits and then they are free to go about their day to day “real lives” as long as they keep well read on the resulting antics through broadcast media. In addition, there is no quicker way to loose the enthusiastic engagement of collaborators and dedicated volunteers then to start paying some of them while not others.

I am also thinking of one of the themes that popped up in several sessions during ChangeCamp Toronto.

Open space/Open source reduces risk.

The complex problems that we face are not new and the intellectual capital to deal with them is de facto state of the art. What is new is our capacity to deal with these complex problems with optimum solutions rather then compromises. That is being driven by bandwidth, cheap computing & storage and search (i.e. emerging ubiquitous access to the best information). It is the gap between optimum (or best possible) and election cycle driven compromise that is at the heart of ChangeCamper discontent in my view.

Politicos, bureaucrats and government are even more risk adverse than Canadian businesses. There is virtually no upside for taking a risk for a politico or bureaucrat yet risk must be involved in adopting the innovations that ChangeCamp hopes to advance.

This may be a key. Getting across the message to governments, politicos and bureaucrats that open space/open source enables them to outsource risk while taking responsibility for innovation may make ChangeCamp irresistible.

The agenda for more open governance (or whatever labels best describe) in the United States did not take a purposeful walk in the political wilderness. It was not naive about “post-partisanship”. Hundreds of years of institutional tradition will not be eclipsed by a new form. What IS happening is that all of our traditional institutions are going through a creative destruction/redesign period … adjusting to the network era … re-architecting to the new scale of human proportions. Reform (not the political party) is a Canadian tradition that ChangeCamp is championing here IMHO.

What happened in the U.S. was a kind of piggyback/incorporation/hijack of a budding political force. Does Obama become President without co-opting the open space/open source, social media movement? Does the movement obtain fast political power without co-opting the Obama campaign?

So the “kernel” to the unassociated or “freely associated” Canadians anchored by 100,000 digerati types (10,000 facilitators) that ChangeCamp hopes to activate may be empowerment – encapsulated in the question, “How do we Re-imagine government and citizenship in the age of participation?”.

But for the sake of ChangeCamp goals and the future of Canada, I urge ChangeCampers to consider how power is wielded in this country and how very real, consequential transitions are undertaken(like it or not & by the way, I must say I am more comfortable in the “not like it” category personally).

Do your one million ChangeCampers need to be unassociated? If they are part of the existing establishment of power in public service what is in it for them? Please consider the “kernel” of outsourcing risk and methodology that enables parties, bureaucracies and governments to generate wide support for best possible solutions (instead of compromises). As I have mentioned before, but not fully reasoned, a question that does not threaten the status quo by re-imagining it, but incorporates/co-opts it, might be “What does “Responsible Government” mean in the age of participation?” Since the beginning Canadians have demanded no more or less from government.  Go ahead be consistent with Eaves but honour Lessig and be cognizant that creativity and innovation always builds on the past.  Wake up one million Canadians to the fact that Responsible Government means open data, open source, online collaboration, etc (because it does) and you have an election issue.

By the way, I am not suggesting a semantic revisit of “the Camp question”. Don’t waste that kind of energy or time.

Let’s just recognize that we are all participants in inevitable “Change” being driven by broadband connectivity, cheap computing, mobility & GPS. As far as I can tell, ChangeCampers seem to be a vanguard of this change. It is happening everywhere – we are just temporarily positioned to make it more evenly distributed.

Preston Manning might advocate the creation of a completely separate movement. But I wonder, if in this case, that would be something like creating a political party to advocate the adoption of the personal computer.

As an aside, Nan Lin’s network theory of social capital is more forward looking than Putnam’s in my opinion, but who cares in this context.

The point is that building social capital (particularly online, but also IRW) for rapid adaptation to the network era is a great purpose and it is critical to Canada’s position in the world.

The change must be achieved across our entire society so why hold back from advancing it in any quarter with any group that we can infiltrate … especially political parties and government departments.

Peter Jones is founder of Redesign Research, and spends time in both the US and Toronto. He’s a visiting scholar at U of T, a senior fellow of OCAD’s Strategic Innovation Lab, and has figured out the secret to making these commitments work: time travel. See Peter’s blog at Design Dialogues.  We are grateful for this guest post …

A week ago 150 people in Toronto started a movement called ChangeCamp, a rapid-response unconference of tech, design, and policy/government people who engaged the question:

How do we re-imagine government and citizenship in the age of participation?

I drove up from Dayton, Ohio the day before ChangeCamp and showed up at 9:00 ready to go. We do not create these types of opportunities for engagement in the US – we mostly work through issue groups, or local citizen activist groups. With the monstrous problems in the US over the last 8 years, we have been fighting for peace, justice, human rights, civil rights, and fair elections (I’m from Ohio and what you heard is all true). And we have celebrated the Obama era with hope, expectancy, and mostly relief.

But ChangeCamp was in my new hometown of Toronto, and I was delighted to be a supporter and to lead a session (co-led Citizen Participation in Policy Making with Karen Smith).

Just a few days later, back in my US homeland I was alerted to this news on the NCDD (National Council for Dialogue and Deliberation) list:

“Barack Obama has yet to announce who his chief technology officer will be. But he has hired a Silicon Valley exec for another role: Google product manager Katie Jacobs Stanton will be the new President’s “director of citizen participation,” starting in March, sources tell me.”

http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090128/obama-gets-a-google-vet-but-not-for-cto/

Comments show respondents are quite disappointed that the pick has no bona fides in civic sector organizations. Critical responses were showing up elsewhere to rebut this appointment already.

“Stanton, sources say, will be part of the White House New Media Team headed up by Macon Phillips — putting “citizen participation” under the White House communications umbrella, it seems.”

It’s great to know such an office has been established at the WH, but hiring a technology expert without any evidence of commitments in social justice and civil society may be telling us that participation is considered to be – let’s be charitable and call it “scalable communications.” I find it an interesting paradox – the Google veteran probably stands for open government and can certainly coordinate technology efforts to engage mass citizen responses. But the need to engage citizen participation is social and cultural, and the social technology design should follow the values and vision of participatory democracy. Not enough info to go on, I know, but let’s consider this a new move for us to track and learn from.

I’m on the board of a US non-profit, the Agoras Institute, that organizes design and decision making for civic sector and policy making stakeholder groups. We are currently holding a progressive (and voluntary) virtual session of structured dialogue (SDD) on the inhibitors to Obama’s vision of participatory democracy. As we are able to understand it, of course. We have conducted one round with about 15 international participants, with the online wiki for the dialogue at: http://obamavision.wikispaces.com/

Our inquiry may be relevant to this White House office. Responses to the focus question of:

“In the context of Obama’s vision for engaging stakeholders from all walks of life in a bottom-up democracy employing Internet technology, what factors do we anticipate, on the basis of our experiences with SDD, will emerge as inhibitors to the actualization of his vision?”

Show in the root cause mapping: http://obamavision.wikispaces.com/Round+5-Root+Cause+Map to include one of 3 deep driver inhibitors as: Corporate Control of the means of Democracy.

Most of my consulting is in the corporate sector, so I’m not anti-corporate. But I do believe we need a better champion, and Canada might learn from this mistaken selection. It’s not enough to just create a new role for citizen participation and then expect it to be a large-scale social network for contribution management. If government is going to be open, they must signal their intention to really listen. We need a citizen-centered policy advocate to be at the gov table, especially where our official representation via Congress or Parliament is weakened by years of the megaphone voice of corporate lobbying.

Citizen participation in the US may be emerging from a long consumerism-induced slumber and it’s got a weak voice – we need to be sure we’re being heard, not being managed by just more scalable social technologies.

MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES

SUBJECT:      Transparency and Open Government

My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government.  We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

Government should be transparent.  Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing.  Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset. My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use. Executive departments and agencies should harness new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public feedback to identify information of greatest use to the public.

Government should be participatory. Public engagement enhances the Government’s effectiveness and improves the quality of its decisions. Knowledge is widely dispersed in society, and public officials benefit from having access to that dispersed knowledge. Executive departments and agencies should offer Americans increased opportunities to participate in policymaking and to provide their Government with the benefits of their collective expertise and information. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public input on how we can increase and improve opportunities for public participation in Government.

Government should be collaborative.  Collaboration actively engages Americans in the work of their Government. Executive departments and agencies should use innovative tools, methods, and systems to cooperate among themselves, across all levels of Government, and with nonprofit organizations, businesses, and individuals in the private sector.  Executive departments and agencies should solicit public feedback to assess and improve their level of collaboration and to identify new opportunities for cooperation.

I direct the Chief Technology Officer, in coordination with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Administrator of General Services, to coordinate the development by appropriate executive departments and agencies, within 120 days, of recommendations for an Open Government Directive, to be issued by the Director of OMB, that instructs executive departments and agencies to take specific actions implementing the principles set forth in this memorandum. The independent agencies should comply with the Open Government Directive.

This memorandum is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by a party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

This memorandum shall be published in the Federal Register.

BARACK OBAMA

January 21, 2009

nice work … what does “responsible government” mean to you?

Rahaf Harfoush is a Canadian who was a member of the team that planned Obama’s social media grassroots campaign.  Thank you Rahaf for this timely, non-partisan guest post …

With President-Elect Obama’s inauguration only a few hours away, I’ve been reflecting on the campaign and the profound changes that I have already seen in American Politics. Seeing our American neighbors using technology to unite and mobilize for a cause they believe in renewed my hope in the political process.

What struck me most is how fast these changes happened. From redefining social media’s role within a political campaign to creating unprecedented channels of fundraising and grassroots mobilization, I for one learned it doesn’t have to take decades to transform old systems.

Change can happen fast and it can happen now. We are welcoming the world’s first Internet President, and as Canadians we should definitely be taking note.

In the last few months we have seen Obama’s transition team introduce weekly Youtube addresses, online policy brainstorms via Change.gov and a nation wide survey encouraging people to meet and discuss the changes they would like to see in their country. Notably, the emphasis is and remains to be on PEOPLE impacting change. It sounds so simple when you say it, but it is something that is so often overlooked: we have to bring the changes we need to government.

The Obama campaign showed us what was possible, but it is up to us to carry the spirit of his message forward especially to Ottawa. We have become too lax in our own governance. Parliament is on the brink of dissolution and we have a Prime Minister who seems to be more concerned with hoarding power then acting in the best interest of the Canadian People.

So what do we do about? A lot. Get involved. There are several initiatives like this site being launched to provide Canadians with a platform for new ideas to push us forward.

My good friend, Mark Kuzniki has created a collaborative crowdsourced event called ChangeCamp which will help bring members of the public and members of political parties together to examine where our system is failing and how we can help fix it.

Let’s get involved. Right now.

Rahaf

Here is a group that we are participating in and we think you should too, regardless of your partisan or not so partisan leanings.  Jennifer also refers to it in the prior post.

From the Centre for Social Innovation news letter:

Saturday, January 24th
8:30-5:00pm
MaRS Centre
101 College Street

ChangeCamp is a participatory and web-enabled face-to-face event that brings together citizens, policy-makers, technologists, design-thinkers, change agents and media creators to answer one question: “How do we re-imagine government and governance in the age of participation?”

This is the first ChangeCamp Canada event, which is intended to ignite a national, distributed and self-organizing movement. For more information, please visit the ChangeCamp Canada Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/changecamp. A web site for the event will be launched soon at http://changecamp.ca/

by Brandon Carlos

Politics and social media have a lot more in common than just the Obama campaign. At the the epicentre of both institutions rests one crucial similarity: connectedness. What a tangled web we weave… or so the old saying goes. But Canadian politics lack the layered finesse of their American counterparts.

Obama’s campaign points out what professional communicators have always known: targeting your audience appropriately is key!

Social media marketing is the practice of targeting your social media initiatives to sell a product, drive traffic to your website, boost awareness, etc. And it’s sort of like fishing.

Imagine you’re out on a lake populated with all types of fish. Your mission, though, is to catch a big, fat salmon for tonight’s dinner. If you want to catch a salmon, you do two things:

1. You use the appropriate lure (i.e. you don’t use a lure built to catch a bass)
2. It’s a big lake, but you know that salmon generally hang-out at moderate depths, so you fish where they hang-out (i.e. you don’t fish off the shores, where you expect to catch a bass)

In Obama’s case, his proverbial salmon were the American youth (18-34 year olds). And where do youth, now more than ever, spend a considerable amount of time? Online! Advertisers have known this for years – and the fact that Google’s #1 revenue stream comes from online advertising, of which they own nearly 3/4 of the market, is a testament to the internet’s influence.

Never has it been easier to find a group of like-minded people than with the advent of social media -there are blog communities for every topic from Star Trek fans to bacon recipe lovers. There are also other benefits to investing in social media marketing:

1. Canada’s population density is four times less than the United States. This means people are far more spread out and less connected. We know that social media communities typically reside more in metropolitan areas than in rural ones. This is largely due to word of mouth, the most powerful form of marketing. What this phenomenon has done is create hyper-groups – folks who have a similar interest in a very specific topic. We also know, however, that an interest in social media often overpowers the specificied interest. The result: communities like Twitter, where micro-bloggers initially follow people of like-minded interests and then branch out to other contacts as they explore the contact base of their contacts. What we see here, then, is a pangea effect: islands of people drift inwards to form entire communities.

2. It’s cheap!

3. It’s the perfect two-way communication initiative. What we get with social media platforms like blogs or discussion forums is the opportunity to pull, rather than push, our information. People naturally respond more favourably to the former and maintain their connection longer. Two-way conversations promote collaboration, and this is an essential step towards building the loyalty needed but lacking in the Canadian political atmosphere.

4. It has the potential to go viral. As mentioned above, social media campaigns breed word-of-mouth, and more word-of-mouth means more brand awareness. In an election with one of the lowest voter turnouts ever, what could be more essential?

Consider this a call to the folks in parliament. Step down from your archaic model of promotion and get people talking– er, typing– in red and white!

Brandon Carlos is a professional communicator and social media strategist from Cambridge, Ontario. He is the founder of the PR Ninja blog and a PR blogger on Brazen Careerist. You can follow him on Twitter at @bcarlos

READ the entire post by Lisa Torjman on MaRs Innovation blog.

Last Thursday, I went to the Rotman School of Business to learn about Obama’s social media campaign strategy from a member of the team that planned this grassroots, state-by-state online takeover. She’s passionate, intelligent, poised. She’s a new media strategist. She is also Canadian. Perhaps the most impressive, Rahaf Harfoush is a mere 24 years old. Her story was both inspired and inspiring.

The applications used in the campaign (such as Facebook and SMS), were not new (Greenpeace is a 2.0 vet). But the fact that they were employed by a political campaign is the innovative part, some would say, the risky part. The risk obviously paid off, since the numbers speak for themselves:

More than one billion emails were sent out and “hyper segmented” or customized according to three different factors: geography, key issue concerns and personal donating history.

READ MORE of Lisa’s post …

See Rahaf’s post covering the Rotman gig …

And here are the slides Rahaf presented …

See a CBC piece featuring Rahaf on her blog.