A ChangeCamp event is a creative face-to-face gathering that is citizen-led, non-partisan and social web enabled. ChangeCamps bring together citizen change agents to answer questions like:
How can we work together to create our desired future?
ChangeCamp addresses the demand for a renewed relationship among citizens and between citizens and our civic institutions. We seek to create connections between people and their civic passions by using new tools of communication.
The ChangeCamp community is open to all. We hope to ignite a self-organizing movement for positive change in cities, towns and neighbourhoods across Canada.
Off the Blog
Imagining Canada Beyond 150
I had the pleasure of attending the 150!Canada Conference, co-hosted by my friends at MASSLBP and IPAC. It was a fantastic event designed to kick off the planning for Canada’s 150th anniversary party in 2017. The first day was packed full with 25 inspiring speakers sharing many different perspectives on the meaning and opportunity of Canada’s 150th.
What I took away was that all of the participants felt that a bottom-up approach enabled by web technology was really necessary to create opportunities for Canadians to tell their own stories of how they came to be Canadian, what it means to them, reflecting on where we’ve been, who we are and where we’re going. I was also struck by the strong desire to reflect the diversity of Canada’s multicultural present while recognizing our aboriginal past.
I think there is a role for the ChangeCamp community in this project, inviting our fellow citizens into conversations to tell those stories and to imagine Canada’s future in creative new ways. What do you think?
For an archive of the liveblog from the full event, see below the jump:
Edmonton Open City Workshop
Thanks to Chris Moore, CIO of the City of Edmonton, for inviting myself, David Eaves and Nick Charney to participate in Edmonton’s Open City Workshop held on Saturday, March 6th at the Art Gallery of Alberta. The discussions were rich, moving beyond open data and mobile apps to deeper questions of the relevance to democracy and community at the local level. This video captures the major content of the day, including our panel discussion on “Government as Platform”.
The open data and open government movements are now truly across Canada. With the major announcements Moore gave at the closing remarks, it is clear that the City of Edmonton is staking a claim for leadership in the emerging municipal open government ecosystem. This includes the ideas of a MuniForge for open source municipal software and a call for a Code for Canada project to mirror Code for America being supported by our friends at Sunlight Foundation in the United States. I’m really amazed at the growing momentum over the past year, and excited to be a part of it.
