ChangeCamp Edmonton: Evolution, Not Revolution
(Originally posted October 18, 2009 on my blog, Alex Abboud)
I attended the first ever ChangeCamp Edmonton yesterday.
I wrote about ChangeCamp on Friday, ahead of the event. What follows is my post-event reaction and thoughts.
Justin Archer introduces ChangeCamp and provides an overview at the start of the day
The day got started around 9am, with an overview of the event concept, process, and “rules of engagement”. I was impressed with the level of turnout at the very start – there appeared to be 100 people or so there by the start, and people trickled in throughout the day. I’d say around 150 people participated throughout the day, but I haven’t seen an official count. There was a pretty good balance in gender, and good mix of ages, which I was pleasantly surprised to see. There wasn’t, however, much ethnic diversity. That’s nobody’s fault, but this is something we’d ideally see more of at future events, especially given that Edmonton is a city with growing immigrant and visible minority (especially aboriginal) populations.
5 items from ChangeCamp Edmonton.
(This post was originally published at daveberta.ca)
On Saturday October 17, over 180 engaged citizens converged to participate in the first ChangeCamp Edmonton. Here are five items that I found to be the most interesting parts of the day-long event:
5) Diversity: Participants came from many diverse backgrounds and I was pleasantly surprised that there were many people who I didn’t recognize from other political events. The large majority of participants were non-partisan (which was extremely refreshing) and sincerely interested in changing the way citizens interact with their governments (and vice versa). I would like to see future ChangeCamps reach out more actively to new Canadians and underrepresented communities in our city who face very unique challenges to participating in governance. Increased outreach will be important for any sequels to this event, but overall I was very impressed with the range of citizens who gave up their Saturday to participate in re-imaging citizenship.
4) A little help from our friends: Videos from ChangeCamp Ottawa and ChangeCamp Toronto welcomed participants to a growing pan-Canadian ChangeCamp community.
