Citizenship as a “Mainframe” Model

I recently watched Eric Dishman’s TEDmed talk on ted.com where he presents his research from his work from Intel on healthcare. He posits that basic technology combined with a mindset shift about the what healthcare is, could radically improve seniors’ quality of life. A basic example would be someone wearing a bracelet that has an accelerometer that can measure how quickly people are walking, how fast they react to the phone ringing, and other minute bits of data. In aggregate, these “behavioural markers” can show very early signs of disease that would otherwise go undetected.

While this was interesting in its own right, Dishman outlined five main sections in his talk, two of which could provide interesting fodder for the ChangeCamp conversation.

His third section (6:35) was entitled: From Mainframe to Personal Health. The idea is that the model of healthcare is similar to that of computing from the 1960′s. Fifty years ago there were huge rooms with tons of equipment that required lots of power and took specialized, highly educated people to run. They were expensive and difficult to access. Computing has since moved to be relatively inexpensive and distributed. The computing power in an iPhone, Blackberry or even some wristwatches gives lots of people access to lots of computing power. He argues that the healthcare system is the same way. Hospitals, doctors, nursing homes and the like are analogous to the mainframe computer from decades ago. It’s an expensive and poor way to provide healthcare to the North American population. He argues that a mindset shift, coupled with technology can move the power of healthcare into the home and into people’s peer networks.

While I’m not especially knowledgeable about health care issues, the idea of the “mainframe” made me think about government, governance and citizenship. With Government as an analogue for the hospital, I see movements such as ChangeCamp seeking to reassert control over the ways in which society progresses rather than relying on the institutional machinations of Government and its Band-Aid approaches to problem solving. One of the pillars of the ChangeCamp movement is technology and its ability to facilitate connections amongst people, avoiding the bottleneck that bureaucracy can represent.

The Fifth Section of Dishman’s presentation was on setting goals. His frustration with the American health care debate is that the conversation was around how public health care gets funded. He argues that there should be a goal. REFORM. Meaning going to somewhere from where we currently are. He proposed that the health care equivalent of “putting a man on the moon would be to have “50% of healthcare services to be delivered in people’s homes by 2020″.

Does ChangeCamp and other citizen-led, grassroots movements need similar “man on the moon” type of goals? Peter Block might argue otherwise, saying that the end goal of citizens working on projects is the community strengthening that naturally occurs. The argument for setting high level goals (at least from a government perspective) is that setting a quantitative goal can spur inspiration, much like the space race did in the 1960′s. The investment in science and engineering inspired a generation of people to take up the challenge.

Questions I’m still pondering:

• What is the best way for technology to enable peer to peer citizen leadership and action? What combinations of tools and processes are ideal?
• How do you bridge the gap between people who use technology and people who don’t?
• What kind of quantitative goal would one set to inspire movement towards a greater good?

Any other big questions that I’m missing? Any answers?!

Let’s Not Fight

A new coffee shop, called The Common, opened up in my neighbourhood recently. It’s a very small place with just a few tables so they set up some chairs on the sidewalk. Those fill up pretty quickly so there is nowhere to sit in their shop. This happened to me the other day but I didn’t want to get my coffee to go so I wandered outside of the coffee shop and sat on the ledge of the storefront next to the coffee shop. The store next to the shop is a day spa. Hair cuts, nails, pedicures, etc.

Within a few minutes someone from the store came out and asked me to move and pointed out a sign that I had truly missed, which was asking people to not sit on the ledge, not block the signage, not smoke in front of the store, etc. On one hand, I can appreciate the owners of the business not wanting people hanging out in front of the store. But on the other hand I’m wondering if they’re missing an opportunity on how to be creative with the extra traffic that they’re getting.

For example, they have lots more foot traffic now that a place like a coffee shop has opened up. Maybe setting up a small table giving away free samples in the mornings would be one idea. Maybe setting up chairs in front of their own store, providing seating for the overflow customers in exchange for free coffee for all of the spa employees might be another. Perhaps setting up a “Morning Jolt” program where you get make-up done and an espresso for a bundled price.

Frankly, I don’t know if any of these ideas make sense but the point is that the spa’s “environment” had changed and rather than seek out opportunity in this change they had taken a more adversarial approach with its new neighbour and its neighbour’s customers.

What I Want From ChangeCamp

Over the past eight months a movement called ChangeCamp has emerged. On December 31, 2008 a bunch of people motivated by the election of Obama and the proroguing of the Canadian Parliament started to plan an “unconference” that posed the question, “How Do We Re-Imagine Government and Citizenship in the Age of Participation?” By posing such a broad question it allows for conversation on a wide variety of topics but it also makes it difficult to define the movement. It makes it difficult to define success. The issue of “What Change Do We Want to See?” pops up. How will we know when we’ve succeeded in making change?

Given that I’m not particularly passionate about electoral reform or other specific policy issues, I’ve been asking myself the question of why I’m even involved with the ChangeCamp people and the movement. Professionally, I’m interested in the process of collaboration and how to make it happen but my interest runs deeper than that and I think I figured out why. So here’s what I want from ChangeCamp:

I want to connect with my neighbours in making my community a better place to live.

I am a big fan of Peter Block’s work on community development and I feel that I lack a sense of connection, accountability and trust with my community. I love Block’s notion that “citizens” have to work with each other and government to effect change and not rely on government as a “service provider” with citizens as “consumers” of the service. Creating trust and accountability amongst community members is the initial step towards making that happen. I feel as though ChangeCamp is a way of helping make that happen. Trying to define  and agree upon the change we want to see or trying to identify when the ChangeCamp movement has been successful is not a good use of time or energy. Getting people engaged, literally out of their houses and into the community engaging in dialogue that is meaningful to them around the health and future of themselves, their families and communities is a worthwhile goal in and of itself.

In the spirit of Open Space Technology, whatever change emerges from those conversations is the only thing that could have.

With the belief that conversation, connection, trust and accountability is good for its own sake, I therefore believe that the big crazy goal of doing 100 simultaneous ChangeCamps across Canada on one day in September, 2010 would be an important, monumental event even if there isn’t a solid definition of change. The act of planning and executing such a thing would in itself be propagating action and strengthening community.

If you’re interested in learning more about ChangeCamp and engaging in the dialogue around what it could be, contribute to the ChangeCamp blog.

It’s not a box, it’s a lens

A few years ago I had the opportunity to spend a couple of days training and exploring different methods of collaboration with the partners at Innovation Labs. One issue that we were all wrestling with is where is the “magic” in collaboration? When you break collaborative process design into its core elements you’re left with a set of principles that on the surface look rather pedestrian, yet we’ve seen for years and years that when it all comes together there is a certain “magic” that happens. People’s passion and energy is unleashed, creative ideas begin to flow and people accomplish a ton of work on very complex issues.

We framed up this exploration with a question: “What is inside the black box?”

The idea is that at the kernel of this activity there is a “magic” that happens but we couldn’t really define it.

I would like to rethink the entire metaphor of the black box and articulate a new way of thinking about process design. I propose that the nucleus of collaboration, the “thing” that makes it all possible, is conversation. Two people conversing is the molecule of collaboration, the building block if you will.

Part of the skill in process design is developing the right kinds of conversations for people to be having. Conversations that explore different vantage points or that direct the conversation to the creation of “tangible work products” are the beginnings of great work. It is less about a magic box and more about providing a multiplicity of “lenses” through which to view and explore a problem.

It was after reading Peter Block‘s book, Community, that I pondered the connection between the “black box” model and Block’s model of change for neighbourhoods. In short, Block suggests that conversations about the “gifts” that people bring to a challenge, the desired future that people want to see and honest conversations about how each person is potentially inhibiting the creation of that future are all useful in an organizational context as well.