Rural/Urban Divide? Meh.

We had another great AgendaCamp on Sunday, this time in Kingston. Close to 100 people from all over Eastern Ontario braved the snowy roads to spend a day talking about how agriculture fits into Ontario’s changing economy. There were 44 separate and distinct discussions over the course of the day and one theme I noticed was the idea of a “Rural/Urban” divide and thoughts on how to solve it.

This notion of a “divide” didn’t sit quite right with me. Was there really a divide? If so, is it really about rural vs. urban? Some ideas that got tossed around on Twitter during the AgendaCamp included notions of “producer/consumer” and “grower/eater”. Something that bothers me about this is the linear construct that the proposed dichotomy inherently suggests. Things are grown, they magically appear in cities, they’re digested and it’s all over. The fact of the matter is that it’s circular and cyclical. It’s systemic. Perhaps you’ve heard the phrase “Farmers Feed Cities”, highlighting the importance of the relationship between rural dwellers and city dwellers. I saw a build on that phrase that read “Farmers Feed Cities. Cities Feed Farmers.” I thought that was a great way of describing the relationship.

Local food movements, slow food and the 100-mile diet are all gaining in popularity which is a good thing but there is a long way to go. What is a better way to describe the lack of appreciation (the divide) for the food production eco-systems that feed Canadian cities and farm communities? Is there something more accurate or an entirely different construct?

So far we have:

• rural/urban
• producer/consumer
• grower/eater

Thoughts?

Le Roi est mort, vive le Roi!

It’s only Wednesday, yet this week I’ve had three separate conversations in three completely different contexts around moving conversations that occur in the same place and time (ie. face to face) and extending those conversations online.

Conversation One

Part of my continuing work with TV Ontario and The Agenda on the Road’s AgendaCamp is to figure out how to leverage tools such as wikis and Flip cams and YouTube and Twitter to move the passion and energy from the face to face AgendaCamps to the web so that people who weren’t at the camp can participate and people who were at the camp can continue to make real change as a result of the conversations started at the camp. This is a challenge. It take lots of effort from the folks at TVO and Mark Kuznicki to get the communities flourishing pre and post event. It also raises an interesting question around the role of TVO in this regard. As a public broadcaster they are providing a technical platform for the conversations to take place, but it’s more than technology that is required. It takes community management. Or to be more accurate, Community Management. The reason for the CAPS is that this role of community manager is an emerging discipline that takes real skill and finesse to do successfully.

Conversation Two

I went to a meeting at The StoreFront, a community space in my neighbourhood that started off as an OCAD student project but has now evolved past that and is trying to figure out what to become in order to serve the needs of the community. So there is a physical space but that can only serve so many people and only one thing can go on in the space at any given time. How to multiply the effect of a physical community space? Online, of course. And the question pops up again: How Do You Effectively Move the Conversation Online? It starts with having an infrastructure to support that movement, so The StoreFront should be putting all of their meeting notes on their site but don’t have that capability right now. In the mean time we’ll have to link to some of the artifacts from the meeting. I did some graphic recording of the conversations, even though I’m no professional. I also recorded some of the report outs using Flip cams.

Conversation Three

On Monday I met with some people from a company in Ottawa called Intersol and they do face to face facilitation for lots of government clients and private sector as well. We got together to discuss the impact of social media technology and its relation (threat?!) to the face to face market. Having spent the past five years designing and facilitating face to face events I have a good understanding of how to get people to work well together. For the past two years I’ve been looking at social media applications in the corporate/enterprise context and specifically how to use them IN CONJUNCTION with face to face collaborative methodologies. Ie. how to move the conversation online after a corporate collaborative session.

The King is Dead, Long Live the King

I feel strongly that social media technology is democratizing the world because the functionality is not hard coded into the tools. It’s the users of the tools who are constantly coming up with ways to use the tools. As a result, the people who are skilled in group collaborative methodologies, facilitation and event design are becoming more valuable in a world of social media.

Face to face gatherings will always accomplish more than electronic events and there is an opportunity to create additional and lasting value by using new electronic tools to extend the conversations into the online arena. People who are schooled in human dynamics and interaction are extremely well positioned to be thought leaders in this emerging area.

Omakase Group helping with AgendaCamp

I’m proud to say that I’ll be helping out with a really cool initiative that TVOntario is doing as part of their Agenda with Steve Paikin (AwSP) program. The show is going on the road, literally.

AwSP will be broadcasting live from a few cities across Ontario and the topic will be about the future of Ontario’s economy with a focus on the dominant industries in each particular town. However the day before each broadcast we’ll be hosting AgendaCamp, an unconference on the same topic as the show. Modeled after Open Space Technology, AgendaCamp is a participant driven methodology that allows the conference topics to emerge organically and for the day’s conversations to emerge in the same way.

I’ll be helping to design the program for all five events over the next six months and facilitating the day’s proceedings with the help of Mark Kuznicki. It’s a great way to engage the public in the conversations that matter because everyone from mayors, industry leaders and the average citizen has an equal platform on which to discuss issues and propose solutions.

Further, with the help of Sean Howard we’ll be extending the philosophy into the online realm. All of the documentation, in the form of the written word, photographs and video will be incorporated into a digital platform that will allow participation from outside the unconference as well as in the time between events. It really is a new way of creating conversations amongst people who may be separated by time and space.

The schedule for the Agenda on the Road and AgendaCamp events is as follows:

Windsor: October 19/2
Sault Ste. Marie: November 16/17
Eastern Ontario: January 18/19 (city TBD)
Thunder Bay: February 8/9
Waterloo: March 29/30

This particular conversation is incredibly important if Ontarians are going to evolve to changing needs and emerging global trends, otherwise we’ll be left behind. Politicians need to hear this conversation and need to hear from you so even if you can’t make it to an event or attend the broadcast of the show, please engage in the online conversation. Make your voice heard. In case you haven’t heard, major disruptions are occurring right now and with disruption comes fear but also great opportunity.