Reflections on #changecamp

Whew. It’s been a few days since we threw the first ChangeCamp. There was lots of energy and activity and if nothing else, people had their views and opinions go through a creative destruction process to create some new thinking and gain new perspective.  But there was lots more accomplished. In fact, I’m still going through the work that was done because there was so much. Here are some musings on how I thought ChangeCamp went.

ChangeLab

We wanted to play with the framework of the Open Space model which has sessions of 1 hour in length as the standard. I do believe that sessions longer than 2 hours start to have diminishing returns but we introduced the idea of a 3 hour session with specific sub-objectives for each 1 hour segment. The intent was to select project ideas that had been planned out a little bit and give people a 3 hour segment in which to recruit talent to bring the idea as far along as it could go. Rough code, wireframes, schematics, strategy, project plans….something tangible that a community of professionals could quickly build.

I would give this idea a passing grade with room for improvement. We refined this idea pretty late in the process so in the future I like to receive ideas for ChangeLab a few days in advance, perhaps via a standardized template, and have some trusted folks review the proposals so we can start the day knowing exactly which ideas will be going through the ChangeLab process. This will give the project owners a bit more time to prepare and we can announce at the beginning of the day which projects are a go and what kind of talent is needed to see those ideas through. We kind of made it up on the fly the day of and it was a bit muddled. It’ll be better next time.

The great thing was that it resulted in a meetup a few days later to continue the work of the initial ChangeLab. People got together on their own to refine the idea, codenamed Project Shamen. Awesome. (Interesting side note: the ChangeLab dealing with face to face meetups drew a crowd of programmers and the ChangeLab dealing with a web application drew the policy wonks. Thanks to Sean Howard for making this observation.)

Dotmocracy

Jason Diceman was kind enough to offer his services and tools as a dotmocracy facilitator throughout the day and next time I would like to work with him in advance to see how we can build in his process so that it’s a bit more planned. I don’t think we gave it its due. That said, there are still some good results on the ChangeCamp wiki.

Meet and Greet Module

We decided that the Intention Question for ChangeCamp should be broad but with a desire to get it more focused. We realized early in the planning process that trying to narrow it down with the planning team was counter-productive. As a combination “meet and greet” and work activity we randomly divided everyone at ChangeCamp into about 15 small groups and gave them the same question to ponder for about an hour: “What Problem Are We Trying To Solve?”  We knew that each person would introduce themselves but also talk about what drew them to ChangeCamp. This would help draw out from the crowd how the ChangeCamp movement should be more focused. But it’s also a flexible question in any context because the “Problem” in Toronto will be different than the “Problem” in Moose Jaw.

While I don’t like starting any event from a “Problem” mindset, I think the question worked in this context. We then tried to pollinate the conversations by having 1 person stay behind while the other members of the group dispersed and wondered around the space for 45 minutes, kind of like at a tradeshow going from table to table, seeing what other groups had talked about. My sense is that most people found another group and then stayed there for the duration of the time rather than wandering but that worked well enough.

This was a very generative exercise with lots of ideas being proposed. A super valuable exercise would be to bring all of the notes together and try to extract themes. As an event designer, I might try to force this activity in some way by making it a permanent part of the grid or by suggesting that at least one person take it on as a task. I didn’t have to do either in this case because Patrick Keenan and Indra Behrouz rocked it by picking up on this idea and running with it. First they tagged and created the themes, then they created a visual model of the themes. Truly stunning work in a couple short hours.

Twitter

Not sure what to say about Twitter except we broke it. #changecamp was the number one tag on Twitter for most of the day, the Search function on Twitter broke and Twitter served to bring people from outside Toronto and Canada into the conversation. We had people at ChangeCamp trading information within the session via Twitter. We organized the event through Twitter. Lots has been written about how Twitter is bringing communities and movements together. A great local example of how Twitter has served the community is with the #hohoto event that was hatched and planned on Twitter in 13 days. The resulting holiday party had 600 guests and raised $25,000 for Daily Bread Food Bank. Hyper connected communities=success.

Other Thoughts

As part of another project, I’m working with TV Ontario on the AgendaCamp project and we did a bit of outreach to the community and got an interesting note in reply. One of the AgendaCamp participants from Windsor in October said that while the activity on the wiki had slowed down, the face to face activity had picked up. Windsor’s bloggers are meeting monthly, walking tours of the downtown have started and there is talk of a collective of artists buying a factory to create a live-work space. In this case it seems as though the AgendaCamp wiki was a place to start but the activity became too important to keep online and it was elevated to actual face to face contact, which is the most powerful form of human engagement. That said, keeping a record of the progress, photos of the projects and videos help spread and solidify the word so keep that wiki fresh!

It’s so cool to see the ChangeCamp activity heading down a similar path. I would love to hear some comments on how you thought ChangeCamp went (if you were there) or if you have any experience in OpenSpace/BarCamp/Unconference would love to hear your thoughts.

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?

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.