I just did a Prezie - my first attempt - but it's not the entirety of what I want. So I write.
First, a bit about my methodology. I am one of those "expansive thinker" types - what that means is I retain large segments of every bit of information to which I'm exposed. My little noggin is always beavering away at making connections between the agencies, individuals, problems, solutions, resources and whimsy that aggregates there.
Throw a problem my way, I automatically start mulling solutions and who/what would be part of that solution. Throw several problems my way, I look for how and if they connect so that any solution generated is a shared solution - more efficient that way, though it does tend to involve keeping a lot of balls in the air.
This is no problem for me - the challenge lies in communicating these myriad, cross-jurisdictional challenges and solutions in sound-bites and framing complex solutions as "low-hanging fruit." There's a real reticence to do (or fund) complexity these days, even in the most complex of institutions.
The reason I started this blog, though, was so that I could be as convoluted, wordy and expansive as I wanted. Nobody's forcing you to read it, though writing big helps me frame small to an enormous degree.
If you want simple answers to simple problems, stop reading. If you want a complex business case as to why one product or service should be paid for, move along. I don't do transactions - I think systems.
So, here are a couple problems that are emerging out there:
- employment, especially for youth and folk suffering from postal code stigma ("I can't hire you, you're from a priority neighbourhood")
- community engagement - everything from voter turnout to participation in consultations is down. I'd love to see volunteerism numbers, or how many communities have things like active neighbourhood watches or committees for events and such. From what I've seen over the past few years, people are becoming more insular, perhaps because much of their social world is moving online/their work is taking up more of their time
- Emerging Cognitive Labour Revolution - quite frankly, most bosses suck at management, have no clue how to motivate their labour and are more interested in being in charge than being successful or sustainable. A "get rich quick" mentality has evolved into a "spend less now" one, meaning investment in resources, especially people, is far below where it should be. Add to that the changing nature (and pressures) of work and the mounting number of health consequences emerging (that people are told to suck it up and deal with on their own), something's gotta give.
- Poverty and Crime - especially by postal code. There are marginalized communities in Toronto that have been marginalized for ages. More interesting, there are some pretty interesting graphs that demonstrate how wealth and power is increasingly being concentrated in narrow conduits running north/south from downtown up to places like Vaughn. This means that there are more neighbourhoods slipping through the cracks than before, which is problematic.
- Innovation. Our economy is kinda chugging along, if you look at natural resource wealth, but all of our other baskets are starting to fall. We need new work, new ideas, new products and services that meet the changing needs of the global market.
Lots of centres and innovation labs exist out there, but they all tend to be focused on nurturing the next Google or Facebook - if you can't readily demonstrate that your idea is a multi-million dollar enterprise waiting to explode, nobody cares and wallets remain closed.
We're not hitting many home runs, yet the rest of the world keeps circling. This isn't a sustainable model.
On the other hand, there are some good things happening, too.
Open Gov and Open Data - a Peaceable Revolution, as it were, seeking to modernize the operation and corporate culture of both government and society at large. Go big or go home, etc.
A big proponent of All Things Open is Make Web Not War, a CSR bit of Microsoft that seeks to build communities and open government, but also drive traffic to their cloud. I have no issues with this - there's no reason companies can't be successful by doing what's right for society. If they open up public data sets in user-friendly ways, allowing for better government accountability on the one hand, but on the other, resources for citizens to develop solutions and even entrepreneurial possibilities, that's a good thing.
MWNW isn't the only player online looking to build communities and provide people with resource and tool access. My SoJo is a brilliant new platform that seeks to connect people and their ideas with the processes, tools and resources they need to turn concepts into action. When you look at MWNW next to SoJo, you can see how complementary they are in what they do.
Another portal that I like is WalkAlong, a mental health resource centre; there format is decent, their tools are helpful and I really like the peer video content. Hopefully, somewere down the road SoJo will have content like that, except more oriented towards how to succeed, like those Epicomm produces.
That's all online. There's good stuff happening in person, too.
Why Should I Care is a civic engagement group that holds monthly chats about issues of interest featuring big-name speakers. These events are free, though - anyone can come in and ask senior bureaucrats questions about policy or get clarification from politicians. It's Canadian Club without the exclusivity, or price tag.
If you want to talk about entrepreneurship or innovation, everyone loves CSI - co-working space, animators, facilitators, resources, fun parties and opportunities, meeting space, community.
Not everyone can get to or afford CSI, though. Which is why I love the fact that enterprising folk like Andrew Cox are trying to develop their own brand of CSI or entrepreneurship centres in communities like Lawrence Heights.
These would be peer-run centres that are safe spaces for youth/residents to attend where they'd have access to computers, printers, forms for things like incorporation or whatnot and resource libraries. If you walk around communities like Lawrence Heights, you'd be surprised how many folk are reading business-related books. You shouldn't be, though.
Centres like this would be great places where entrepreneurs like Jabullah Murray and his PUSH Elite basketball/leadership/community volunteerism program could flesh out business plans, work on marketing and the rest of it.
Places like CSI occasionally have speakers (often in paid sessions) on different business tips and tricks; communities like Lawrence Heights already have Friday Night Cafes where local issues of concern ranging from planning healthy meal plans on tight budgets or what to do about local security concerns get raised.
To bring us back to the beginning, the nascent Open Gov community is trying to find ways to get out into communities and tell them about what Open Gov means, while also answering questions and gathering feedback - like Richard Pietro is doing with his #OGT14 Open Gov on the Open Road Tour.
At some point, both Make Web Not War and SoJo are going to want to build brand in individual communities, in much the same way WSIC is looking to host more events in more locations.
Now, let's tie all of this together.
We'll start with a pilot and build from there. Imagine space was found in communities like Lawrence Heights or Dixon Heights (Toronto Community Housing has some) where Centres of Entrepreneurship could be set up. These centres would have a dedicated admin staff, a resource library, some meeting rooms, internet access, stationary, forms, all the rest of it. Admin would be hired locally, but trained by the best facilitators, managers and the like in the city - I'm looking at Exhibit Change and Swerhun as partners on that front.
Membership would be free, though it would involve signing a Statement of Ethics and include a commitment to offer some kind of support to the centre; a few hours volunteering, willingness to be included in promotional videos or whatnot. The point of the Statement is to create a tactile sense of belonging to and having some ownership/responsibility for a community.
These centres would be wired in to SoJo, so that they and their partners/member start-ups could be part of a broader community. SoJo would help add value and refinement to the ideas and inspirations of community members, help connect communities (geographic, demographic, issue-related) together and promote relationships. SoJo would also list and promote events, facilitating further engagement and coordination between communities. Add to this a toolkit of resources that are downloadable, editable and easy-to-use so that new businesses or NFPs could have access to the sorts of media templates, business plan or comms plan formats that are generally accessible only to those with significant coin.
These Centres of Community Engagement would host regular WSIC-like chats, with topics ranging from how to communicate effectively with funders to tips and tricks on marketing to things like emergency preparedness and, of course, why Open Government is good for you. Local members would be able to decide on desired topics themselves; their admin/SoJo could help line up speakers. At all times, residents would be in the driver's seat.
Meanwhile, SoJo would be plugged in to Make Web Not War and their government/corporate connections and data sets. This interoperability would do two things - allow community groups, NFPs and start-ups access to useful data and the tools they need to do stuff with it, but also allow for government and corporations to see what and how their data is being used. This is good for planning, but who knows, maybe a company would find a nascent idea they liked and want to fund/hire/buy the organization behind it. It'd be a bit like outsourcing R&D.
Meanwhile, members at Centres of Entrepreneurship could get the raw material, training and support they need to turn this data into marketable, profitable Aps.
Meanwhile, members at Centres of Entrepreneurship could get the raw material, training and support they need to turn this data into marketable, profitable Aps.
If you can't think outside the box, why not work with others who can do it for you? Why not empower them to make some coin of their own through the process?
Some of these corporate participants might want to be speakers in these communities - because, if they're smart, they'll realize the value of building brand loyalty, integrating themselves into new market and empowering future customers. Altruism is just selfishness that plans a couple steps ahead, after all.
What does all this have to do with engagement, poverty, crime, etc?
It's a Maslow thing. By focusing on how to mitigate a negative, we've been perpetually seeking the wrong solutions. Marginalized communities don't need programs plopped down on top of them - they need resources, encouragement and support that never waivers as they build their own. The biggest gap, apart from trust, has been communication (which is, of course, tied very closely to communication). When the people "in charge" feel like they can't communicate with communities and vice versa, nothing happens.
By building communities of engagement that see the selfish win in structural changes, we can flip all that. The question isn't "how might we solve poverty in these isolated neighbourhoods" - it's "how might we empower a dynamic society that achieves greater heights in collaboration?"
We don't need to individually reinvent the wheel - we simply need to link the best of what exists now together.
Voila. It's all doable - the pieces are out there, right now. What's needed is time and money to bring these things together. But that takes will and that tantalizingly nebulous commodity, leadership.
Whoever is clever enough to see their own ROI in being part of a shared solution will have the satisfaction of being the one(s) to catalyze system change on a massive scale, gaining reputationaly and monetarily in the process.
They just have to think big enough.
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