Over the past 6 months, Michael and other community leaders, primarily from the non profit sector have being working diligently on establishing the York Region Multi-Media Film Development Council & Institute.
Michael is the Chair of the Council and a driving voice behind this much needed community building initiative.
In this interview, Michael gives a brief overview of the Council’s plans for a yearly film festival and eventually the creation of a York Region Multimedia Film Institute.
Turn your speakers up a wee bit as Michaels voice is on the soft side. I’ll be posting more on this exciting collaboration project over the coming months.
To see how you might fit into or participate in the Council’s plans, I’ve included a portion of their governing statements.
It was a great day on Friday, August 14th, 2009. My partner Alain Hurtubise (of iAutomate) and I completed a proposal we worked hard on over the preceding weeks.
We felt on the ecstatic side of life that afternoon. We had just submitted the most fully designed presentation of our thinking and what we are aspiring to provide for non profit groups in York Region. Flushed with our success, we retired to a local restaurant not far from Alain’s home and had a well deserved celebration drink.
As I had my new and untried FS200 Canon camcorder with me, we thought that we should test it out by talking about our evolving social web platform.
Alain did a wonderful job of outlining the changing landscape of web design and how we are trying to deliver an affordable social web platform to York Region non profits.
Both of us were pleasantly surprised as to the quality of video and sound from this little camera. It will definitely be put to more use in the coming weeks and months.
ResearchImpact, Canada’s emerging knowledge mobilization network, is designed to support the active, two-way exchange of information and expertise between knowledge creators and knowledge users.
Figuring out my personal communication style is a full time job. Throughout my career working in non profit towers, I’ve had to speak as a representative of the tower.
Now that I am no longer an official Tower representative (as a full time employee), I feel more comfortable in speaking from a broader platform as a consultant.
I continue working and speaking on behalf of organizations through my consulting work. In my new role, I strive to represent the interests of these groups and I continue my obligation to provide high levels of service.
I have new towers to report to but I also have a degree of flexibility and freedom that I didn’t have as an employee.
Now as I look back on all the work I’ve undertaken and how fortunate I’ve being to experience so many challenging roles in the community, I feel more comfortable in letting more of my spontaneous and personal side be expressed through my weblog.
Danah Boyd’s talk at the Personal Democracy Forum, 2009 opened up the issues of inequality, social divisions and homophili on the Internet. Her talk helped me understand that social media is not a solution for these social ills, but a mirror or magnifying glass that reflects what’s going on in our society.
Danah uses her research on teen cultures and teens use of Facebook and Myspace as a foundation for her points. It’s a very instructive and helpful presentation that puts social media practices in a more realistic context, particularly for change agents who are adopting social media strategies as a means to address racism, classism and inequality.
Michele Martin at her Bamboo Project Blog has written a great post on homophily. Like her, I recognized this phenomenon as a factor imbuing conversations and relationships but I never heard the term before, nor thought about what this looks like in online behaviours.
Danah Boyd is a Social Media Researcher at Microsoft Research New England and a Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. She recently completed her PhD at the School of Information (iSchool) at the University of California (Berkeley). Her research examines social media, youth practices, tensions between public and private, social network sites, and other intersections between technology and society.
I attended the ChangeCamp Canada tel/conference meeting on July 21st, 2009. Instead of dialing in to the meeting I chose to participate with a group of people at the Social Innovations Centre in downtown Toronto. I was wanting as much face to face time with the discussion as I could get, as this was my first experience participating in ChangeCamp. It was a planning meeting to look at the road ahead and how to build on the successful ChangeCamp events held in cities across Canada last winter.
My interest in ChangeCamp grew when Mark Kuznicki, one of the ChangeCamp stewards gave a signal online that he was interested in exploring how the work of Peter Block, author of Community – The Structure of Belonging could apply to ChangeCamp Canada.
Peter Block’s work centres on the theme of restoring communities. I’ve read all I can find (without buying the book – yet) on Blocks work. Upon reading these documents and watching a few videos, I felt that his approach/framework fit so closely with my own thinking and growth as a community worker. For me reading about the community restoration framework leaves me feeling like I’ve transcended into new territory on a practical and theoretical (consciousness) level.
Here is how Mark introduced his position to ChangeCamp Canada participants.
Nancy White is one of many outspoken and knowledgeable bloggers who writes about building and supporting online communities. In this video which I discovered via Robin Good, another outstanding participant/contributor to the social web, Nancy talks about the economic model used to run conferences and the “passive mind set” of so many of the people who attends these events.
I think she is right on with her comments about conference attendees who sit passively and lazily at conferences, unwilling to contribute to important conversations, more content to get their monies worth from the expert on the stage.
Nancy challenges people to participate more in conferences and place demand on conference organizers to build more opportunities for participation by attendees. The current model that keeps the expert on the podium and the uninformed in their seats is just not in step with the participatory values of the social web or conference participant’s wish for space to join the conversation.
It’s a great little video that invites us to unpack some of the conditioning we take into conferences. What thoughts did her message provoke in you?
This post features a short video of Etienne Wenger who answers questions about low participation rates in a community of practice. Etienne Wenger is a world renowned theoretician – practitioner on communities of practice.
I sit on a number of committees that address pressing community concerns. My view is that committees are close cousins to communities of practice and we can learn from our cousins.
From poverty & homelessness to engaging youth at risk, these committees are attempting to bring about positive social change in my community. As long as I’ve been sitting on committees, usually coordinated by a lead non profit agency or a network of non profit organizations, I continually hear the wish that more “service users” be at the table to help determine the results of our planning.
I attended my first Net Tuesday meet-up event a few nights ago. Toronto’s Net Tuesday is a once a month meeting sponsored NetSquared. Here is NetSquared’s elevator pitch.
“Social changemakers and technological forerunners come together at Net Tuesday events to mix, swap stories and ideas, build new relationships, and reinforce the online NetSquared community.
At break I introduced myself to Billie Mintz, President of Artists Raising Consciousness. His talk resonated with me more than the other presenters. Being relatively new to creating online videos, his references to learning from the many mistakes he has made and his fly by the seat of your pants style (but organized and professional) appealed to me.
Billie said “I know you from your videos’. I couldn’t figure this out as my work has being pretty minimum to date and I hardly have a following. Anyway Billie explained that he stumbled across my video interviews taken of my elderly mother (96 and going strong). She talks about her political beliefs, making biscuits, speaking Gaelic and life on the Cape Breton farm. He thought they were great videos and was the first person to comment on my very first video. What a magical serendipitous moment. It really inspired me to continue with my video story telling projects. Here is my YouTube channel if you would like some advice from a senior elder of the community.
I’m working with local organizations on strengthening the community in York Region, through social media strategies and user controlled web platforms. The Cynefin Framework is making a lot of sense to me. I first learned about this model through the Anecdote web site in a post written by Shawn Callahan.
I’ve being looking at community change through the complexity lens or through “complex adaptive systems” for some time. This is a simple video that gives a clear picture of what the Cynefin Framework is and how it can be applied to understand issues (for me community and organizational issues).
I’m going to integrate this model into my work with organizations because it give a clear picture for understanding the different relationships and activities that are taking place within a community. It is especially useful for considering how best to use social media strategies to engage stakeholders so that communities are strengthened.
When an organization or network wishes to engage stakeholders by using online community building tools, this model will help understand the different levels of involvement and the dynamic conversations that can bring about meaningful community improvements.
My focus is working with organizations to develop their online communication strategies then utilizing appropriate social media tools. Complementing my expertise, I partner with great web designers and developers to deliver a full range of web 2.0 services. Let us help you be better at what you do, using the power of the social web.
Social Media – a definition
Social media are works of user-created video, audio, text or multimedia that are published and shared in a social environment, such as a blog, podcast, forum, wiki or video hosting site. More broadly, social media refers to any online technology that lets people publish, converse and share content online. (via Socialbrite)
Figuring out my personal communication style is a full time job. Throughout my career working in non profit towers, I’ve had to speak as a representative of the tower.
This post features a short video of 
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