It's a Remarkk-able life

Video of my talk at #voteTOin416 is now online.

"The puritans are going take over this city and this country very very soon". It's an amazing speach, really. Enjoy!

For the last fifteen years, various community members have been working with city staff to build Dufferin Grove Park into a lively community commons. In the past year, this effort has come under sustained attack by Parks, Forestry and Recreation management. The front-line staff at the park have been warned that their community connections put them into a situation of conflict of interest, and last week we heard that the long-time Ward 18 recreation supervisor will be removed from this ward. We believe that his transfer to a back office at Metro Hall to work with building cleaners is a punishment for his support of our efforts, and is also meant to send a message to his colleagues.

Have a read of the full letter and response. The reports of Parks & Rec's attitude of homogeneity and bureaucratic central control over creativity and community collaboration is symptomatic of the industrial age approach to services delivery. Standardization is seen as more efficient. Separation of professionals from stakeholders is seen as a more responsible approach to governance.
What is being lost is the public value of what parks and public spaces are for. The park is not a set of services, it is a space for community. Community is composed of the connections between people and emerges in spaces for individual and community self-expression. By instructing supervisors to be obedient to the Corporation first and seeing community connections as a conflict of interest, this organization may be damaging the very thing it is intended to promote.
If true, and it seems entirely plausible to be true, this cynical approach to the management of public resources is shameful and short-sighted.
Join the Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=314791346519

This was a little surprise folded inside the delegate badges at ChangeCampTO on February 16, 2009

Fascinating what you can figure out from public Facebook pages. I'd like to see something similar done in Canada.

The AgendaCamp model evolved since last year, incorporating both open space and world cafe methods into a new hybrid, designed to help create a broadcast of The Agenda with Steve Paikin the night following the Camp. Great testimonials.

A movement isn't created by the leader, it is created the first follower who shows others how to join.

A rare moment of journalism.

Look at is this way: a byproduct of yesterday's discussions and actions is a television program. When you add a public broadcaster to the camp event, you harness its expertise and resources to seek out participants from government, the business community, academia, etc., and also to take the work that participants have done and forge it into a debate to probe and share the insights revealed at AgendaCamp.

 

To me, this seems like a natural extension of the work that goes on at all camps. There, the community comes together to gather the information, to mold it into useful forms, and to spread that information. Public television is truly a part of that community, and events like this are a great example of public television doing exactly what it is meant to do.

 

Tune in tonight to watch as we broadcast live from the University of Western Ontario (and please join me on the live online chat that will go with it). What you will see is something new that TVO is working hard to help develop: open source television. This program is entirely the product of the community we are in, their ideas and concerns, and the resources here to help articulate their particular perspective on the province in the world. It's very much like a bottle of wine, whose flavour and character is determined by the soil that nurtured the grapes.

I'm happy to see TVO continue the work we began together with last year's AgendaCamp, making their own and tweaking the model from what they learned last year. Big thanks to Mike Miner for the shout out on this post!