It's a Remarkk-able life

Thanks for shooting this @benlucier and thanks to @heatherloney of @Globaltvnews for good questions!

Hat-tip to Mike Lewkowitz (@Igniter) for bringing this to my attention.

I had the pleasure of working alongside colleagues Daniel Rose, Ryan Coleman, Liisa Sorsa and Disa Kauk to bring various kinds of participatory engagement for the Collingwood Conference 2010: Imagining Ontario's Future. This was a long-term focused ideas conference put on by the Ontario Liberal Party, organized by Laura Miller and wrangled by Kelly Legris.

We all enjoyed bringing our skills to the table with a large and very professionally-run conference like this one, with its clear connection to important public policy issues and the challenges of our shared future. These are the kinds of issues that my practice was created to help address by bringing social technologies (both digital and analog) to enable participation, public engagement and collaborative problem-solving for the public good.

I remain an agnostic non-partisan, but I have to say that I was genuinely impressed that a provincial political party was willing and able to create a large-scale event like this with big ideas, bold content and then share it with the world in new ways. Hearing personally from the Premier himself that he appreciated the participatory nature of the event was very gratifying.

The conference was a hit online, with live streaming video and online discussion, it was the #2 or #3 trending topic on Twitter in Canada most of the weekend. The liveblog took almost 5,000 comments!

The in-person experience was as (ok, more) important as the online experience, so we brought a variety of graphic facilitation methods, included beautiful live graphic recording of Friday night's keynote addresses from the Premier and Malcolm Gladwell by Liisa and Disa and a massive 500-person sticky note theming exercise.

You can see all the conference content (session videos are still being uploaded) by visiting http://www.cc2010.ca/. Check out the participant-created interviews on the YouTube channel and the great shots created throughout the conference on Flickr. And you can still follow the ongoing conversation on Twitter at #cc2010.

I'm asking my followers and supporters to support me one more year! I am riding 660km from Toronto to Montreal in July, raising money for the Toronto People With AIDS Foundation. You can go directly to my Bike Rally fundraising page to donate: http://bit.ly/MarksBikeRally

This is a dual milestone year: my 5th year riding in the Bike Rally and the first Bike Rally of my 40s!

Over the years, the Bike Rally has become an important part of my life. The physical challenge gives me something to shoot for. The 6 days on the road help me disconnect from the grid and reconnect with my body. Each day is different, each turn of the crank is a meditation, and the meaning of the ride each year only becomes clear upon the arrival in Montreal.

This year, I will be reflecting on the community of people who have supported me over the years. I am so thankful for all the support I've received from you.

Another change this year is I will be riding with my boyfriend Chris Hayden, who is a first year rider who is already kicking my butt in fundraising with $2275 already raised!

Help me catch up and show the noobie how it's done! Donate here: http://bit.ly/MarksBikeRally

Life is transparent, warm and swirls randomly like a soft light. And it constantly changes...
Life illuminates itself and then it begins to illuminates a new life.
A sprouted mass of innumerable lights become a flow before long, and then become the part of the life-throb of ages.
That ties life, this moment now.

A Conservative MPP wants Toronto to become Canada's 11th province.

Bill Murdoch, MPP for Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound says rural Ontario is fighting a losing battle against what he calls "a Toronto mentality."

He wants residents who live in the Greater Toronto Area to remain part of Ontario, while Toronto becomes its own province.

Murdoch should pay attention to his own backyard and ask himself why creative young people leave his riding for the south. I'm one of them. I grew up knowing that I'd have to leave, because I just didn't "fit". Smart queer boys with big dreams and gentle creative spirits don't fit the vision of Murdoch's Ontario of rural monoculture.

My hometown of Owen Sound sits in a pretty little corner of Grey County, cradling a beautiful part of Georgian Bay. From Toronto or south-western Ontario, Owen Sound acts as a gateway to the Bruce Peninsula and the beautiful sunsets of the Lake Huron shoreline.

The area is typified by socially conservative attitudes stuck in another century and a lack of opportunity for young people. Murdoch's romantic idealism for rural past glories is not helping Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound thrive in the new century.

Murdoch's perfect Ontario without Toronto would keep the 905 region surrounding Toronto. He needs to get a bit of Economic Geography 101. Toronto and the urban agglomeration around it operate as a single integrated economic unit. If we're going to separate Toronto, we should also separate the entire Greater Toronto Area.

If Toronto were to become a province, it is rural Ontario that would suffer the most. It would lose the economic welfare benefits of taxation over the richest and most economically vibrant part of the province. The rest-of-Ontario would become a poverty-stricken rural rump saddled with an aging population, high healthcare and social welfare costs and insufficient economic activity to pay for it all.

Luckily for him, Murdoch's dream is unlikely to come true.