How it is organized?

Open space environment; differs from other camps with idea of “Change Lab”. Change Lab designed to one three hour session in which people could develop something technical – coded prototype

Toronto:

Two specific actions:
•    Open data in City of Toronto – Mark Kuznicki thinks ChangeCamp accelerated the process
•    Change Engine that came out of the Change Lab – local micro-messaging, community building

Open data in City of Toronto
•    ChangeCamp was pivotal, along with open government conference
•    City has leveraged the group as they opened up the city’s data
•    Proved there is a community of support which the City needed to act
•    Opportunity to meet other people, colleagues in public service doing similar work

Ottawa:

•    Different levels of government in attendance, especially Federal and municipal
•    Consultants & independent citizens
•    Finding a focus that would appeal to all groups was difficult
•    French & English sessions

Follow up needed on how to run a bilingual ChangeCamp event, perhaps talk with the Montreal group on how they do it.

Vancouver:

•    Not purely technology, but focus on driving change
•    Government not as big a presence as in Toronto or Ottawa; main provincial offices are in Victoria, and far from Federal government
•    City of Vancouver, City of Nanaimo, GVRD (?)
•    Technology groups, non-profits
•    Not everyone was comfortable with open meeting – spent time on how this would work – how a wiki works, how to blog, etc.
•    Group lunches organized around themes
•    “brown bags” – write description of project on a bag, people drop in business cards if interested
•    last session of the day open – everyone wrote down their burning question – self-organize into groups – 9 different groups, went into different groups
•    link to City of Vancouver open data – already started, continued the conversation
•    beyond individual cities, building Open 311 for citizen inquiries
•    spreading word about importance of mapping e.g. police mapping to show discrimination that is taking place in Vancouver
•    Town hall on the continuation of the Internet (pre-planned)
•    The mayor showed up, talked

Civic Camp Calgary:

•    Not connected to technology industry; took democamp/barcamp model to address civic advocacy
•    Looking not just at municipal politics, but broader as well
•    Had to cap number of participants – 150+ took part
•    Breakout facilitated brainstorming sessions on 10 topics
•    Didn’t come up with as tight of information as they hoped, but first civic engagement thing than most had taken part in previously
•    Wanted to become permanent presence on City of Calgary map
•    Took part in closure of street for street festival
•    Pulled people together in a Google Group
•    Should have recruited technical people to help figure out which tools to use, how to aggregate the conversations and information
•    Could use advice in this area
•    Has become a group of people – community – go to City Council on a regular basis – while it is a political organization, it is non-partisan based on civic engagement
•    Notice of Motion from City of Calgary Council to make city data in open source format – based on Vancouver’s – even though it wasn’t part of Civic Camp agenda
•    Any member can “call to arms” for an issue

They would like access to Webinar on using wiki, blog  (from Vancouver) – slides are on Slideshare – collection of background

Halifax:

•    Emily: First meeting tomorrow

Edmonton:

•    In September, first time
•    Some people are well-versed in unconference type meetings
•    Looking for advice for planning process
•    They have had an Edmonton Transit Camp previously

Q&A:

Future:how do we support organizers of this movement so that we don’t have to have as many one-on-one conversations?  Use the Google Group for discussion

Optics of holding ChangeCamp events in a city hall?  No good reasons given not to hold it there.

ChangeCamp: How do we re-imagine government & citizenship in the age of participation

Presentation by Mark Kuznicki
http://remarkk.com
@remarkk

Open data, open government are important responses to what is happening in the world. He sees us in a lot of trouble – what we have been doing up until now is not working. We are running into accelerated change that is turning into crisis after crisis.

Part of the issue :
•    increasingly interconnected, increasingly complex
•    organizations created centuries ago are being challenged to deal with the world of complexity

Those of us concerned are coming together as a certain kind of tribe
•    We are not like everyone else necessarily
•    What makes this group distinctive
•    People see the need and desire to participate, build community

Dave Eaves – “A Neo-Progressive Manifesto”
http://eaves.ca
•    what the values are of emerging groups that are coming together
•    non-partisan, but not value-neutral – this group still has a set of values
•    still a work in progress
•    themes around
o    huge shift going on
o    what we want in terms of sustainability, emergent, open
o    citizens becoming hackers, creators & citizens rather than customers

ChangeCamp is…
•    Post-partisan (citizens, not belonging to a party)
•    A third space outside the silos of government, outside private enterprise
•    Face-to-face and online
•    Set of ideas emerging inside it
•    A conversation
•    A platform for collaboration
•    Local and national/global

Explicit versus tacit knowledge – our most important knowledge on how to deal with the most important problems is not held in any one tool, book or person’s head. Disconnection of communities, professions puts at risk the future of civilization.  Idea that “talk is cheap” i.e. meaningless does a disservice to the work being done.

ChangeCamp is not…
•    A coherent ideology with a centre or charismatic leader (it is too emergent right now)
•    An advocacy organization
•    A political party or interest group
•    A replacement for representative democracy

What we are doing: restoring the village square. Bringing back public space for civic dialogue. 

He gets inspired by Peter Block – Community: The Structure of Belonging
•    Social capital idea
•    Translate isolation in our communities to connectedness and caring for the whole

We have been separated into silos – across organizations, between organizations, and this separation is harming us.

Peter Block’s principles:
•    Build the social fabric – free association for people to come together
•    Citizens convening other citizens
•    Small groups are powerful
•    Community as a conversation

Clay Shirky – what the web does in the age of participation

Community is being transformed by technology. It is not either/or.

Mark is passionate about thinking about a vehicle with people who are moving us from an industrial society to a more networked society.

Roundtable discussion

Rohan Jayasekera (Toronto)
•    Worried about a future meritocracy that David Eaves envisions
•    Worried about marginalization of large parts of society
•    What kind of change do we want? We want change in the political process – modernize it. Increase participation. Does not want to see the technology haves rule over the technology have nots.
•    How do we make sure the participation is broadly based.

Brent McKinnon (Toronto)
•    Key word: re-imagine

Elena Yunusov (Toronto)
•    Ontario Ombudsman’s office
•    Outreach from the government
•    We don’t have to stay in our own bubble

Reilly (Vancouver)
•    Agrees with Rohan
•    How we can expand the conversation to new audiences; make sure people know it is open to everyone.

Patrick Keenan (Toronto)
•    What resonated most – change often comes from a small group of people

Emily (Halifax)
•    Make accessible all the tools by which people can participate
•    Esp. for people in rural regions
•    Anything that simplifies the process
•    How-to and guides would be useful.

Steve (?)
•    Issue of creating community and creating conversation are not distinct from creating change
•    Some inherent value in connecting people, but if we don’t make some vehicle for creating change, it is just a lot of conversations
•    Could just be the forming of a new community in a neighbourhood
•    How do we facilitate that change?
•    He is not hearing these issues addressed: poverty, homelessness, addiction, HIV/AIDS, climate change, housing

Karen (Vancouver)
•    Learnings from Participation Camp in New York
•    Trying to be as inclusive as possible
•    Collaboration, cooperation, coordination – differences between – give people tools if they cannot take part in full collaboration – give people an “onramp” to other levels of engagement

DJ (Calgary)
•    Success – this is not new, generations before have attempted; but we have a very powerful tool not previously available to us. Allows people to self-organize.

David Hume (Vancouver?)
•    Governments have been in the business & had the expectation by citizens of doing everything
•    Rethinking citizenship
•    How can we make people the best of what they want to be

Melanie
•    Will post her thoughts to her Google Group

Reilly (Vancouver)
•    We will be able to find a good balance, but need to keep in mind

Mark Kuznicki's thoughts on where things could go:

If we could do anything

Methods within ChangeCamp:

Open Space + Social Media + Open Innovation

Open Innovation covers things like
•    Open data
•    Open Source
•    Creative Commons

Long tail of ChangeCamp

All the tools on the ChangeCamp website were pulled together in less than 3 weeks, including the branding – has served its purpose.

ChangeCamp is both a platform and a community – accelerates community transformation.