Being an intern is fun

It really is!

Some of you may or may not have heard of me (or even met me) but for about the past month I have been an intern for 21inc. I attend the New Brunswick College Of Craft And Design, taking the Integrated Media program. I hear you now asking yourself, "What is integrated media?"

If you are familiar with NBCCD at all, you may know that one of the studios (programs) they have is called "Communication Design" which is basically Graphic Design. They decided last year that there was so much in the realm of graphic design that they couldn't fit it all into one program any longer. So! They split it up into two programs, Graphic Design (Mostly print media based and basic web design) , and Integrated Media. What I take in school is less about the print side of things (Though those things are still a part of my program) and more about media - More dynamic web design, special effects (Motion graphics), film, animation and game design. I also graduated from the Foundation Visual Arts program last year (I miss the drawing/painting aspect of that, though I still get to draw and paint - I just don't always have a drawing class) and I'm almost at the end of year 1 of a 2 year program. The things that I'm most excited about next year are making video games (We're going to be using a program called unity which looks amazing), learning php/web programming, flash actionscript and I get to take another elective (I would like to take a drawing class or something in textiles/surface design.)

Tim brought me on to take care of more the communications side of 21inc - Newsletters, web, and video is mostly what I'll be doing. It's really great for me because I get a chance to work in my field and I haven't even graduated yet. (Sidenote: I get to blog and post things to Twitter/Facebook. For work. How awesome is that?)

Last week there was an event for 21inc alumni at Up wine bar with Nancy McKay, and I got to attend and take pictures/interviews. It was really interesting because I don't really read the news that often or keep up with politics (shame on me) so I definitely learned a lot. I didn't participate in the group discussion but hearing the differing opinions was very insightful. (And the decor was amazing)

That and photography is something that I really enjoy doing, so I was happy that I had a chance to borrow a sweet camera (Nikon D300s) from my studio and go out and take some pictures. I would say that I took at least 80, but narrowed it down to 12 to upload, which you can see at flickr (Click the image at the top of the post)

Guest Blog Post: Jeff Sparks on 11 Minutes/11 Muscles

As a 21 Inc. alumni, member of the 21 Inc. Board, and person with a neuromuscular disorder, I am very excited to attend 11 Minutes/11 Muscles. This is an event conceived and organized by students in UNB's MBA professional development class to support Muscular Dystrophy Canada (MDC) and modeled after the inspirational TED event.

Through attending this event you will have the opportunity to hear from some amazing speakers, while making a difference in the lives of those with neuromuscular disorders. 11 Minutes/11 Muscles will feature the Honourable Graydon Nicholas, Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick; Freeman Patterson, photographer and writer; Rachel Pulfer, international program director, Journalists for Human Rights; Stanton T. Friedman, physicist and ufologist; Brian Duplessis, executive director, United Way; and David Adams Richards, author, playwright and Saint Thomas University writer-in-residence.

Funds raised from the event will support the programs and services of Muscular Dystrophy Canada including. Where do the funds go? Here's a personal example: My new wheelchair cost $45,000. Purchased with support from MD Canada, it allows me to live an amazing quality of life and contribute to our communities through the work of great organizations like 21 Inc.

Hope to see you on April 1st.

Ideas Festival videos

Over the last couple months we've been working with Hemmings House Pictures to produce a few videos of the Ideas Festival. We're really happy with the results - they capture the energy and opportunities created by the Festival. I'll be posting English, French, and bilingual videos up here over the next week. Below is the bilingual trailer, a mash up of some of the best quotes and interviews from the 2010 Festival.

Entrepreneurial Purpose-Driven Education

Came across a video this morning of Bruce Mau, the well known designer and planner talking about his Center for Massive Change. Much of this is very resonant with where 21inc is going. Like the Center, we're developing a "methodology and expertise to be constantly innovative, to deal with challenges that will emerge in the future." We're focused on building a community of "entrepreneurial learners." Because change is happening so fast, people need to know how to "explore possibilities as they're evolving."

His analogy about being lost in the forest is brilliant and incredibly relevant to Atlantic Canada. I may "borrow" it.

Making Models

Our quarterly board meeting is this Saturday and it's more anticipated than usual. (Aren't board meetings always hotly anticipated??)

I've been devouring the book, Business Model Generation, over the past few weeks. Unlike most business books, this one is useful. Very. A business model is a description of how an organization creates, captures and deliver value. BMG shows how a combination of nine building blocks (eg. value proposition, key activities, customers) that all organizations have work interdependently to create, capture, and deliver value.

On Saturday we're developing the 21inc business model. We do each of the building blocks to some extent. Some better than others. But we've never put them together and see where we need to focus for future success and sustainability. There's so many benefits from doing this, including understanding where we need systems, what we should stop doing, and where we need to double down.

The picture above is from our practice session (prototyping for the design thinkers out there) with the Executive Committee this Monday.

Mission creep, or something else?

Mission creep is infamous in the not-for-profit world. It’s when an organization does a project outside its mission. Because budgets are tight and most of us run project to project, you do the project because you need money. In the process the organization dilutes who it is and weakens the brand.

But what if taking on different projects isn’t mission creep. What if instead it’s part of every organization’s evolving identity? That’s the question I’ve been playing with over the last week, particularly after a recent lunch meeting in Saint John.

Lately we’re being asked to consider and increasing amount of projects with the goals of enabling policy change. We usually say no. Our work focuses on developing the best leaders in Canada by building hard and soft skills, and knowledge of the context in which those skills are applied. Policy isn’t what we do and only tempts mission creep. That’s what I used to think.

I’m now wondering if 21inc can pursue its mission – to develop and inspire Atlantic Canada’s new and emerging leaders – with greater impact by not only using our programs to develop skills and knowledge, but also further create opportunities to exercise leadership. Our growing alumni, now at 118, have told us they’d like opportunities to influence the direction our provinces and region are taking.

The Aspen Institute in the United States does this. They’ve always been a model for us and maybe this is the road they took. Even if we eventually follow them, we still need to walk it ourselves.

2010 Reflections

It’s not my habit to spend much time looking backwards. True to form, for the last month, since the Emerging Leaders Summit and Ideas Festival in November, 21inc’s Board of Directors and I have been thinking about 2011-2014. But unable to sleep last night because of a stupid decision to drink a late coffee, I found myself lying in bed reflecting on 2010. Some of you might be interested in this, so below are my top three highs and lows of 2010.

2010 Highs

Atlantic Programs

No question, our biggest high of 2010 was the launch and successful execution of our first regional leadership experience. It started in the fall of 2009 when discussions began with the Government of Nova Scotia about what 21inc does. There was much interest and more stakeholders were brought to the conversation. We approached several of our partners, including ACOA, Scotiabank, Colour, Emera , Stewart McKelvey, and Ernst & Young, who all saw real value in a regional approach. With each Atlantic Province committed as a partner, the Emerging Leaders Summit was launched in June. The results were excellent. Working with our alumni across the region in 2011 is going to be a blast.

The Ideas Festival was also a highlight. This was our second Festival, which happens every two years. My colleague and co-conspirator Julie Breau told me after the Festival that a part of her wanted to know if the success of the first one was luck. It wasn’t. Pamela Scott Crace of Progress Magazine said she “loved” the inaugural Festival and didn’t know how we could top that. Her answer was we did, “by a lot.” I’m most proud of the greater regional representation and increased French content of the 2010 Festival. And the limbo contest.

Partnerships

Partnerships aren’t easy and we learned that this year. I guess we always knew it, but from now on we’ll enter partnerships having earned an education from the school of hard knocks.

Board changes

We spent the summer drafting policy, creating systems and updating the board structure. We added new members and for the first time, recruited them from outside the alumni. We still need to put some specifics to the systems and add two more members, but the momentum 21inc is experiencing at the board level is very positive.

2010 21 Leaders program

Our second 21 Leaders cohort graduated in May in Bathurst. They are an inspiring group. Two companies were started, several of the Leaders found placements on prestigious boards. And NB Debates was formed out of the Community Solutions Projects.

2010 Lows

Partnerships

This is both a high and a low. The highs are the lessons learned. The lows were the pain endured while learning those lessons.

Workload

It never gets lower. Murphy must have a law about this. Hire people, gain experience, purchase fancy tools, and enter into partnerships: new work displaces the old.

Noah Augustine

Canada lost a significant leader when Noah Augustine died in a car accident this fall. Noah was a big supporter of 21inc and met with the 2009 cohort. I was cleaning out my inbox over the Christmas holidays and found an email correspondence we had just one week before he passed. His shoes will be difficult to fill.