Getting Government to Innovate

Readers of this blog know that I’m into social innovation, which is simply improving the way we tackle public challenges.

Last week, Tim Draimin, the Executive Director of SIG, tweeted that the world’s leading social innovator, Christian Bason, was coming to Toronto. I had no idea who this Bason guy was and why he’d be regarded by one of Canada’s leading social innovators as the world’s best.

It takes Google 0.17 seconds to return more than 110,000 hits bearing his name. It’s not hard to learn about him. And the more I looked, the more I realized what he does is needed our region.

Bason leads MindLab, a “cross-ministerial” research centre that involves business, citizens, and government to find creative solutions for society. It’s an incubator inside government focused on delivering new ideas, and housed in a gorgeous building. Which no doubt is an inspiring place to do their work.

Their work has helped retain foreign workers, reduced red tape through a citizen’s perspective (with a focus on young people), combined workplace safety with mentoring, and developed a business led climate change strategy.

At last week's panel on Governing New Brunswick, it was shown that our system puts up almost insurmountable barriers to doing the work that's needed. The province's fiscal situation fosters more conservative behavior, despite the need for innovation and creativity. From conversations in the other Maritime Provinces, this is true throughout.

A MindLab type organization on a regional scale could be our anecdote.

It's that day of the week again!

It's another Thursday, which means I'm due for another post.

Initially I was going to write a big long post about how I don't know how to drive, to continue on the "things Sarah doesn't know how to do" train of thought, but I figured I'd spare you most of that. I would, however, like to state that I have driven a tractor once, and a car twice. The second car incident involved me almost driving my friend's car into a snowbank while my sister sat in the backseat yelling at me (The joys of winter and being stuck in the snow. Everyone was okay. Even the car! I said almost into the snowbank.)

Ahem. Onto a different topic.

I have recently started paying more attention to politics. It started when I began working here for the most part, but it started cropping up in all areas of my life - My brother often discusses politics with me, it occasionally comes up at both of my jobs, and at school the other day we took a political test. I've been able to vote for the past couple years. I voted the first time I was able to, the second time I did not because I had moved, but this year I'm going to. Tim told me yesterday about vote mobs and it's actually pretty inspiring. There's one happening in Fredericton this Saturday, and I'm going to attend. (there's a good article here about it)

And it's all thanks to Rick Mercer... And even if you aren't attending a vote mob or anything like that - Please just take 20 minutes out of your day and vote, as he says.

Can we be too happy?

Can we be too happy?

I asked this question on the closing panel of the Ignite Leadership Conference at St. Mary’s University. It was in response to another panelist lamenting how much Haligonians (and I’d argue, Atlantic Canadians) spend whining about the state of things. In fact, this panelists said, we have much to celebrate.

This is true. One of those things should be our high scores on a slew of happiness rankings. A key indicator behind these happiness indicators is the strength of one’s relationships. Atlantic Canada is well known for strong ties, so it shouldn’t be surprising that we rank particularly high.

But we don’t rank high on a host of other issues that also matter – education, health, innovation, business starts. We’re close to, if not at, the bottom.

Recently Jim Meek wrote a piece in Progress Magazine about the dark side of happiness - being happy may lead to complacency. If one is happy, why change? Why stick your nick out and maybe fail if life is good? As another panelist said yesterday, Halifax seems to have a lot of people devoted to the status quo.

Many of the young leaders going through our programs have tapped into wells of motivation by recognizing how their efforts make a real difference against these challenges. Whether that’s through starting a business, adapting one’s behavior and getting better results, or working with their mentor on a particular challenge, achieving one’s goal brought satisfaction.

This isn’t a post against happiness –I wish everyone supportive families, friends, and community. But we can’t be blind either. When our leaders become more willing and able to do something about the challenges before them, that makes me happy.

Intern post number two

I have a (small) confession to make.

I don't know French.

I never learned French when I was younger, and now I'm wishing I had. It would make things a bit easier for me. I never really saw it as something I needed to know (though I wanted to learn after I took a trip to Montreal last summer) but something that I kept procrastinating (gasp!) on learning. Most of the time if someone speaks slowly to me in French I get an idea of what they're saying, but it's not perfect. Where does this fit in with 21inc? Everything is bilingual. Which I think is awesome. Except I keep making changes to the website and then am reminded that I have to go in and change the French version too. If it's text? Have to wait for someone to translate it.

So something I would like to gain out of working at 21inc is to at least have a grasp on French. My title does have the word 'communications' in it, and probably that should stretch to both languages. (This will be put on the backburner until after school is finished. My other summer goals are to paint more, get into traditional illustration, make comics and go to the beach.)

One thing that I'm already gaining in my (so far) short time here is experience working in an office environment. I've had a few jobs before this (I actually go to school full time and have another job) so I know what it's like to work somewhere, but usually there's a lot of managers telling you "you have to do this and that and so on and so forth..." but here.. I have a number of things that Tim and I decided I'd be working on, and I get to self-direct myself. I have a really short attention span, so it's nice because I have a number of very different things I can work on (layouts, video editing, web stuff) so once I need a break from one thing I can move on to something else. I find that that's how I work best when I'm doing homework, so it's nice to see that I can apply that to a workplace as well (though obviously things that have a deadline get priority.)

What I've been working on today is a webisode for our e-newsletter, with interview footage that I took at the event at Up a few weeks ago. It's actually really convenient because in my A/V production class we just recently went over documentary editing (which was basically putting interviews together) so it seems less daunting now. Putting all the footage together is almost like a puzzle though, but not in a bad way.

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.