Friday, March 25, 2011

Back in the Saddle Again

First let me start off by sharing:

Second, let me share that it's great to be back in the saddle, I've really missed this space and truly underestimated it's ability to keep to me motivated and thinking creatively about public service. I hope that you can bare with me if my writing seems a little unpolished in the next few weeks, I have a lot of thoughts swirling through my head.

Since I last wrote I've been to Edmonton, Kamloops, Nanaimo, Vancouver and Halifax. I've been fortunate enough to meet a number of public servants facing unique challenges and have a much deeper appreciation for regional employees than ever before. I've participated in workshops here in Ottawa on social media in government, sat in on intranet renewal consultations, and been exploring (and learning) about some of the challenges with respect to publishing government data online. I will undoubtedly be sharing more details about these experiences and learnings in the coming weeks, but before I do that there are probably some other "housekeeping" items worth mentioning:

  1. Clearly there is a lot of talk of elections ('nuff said)
  2. The Clerk of the Privy Council released his 18th Annual Report to the Prime Minister (Kudos to those of you who were involved in the Collaborative Culture Camp (C3) series of free learning events as they were highlighted in the Clerk's report)
  3. The Government of Canada has launched data.gc.ca (an open data portal pilot project) as well as open.gc.ca

Next week, I'll publish a real column, promise.

Cheers.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Back Soon

Hi All -

Just wanted to thank everyone for their support since my last post, I know that Movember is a long time away but given how prostate cancer has touched my life this year, expect me to be hitting you up for support come next November. All things considered my father is doing pretty well.

I also wanted to alert you to fact that I was featured in Ottawa Magazine this month. I'd encourage you to check it out if you are interested in learning a bit more about me. I gave a copy to my old man (whom is also mentioned in the article); and he and I are fairly emotional people so he got a little choked up. It was great to see him happy.

On that note, I'm working on a couple things that may see me working on different things in the near future, and if everything stays moving the way it is with my dad, I'll probably be back writing in the new fiscal year. Until then, catch you over at cpsr365.

Cheers