Go West (Again)

I've had a really interesting week last week. I spent time in Edmonton, Vancouver and Victoria.

In Edmonton, I delivered social media training at the Affects Symposium hosted by the Alberta Federal Council. I ran three separate workshops on social media: (1) Putting the Social in Social Media; (2) Social Media 101 for Personal Development and (3) Social Media 101 for Organizational Objectives. I also hosted three roundtable Q and A-style discussions on social media in general. My key takeaway from Edmonton was that there is still a significant demand (and need) for social media 101 training.

In Vancouver I had the opportunity to sit on a panel with two people for whom I have a tremendous amount of respect: Etienne Laliberté and David Eaves. This panel was a long time coming. These men helped shape my career. The conversation was incredibly satisfying and we touched on a number of salient points. The most important of which was an intervention by David where he argued that, 10 years ago this panel couldn't have existed because the three of us would have never been able to connect, share and publicize our ideas to the extent that we have. David went as far to hypothesize that perhaps the three of us would have chosen completely different paths. I can't speak for Etienne and David but I can say that without them I would have surely left the public service a long time ago. While I am grateful for the help, encouragement and brotherly advice the two have given me over the last few years, I am even more grateful to count them among my friends.

In Victoria I attended a planning session for the upcoming Open Gov West BC conference being held at the University of Victoria on November 10. My sense is that the event will be a unique mashup of my experience at ChangeCamp Ottawa, WiredCamp Toronto, Open City Edmonton, and GovCamp. As a speaker for the event, my objective is simple. I want to rally people around a single idea:

We are the future of open government, open data and public sector innovation. We are here learning our trade, stretching the organization, and building the platform for the next generation of government. We are the public servants that the web built.

I'm going to do that by sitting down with my friend Walter Schwabe and share some stories about the importance of openness, the transformative nature of the web and how those things relate to government. I want to share specific examples and help connect the audience to other people in the larger community in hopes that they will continue the conversation after the event.

In short, I'm hoping to inspire people, and I'm hoping to make a case for open government. But most importantly, I'm hoping you will join us in Victoria on November 10.

See you there.

Column: What I Learned at WiredCamp

This week I had the pleasure of being invited to participate in #wiredcamp, an event hosted by some of my friends in the Ontario Public Service. The event was styled as an unconference after the changecamp model (which I helped facilitate here in Ottawa and which Mike helped to document), and was aimed at:

[bringing] public servants of all stripes to together [to] answer the following questions:

• How do we re-imagine government and public service in the age of participation?
• What we can do to help make government more open and responsive?

To my knowledge it was the first of its kind to take place within the public service. Looking back on the day, I must say that it was a tremendous success. The participants were energized and the conversations engaging. I was happy to be afforded the opportunity to both meet some great people like Lisa Torjman, and see the likes of Mark Kuznicki and Elena Yunusov both of whom I hadn't seen since ChangeCamp Ottawa.

One of the things I really enjoyed was how the day began with four ignite-style presentations. Here is the lineup and my key takeaway from each:

• Mark Kuznicki: Leaders are no longer command-and-control type people but those who thrive within communities; they are facilitators, they are enablers.
• Lisa Torjman: The world is now driven by people. Enable them and they will carry your brand/message further than you ever could.
• Nick Charney: Get your hands dirty and be creative. Stop focusing on how to stop things from happening and focus on how to make them happen.
• David Tallan: When it comes to innovation, start small - under the radar. Make it seem harmless, then scale up to keep pace with success.

For those of you who don't know, ignite presentations are extremely challenging. They are 5 minute presentations where speakers have 20 slides, each automatically advancing every 15 seconds. This was the first I’ve ever done. I embedded my deck below and have attached my speaking notes as well. I wanted to capture the audio but didn't want to lose the momentum that Mark and Lisa had built up already. Doug told me he captured the video, and I will share the link if/when it finds its way onto the Internet.

If you are interested in knowing more about Wiredcamp or what was discussed in the breakout sessions please visit www.technowonk.ca. Most of what we did that day is captured there. In fact, the only thing that isn't is all the tremendous value we created simply by meeting with one another, serendipitously finding allies, and vowing to carry something out of the room with us.


Speaking of Action Items

At Wiredcamp I committed to taking the next step in establishing something akin to a Govloop North. This is something I have been working on quietly with some great people on the West Coast. We aren't exactly sure what that means or how it will come to fruition yet, but interest is building and our friends at Govloop have agreed to help in whatever way they can – awesome.

If you are interested in knowing more/participating in this endeavour please visit and contribute to the Govloop North group I have created over at Govloop.


My Presentation

Here is a PDF of my speaking notes for my presentation, which is embedded below.

Wired Camp Ignite Sept22 Toronto

View more presentations from Nicholas Charney.