It’s Go Time >> ChangeMedium Toronto

It’s go time.

ChangeMedium Toronto is slated for October 24th at MaRS. What is it? Read more to find out. Want a hand in it? Leave a comment below.

What?
ChangeMedium is an initiative to provoke public micro-messaging as a medium for change. Public micro-messaging (e.g. Twitter) is emerging as the most accessible, participatory public medium in history. Bringing the open and emergent properties of the web to the global reach of text messaging is already showing great potential for public benefit. But we’ve only begun to understand what’s happening let alone build an infrastructure to make the most of this medium. Enter ChangeMedium Toronto.

ChangeMedium Toronto is an event to explore the frontiers, gather community, and make the medium. It will be a simple format with 2 tracks – one for researchers and one for hackers. We want to explore the frontiers. What is this medium about? We want to push ourselves further. What are the implications for change? We want to contribute to making it better. Let’s make it happen.

Why?
The pace of change is stunning. Researchers, hackers and makers are already involved in understanding and applying this medium. Whether for fun, profit, or benefit we’re creating this as we go. ChangeMedium Toronto is our inaugural effort to convene this community and introduce and provoke the potential for change.

Who?
ChangeMedium emerged out of the work of a group of people passionate about the world play with Twitter as a platform for change. The Toronto event itself was provoked by Frances Westley and Renjie Bitauld of SiG@Waterloo, Lisa Torjman and Allyson Hewitt of SiG@MaRS, Ryan Coleman, Peter Flaschner, and James Walker.

Of course we’re just beginning and what ends up will be a product of the community. Have an idea? Want to play a role? Want to know more? Leave a comment and get the ball rolling.

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SoCap09 – a journey, my mission.

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Image by ***Images*** via Flickr

Coming to SoCap09 has proved to be a good opportunity to integrate a number of threads I’ve been exploring over the past few years. Accelerated by an exploration with Jeremy Heigh and crystalized through provocative conversations with Stephen Huddart and Tom Reis, here’s the perspective I now find myself now arriving with.

We know complexity is rising and change is quickening. The systems of society are reaching their limits. Our interventions are having more impact. Repercussions ripple up, down, across systems.

We’re responding with rigor, improving our understanding, building models, measuring, and evaluating our progress. And yet we know better than ever that while we aim for impact, change is erratic.

Adding to this we have the mess of mobile, open, and the social web. We don’t know yet fully what it means but we know it’s playing a role. We know it’s not just about tools and technology, it’s about culture and community.

So now, for SoCap, I’m coming clearer on my agenda. In addition to my role with the Canadian contingent, my invitation to discuss Community Power as the next asset class, the upcoming launch of ChangeMediumI’m playing with the opportunity in using ‘social media’ to improve the way we sense and respond to events, intersects and shifts in systems up, down, and across the layers of change (e.g. venture, portfolio, mission). While I have ideas and intentions on what that looks like – I know I can’t know what it will end up.

If this interests you too, track me down and we’ll see where this goes.

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Reconfiguring my presence and channels.

I’ve been unsubscribing from email subscriptions like crazy lately and have just been prompted to review my online profiles in prep for the launch of http://thread.IO.

I used to want product/org updates to come to me… ones that I had requested. That seems to be changing though. I’m shifting to reliance on curation and synchronicity like never before. That means relying on Twitter, Friendfeed, Tumblr and direct notices from real people who know me to find out what’s going on. It marks my trust that what needs to, will find me. This is big. And I think it’s a reflection of how the social web is fundamentally changing us. I don’t want new destinations I want humanly pre-filtered inputs.

In terms of profiles, I’m also finding myself less drawn to define myself by the companies/projects I’m affiliated. I seem to be trying to express who I am and am more comfortable letting the companies/projects just surface in the content. My sense is that this also relates to the gig economy where we are increasingly people who do stuff rather than people being a part of stuff that happens.

Which leads me to my final ramble… how I use this blog is changing. I will be doing more unfinished thoughts and posts as they happen. I have also been more actively on my tumblog which is more about sharing what I encounter throughout my day (my curated content).  And finally if you want a firehose of my content you can check out my FriendFeed which grabs all the contributions I make in this social web. As I play with these things, and can find the time or help, I’ll be updating this blog to bring it together in a cleaner way.

Feels like this is a transition to a new way of being. Something that’s been coming, but has just become more practical. The transition will be messy but it’s a great time for ideas and experimentation too.

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