renjie's posterous

The SiG@Waterloo "Innovators in Action" Speaker Series, will apply the ideas of social innovation to a number of specific sectors and issues - education, youth mentorship, inclusion, collaboration and cultural change. Each of the keynote speakers will share their experiences of operating at the national level to identify and address the root causes of intractable social challenges. Each keynote lecture will be followed by a local panel discussion who will share their reflections on the presentation and offer insight into their own experiences.

May 5 - Ric Young at The Museum, Kitchener, ON

May 19 - Cindy Blackstock at The Museum, Kitchener, ON

June 2 - Penny Milton at the Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery, Waterloo, ON

June 16 - Ilse Treurnicht at the Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery, Waterloo, ON

June 23 - Bruce MacDonald at the Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery, Waterloo, ON

All lectures are FREE to attend. RSVP required.
Spaces are limited. Register to attend below!

Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Time: 7pm-9pm
Venue: The Museum, 10 King Street West, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada

Ric Young - Architect of numerous campaigns for change and one of Canada's leading authorities in the field of social innovation.

Eric (Ric) Young was a pioneer in the field of social marketing. He cut his teeth on the early stages of the PARTICIPaction campaign, and was co-founder of Canada’s first dedicated social marketing agency. He left that company in the mid-90s to start E.Y.E. | The Social Projects Studio™ – a company dedicated to the creation and development of breakthrough social change initiatives. Working with leading government, corporate and not-for-profit clients, he became increasingly frustrated by the inadequacy of the tools, models and methods society has at hand for tackling our most complex problems. This led him, in the year 2000, to propose to DuPont Canada that they embark on an initiative “to foster new mindsets, new skill sets, and a new culture for social innovation in Canada”. He worked with DuPont over several years to develop the Social Innovation Initiative, eventually forging a partnership with McGill University to create one of the world’s first social innovation think tanks. This think tank gave rise to the best-selling book, Getting To Maybe. He is on the faculty of the Boston College Centre for Corporate Citizenship. His current voluntary roles include: membership on the board of Ecotrust Canada, the Canadian advisory board of Right To Play and the editorial board of the Social Marketing Quarterly. He is a fellow of The Royal Society of the Arts, a member of Massey College’s Quadrangle Society, and a fellow of SiG (Social Innovation Generation) at the University of Waterloo.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Time: 7pm-9pm
Venue: The Museum, 10 King Street West, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada

Cindy Blackstock - Executive Director of First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada.

A member of the Gitksan Nation, she has worked in the field of child and family services for over 20 years. Key interests include exploring the over representation of Aboriginal children in child welfare care, structural drivers of child maltreatment in First Nations communities, human rights and the role of the voluntary sector in expanding the range of culturally and community based responses to child maltreatment.

Current professional interests include serving as an Atkinson Economic Justice Fellow, J.W. McConnell Family Foundation Social Innovation Generation Fellow, co-director of the Centre of Excellence for Child Welfare and a board member of the National Aboriginal Youth Organization.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Time: 7pm-9pm
Venue: Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery, 25 Caroline Street North, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

Penny Milton - CEO of Canadian Education Association.

Penny Milton has been Chief Executive Officer of Canadian Education Association since 1996. She was past Chair of the Toronto Board of Education, Executive Director of the Ontario Public School Board Association, and served as Deputy Minister of the Ontario Premier’s Council of Health, Well-being and Social Justice. She has held several public appointments including current membership on The Minister’s Curriculum Council and Governance Review Committee for Ontario. She was a founding Director of the Toronto Community Housing Corporation and now serves as a Director of ArtsSmarts and Goodwill Industries. She is the author of several book chapters, numerous articles and presentations on policy issues in education.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Time: 7pm-9pm
Venue: Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery, 25 Caroline Street North, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

Ilse Treurnicht - CEO of MaRS Discovery District.

Ilse Treurnicht is the CEO of MaRS Discovery District, a leading innovation centre located in Toronto. She oversees both the development and operations of the MaRS Centre and its broad suite of entrepreneurship and innovation programs.

MaRS offers advisory services, market intelligence and entrepreneurship education to emerging companies in health care/life sciences, digital media/ICT, cleantech and social purpose businesses across Ontario. Ilse has worked closely with the leadership of Toronto's academic institutions and teaching hospitals to create MaRS Innovation, an integrated commercialization platform for 14 Toronto Institutions and served as the interim Managing Director for a year following its formal launch in early 2008.

Ilse joined MaRS in early 2005 from her role as President & CEO of Primaxis Technology Ventures, a start-up stage venture capital fund focused on the advanced technologies sector. Prior to Primaxis, Ilse was an entrepreneur with senior management roles in a number of emerging technology companies.

She is an active member of Canada's innovation community, and has served on the boards of private companies, industry associations and research organizations, and has been a member of several government advisory panels.

Ilse holds a DPhil in chemistry from Oxford University, which she attended as a Rhodes scholar.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Time: 7pm-9pm
Venue: Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery, 25 Caroline Street North, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

Bruce MacDonald - President and CEO, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Canada.

In 1995, Bruce joined the staff of Big Brothers and Sisters of Canada as Director of Marketing and Special Events. Three job titles and two organization names later, Bruce eventually moved into the senior staff position, becoming President and CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Canada in March 2004. Prior to BBBSC, Bruce was involved with the Hamilton-Burlington YMCA, Stoney Creek YMCA, Ontario Senior Games and the Kinsmen and Kinette Clubs of Canada. Bruce holds a Bachelor of Commerce in Sports Administration from Laurentian University and a Masters in Management in the Voluntary Sector from McGill University.

OMG... the plaza close to the University of Waterloo caught fire this morning. Heard on the radio that 8 business have been affected, from Mel's Diner all the way to Tabu. 

Not too sure of the cause of the fire, will update once I get more information.

Photos below of the fire, taken and posted by Levi McCulloch on facebook this morning, as he was making his way to campus at 6am (presumably to study for final exams).

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Click here to download:

Developing_story_University_of.zip (269 KB)

Edit: 9:50 AM April 22 2010

Thankfully, there are no reported injuries as a result of the fire earlier this morning.

From CTV Toronto

Police say the fire caused extensive damage in the area but that there are no reported injuries.

There are two universities in the area, Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Waterloo.  Dozens of students who live in the area have been evacuated from their residences.

The fire started at around 5:30 a.m. on a commercial block at Phillip Street and University Avenue. Several businesses were reportedly in flames.

Waterloo authorities say the fire is now under control though emergency crews will remain on the scene to put out any hot spots.

Edit: 10:45 AM April 22 2010

Amateur video shot by classic240 on YouTube

Edit 10:30PM April 22 2010

UW Plaza aftermath photos shared by Christine Lu on facebook, taken by Juliana Tsang (approximately 9am-12pm). Extensive damage to the premises, its a sad day for Waterloo.

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developing-story-university-of-waterloo-plaza-on-fire-this-morning-uwaterloo-photos-taken-by-levimcc-mlbwGusJdryvgzphjkge.zip (890 KB)

Monika and I made our way to the plaza for dinner last night. We stopped by and took pictures of what's left standing of Mel's Diner - brings back some good memories of 3am "breakfasts" after the bar.

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developing-story-university-of-waterloo-plaza-on-fire-this-morning-uwaterloo-photos-taken-by-levimcc-rwIzlkrAlgDIfnvIkgni.zip (365 KB)

“During my time as the Vice-President, Administration and Finance for the University of Waterloo’s Federation of Students, I worked closely with Jeff Henry, and can attest firsthand to his skilled leadership and collaborative approach. Among Jeff’s broad set of advocacy skills, his in-depth knowledge of municipal affairs helped to ensure an optimal outcome when we worked with the Region of Waterloo to provide a universal transit pass for University of Waterloo undergraduate students. Thanks to Jeff’s leadership and teamwork skills, more than 24,000 students now have access to affordable and reliable transit that connects them more closely with the Waterloo community.

Even during the more challenging executive experiences that arose during our time working together – and there were many – Jeff showed an even temperament, well thought-out arguments, a team-focused mindset, and capable leadership. I am pleased to support him in his bid for city council, and believe he would serve as an excellent bridge between the community and university students.”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Paul Polak, founder of International Development Enterprises (IDE) and author of Out of Poverty, spoke at the University of Waterloo on Thursday night where he discussed solutions to help millions of people escape poverty.

Paul, along with Gerry Dyck, IDE's first staff member, told the story of the organization, that has grown over the course of 28 years, to impact the lives of over 17 million people who live on less than a dollar a day.  IDE was founded as a non profit organization, on the premise that the world's poor were customers and needed to be treated as such:

From a BusinessWeek article on Paul Polak and IDE:

Founded by Polak in 1981, IDE is based on the belief that there are simple solutions to the seemingly complex problem of poverty, and that those solutions are based on enabling the entrepreneurial spirit of the poor. The logic of IDE's approach is so simple it seems ridiculously obvious: Poor people are poor because they don't have enough money; 800 million of the world's poorest earn their living from one-acre farms; those people could earn more if they knew how to grow high-value crops; to do that, the poor need access to very cheap tools—seeds, fertilizer, irrigation—and to markets where they can sell their goods. 

Given this, IDE's focused mission has been to develop radically low-cost tools that will help subsistence farmers become small-scale commercial farmers. For instance, IDE's $25 treadle pump (a foot-powered suction pump) enables a family working two to six hours a day to irrigate a half-acre of vegetables during the dry season and earn an average of at least $100 a year after expenses. Other products include a $40 water storage tank and a drip irrigation system that costs roughly $200 an acre, four-fifths the cost of a conventional system. 

IDE therefore operates much like a business, a 'multinational for international development' as Paul put it on Thursday night. On top of IDE, Paul is keeping himself busy with two relatively new organizations: D-REV, a non-profit fostering a revolution in design for the other 90%, as well as Windhorse International, a for-profit company fostering a revolution in how big business designs, prices and markets its products.

I heard this a cappella group break out into Superman by Five for Fighting at Needles Hall when I was on the University of Waterloo campus earlier today for a SiG@Waterloo-related workshop exercise.

The things you miss when you are no longer on campus every day.

A Cappella.mp3

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Click here to download:

A Cappella.mp3 (1.51 MB)

Below is an interesting opinion editorial that appeared in the NY Times a couple of days ago, and it relates to some of the work that SiG@Waterloo is doing through the development of the Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation (WICI), being spearheaded by Thomas Homer-Dixon, Frances Westley and a number of other professors at the University of Waterloo.

Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation

In the coming decades, rapid systemic change on multiple levels will contribute to global problems, potentially inducing pandemics, violent meteorological events, and social and political unrest. The weakening of national public institutions, widening gaps between rich and poor, increasing scarcity of high-quality energy, and worsening damage to the global environment coupled with increased global connectivity will erode systemic resilience and boost the incidence of surprising and even catastrophic change.

The goals of the Waterloo Institute are to:

Develop a common, transdisciplinary language and methodology and an integrated, coherent theory for the study and pedagogy of complex adaptive systems; and, • Apply these tools to stimulate rapid and beneficial innovation that will increase the resilience of complex adaptive systems worldwide – including social, political, economic, and ecological systems – that are currently under threat.

If you are interested in finding out more about WICI, please check out the videos of all of the WICI Seminar Series, that began last September 2008. They are available here

End the University as We Know It

The world is certainly changing, and there seems to be a groundswell of people waking up and realizing that we need to change our mindset and the way we live/organize ourselves as a society (local, national, global), in order to adapt and become resilient as we face the challenges of the road ahead.

It seems that Mark Taylor, Chair of the Department of Religion at Columbia University, who penned the NY Times opinion editorial below, argues that our institutions of higher education and learning need to adapt to this changing world as well.

Op-Ed Contributor
End the University as We Know It
By MARK C. TAYLOR
Published: April 26, 2009

GRADUATE education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans).

Widespread hiring freezes and layoffs have brought these problems into sharp relief now. But our graduate system has been in crisis for decades, and the seeds of this crisis go as far back as the formation of modern universities.... The dirty secret of higher education is that without underpaid graduate students to help in laboratories and with teaching, universities couldn’t conduct research or even instruct their growing undergraduate populations. That’s one of the main reasons we still encourage people to enroll in doctoral programs. It is simply cheaper to provide graduate students with modest stipends and adjuncts with as little as $5,000 a course - with no benefits - than it is to hire full-time professors.

In other words, young people enroll in graduate programs, work hard for subsistence pay and assume huge debt burdens, all because of the illusory promise of faculty appointments. But their economical presence, coupled with the intransigence of tenure, ensures that there will always be too many candidates for too few openings.

Read more here.

Mark Taylor then goes on to outline six ways in which these institutions of higher learning can change in order to become more adaptive to the complexities of the problems we face in the 21st century (summaries below):

1. Restructure the curriculum, beginning with graduate programs and proceeding to undergraduate programs, where the curriculum is like a web or complex adaptive network, where teaching and scholarship are cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural.

2. Get rid of permanent departments at universities, and instead, create problem-focused programs, such as a Water Program, where the quantity, quality and distribution of water will pose very significant scientific, technological and ecological difficulties in the coming future, as well as serious political and economic challenges. These programs will have a limited time-frame and will be constantly evaluated, resulting in the program being abolished, continued or significantly changed.

3. Encourage increased collaboration among institutions, leveraging the internet and online video-conference tools as a means of communication.

4. Transform the traditional dissertation of published "books" with more footnotes than text, and encourage graduate students to produce "theses" in alternative formats, using analytic treatments in formats from hypertext and Web sites, to films and video games.

5. Expand the range of professional options for graduate students, exposing them to new approaches, different cultures as well as real-life considerations, helping them cultivate skills that will enable them to adapt to a constantly changing world.

6. Impose mandatory retirement and abolish tenure, and replace it with seven-year contracts, enabling colleges and universities to reward researchers, scholars and teachers who continue to evolve and remain productive while also making room for young people with new ideas and skills.