Part of a new series I’m starting to explore social, creative, and economic opportunities specific to London Ontario. Recently I posted about the benefits of educating citizens to think like journalists. Since then I found a lot of great examples of a collaborative approach to journalism — not just between professionals and amateurs, but between [...]
Tagged as:
cities,
collaboration,
conversation,
cooperation,
journalism,
news,
opportunity,
organizations,
social media,
web
At the London Free Press, Ian Gillespie warns of the hazards of the internet: Watching that 90-second video [here], it’s hard — no, make that impossible — to see or know exactly what’s going on. But that hasn’t stopped tens of thousands (by late yesterday afternoon, the video had been viewed more than 30,000 times [...]
Tagged as:
blogging,
citizen journalism,
dialogue,
news,
newspapers,
web
I had a great time at last night’s GenNext launch at Museum London (#gennextuw). GenNext is a United Way initiative to get young people (20′s & 30′s) more engaged in philanthropy & volunteering. The speaker was Marc Kielburger, co-founder of Me to We, an impressively accomplished young guy who shared some of his experience working in a [...]
Tagged as:
apathy,
charity,
generations,
institutions,
mark kielberger,
non-profits,
philanthropy,
social change,
social engagement,
volunteering
by Brian on 10-12-2009
in london
Regarding the reading group, Titus and I chatted briefly at gdldn (last week was pretty chaotic for pulling people together), just enough to touch base but there are still some specifics to figure out, starting with: when? where? what? As goes without saying, feedback and suggestions are more than welcome. I’m probably more flexible than [...]
Tagged as:
bookldn,
books,
gdldn,
reading,
social media
I wasn’t planning on writing much more about London for the time-being, but it just occurred to me that I should at least recognize the economic strategy recommendations made by the LEDC. I already bloviated on their recent summit — not once but twice – and I’ve written so much on the topic my silence would [...]
Tagged as:
government,
london
Last week there were a couple of remarks on Twitter about Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody and within an hour or so we had a handful of people interested in doing some sort of book club. So far 9 people have signed up for the group at Goodreads. It’s open to anyone in the London [...]
Tagged as:
bookldn,
books,
gdldn,
reading,
social media
This is a more positive followup to yesterday’s post, trying to work out what the key idea or shared ethic might be for London’s economy. I’ve already expressed doubts about the “transporation hub” idea here and here. It isn’t a bad idea to beef up London’s transportation capacity as one specific part of a broader plan, but [...]
Tagged as:
capitalism,
cities,
constructive capitalism,
creative capitalism,
culture,
generativity,
humanism,
life,
livability,
new economy,
substance,
sustainability
This might seem like a joke or a bunch of rhetoric but it isn’t. Ok, maybe it’s somewhat extremely rhetorical — but no less serious: What exactly is supposed to come out of this economic summit on Thursday anyways? On Saturday I read a passing mention of it in the subhead to some comments by Chris Bentley, [...]
Tagged as:
discourse,
economic summit,
ledc,
london economic development corporation,
london ontario,
london's economy,
open democracy,
public sphere,
social media,
web
No I haven’t forgot about the little endeavour I launched in May: I started thinking we need someplace to just try stuff. If it works, then great: we can replicate it on our own sites or even develop something more permanent, public, and professional. If it doesn’t work, then that’s ok too: without actually losing [...]
Tagged as:
community organizing,
creativity,
development,
enterprise modelling,
initiatives,
institutions,
ldnbeta,
learning,
open democracy,
professionalism,
progress,
projects,
rapid prototyping,
relationships,
signalling,
social capital,
social media,
web
Who’s responsible for the “inspiration deficit” in Canadian politics? Why of course, blame the young: The young reject the political status quo, as they should, but they are too lazy to do anything about it. Most of the under-25s don’t even bother to vote. Instead of fighting for change, they wallow in their vanities and [...]
Tagged as:
blame,
change,
demographics,
elections,
generations,
generativity,
government,
leadership,
politics,
the young,
voting,
youth
I deliberately called this “Envisioning London’s Downtown Future” rather than merely “Envisioning the Future of Downtown London” because I believe London’s future is downtown… Not everyone would agree (see Dan Brown’s column challenging the notion that downtown is the heart of the city, discussed here), but I wasn’t convinced. Even detractors have to admit it’s [...]
Tagged as:
deliberative democracy,
downtowns,
neighbourhoods,
pedestrians,
planning,
social media,
traffic,
urban,
urban design,
urban planning
I’m still posting more or less daily at Open/Conceptual, focusing on some special interest stuff there, but I haven’t been doing much for BrianFrank.ca lately. It’ll probably stay this way for a while. Lately I’ve been looking back at where I’ve come from. I actually forgot how non-blog-like my blogging was a little over a [...]
Tagged as:
autobibliography,
blog,
blogging,
learning,
open conceptual,
open/conceptual,
progress,
writing
