social change

Saving the world is serious fun at Simon Fraser University

Be a part of the conversation - how is social media changing the way we witness the world?

I'm happy to announce that I'll be speaking at Simon Fraser University's Institute for the Humanities conference this Friday, Oct 16 at Harbour Centre. And you're invited!

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Hear how art and tech combine for social change

Designing for Democracy: Thursday, March 5 in Vancouver

Frequent collaborator and Friend Of the Show Jason Mogus tells us about a fantastic-sounding event this Thursday, March 5 in Vancouver. Alex met the keynote speaker, Favianna Rodriguez, at Web of Change last year and was blown away; this is your chance to experience something amazing.

Here's the scoop, directly from Jason:

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Engaging the power of (online) conversation

Why online conversation matters

Conversation is a little miraculous

Conversation is a little miraculous. Through conversation we learn about the world around us, about each other, and about ourselves. We discover what we have in common and how we look at things differently. We arrive at common solutions and build lasting agreement about how to do a better job, together.

You can find evidence of the transformative power of conversation in just about any field. When you read stories about people who are trapped in life-endangering situations (like a building collapse), they often say that what let them survive was another person engaging them in extended conversation.

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Ep. 17: the big-jar-of-change episode

Alex came home from a talk by Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus, and she was in a soul-searching frame of mind. How does the web support meaningful social change? And is there a particular kind of change the web does an especially good job at?

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Can Web 2.0 save the world?

It's easy to get fixated on the shiny toys of the Web 2.0 world: the latest invitation-only beta of the hottest new collaborative technology using the coolest whatever. Nothing wrong with that; our natural affinity for cool and new helps provide a built-in audience for technological innovators.

But the bright glare of technological promise can obscure its social impact... and not just the negative effects that technology's critics are fond of citing.

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Five ways to shape the soul of the Internet

Does YouTube make people into exhibitionists? Does Facebook stunt teenagers' social skills? Does 43Things help people realize their dreams?

Journalists, academics and web surfers have been arguing over whether the Internet is Ultimate Good or Ultimate Evil long before the social web (a.k.a. "web 2.0") came along. But blogs, social networks and other kinds of online communities have raised the stakes and intensified the debate. Social web sites are more intensively interactive, and more socially connected, so they offer users an experience that is potentially more compelling (or in the view of Internet skeptics, distracting/disengaging) and (in the view of Internet boosters) more elevating, because they realize the Internet's potential for forging and deepening interpersonal and community connectedness.

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ChangeEverything.ca becoming a launch platform for great ideas

Just as you can never really tell if an online community will really take off, you also really don't know what form that success will take.

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Changing everything at Vancity

Announcing Vancity's Change Everything: an online community conversation on change

Think "financial institution", and you likely think of pinstripes, vaults and armed guards. Oh, and a powerful, deep-seated aversion to change.

So it'll probably startle a lot of people to see the latest project from Vancity, Canada's largest credit union. ChangeEverything.ca is an online community targeted (but not limited) to residents of Vancouver, Victoria and B.C.'s Lower Mainland. We spent the past few months building it, and launched a few days ago.

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