If you hadn’t heard about ChangeCamp happened October 17 at Lister Hall at the University of Alberta. The goal of ChangeCamp was to answer the question: “How do we re-imagine government and citizenship in the age of participation?” It’s an “unconference,” which means that there’s no set agenda. The agenda is set that day by the participants in the room.

Our goal was to get 150 people out to the event and it seems that we succeeded. The room was full and we had about 25 people pitch topics to discuss that day. There were so many interesting topics; I would have really liked to have been at more sessions.

Overall, I was really impressed with how smoothly the event was run. The team running the event did an excellent job! I heard a lot of good feedback and everyone seemed pretty happy.

Who was missing?

Many people attended who billed themselves as “average citizens” which was nice to see. If political change is going to happen anywhere, in my opinion, it has to start from the bottom up. There are a lot of unhappy citizens out there. The evidence? What was the voter turnout in the last Alberta election? 40%? There are a lot of people frustrated with status-quo politics.

The rumour was that provincial employees were ordered not to attend. We only saw a few local politicians and, I believe, two MLAs. Granted, our politicians are busy people and this is the first ChangeCamp event we’ve had, but a few more would be nice. I’m hoping we have more ChangeCamps and get better attendance by our leaders.

There are some great posts I’ve listed below that go more in depth about what happened and their views on the events of the day. I’ll let the video and audio content I’ve posted speak for itself.

Technical stuff:

I was able to record the audio from several sessions and video from a few. That consumed quite a bit of my time on the day and I learned a lot from covering the event. I hadn’t planned on bringing my video camera, but I’m glad I did. I focused on individual sessions and tried to cover them completely. I’ll be posting to Flickr, YouTube and other locations as I get the files processed.

I haven’t watched all the footage but it seems good, generally. I’m not a post-production video guy, so processing the video and posting it has been a learning experience. I’d just like to say I hate YouTube’s 10 minute rule.

Things I’d do differently?

• Bring my video camera charger and an extra battery.
• Bring more SD cards for my video camera.
• Bring a proper microphone for my video camera.

What I did right

• I brought my tripod (I hate shaky video).
• I brought two audio recorders & fresh batteries (to record sessions I wasn’t in).
• Brought my point and shoot digital camera.

I really enjoyed covering the event the way I did (I still miss being a reporter). While I didn’t participate as much as I would have liked, I felt an obligation to record what was happening so it wasn’t lost.

Links, media, photos, video

Photos of ChangeCamp Edmonton

• ChangeCamp Edmonton Flickr group

Youtube videos/audio about ChangeCamp Edmonton

• Accountability journalism – 4 parts – audio (link to part 1)
• Opening video – Mark Kuznicki

Blog posts about ChangeCamp Edmonton

• Chris Labossiere
• Dave Cournoyer – Daveberta
• Alex Abboud
• John Winslow – SirThinks
• Andrew McIntyre
• Robert Burwood – bOpen
• The Edmontonian
• The Edmontonian – Why I’m going
• Debra Ward – Edmonton Ambassador

Media about ChangeCamp Edmonton

• Edmonton Journal
• The Gateway – University of Alberta
• See Magazine
• Metro News
• Vue Weekly
• Unlimited Magazine

ChangeCamp Edmonton – official

• Wiki – day of ChangeCamp
• The Grid – what we talked about

Social media

• Twitter search – #yegchange
• Scribblelive – ChangeCamp #yeg

If you’ve got any suggestions for links to add, please comment. I’ll also add more of my audio and videos from the day of.

The idea behind ChangeCamp is “How do we re-imagine government and citizenship in the age of participation?”

This is also on the ChangeCamp Edmonton site: “ChangeCamp addresses the demand for a renewed relationship among citizens and government. We seek to create connections, knowledge, tools and policies that drive transparency, civic engagement and democratic empowerment.”

I think those both capture it fairly well, but I feel like I need to inject a bit of my vision, for what it’s worth. This is why I’m involved and this is my view, not necessarily the view of others who are involved in ChangeCamp.

I’m participating in publicizing the event and trying to get various interest groups and interested parties out to the event. It’s a time consuming task to contact all the groups who really should be represented there and who would have a strong interest in what’s going on.

In some ways it reads like a “who’s who” or “the usual suspects,” depending on your point of view. I’m not saying it’s going to be an elitist event where you have to be “in the know” to be able to attend. That’s not the intention of anyone involved, and I wouldn’t want that perception to be out there either.

Value in diversity of opinion

What I would like to see is a good mix of the population represented at ChangeCamp Edmonton, from the business community right down to those living in poverty. I think ChangeCamp needs a broad cross section of the community to talk about the issues around governing, accountability, transparency and citizen engagement.

Does this capture how you feel about politics lately?

Let’s be honest. We are far from having truly accountable and transparent government at any level in Canada, no matter what the party. Citizen engagement is something most politicians seem only to consider up to and including election time. After that? Well, it depends on the politician.

I know the types of people who will show up to ChangeCamp for sure. They’re the same ones that show up for so many of these kinds of events. They’re the type of people who are interested and engaged in what’s happening in our society, and I thank them deeply for that.

The people who are not as likely to be represented at ChangeCamp Edmonton are those who are disenfranchised, poor, frustrated with the system, marginalized, haven’t voted in a long time, have never voted, new to Canada or just plain pissed off.

These are the people, in addition to the rest, that I would really like to see attending ChangeCamp. These are the people that, if they got involved in the political system, have an incredible amount of political power and ability to change things. For a variety of reasons, they’re not represented.

I don’t see ChangeCamp as an advocacy group and it’s not. There are people from across the political spectrum involved. I see it more as a group trying to facilitate a discussion among this country’s citizens to see how we can make government into something that works better for everyone.

Frustrated with politics? Come out to ChangeCamp. Got friends who feels the same way? Bring them too.

I’m not expecting to change the world in one day, but it’s a first step. It’ll be your opportunity to get out and interact with people who are also interested in changing politics, making government more accountable, transparent and increasing civic engagement and voter participation.

I am hoping to see some of our MPs, Alberta MLAs and Edmonton city councillors in the room to participate in the discussion.

Please take the time to attend. It’s important to have your contribution to the process and to have an open, honest, civil discussion about our political system and how to make it better. It’s an “unconference” format where you help to decide on the topics that will be discussed. Perhaps you’d like to help out by leading a discussion on a topic?

There have been other ChangeCamps in Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver.

ChangeCamp Edmonton happens on:

October 17, 2009 Saturday
Lister Conference Centre – Maple Leaf Room, University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta
Lunch will be provided.

You can get involved by signing up to the Facebook ChangeCamp page.

Or register right at the ChangeCamp Edmonton registration page.