Torontonians in 2010 have an opportunity to restore our sense of community and use new tools of communication to set the agenda for our politicians. My vision is a program of coordinated and community-generated events all across the City to re-engage our civic imaginations. ChangeCamp is launching a city-wide initiative to help us imagine a new age of public engagement and civic innovation across a vast and complex city. I want to challenge the Twitterati and digirati of Toronto to get out of the bubble and use their skills to help Torontonians in all of Toronto’s wards to tell their stories, identify their issues and propose solutions.
Mark Kuznicki works at the intersection of technology, open government and social innovation. Mark’s work combines social media, face-to-face gatherings and open source approaches to engage citizens, connect communities and foster creative and innovative ideas for the future. Mark helped organize Toronto TransitCamp, a “solutions playground” that looked at the future of Toronto’s transit system, and wrote about the model for Harvard Business Review. Mark launched ChangeCamp in 2009, an event and a community to “re-imagine government and citizenship in the age of participation” that has spread from Toronto to Ottawa, Vancouver, Edmonton and Halifax.