With sadness, I’d like to announce that we’re putting TFD on hold. Even before we get it going. That’s quite a failure and disappointment.

It’s been a long time coming, with a fantastic group of people putting in time after their 50 hour regular work weeks, and over several continents. The reality is simply that we don’t currently have enough bandwidth to drive it forward. I don’t mean committed support people. I mean the 1-2 people that need to be pushing a team day in, day out. I was expecting that to be me. But it hasn’t been. And without that impetus, TFD isn’t moving forward. We could throw a forum online in an hour. But that’s not what we wanted, we sought to create a community that would catalyze change in Canada.

So for now, we’re putting this on hold. I’ll say this though: if there’s someone who wants to drive it forward, is committed, and is in line with our vision, they should get in touch with me.

Now, let’s try to pull something out of this. What have we learned? We have confirmed the following:

There is the need for TFD in Canada, and there are people who want to do it. One thing we found in abundance is an unmet need to raise Canada to a new level. It wasn’t hard to draw people. This instills hope in me, that a movement to raise Canada’s game can develop, and can challenge the comfortable, complacent nation we’ve become. Trust me, there is a surprising amount of Canadians out there who want to help create this. This is a need, and an opportunity.

Now let’s talk about our failure of execution. I’ve learned that it’s very difficult to manage and motivate people in 7 cities, on 3 continents, with little to no face to face contact. We needed a more focused whip cracker, and didn’t find it within our core team. At least not now. So the lesson here is one of team makeup, and having not only fantastic people, but complementary abilities in the right roles.

There was also the need to show small wins of progress throughout. We are convinced that design affects people’s behaviour, and that people’s behaviour creates the right culture to make TFD powerful. We spent time thinking about this and designing elements we felt would create balanced discussion between disagreeing members. But we probably planned deliverable chunks that were too big, and didn’t allow us to make visible progress. This reduced the motivation of the team, and eroded the trust of our supporters.

We promoted too early. We became all talk and no game. Partly, this was a way to preemptively fire up a community, and inspire the team to deliver. Partly, this was a result of our own excitement for what we were planning. But in future initiatives, I’ll personally need to keep the public promotion/community-building much more limited, until tangible progress is shown.

Those are the big three lessons for me. We have a couple strongly-held beliefs that were not disproven:

This must be design-driven. Design influences our behaviour. Along with other elements, behaviour creates a culture. And it was this culture of passionate respect that we needed on TFD to truly fill a gap in Canadian discourse. So we often asked the question of how the site design could create the right community culture. This is not something most websites consider. That’s why it was difficult, but also a fun challenge. A solution must be design-driven.

We must draw from people of all sides. Politically. Socially. Economically. Otherwise, we are only another segregated community, speaking to our converted. The risk of this happening is great. There was some concern early that it was trending to skewed participation from more narrow perspectives. We didn’t get far enough to confirm this, but it was always a prominent risk.

I’m disappointed that we can’t handle this. I’m a little embarrassed that we started so publicly, and then failed to deliver. But I’m most embarrassed by the fact that we sourced some fantastic applications from contributors that may not see the light of day. That some of the most engaged people showed us commitment, and that we didn’t reciprocate. That’s a violation of trust. I’ll follow up with these people personally, and hopefully find a way to have their work be seen in the end.

That said, I don’t feel trying this was a mistake at all. There were many positive outcomes, the biggest being a rousing confirmation that something like TFD is needed, and there are people ready to get on board. As a life approach, I feel we need more people doing these things, even if they ultimately result in failure. We learn from the failures, while the successes will change our country.

I’ll repeat: if anyone wants to truly drive this forward, get in touch with me at brendanbaker@ewb.ca. If I’m convinced we share the same vision, and the personal drive and implementation ability is there, then I’m happy to hand it over and offer whatever support I can. In spite of the public silence, there has been a tremendous amount of thought, planning, design, and building in the background already. But I’ll have to be convinced that TFD won’t see another false start. I also sense that there will still be a need in the next few years. It’s possible it may be resurrected.

So with that, thank you for your passion, trust and support. I’m sorry that this time, in this battle, it didn’t help us deliver. There will be others.

With thanks,
Brendan

Reading that title, I have the image of WW2 era posters with ‘Uncle Sam Wants YOU!’, with an old man in an American top hat pointing.

But it’s not like that.

We’re looking for about 20 people who will become the core of the community at The First Drop: our founding contributors, ready to roll as we launch in the next month or so.

Contributors will write 1-3 short articles a month on a topic that matters for Canada’s future. That’s the subject: Canada’s future. In any way you choose. Politics, business, civil society, it’s all good. From what perspective? Legal, artistic, entrepreneurial, military, academic or the snowboard shop. East, West or North (we don’t really have a South, do we?), you’re all welcome. Conservative, Liberal, NDP, Bloc, Green. C’mon in. We don’t care, so long as you can write a good, reasoned, reality-based piece and trigger a great conversation.

Actually, that’s what we really care about – the conversations that emerge from your writing. Have a voice, but no way to get it out there? TFD can be that way. Have a blog or book already? TFD can help you reach a bigger audience and draw in new perspectives. Just want to help us create a community of future Canadian leaders? Great.

Interested? Have a look at our Guidelines to get an idea of what we’re looking for, fire me an email with any thoughts or questions, or just apply and let us know you’re interested.

Brendan

Some of you who have been following our friendly TFD propoganda have noticed a desire to be ‘reality-based’, avoiding too many forays into truthiness. This will hopefully involve the widespread use of ‘facts’ to back up statements. Ok, that’s fine, but some of us are visual creatures. Some of us won’t dig into statistics like we maybe should. So we want to do this in pictures as well.

We’re looking for someone to regularly develop data visualisation pieces for TFD. If you can think of the Economist’s regular charts, that’s a good idea of where we’re heading, but broadened to include work similar to Information is Beautiful or Information Aesthetics (both pump out wonderful work). Pieces will go out approx weekly, with cubtle credits to you and TFD. We expect this to be a key part of out messaging and reach, with the potential to be shared far beyond the TFD network.

Interested? Fire me an email at brendan at thefi…

Cheers,

B

But how can you influence it through design? Ina detailed way? I’ve been asking around. To some pretty plugged in people. And I haven’t got anything really concrete back yet. I mean, good suggestions and further ideas. But I haven’t found the person who really understands how site design affects not the individual user experience, but the dynamic of an entire community. Smart people out there: fire me an email at brendan at thefirstdrop.ca if you’re thinking around this…

B

“Just as some people have a better self-image than others, so it seems do countries. In a poll of 33 nations by the Reputation Institute, a branding consultancy, people were asked to rate their trust, admiration, respect and pride in their country. By this measure, Australians are almost as exuberant about their country as they are about sport, and lead the list. They are followed closely by Canadians.”

I wonder what young Canadians think? Or what serves as fuel for this pride in 2009, and how it breaks down across age and socioeconomic groups. It’s probably too much to ask for this data, but if anyone has a good source, please let us know.

B

Right now we’re still in the “maybe, maybe not” stage.  Here’s a short version of why that is.

We all know that just before the fall sitting of Parliament started, the Liberals decided to stop agreeing with the Conservatives. This means that the government now relies on either the Bloc Quebecois or the NDP to prop them up during confidence motions owing to their status as a minority government.  A confidence motion is any motion which can trigger the dissolution of Parliament by a vote against the side the government is taking and, under Prime Minister Harper at least, a lot of the motions that the government tables are motions of this kind.  The government needs to carry confidence motions with a majority in order to avoid ‘falling.’  The consequences of a government’s fall can play out in a couple of different ways. In Canada, it almost always ends up being an election.

Elections happen 28 days after the Governor General dissolves Parliament & ‘drops the writ,’ which would happen almost immediately after a lost confidence motion.

Up to this point of the current Parliament, the NDP & Bloc have staunchly opposed everything the Conservatives have done, so, if their behavior had remained consistent, the government should have fallen at the first confidence motion after the Liberals decided to stop supporting the Conservatives.  The first confidence motion of the fall sitting of Parliament was on Friday.  The Liberals voted against it, but the Bloc and the NDP both sided with the Conservatives.

Election averted.

The NDP have agreed to support the Conservatives until some changes to EI are passed – which should take us to at least the 28th, depending on how quickly those changes go through committee, and may actually take us all the way to the end of the fall sitting.  Either way, after that motion is passed, it’s anybody’s guess as to what the NDP will do.  And, if the Conservatives push their luck by trying to move controversial legislation prior to the EI changes, they might fall anyway, as the NDP support is conditional.

At the moment, it looks kind of like there IS NOT going to be a fall election.  Except…here’s the thing:  if the Opposition parties want to have an election, they need to have it before Christmas or wait until this time next year.  December (Christmas), January (the Queen may be visiting! Also, the Olympics are almost here!) and February (the Olympics!) are all out for election triggering. And unless something surprising happens, the Conservatives are going to be ahead in the polls in the spring because of the Queen! the Olympics! and the government usually getting a bump during budget passage season.  Summer’s out too – summers are generally a terrible time to have an election and, if the Queen does not come before or during the Olympics, it’s likely that she’ll come in the summer sometime.  That means that now or this time next year are the smart choices for an election.

If a fall election does happen at this point, my guess is that the likeliest date for the voting to take place  is sometime between October 29 and November 5 (and I can explain why I guess that, but it’s even more boring than the rest of this already is).

The actual verdict?  No one really knows if an election will be triggered.  If an election does happen, we get no notice at all on the campaign period and 28 days’ notice on the opening of voting polls.

That’s my 2 cents, anyway.

-A

Here at TFD, we’re moving pretty quickly towards contributor recruitment. We’re going to cast our net widely and take on between 30 and 60 regular contributors, who will write discussion-triggering pieces for TFD. We’re less concerned with having established figures as fresh faces, people who can write well and create a discussion on issues surrounding Canada’s next generation of leadership. And we want to capture the widest range of views and backgrounds possible among our contributors. Finding the right people is important.

As we plan our call out and review process, we’d like to get some more perspectives on board. Do you want to help us find 30-60 future Canadian leaders to contribute articles to TFD? We’ll do the heavy lifting, but would like the regular advice of somebody (or a couple people) with editorial experience.

Estimated time commitment: 5-10 hrs / month for September and October

Start: soon!

Interested? Fire an email to amanda@thefirstdrop.ca with a paragraph on your background and reasons for joining the First Drop team. Add a short resume for extra fancy bonus points.

Cheers,

B

Site development. Here’s how it happens. I tell the guys that I want a Cadillac. Then they tell me that a Cadillac might be feasible but we’re going to have to start with a Toyota and work our way up to the Caddy. I say OK, because they’re smarter than me at this stuff. Seriously, we’ve had a nice shot at the first iteration of the site, and are making adjustments for a second design iteration. After that, there should be few changes, included in a quick third design, which is good to go. So far we’ve left some of the most complicated functionality out, but do have some neat stuff in the first version. Stuff that helps us move comment structures past simple blog/article formats. I’m excited.

Contributors. We still have people telling us they want to get involved. We want you to get involved too! Since we’re getting closer to launch, we’ll kick off a contributor recruitment/application process soon.

Speaking of launch…when? Well, I’m done promising things, but if we’re slapped with another futile election, we want this beast to be ready. So hopefully soon.

Cheers,

Brendan

Some pull-quotes…

“The evidence is irrefutable: young Canadians are much less likely to join political parties than previous generations, increasing the danger that participatory membership-based political parties will become less and less viable in Canada.”

Researchers found that youth are not only highly engaged in global and local civic causes, organizations and initiatives, they are savvy communicators, sophisticated networkers and soundly and demonstrably committed to democracy.

We have to be careful not to blame young people for their own marginalization from politics.

Youth are not disconnected from politics; it is political institutions, practice and culture that are disconnected from youth. And yet when we listen carefully to young people, we see
that they have not given up on democracy. We need to redirect public energy from a fixation on getting youth to vote, and conforming to traditional ways of doing politics, to find constructive and respectful ways of co-creating a better politics to serve political and civic society.

-A

]]> http://thefirstdrop.ca/blog/2009/09/thanks-a-million-cprn-seriously/feed/ 0 http://thefirstdrop.ca/blog/2009/09/tuesday-bulletin/ http://thefirstdrop.ca/blog/2009/09/tuesday-bulletin/#comments Tue, 08 Sep 2009 15:36:33 +0000 Amanda http://thefirstdrop.ca/blog/?p=74 We *drumroll* sent an email this week.

Of course, emails aren’t that momentous (the internet tells me that we send millions of them every second), but this one was special for two reasons.

1) It’s a ‘top secret’ communiqué to the team of people who have expressed an interest in contributing to TFD – hopefully the first among many.

2) Despite it being the first email of its kind in the history of The First Drop and therefore kind of a big deal, I managed to screw it up.

Anyway, if you want to get in on the contents of this email or any subsequent ones, email change@thefirstdrop to let us know that you’re interested and we’ll sign you up.

In other TFD-related news…

We now have a Facebook page. Check it out and become a fan, if you’re so inclined.

With all of us in Canada for the first time in 2009, we’re busy as bees behind the scenes trying to plan a 3 part Skype conference to go over the big dreams and nitty gritty details.

In other news, the holiday Monday has put me in a pretty good mood, so today’s links are themed and the theme is… levity.

Michael Ignatieff thought some thoughts, thoughts that could not be unthinkified.

Once upon a time, Sarah Palin got a twitter account. William Shatner made poetry out of it on Countdown.

Optimus Prime beats the federal NDP to the punch on stealing “Change” as the beginning of a catchy political slogan.

All for now.

-A