Yule Heibel’s Post Studio © 2003-2008

What’s wrong with Victoria’s business community?

I take it as a given that cities need healthy economies if they are to thrive as vibrant, creative places. And I wonder what’s wrong with the established business interests in Victoria, whether in traditional commerce, or in our growing high tech sector, or even in tourism.

Here’s the problem: we have a municipal election coming up on November 15.  With the sh*tstorm of issues facing us (homelessness on a big scale, drug abuse and addiction, financial turmoil,  credit crunches, possible stagnation, crumbling infrastructure, and provincially mandated sewage treatment to the tune of $1.2b), you’d think that everyone must have their eyes on the candidates — because whoever gets in for this next round is going to have a hard row to hoe, and we want to make sure we don’t elect NOOPs.

And guess what?  Many people are paying attention.  Witness the all-candidates meetings held around the city at various venues.

But here’s the rub: these events are almost all hosted by various community associations and community groups, and none of these have the broader economic health of the whole city on their agenda.  Instead, these are issue-driven venues with issue-driven agendas that cater to important, but nonetheless specialized, interests: whether it’s a community association (often with a NIMBY agenda) that wants to grill candidates on their stance around development and affordable housing, or poverty activists that want to grill candidates on what they propose to do about the growing problem of homelessness, none of these sponsors of all-candidates meetings have a balanced, holistic view of the entire city or its economic well-being.

Let’s face it: if you get enough people together in a room and agitate them with issues that are already in their faces, it won’t take much to have normally intelligent people reduce issues of great complexity to black-and-white caricature, and you’ll find that people readily sort themselves into rigid interest groups that brook little dialogue.  One of first complexities to go by the board is economics.  Whether or not our government is doing anything (beyond raising or lowering our property or business tax rates) to facilitate a climate of economic health is uninteresting in those contexts, because their focus is on what’s perceived as the immediate crisis to hand.

The typically agenda-driven community-organized meeting is about focusing on all the problems that bedevil us, and often on demanding our “rights” to better services.  Take affordable housing, a truly complex issue.  At your typical community association-sponsored all-candidates meeting, the issue invariably devolves to this: someone from the audience asks the candidates whether they will “stand up to” the developers of new buildings and “make them” include “affordable” housing.  And if they’re not able to “stand up to” those evil rich bloodsuckers, will they shut down development so that “our” city won’t be “given over” to the rich and the poor won’t be squeezed out?  That’s how easy many people think it should be. If we can’t get what we want, shut the whole damn thing down.  Stop everything.

Complexity?  Com-schmexity.  Rhetoric and posturing is all that matters.  The candidates are forced to respond and react within this framework, and the result is ridiculous.

Further, we have 7 people running for mayor, of which at most 2 are actually qualified in any real sense of the word.  And we have 35 people running for 8 council seats, and here again there’s a majority that’s simply unelectable because they have a single agenda or fringe idee fixe that speaks volumes about their inability to govern anything as complex as a city.

Yet the community-sponsored all-candidates meetings bring out the “best” (i.e., the worst) in these candidates, because inevitably the more fringe-y ones can turn things into a circus with help from the audience.  Of the 3 meetings so far, 2 degenerated quickly into out-and-out gong shows.  The venue and the audience / question period encourages this: insofar as audiences here typically already feel aggrieved, rational candidates cannot, in the 2 minutes allotted to them, convey a nuanced sense of what their platform is, and instead the decidedly more manic candidates act out and use the stage to perform what can only be described as a spectacle of narcissistic self-display that serves to whip up audience fervor.

Gong show.  Truly.

I am not suggesting that we get rid of the community association or community agenda-sponsored meetings.  But here’s my question: why are they the only ones who host open, free-to-all meetings?

Where, for example, is the business community and why isn’t it sponsoring all-candidates meetings?  In a private exchange I asked:

Where is the “business community,” anyway? UDI Victoria is hosting a mayoral candidates event at the Ambrosia Centre on 11/3 (which will probably involve charging admission), but where are the all-candidates meetings that aren’t being driven by the agendas of the poverty-industry advocates and/ or community associations?

Those groups look only at the negative stuff — they don’t talk about what’s positive, what’s worth continuing.

Where are the groups that could and should host meetings that don’t devolve down to 150% negativity? The business groups? VIATEC/ the technology community? Higher learning?

They seem to be allowing Victoria to flounder, flail, and drown.

Giant fail.

Well, it turns out the Chamber of Commerce is hosting a mayoral candidates meeting (albeit not an all-candidates meeting), but what a dog’s-breakfast they’ve made of it.

In a nutshell, it exemplifies what’s wrong with our municipal democracy: on the one hand, community-agenda driven meetings that seem blind to business issues, and on the other a Chamber of Commerce, which, by hosting a meeting that for all intents and purposes may as well take place in a different galaxy for all the relevance it’ll have, thumbs its nose at the larger community.

Here’s the format for the Chamber’s meeting:

City of Victoria Mayoral Candidate Forum

Join the Chamber and hear what your candidates have to say about issues that affect your business.
The Mayoral Candidate Forum will be moderated by Bruce Carter and questions will be encouraged from the audience.

Candidates participating in this forum are:

Dean Fortin
Rob Reid
Steve Filipovic

November 12th, 2008

Delta Victoria - Ocean Pointe Resort & Spa
7:15 a.m. – Registration
7:30 a.m. – Event Start
Continental Buffet Breakfast Provided

The page continues, but a note first.  There are 7 mayoral candidates, and by excluding 4, the Chamber is engaging in some heavy-duty editing.  But most interesting is that they chose to include Steve Filipovic, who doesn’t stand a chance to be elected.  He’s the token candidate; the Chamber would have been better off to directly state that Dean Fortin and Rob Reid are the only two viable candidates, with Fortin an incumbent councilor with lots of experience, and Reid the newcomer who wants to shake things up a bit.  (Although I’m not impressed by Reid’s strategy of aligning himself with several NIMBYist community association leaders, who will surely bring the city to a halt if elected.  My impression now is that Reid doesn’t know what he’s doing.)

Ok, here’s my point as to why the Chamber’s efforts are a dog’s breakfast.  First, the venue is the Ocean Pointe, which just screams “exclusive” and “riff-raff keep out.”  Second, here’s the price of admission:

Nov 12, 2008
07:30 am - 09:00 am
Members: $30.00 +GST
Future Members: $45.00 +GST

The cute “Future Members” notwithstanding, I found that $45 price tag maddening.

So we have a “no riff-raff” venue and an admission price that seals the deal that this meeting is for the “let them eat cake” crowd.

But these are stupid cake eaters, to boot.  For here’s the final straw.  After exhorting us (in bold) to Register Today!, we read:

Note: Our online registration system is not compatible with Mozilla Firefox or Mac computers and only accepts Visa & MasterCard. [emphasis added]

That really takes the cake — alas, it doesn’t take the cake away, but it takes it.

If that’s our representative business chamber, obviously reliant on proprietary Microsoft software and unable to deal with either Macs or Firefox (because they use Internet Exploder), then how can we expect any innovation or creative thinking from this sector?

And how can the voters in this city expect innovation or creativity from potential leaders who are forced to flail about between the horrible Scylla and Charybdis of crisis-focused community groups on the one hand and fossilized business thinking on the other?

What a mess.

(Additional blog post on this topic from 10/26 here.)

Comment on BC Supreme Court Ruling re. Camping in Parks

Tim Ayres is a realtor in Sooke, BC, who blogs about real estate and Victoria issues.  I’ve seen his Twitter updates in the Twitter Local Net, but haven’t been following his blog.  The other day, however, I saw that someone I follow on Twitter twittered that he had left a comment to Tim’s video post, Get Ready For The Homeless in Beacon Hill Park [Video], which asked readers what we all think about the “camping in parks” ruling.

For anyone in BC, the recent BC Supreme Court ruling is …uh, significant.  (And for the best local coverage on this question so far, see the Vibrant Victoria forum thread, Homeless win right to camp in city parks.)

I clicked through to Tim’s video blog and posted a lengthy comment.  However, as it appears to be held up in a moderation queue I’m re-posting it on my blog, too (minus some pre- and post-amble…):

The ruling by (BC Supreme Court Justice Carol) Ross is not helpful if it does nothing to bring the various levels of government together to address the problem of homelessness, and I have to voice my disagreement with comments here that the city should be able to fix the problem.

Far from defending our current municipal leadership — because it has been wishy-washy — I would argue, however, that the cumulative effects of off- or downloading by *all* parties at the senior (Provincial and Federal) levels of government has created the mess we’re in now.

By all parties I’m referring to how Paul Martin’s Federal Liberal government really accelerated the downloading of federal responsibilities to the provinces; how our current Conservative federal government, when approached for help with infrastructure in cities — which includes *so* many aspects — reduced the issue to banalities by replying that “the Federal government isn’t in the business of fixing potholes”; how at the Provincial level, we’ve lost mental hospitals to cut-backs, are failing to provide detox.

Most importantly, I’m also referring to how, we, in urban centres, are subservient to rules laid out in a British North America Act that gave Provinces all power over municipalities because cities were considered unimportant, mere entrepots for raw resource export (which is manifestly no longer the case), and how our Canadian Constitution also fails to take into consideration the fundamental importance of cities to 21st century economies.

And yet the problems of homelessness as well as untreated mental health problems and often attendant drug- and alcohol-abuse as well as the criminality associated with procuring drugs (and paying for them, that’s based on crime often enough) aggregate in our cities. These are problems dumped on municipalities, which in turn can’t seem to deal with them. Yes, people are poor and even homeless in rural areas, people become addicts in rural areas, people lose their minds in rural areas. But when they come for help, chances are they’ll migrate to the cities to seek it, expecting services that those cities are increasingly unable to provide because they’re being asked to do too much with too little.

In case you’re interested, a number of months ago I wrote a blog post about off- or downloading and how the spectacle of homelessness is the last link in that downloading scheme, Connect the dots: two articles by Miro Cernetig and Bob Ransford that should be read together.
What I argued was that we citizens are the last link in that chain: the municipalities have dumped the problem on us — and just as the downloading of responsibilities from Feds to Provinces to Municipalities was ill-conceived, downloading to Joe and Jane Citizen is equally wrong.

It’s wrong for the same reasons: if you download responsibilities (which entail fiscal responsibility) without ensuring that the entity you’re downloading to has a tool kit with which to approach the responsibilities, you’re asking for trouble down the road. When Canadian cities were asked to take on the responsibility for the hard-to-house, the mentally ill, and the drug-addicted, the scheme collapsed. Why? Because there’s nothing in Canadian cities’ toolkit to allow them to create the fiscal arrangements to pay for that responsibility. Canadian cities depend on property and business taxes, while all income and consumption taxes go to senior levels of government. Municipalities can’t keep jacking up property and business taxes, unless they want to drive out their most successful members.

I’m not excusing poor leadership at any level of government. But Canada is set up in a very weird way, and it’s not as easy as some would believe to deal with these problems. There are way too many silos and too many policy restrictions on how cities can be pro-active.

What I would like to see (and ask municipal politicians) is “how are you going to be an effective lobbyist for us?” I would ask, “how are you going to break down the party mentality that sets up us-and-them dichotomies?” — something we see far too much of in Victoria, which likes to nurture an NDP chip on its shoulder and complain about the “evil” Liberals. I’d want to know how you (municipal leader) are going to seek out contacts on a personal level, make sure you meet the right people at all levels of government, how you’re going to *schmooze* and wheel and deal, assemble teams, and break down the g-d-damn silos, so we can work toward the common good. I would not want a municipal politician who has lofty ideals and refuses to get his/ her hands dirty by working with “the other side.” I would specifically support politicians who are ready to throw the old partisanship out the window. At least we who are housed still have windows to throw things out of. Let’s use that.

PS: I don’t work in government or have any professional affliliation with policy making. I am passionately interested in cities, though, and write often about Victoria in particular.

I’ve written several other entries related to housing, homelessness, affordable housing, and so on, but the specific entry I cite above (Connect the dots…) is probably the one most relevant to the crisis we’re dealing with currently.

DemoCamp Victoria 02: it’s on!

Mark Lise and I have talked about having another DemoCamp Victoria for months now, talking, talking.  But the other day, we realized we could talk about it forever more, or we could just do it.  Perhaps that’s a very un-Victorian thing to do?  Maybe just talking about things, or commissioning a lengthy governmental study, is the more usual m.o. around here.

And yet, …based on some feedback that one or two people would be willing to step up to demo, and based on feedback from my lunchtime chat at last month’s UDI with our DemoCamp 01 host David Chard, we announced a tentative-but-nearly-for-sure date, same location as the first one. Mark made sure the story immediately went live on the Barcamp site and on Facebook, and of course Twitter.

After that, all it took was a green light (which arrived literally within an hour of asking) from our host, and that’s how 02 was born.  Be there, October 30, 5pm (event starts at 6pm), 834 Johnson St., Victoria.

I’m psyched that we’re going to have another crack at this, and that we can again have such a splendid venue for the event, too!

Now, I have heard some vague backchannel noises that maybe there was some parallel visioning going on by others, who were also wondering when the next DemoCamp would take place.  And I have heard that some people maybe were surprised that DemoCamp appeared to spring out of nowhere so fast.  (To which I’d add: fast?  Come now, it has been months since the first one.  Do we need a committee to study this thing before we can move on it?  I think not.)

Since no one said anything about organizing another DemoCamp to Mark or to me (who was one of the organizers, nay: catalysts of the first one), it just wasn’t happening as far as we could tell.  Not as a grass-roots, bottom-up event that’s all about breaking down the silos and getting people together.  If you want to break down the silos, then get out there and talk openly to everyone. Connect people! (Add a comma if you like: Connect, people!)

And I will be connecting, because I’ll be talking to everyone I know about it.  For me, this is not about just the tech community in Victoria.  It’s about the arts, media, government, the business community …you name it.

The only people I don’t really know are golfers — although I did pass former hockey player and current golf course builder Len Barrie in the hallway at CFAX 1070 the other day.

Wonder if he’d be into demos? (Heh.)

So, people: mark your calendars!  October 30, 5pm, at 834 Johnson St., the Juliet Presentation Centre — DemoCamp Victoria 02!  It’ll be great!  See you there!

Another confirmation that cross-use is crucial: “Reinventing Grand Army Plaza”

I just came across this piece on Cool Hunting, on Reinventing Grand Army Plaza.  This bit really jumped out for me:

With regal statues and a sparkling fountain, it’s majestic and — its function as a busy traffic circle separates the cultural landmark from the surrounding pedestrian sidewalks — inaccessible.

In other words, the traffic arterial (a single-use feature) strangles cross-use within the Plaza.

This echoes what I just wrote for my next (November) article for Focus Magazine, on the topic of Victoria’s Tourist District (single-use) working together with other single-use areas (the Legislative Precinct, Beacon Hill Park, the Department of Defense/ Ogden Point, and the shoreline) to thwart cross-use within the residential district of James Bay.  The solution for the neighbourhood isn’t to strengthen those barriers by making them even more strongly single-use only, but rather to make them more porous, introduce cross-use into the  barriers (at least the Tourist District, as the others are too difficult to shift), and thereby encourage cross-use within the neighbourhood.

I had already blogged about this at the beginning of the month (Jane Jacobs on “differences, not duplications”), but it really became clear for me in the article I just finished today.  Strengthening the single-use areas that encircle James Bay will only increase James Bay’s troubles within its neighbourhood centre, not lessen them.

Jane Jacobs on “differences, not duplications”

Rereading Jane Jacobs’s classic, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and came across the following on p.169, in the chapter on “The Uses of City Neighborhoods”:

Almost nobody travels willingly from sameness to sameness and repetition to repetition, even if the physical effort required is trivial.

Differences, not duplications, make for cross-use and hence for a person’s identification with an area greater than his immediate street network.  Monotony is the enemy of cross-use and hence of functional unity.  As for Turf, planned or unplanned, nobody outside the Turf can possibly feel a natural identity of interest with it or with what it contains.

I find Jacobs’s insights so compelling and rich because they apply not just to cities, but to life-systems.  What she has to say about “differences, not duplications” applies equally well to all the places of human use: cities, but also natural and digital/virtual places, and user interfaces of every kind.

She goes on to add the following, pp.169-170:

Centers of use grow up in lively, diverse districts, just as centers of use occur on a smaller scale in parks, and such centers count especially in district identification if they contain also a landmark that comes to stand for the place symbolically and, in a way, for the district.  But centers cannot carry the load of district identification by themselves; differing commercial and cultural facilities, and different-looking scenes, must crop up all through.  Within this fabric, physical barriers, such as huge traffic arteries, too large parks, big institutional groupings, are functionally destructive because they block cross-use.

This is something to think about with regard to Victoria’s Tourism precinct: the district defined by two giant architectural landmarks, built at the end of the 19th / beginning of the 20th century by Francis Rattenbury, The Legislature and The Empress.

I never before thought about how these structures (which can arguably be called “big institutional groupings”) are not just “district defining” (and used by NIMBYs who live near the district as a reason to thwart all other adjacent development), but are also in a very real sense “functionally destructive because they block cross-use.”  Thinking about them in those terms helps explain the curious sense of artifice and sterility that sometimes pervades this district.

Now that the Empress (in the 1980s?) blocked off the grand front door — designed by Rattenbury as a front door to the Inner Harbour, a door symmetrically centred on the building and the Causeway — effectively killing the lobby, and instead moved the entrance off-center, for use by guests only (i.e., literally no more cross-use of the building by the ordinary people), the potential for destructiveness to the district is even bigger.

Not that the Empress should be reduced, no.  What should happen is for life to grow up around and beside it, and that includes additional new development unrelated to the hotel, but still in the district.

Click here for a closeup image of the hotel’s original main wing, which shows at centre the former grand lobby entrance (now blocked off, although the barriers aren’t visible in the photo).  Click here for an image where you can see the new entrance, housed in the comparatively tiny, conservatory-style off-centre pavilion, toward the left side of the hotel.

This new pavilion entrance was added so that the original main lobby entrance, which attracted into the lobby hundreds of gawkers, both tourist and local, could be blocked off and the hotel could strengthen control over who could enter and therefore use the premises.  With this measure, the hotel protected itself, but cross-use by non-specialized users (i.e., users other than guests) was killed off, too.

That also means that you won’t find the Jane Jacobses of today, casually using this space to have a drink and conversation (we won’t mention the cigarette, now banned everywhere in Victoria)…

Immigrants to Canada shifting to smaller cities?

Two articles in the Vancouver Sun, published a day apart, repeat a finding by Citizenship and Immigration Canada that immigrants are choosing small to mid-sized cities over the big 4 (or 5) in Canada: Smaller cities benefit from the latest immigration boom, by Shannon Proudfoot (Friday, July 25, 2008) and Shifting economy leads to a shift in immigrants away from large cities (no author given) (Saturday, July 26, 2008).  Not sure why this warranted two articles on two separate days, but given that immigrants represent positive human capital, it’s newsworthy if there’s a shift away from the bigger cities.

(Aside from that, Canada still has lots of work ahead in allowing highly skilled immigrants to work in the fields they’re qualified in.  There are too many horror stories of doctors and engineers working in low-level jobs because their qualifications aren’t recognized, or recognition is mired in some bureaucratic process.)

Excerpts, from the first article:

Canada’s mid-sized cities are enjoying an immigration boom while the stream of newcomers flatlines or even declines in the large urban centres that typically act as magnets, according to new figures from Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

The change reflects shifting economic and employment prospects across the country and the successful efforts of smaller centres to woo newcomers, experts say.

(…)

Toronto, whose share of Canada’s immigrants slipped to 37 per cent last year from 50 per cent in 2001, welcomed 87,136 immigrants last year — down almost 26,000 from two years earlier. In Vancouver, immigrants those same two years dropped to 32,920 in 2007 from 39,498 in 2005. The flow of new arrivals to Montreal has virtually stagnated at about 38,000 per year.

At the same time, the country’s smaller centres are enjoying major boosts. Saskatoon more than doubled its immigrant intake between 2003 and 2007, to 1,618 people from 631, while the number of newcomers to Halifax jumped to 1,926 from 1,101 in the same period. Victoria’s immigrant intake shot up to 1,270 from 950 over that period, while Kelowna jumped to 531 from 304, Chilliwack jumped to 189 from 104, Nanaimo jumped to 284 from 173 and Abbotsford grew to 1305 from 1201.

(…)

One reason for slowing immigration to Toronto and Montreal is the decline of the manufacturing sector due to the strong Canadian dollar and faltering U.S. economy, says Charles Beach, an economics professor at Queen’s University. “Traditionally, the big absorber of immigrants was manufacturing jobs because if your English or French was not as fluent as it might be, you could still learn to run a machine pretty well,” he says.

On the other hand, note that “The federal government has introduced several programs designed to encourage immigrants to settle in diverse areas of the country, says Karen Shadd, spokeswoman for Citizenship and Immigration Canada.”

The second article adds a bit to the first:

Mid-sized cities are beginning to attract an increasing number of immigrants due in large part to shifting economic and employment prospects.

The federal government, naturally, credits its own initiatives, such as the provincial nominee program that allows provinces to select immigrants to fill specific labour needs; and the development of tools that help smaller centres draw and retain immigrants.

In particular, this article notes that immigrants in the largest cities will probably earn more money:

Still, Canada’s major urban agglomerations remain the preferred destination for the vast majority of immigrants, with 67 per cent of newcomers calling them home.

Larger cities tend to offer an established community of family and friends and a greater number of economic opportunities — either low-skilled jobs that require few language skills or businesses that cater to particular ethnic groups.

In fact, studies have shown that immigrants who settle in larger cities experience labour market advantages over those who settle in smaller cities and they can earn substantially more.

In general, the aspect of positive “human capital” is in the forefront in both articles.  As the second one notes:

The influx of immigrants benefits small cities by raising their municipal tax base, increasing the labour pool and bringing greater cultural diversification to their communities.

Yep, it’s not just a country of hewers of wood and drawers of water — i.e., resource extraction — anymore.  People power matters more.

Image stealing, but the girl can’t help herself…

Ok, so I’m not supposed to “rip” images from flickr.com directly, but this one is so great, it would be a shame just to point to it:

Isn’t that a beauty? (I mean everything: the cars, the photo, the framing of the shot…)  It’s by  Maple Musketeer, and the shot is from this page.

Note, by the way, that it was taken yesterday (7/26).  It looks old, but it’s simply one (correction: two) of the many vintage cars you’ll see in this climate (they don’t rust, they just eventually fade away…), and the photographer has toned it (sepia?) to suggest age.  Across the street you can make out the sign for “Westbank,” which is the presentation centre for a development corporation.  The building it’s in used to house Ballantyne Florists, the building itself is by John di Castri, a local mid- to late-20th century architect of some (local) renown.

Friday colloquium at UVic, Computer Science Dept.

I’m definitely going to this.  Brick & mortar metropolises aren’t the only kind that interest me…!

D E P A R T M E N T   O F   C O M P U T E R    S C I E N C E    C O L L O Q U I U M

Topic: The Metropolis Model: A New Logic for Software Development

Presented By: Dr. Rick Kazman, Professor
From: Department of Information Technology Management , University of Hawaii
Biography: Rick Kazman is a Professor at the University of Hawaii and a visiting Scientist (and former Senior Member of the Technical Staff) at the Software Engineering Institute of Carnegie Mellon University. His primary research interests are software architecture, design and analysis tools, software visualization, and software engineering economics. He also has interests in human-computer interaction and information retrieval. Kazman has created several highly influential methods and tools for architecture analysis, including the SAAM (Software Architecture Analysis Method), the ATAM (Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method) and the Dali architecture reverse engineering tool. He is the author of over 100 papers, and co-author of several books, including “Software Architecture in Practice, and Evaluating Software Architectures: Methods and Case Studies”.

Kazman received a B.A. (English/Music) and M.Math (Computer Science) from the University of Waterloo, an M.A. (English) from York University, and a Ph.D. (Computational Linguistics) from Carnegie Mellon University. How he ever became a software engineering researcher is anybody guess. When not working in architecture or writing about architecture, Kazman may be found cycling, playing the piano, gardening, or (more often) flying back and forth between Hawaii and Pittsburgh.

Sponsored By: Dr. Hausi Muller, Professor
From: Department of Computer Science

Date: Friday, July 25, 2008
Time: 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Location: Engineering and Computer Science Building (ECS ) Room # 660

ABSTRACT:
We are in the midst of a radical transformation in how we create our information environment. This change, the rise of large-scale cooperative efforts, peer production of information is at the heart of the open-source movement but open source is only one example of how society is restructuring around new models of production and consumption. This change is affecting not only our core software platforms, but every domain of information and cultural production. The networked information environment has dramatically transformed the marketplace, creating new modes and opportunities for how we make and exchange information. “Crowdsourcing” is now used for creation in the arts, in basic research, and in retail business. These changes have been society-transforming. So how can we prepare for, analyze, and manage projects in a crowdsourcing world? Existing software development models are of little help here. These older models all contain a “closed world” assumption: projects have dedicated finite resources, management can “manage” these resources, requirements can be known, software is developed, tested, and released in planned increments. However, these assumptions break in a crowdsourced world. In this talk, I will present principles on which a new system development model must be based. I call these principles the Metropolis Model.

Douglas Magazine in Victoria: letter to the editor

I bought a copy of Douglas Magazine yesterday — it’s a slim publication, but full of interesting articles relating to Victoria’s economy.  Too bad it’s not online, but maybe one day?

The current July/August issue includes a useful article by Dan Gunn, “Growing the tech talent pool,” which made me want to write a letter to the editor in response.  I wrote:

I enjoyed Dan Gunn’s article, “Growing the tech talent pool,” (July/August ‘08), and found it a good complement to Ken Stratford’s “Owning your own business,” which deftly busted some Victoria economy myths.

Gunn observed that our technology sector has to grow and expand, and suggested several ways we can plan for its future growth.  He also noted that “Greater Victoria has a very tight-knit technology community.”  Let’s not forget that “tight-knit” often also means “insular” or “locked in silos,” a condition that’s anathema to innovation.

Hence I feel prompted to suggest another way to plan for tech’s future growth: encourage synergistic cross-pollination between the various industries.  Propagate the knowledge that technology is part of the “creative cities industry,” which includes not just artists, marketers, or creative urbanists, but also technologists, coders, entrepreneurs — in a word: innovators.  Spread the word that innovation and entrepreneurship add value to a city’s economy, and good ideas emerge when folks rub up against one another rather than staying within a tightly-knit tribe.

Douglas Magazine helps get those ideas out there, as do specific events.

For an additional example of how events play a role in connecting people and ideas, recall last April’s first-ever DemoCamp Victoria (and we’re planning a second one for Autumn), or take a look at events like Pecha Kucha (started in Japan, now world-wide, including Vancouver).

We have so much potential here — and if we can work to break down the silos and get more interactive (literally, with one another), we’ll be hopping.  Everyone I talk to in the arts and in tech wants to see this happen, and wants additional platforms for connecting with other people.  Geographically, we might be an island, but with technology and talented people, we don’t have to be on islands creatively.