karen louise smith

On Wednesday June 8th I presented a session at GovCamp 2011 in Toronto, as part of Netchange week. My session was titled 'Can they hear me?' Exploring Citizen-led participation.' The image above is one of my closing points from the session.
I plan to add a full blog entry later.

Credit: The scaffolding image was originally created by Magnus Franklin, magnusfranklin at www.flickr.com/photos/adjourned/1636521574/ under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0).

Organized by Megan Boler and Matt Ratto, the DIY Citizenship conference was held this past weekend at the University of Toronto. It was a treat to have many scholars working in the fields which intersect with my own arrive in my own backyard. One of the highlights for me, was to hear of the parallels between Boler and Henry Jenkins’ work.

For several years, Boler has been studying political satire in both broadcast and web 2.0 culture. During a keynote, she explained the question always arises, if an audience of satire can become politically engaged in the more traditional sense. In another keynote address, Henry Jenkins outlined how fan culture and political engagement are blending. The example of the Harry Potter Alliance was provided to demonstrate how fans are mobilizing around the values which underpin the fictional series. Fair Trade chocolate, human rights and the Darfur crisis are relevant to Harry Potter fans who seek social justice both in the wizzarding and ‘real’ worlds. These presentations gave me a greater sense of how the ‘fun’ of cultural studies can blend with political engagement.

At the University of Toronto, I am helping to organize a consultation to prepare a collaborative submission to the Federal Government's Consultation on the Digital Economy. We are holding a roundtable on June 14th

We are also organizing via a wiki and there are numerous ways to get involved:

1. Opinion gathering (via the wiki): Do you have prelminary thoughts and ideas which respond to the consultation topics? If yes, add them to our submission document. Comments are welcome from event participants as well as from individuals who may not be able to attend. Contributions to the submission document will close a day or so before the Roundtable day in order to consolidate the and reorganze the postings for discuss at the Roundtable.

2. Roundtable discussion (in-person, half day on June 14): You need to register separately for this roundtable discussion day on the Roundtable event sign up page. Scribes will record ideas and add them to the consensus document wiki during the event.

3. Submission finalization (via wiki)
a) Consolidated draft statement: to be posted after the event by Wed June 16
b) Your further comments and feedback: accepted until Mon June 21
c) Endorsement period: all participants who attend the event will be assumed to endorse the submission. If you choose not to endorse it, please let us know by removing your name from the endorsement page by Thurs June 24. If you object to particular numbered clauses of the statement, you can also note this on the endorsement page of the wiki.
d) Submission finalized, with endorsements and submitted: Mon June 28

I hope you will join the wiki or attend in person on June 14!

Below is a brief summary of my most recent post at Metronauts on goods movement in the GTHA. This post is a summary of discussion topics from a public meeting.

A number of themes emerged at the Metro Hall meet up on Nov. 18th, 2008, when transit interested individuals discussed goods movement. Some of our discussion points originated from the Metrolinx Green Paper on goods movement, others reflected the interests of the group. My summary of our discussion is listed below:

1) The bigger geographic picture

2) Impacting change through local urban efficiencies

3) The interlinked nature of moving goods and moving people

4) Understanding models

5) Seeing new possibilities

I sent off my registration materials today for the Learning Democracy by Doing: Alternative Practices in Citizenship Learning and Participatory Democracy conference at OISE, University of Toronto. The conference runs October 16-18, 2008.