Flag waving (and wearing) Ecuadorians pour on to college street moments after their upset win over Poland on college st in Toronto’s little Italy (Wouldn’t want to be in one of the local Polish bars right now).
Anyway, let me just go over that again. Extatic Ecuadorians. all over Little Italy. in Toronto, Canada.
This is an example of what I mean when I talk about the death of pure local culture. Long live autobiographically local culture.
Well, for now, all I have to say is: Go Ecuador!
A found poem, of sorts, in my feed reader this morning, courtesy of upcoming.org/toronto
“Corporate Social Responsibility and the ICT Sector — Do you know how CSR can impact your business value? Canadian Business for Social Responsibility (CBSR), the Information Technology Association of Canada (ITAC), Electronics Product Stewardship Canada (EPSC) and Imagine Canada are hosting an introductory event on CSR issues and the ICT sector. Some of the issues to be covered include: ? Introduction to CSR and the CSR issues facing the ICT sector (CBSR) ? Addressing the Digital Divide ? The significance of Accessibility issues to the ICT Sector ? Doing Business with Charities & Non-profits ? CSR and Employees- how CSR is impacting employee attraction and retention ? Environmental Stewardship ?”
So, you excited for this one? When you you woke up this morning were you just thinking in the very words “hey, damnit how can we really get-up in there with those (CBSR) CSR issues facing our ICT sector today?”
While it’s true us geeks are sometimes guilty of talking in our own echochambers and in our own cryptic jargonfile but nonetheless, it’s this kind of policy speak when used in the wrong context that just kills me. I had the same complaint with the title of the ICT toronto strategy unveiled last month. I think it’s important that industry, stakeholders and policy-makers engage each other as much as possible yet this self-obsessive and exclusatory argot of acronyms is not helping. This is not good marketing. I’m just asking to please consider your audience.
What business owner do you know that speaks this way?
Social responsibility is an important topic to every citizen, and yet marketed thus, who’s going to show up but those few usual suspects of policy and association wonks who can actually parse the invitation?
At the risk of going to far, can I just add one last acronym: WTF?
okay, whew, sorry I am done ranting for the day…
Thought provoking post from Fran today who had the opportunity to attend two simultaneous conferences in copenhagen last week. One was Reboot a technology, life, business and social software and the other a conference on demographics and aeging. As she says:
It was interesting to go back and forth between a conference concerned with the impact of an ageing population and made up almost entirely of senior/elderly/ageing (take your pick, all the words are kind of uninspired) people, and to another with young hip thangs with faces humming with the glow of their laptop extended selves. There was clearly a gap between both dimensions, and it made me wonder whether there might be a way to bridge the two universes.
and later
I am probably missing some elements, but there is a bit of irony that both conferences were celebrating their 8th happening but with very different audiences in mind. Somewhere between the two is a revolution or real Web 2.0 waiting to happen…
With an ageing population being one of the key demographic trends that will be reshaping the economy in the coming decades, one has to wonder, are we technologists speaking the right language? (and I mean that both figuratively and literally)
If you’re a technologist, a designer or a web2.0 entrepreneur, I’d ask yourself these questions?
update: more coverage of reboot and the global aeging conference on fran’s global village blog here