Imagine the things you could do

By DJ Kelly

Yesterday afternoon I had lunch with Mack Male (who was down from Edmonton) and Andrew McIntyre. As you might expect the conversation quickly dove into all the local projects each of us are working on and how difficult it can be to balance those projects with an actual job.

Me: “I could do so much more useful work if I just didn’t have to worry about paying the bills.”

Mack: “That might actually be a more useful investment.”

Then the light came on for both of us.

So here it is: a pitch for you and anyone that you might know. It’s an idea for a program aimed at making the future Alberta an even better place to live. It could be something for EnCana or First Calgary Savings or W. Brett Wilson or the Government of Alberta to take on. I don’t care who wants to pick it up and run with it. If you agree this is a good idea and want to see it implemented, pass the idea around. I’m confident someone within your earshot will make it happen eventually.

What’s the idea?

Each year 5 Albertans are selected, they take a leave of absence from their jobs, a sponsor pays them each a ‘salary’ of $50,000 so they don’t have to worry about paying the bills AND… they work on as many projects aimed at improving the province of Alberta as they possibly can.

Each day, rather than going to the office or the job site they meet with other Albertans who can help make their idea(s) a reality. They work exclusively on their once extra-curricular projects that have made them a valuable Albertan. I can all but guarantee they will work an inhuman number of hours over the course of one year on forward-looking, cutting edge projects that we so sorely need. (Certainly much more that they would have at a the average “standard” job.)

Mack is right, giving someone an opportunity like this is a much more useful, bold, game changing, investment in our future than many of the tasks each of us do daily.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my job. I love the work the company does and I think it is important. (if I didn’t I wouldn’t work there). But the question does need to be asked from time to time: if money wasn’t an obstacle, or if profitability wasn’t the number one concern, what might I actually be doing with my time instead?

I spend a lot of time doing extra community improvement projects so perhaps that isn’t the most important question we could be asking. Perhaps a better question is: what amazing thing would you be doing if a program like this existed? How would your community be a better place?

And: isn’t that worth the rather paltry investment it would take?

So go ahead, share this idea with anyone you think could make it a reality. Reshape the idea. It could be one Albertan a year, or 10. It could be a two-year program. It could be open only to young Albertans. Whatever. At the end of the day, all I’m looking for is more people dedicating more time to making Alberta’s future unparalleled elsewhere.

And only you and I can make it happen with ideas like this one.

Idea: Empower passionate individuals to improve Alberta

By Mack Male

As you can imagine, the discussion I had over lunch yesterday with DJ and Andrew was quite interesting and left me with a lot to think about. We’re all passionate and deeply involved in local projects, trying to make the places we live better. At one point we were ranting about the money government wastes on certain projects. A little while later, DJ remarked that he could do so much more if he didn’t have to worry about paying the bills. A light bulb went off for me then.

What would happen if we took ten passionate and involved Albertans and enabled them to focus on their extracurricular activities? Pay the bills for a year, and let them focus on improving their communities. What would they come up with? How big of an impact would they have on the province?

Now, I recognize there are many potential issues with the idea. First and foremost, if you pay those individuals for their “fun” extracurricular activities, there’s a danger that those activities become “work”. I’m sure you can think of many other issues. But imagine the possibilities! Let’s say, as DJ suggests, that you pay each individual $50,000 for the year – that’s only $50,000. We could easily come up with a list of things our municipal and provincial governments have done in the last few months that cost as much but will have a far smaller return.

Funding this idea needn’t fall to the government, either. Wealthy Albertans or large companies could fund it. Anyone with the money and the desire to make Alberta a better place. Think of it like the unconference version of the X Prize or the Netflix Prize (in that there’s less structure and no pre-defined goals).

The idea is to simply set ten individuals free for a year, knowing that they’ll rise to the ultimate challenge: twelve uninterrupted months to make your city and province a better place.

Thoughts? Know of anything like this happening elsewhere? Let me know!

• Anielski
• Dubé
• Moser
• Novak
• Boulanger
• Cross
• Florida
• Nolan
• de Coquet
• McCullough
• Kerr and Loat

• Anielski
• Dubé
• Moser
• Novak
• Boulanger
• Cross
• Florida
• Nolan
• de Coquet
• McCullough
• Kerr and Loat

When one thinks about a great civilization, there are clearly a significant cluster of factors that come into play. But one that we have tended to overlook in our current age is the role of faith (of whatever kind) in contributing to our social fabric.

Cardus, a Canadian think tank, conducted a research project called Toronto the Good which examined the role of local churches in forming and sustaining Toronto neighbourhoods—a role that turns out to be as critical as it is ignored. This is the case regardless of whether or not you believe what a particular church teaches or practices. They are, in the urban landscape, a valuable social nexus. We tend to think our sophisticated, technology-driven society has now outgrown religion. But on the contrary: recent research by Reginald Bibby shows, among other things, that declining church attendance has bottomed out and is beginning to move back up.

Cardus is interested in extending the Toronto study to Calgary.

Richard Florida has identified diversity and tolerance, among other things, as important indicators of cultural and creative strength. One of the challenges of embracing diversity is sustaining the creative tension of difference without such tension becoming divisive and destructive. It’s a bit like having healthy conflict in a family or relationship—it can be destructive or it can lead to deeper relationships. Alberta is in that space. Canada is there too. Can we transcend old east/west conflicts and understand the valuable creative tensions that our differences represent? And within Alberta, can we learn to deepen our diversity—cultural, ethnic, economic, religious, political, artistic, etc.— by mantaining differences in creative tension rather than descending into caustic conflict?

Complexity dynamics (an area of core interest for me) applied to human organization supports the idea of creative tensions—too much of the same thing and you have a static state where nothing happens. Too much difference and you end up with a chaotic state that is just noise or anarchy. But between there somewhere is a narrow band where complexity lives. That’s where biological life exists. That’s where places like Austin, Texas live. That’s what New York City is like. And that’s where some of Alberta’s best offerings are—pockets of artistic, visionary, entrepreneurial, cultural activity that represent the best of who we are.

Back on the faith side of this dynamic mix, think about the impact of Anno Domini: Jesus Through the Centuries in 2000. David Goa’s vision led to a highly public event that simply told the story of 2,000 years of re-mixing (or mashing up) the story of Jesus. Again, whatever our own beliefs might be about Jesus, as a cultural influence he is not someone you can simply ignore. That’s what Goa was working at. He saw a significant lack of religious knowledge among undergraduate students and utilized a particular public forum to stimulate collective thoughts and ideas around a highly influential phenomena. That was an Alberta event of world-class proportions with deep cultural implications.

Sometimes we want our public discussions sanitized, with all controversy or risk removed. The problem is that when we go that way, the discussion feels dead and flat, scripted and pitched. That will change as we learn how to maintain the healthy tensions of diversity in all the complex ways that we are different. Forget boringly homogenous discussion or wildly careening anarchy. There’s something much more interesting that can fuel a significant Alberta future.

Milton Friesen
www.ingenuityarts.com
People ideas for the 21st century

• Anielski
• Dubé
• Moser
• Novak
• Boulanger
• Cross
• Florida
• Nolan
• de Coquet
• McCullough
• Kerr and Loat

• Anielski
• Dubé
• Moser
• Novak
• Boulanger
• Cross
• Florida
• Nolan
• de Coquet
• McCullough
• Kerr and Loat

• Anielski
• Dubé
• Moser
• Novak
• Boulanger
• Cross
• Florida
• Nolan
• de Coquet
• McCullough
• Kerr and Loat