Voluntary Planning

Over the next three days, John Bennet and I will be joining a handful of others for Cognitive Edge training.  Cognitive Edge is all about making sense of complex systems.  Or so I understand...I'm sure after the training I'll be able to talk more clearly on the topic.

We were lucky to have David Snowden [pdf] from Cognitive Edge, in Halifax a couple weeks ago.  We had the opportunity to meet with him a few times regarding the use of technology in understanding large swaths of data. 

Voluntary Planning's interest is in making sense of what the Cognitive Edge people call "narrative." They use a peice of software called Sensemaker that is able to analyze "narrative" (which in our case would be "submissions to a project").  It is our hope that the analysis done by the software would help us do our job better, when we have hundreds or thousands of written submissions to a project. Among the things we'll be learning, is how to use the Sensemaker software to analyze the kind of data we would gather on a major project.  Should be an interesting few days.

Posted by Dan O'Rourke

All three workshops have passed.  I think it's fair to say that the day long events all went quite well.  I think it'll be while before we make use of Post-it-note flip chart paper again, as this marks the end of public meetings on the Natural Resources Project. I for one won't be sad to be free of the adhesive flip chart paper.  While it works wonders in meetings allowing you to post things all over the walls and windows.  It's a bit a of a pain to pack up and bring back to the office, and it's equally frustrating to unfold and seperate from itself.

Sticky flip chart paper aside, we're still inviting written responses to the working paper up until November 14th. 

Our thanks to all who turned out to the Workshops!

Posted by Dan O'Rourke

Tomorrow VP will be hosting the first of three workshops on the Natural Resources project.  The aim of the workshop will be to refine the work we derived from the 27 community meetings and 600 submissions we received earlier in the year.

I'm hoping the day is filled with creative energy.  The workshop is scheduled to last five hours, a much longer time than the community meetings.  The format also will allow for greater dialogue and discussion among participants than the community meeting format permitted. 

Posted by Dan O'Rourke

I just uploaded some PDF's of submissions made to the Natural Resources Project from a grade 1 and 2 class. I think it's great to see people so young take the time to write and draw submissions. The importance of being involved can't be taught early enough!

Check out the submissions on the Youth Submissions page.

Posted by Dan O'Rourke

Tonight is the Halifax meeting of the Natural Resources project. The meeting will be happening up at the Holiday Inn on Quinpool starting at 6:30pm. I think it's fair to say that a lot of thought has gone into this meeting, all of that tought has been around numbers.

By making all the meetings completely open to the public with no request for people to RSVP, we always end up playing a guessing game when it comes to numbers of attendees. Halifax though, is a hard one to guess. With meetings sizes ranging from 6 to well over 200, there's already been quite a range.

For those who've been to meetings already, you're well aware that we endeavour to give everyone the opportunity to speak. It's always been the goal of the committee to hear from as many Nova Scotians as possible. When the numbers in the room get so large, it becomes difficult.

To date we've had some terrific meetings, with excellent contributions from citizens across the province, let's hope that tonights meeting proves to be yet another success.