Reboot Alberta was started by Ken Chapman, Dave King, Don Schurman and Michael Brechtel who came up with the idea at a lunch meeting at Rigoloettos restaurant in the late summer of 2009. The concept was to invite some folks we all know and invite them to get together and see if anyone was really interested in finding and facilitating a progressive voice in Alberta’s politics. That was the question.
The answer from those people who were contacted was an overwhelming YES and Reboot Alberta was born. Reboot Alberta is an early-stage and emerging citizen’s movement of progressive thinking Albertans. It started in late November 2009 with the first gathering in Red Deer and the second gathering happened in Kananaskis at the end of February.
Over 540 individual Albertans have signed up so far at http://www.rebootalberta.org/. This group of individual citizens is now forming into a diverse on-line and real life like-minded community of citizens who are concerned about the future of Alberta and the political trends they see shifting the province too far to the reactionary right.
Coming out of the gathering in K-country was the request for a newsletter to keep people informed and to help organize local events under the Reboot Alberta banner in communities throughout Alberta. We did a short survey to get a clearer sense of what was wanted by Rebooters for the future of this citizen’s movement. Here are some of the key findings of the 100 survey participants and it moves Reboot Alberta into the next stage.
Communications Key to Reboot Alberta as a Citizen's Movement:
Two newsletters have been sent out so far and 87% of Rebooters are reading them with 65% wanting it to come by email to them on a monthly basis but with they what other emailed information on more current events and issues.
According to 60% the newsletter should be used to connect Rebooters to interesting community events and progressive websites and 87% want more of this kind of content in the newsletter. The newsletter information is used by 57% of Rebooters in their conversations with others about Reboot Alberta and issues of citizen engagement. This is not surprising when you consider that 88% of Rebooters are Influentials and 86% are Cultural Creatives. They are natural connectors. The desire for a continuing sense of community amongst progressive thinking Albertans is obvious from these numbers.
Making it Relevant but Local and Provincial at the Same Time:
In terms of local community events for progressives to get together there are 75% who have not yet contemplated organizing such a meeting using Tweet-Ups or Meet-Ups but 60% want to know how to do it and 70% want tips on how to find other progressive thinking Albertans in their communities.
If there are going to be help in organizing local gatherings and events for Rebooters and other progressives, 67% wanted suggestions on topics and questions to be the focus of such meetings and 57% want updated information on those questions concerns and issues to be provided by Reboot Alberta too.
Sustaining Reboot Alberta Focus and Momentum is a Key Issue:
How to sustain Reboot Alberta is a fundamental question too and 85% said it was acceptable for the organization to accept donations to help lower event costs, administer the organization like maintaining the website and keeping up the communications. Province-wide face to face gatherings are important to Rebooters and 42% want them to happen twice a year, 23% want it annually and 22% want to have larger events three times a year.
Reboot is About Influence and Issues but Not About Political Parties:
As to what Reboot Alberta should focus its efforts on going forward 79% of survey participants want it to organize and sponsor issues oriented political and public policy events. Some 73% say Reboot Alberta should be a citizens-based political movement to communicate with Albertans and politicians. There is an obvious desire to influence public policy considering 63% want Reboot Alberta to advertise and advocate on public policy issues of concern to progressives. This is not to be done in a partisan context as only 24% of Rebooters want to promote political parties or platforms and 38.5% are in favour of supporting individual candidates, regardless of party affiliation.
So the future direction being dictated by these survey results are pretty clear. There are new faces and new energy being brought to Reboot Alberta all the time. This growing movement is intent on making Reboot Alberta a force for the common good of Alberta. It is focused on making a difference with a non-partisan citizen-based approach and promoting progressive perspectives on public policy issues. Of course you can ask what those progressive public policy issues are. That will be decided on a decentralized basis by Rebooters self-selcting amongst themselves over time.
Suffice to say Reboot Alberta is not going to be a political party but a way of thinking and an approach to political culture based on a consistent values set of like-minded progressive Albertans. We have the results of another conjoint survey of Rebooters that shows us what are those progressive values. I will be doing a series of blog posts on Rebooters this coming week and will clarify those progressive values. I will also shed some light on what is progressive thinking in Alberta in a 21st century context.
I encourage all Albertans who are concerned about the future of Alberta and see the issues in terms of an integrated economic, environmental, social, political and even spiritually you will find your tribe at Reboot Alberta. So join in the Reboot Alberta citizen's movement and sign up at http://www.rebootalberta.org/. It is time to re-engage and assert your citizenship once again.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Don't Close Schools! Integrate and Adapt Schools into the Community!
There are more Reboot Alberta people speaking out in the Edmonton Journal's Letters to the Editor. This time it is about school closures in Edmonton by the Edmonton Public School Board.
This time Dick Baker is commenting and noting that communities need more say in what happens to a school.
Also read the letter from Rebooter Christopher Spencer on school closure.
Full disclosure: Last year my firm, Cambridge Strategies Inc. did a conjoint study for the Edmonton Public School Board. It focused on the key values that Edmontonian feel that should guide and drive issues and approaches to school closure. Here is a link to the Powerpoint on the survey findings that underscores the points being made in these letters from Rebooters
The most important values attributed to a school to a community were dominated by two criteria. There is the balance between space and cost issues but the dominant need was for a focus on being able to provide a quality education. Distance from school was not so critical povided kids did not have to go beyond 3 kms.
Schools were seen as vital to the health and vibrancy of the overall community. So the school closure issues are much more than cost, it is about education quality and the sense of community. There was a dominant value focus on keeping a school open and adpated to meet community needs regardless of enrollment statistics.
The education focus of a school was the most important consideration. That was seem as providing extensive programming, with a focus on an adaptive school culture that really prepares students for their future. The key education element there was seen as a focus on creativity and social integration skills, preparation for post-secondary. Other important educational concerns was about developing the individual skills of students to prepare them for the workforce and also deal with citizenship and character development. Standardized test results were not highly vallued as measures of quality education.
This all begs questions of governance and how the province, school boards, municipalities and community groups work together to not only save a school but turn it into a community facility that provides quality education and better integrates and also serves larger community needs. It is a culture shift that is all about integration of uses and recources to meet more community needs including education.
The studies have been done and wrap-around schools are concepts that are well proven to work and benefit education and community outcomes. The full cost and life cycle accounting methods for multi-use adaptive facility design is ready to be made the new standard for educational infrastructure decisions. The political will is there to make this cultural shift from the current Minister of Education. There a need for a more effective collaborative linking of the local community, the municipality and school boards to serve the greater good of neighbourhoods and students best interests when considering school closure decisions.
The question is larger than just enrollment levels. It is about what we "value" as a society and not just about what it "costs" in dollar terms alone. Citizens know this and have told us that they value community needs and school services as integrated wholes, not as isolated silos. It is time for some comprehenseive, forward thinking good governance coupled with a dash of political courage. We need to change the old culture about such decisions where school closures are mostly about dollar costs and not the value of a school and its facilities to serve community concerns. Simply closing a school forecloses the adaptive and imaginative opportunity costs and chances for community capacity building. Those options are lost in a shortsighted school closure decision.
This time Dick Baker is commenting and noting that communities need more say in what happens to a school.
Also read the letter from Rebooter Christopher Spencer on school closure.
Full disclosure: Last year my firm, Cambridge Strategies Inc. did a conjoint study for the Edmonton Public School Board. It focused on the key values that Edmontonian feel that should guide and drive issues and approaches to school closure. Here is a link to the Powerpoint on the survey findings that underscores the points being made in these letters from Rebooters
The most important values attributed to a school to a community were dominated by two criteria. There is the balance between space and cost issues but the dominant need was for a focus on being able to provide a quality education. Distance from school was not so critical povided kids did not have to go beyond 3 kms.
Schools were seen as vital to the health and vibrancy of the overall community. So the school closure issues are much more than cost, it is about education quality and the sense of community. There was a dominant value focus on keeping a school open and adpated to meet community needs regardless of enrollment statistics.
The education focus of a school was the most important consideration. That was seem as providing extensive programming, with a focus on an adaptive school culture that really prepares students for their future. The key education element there was seen as a focus on creativity and social integration skills, preparation for post-secondary. Other important educational concerns was about developing the individual skills of students to prepare them for the workforce and also deal with citizenship and character development. Standardized test results were not highly vallued as measures of quality education.
This all begs questions of governance and how the province, school boards, municipalities and community groups work together to not only save a school but turn it into a community facility that provides quality education and better integrates and also serves larger community needs. It is a culture shift that is all about integration of uses and recources to meet more community needs including education.
The studies have been done and wrap-around schools are concepts that are well proven to work and benefit education and community outcomes. The full cost and life cycle accounting methods for multi-use adaptive facility design is ready to be made the new standard for educational infrastructure decisions. The political will is there to make this cultural shift from the current Minister of Education. There a need for a more effective collaborative linking of the local community, the municipality and school boards to serve the greater good of neighbourhoods and students best interests when considering school closure decisions.
The question is larger than just enrollment levels. It is about what we "value" as a society and not just about what it "costs" in dollar terms alone. Citizens know this and have told us that they value community needs and school services as integrated wholes, not as isolated silos. It is time for some comprehenseive, forward thinking good governance coupled with a dash of political courage. We need to change the old culture about such decisions where school closures are mostly about dollar costs and not the value of a school and its facilities to serve community concerns. Simply closing a school forecloses the adaptive and imaginative opportunity costs and chances for community capacity building. Those options are lost in a shortsighted school closure decision.
Monday, April 05, 2010
Connectivity is Key to Improved Productivity
I harp about Harper a lot on this blog. But when they do something right I like to applaud the effort. There is a disasterous state of digitization in Canada. There is poor rural access to high-speed Internet. We have userous wireless cost structures run by the oilgarchy of Rogers, Bell and Telus. An we have the indifference of the CRTC to the pubic good in terms of effective regulation.
Now the Harper government seems intent on at least shedding light on this situation.
In Alberta we have a wonderful opportnity to leap ahead in terms of digital connectivity and productivity because of the foresight of the SuperNet. However our goverment seems disinterested in making it available to every citizen, which is possible if you have a copperwire telephone line in you home or business.
Telus owns those lines and have refused to negotiate Internet access to the SuperNet through them. The CRTC recently bought a bogus argument that such use would interfere with other telephone use, something called crosstalk. The technology has advanced way past that problem. Nevertheless, the CRTC recently refused a complaint by an Edmonton based Internet Service Provider to require competative acces to the Telus copper wire and in the process the Commission embarassed themselves in holding to such an arcaine misunderstanding of the technological reality of today.
Poor productivity is a major issue facing the Canadian and Alberta economies. Connectivity is a key to improved productivity. The world gets it and has started to move way past the pedantic and pathetic connectivity policies of Canada. Alberta is perhaps the most to bear the brunt of such criticism. We have the SuperNet and a government with no sense of its potential or how to realize it for the benfit of Albertans. Sad but true.
Now the Harper government seems intent on at least shedding light on this situation.
In Alberta we have a wonderful opportnity to leap ahead in terms of digital connectivity and productivity because of the foresight of the SuperNet. However our goverment seems disinterested in making it available to every citizen, which is possible if you have a copperwire telephone line in you home or business.
Telus owns those lines and have refused to negotiate Internet access to the SuperNet through them. The CRTC recently bought a bogus argument that such use would interfere with other telephone use, something called crosstalk. The technology has advanced way past that problem. Nevertheless, the CRTC recently refused a complaint by an Edmonton based Internet Service Provider to require competative acces to the Telus copper wire and in the process the Commission embarassed themselves in holding to such an arcaine misunderstanding of the technological reality of today.
Poor productivity is a major issue facing the Canadian and Alberta economies. Connectivity is a key to improved productivity. The world gets it and has started to move way past the pedantic and pathetic connectivity policies of Canada. Alberta is perhaps the most to bear the brunt of such criticism. We have the SuperNet and a government with no sense of its potential or how to realize it for the benfit of Albertans. Sad but true.
Sunday, April 04, 2010
Feature Story on Reboot Alberta Supporter Fred Martin is Worth a Read
I met Fred Martin for coffee and a chat in anticipation of Reboot Alberta 2.0 at the end of February. We talked a bit of shop as lawyers do but mostly we talked about the need for change in the political culture of Alberta.
Fred is part of the Reboot Alberta progressive citizen's movement. We talked about what it meant to be a progressive in Alberta in the 21st century and how it had to be different from the values that dominated the 20th century. The new progressive movements that are forming in the States are grounded in the kinds of consciousness that was so much part of the social justice movements in the 1960s. Fred Martin was there!
Fred is featured in the Edmonton Journal today around his personal involvement and commitment to social justice issues in the States back in the day and yes, even today. Fred's story is worth a read. It will help those of us already in the Reboot Alberta movement and others who are still at the curious stage to get a sense of what Reboot Alberta is about. It is an emerging citizens movement intent on influencing the direction and destination of politics in Alberta. It is not a political party.
I don't remember who said that "History does not repeat itself. It rhymes." We can learn a lot from the values, commitment and socila justice experiences of citizens like Fred Martin. What we learn is to build on past strengths and events but do not presume tomorrow will be a repeat of yesterday.
Modernists, like the PC Party, and Traditionalists, like the Wildrose Alliance Party make that mistake all the time. For example, PCs seem to be waiting for oil and gas prices to return and that will be enough to attract the same old kind of economic investments of the past. The oilsands are the exception to such short term thinking because they are long term investments. Oilsands companies as tenants and Albertans as resource owners have lots of work to do on the social and environment impacts of oilsands development.
The WAP wants to return Alberta to an even older and even more inappropriate set of parternalistic authoritarian social values. They want to take Alberta all the way back tothe 1950s where government, as the father who knows best, controls our morality and defines our society on an "Us versus Them" approach. That old-style Tea-Party kind of anger and anguish comes from people who are longing for a time that is has outlived its usefullness and effectiveness decades ago. But they are becoming a force in Alberta's politics these days.
Progressive values for the 21st century come from a place in the hearts and minds of people like Fred Martin. Alberta is full of such people but we have to find each other and reactivate our responsibilities as citizens in some forceful and effective way. Progressive Albertans have to reassert ourselves and return to activistists in the political culture of the province. Progressive values and ideas are vital if we, as a people and a province, are ever going to realize our full potential in a responsible and sustainable way.
Reboot Alberta is trying to facilitate that renewed sense of responsible citizenship in Alberta. Check it out and join us in helping the next Alberta to become more than the last Alberta was. Reboot Alberta is only 5 months old so give it some time to gel and get some focus. We know the value drivers of the Reboot Alberta movement members from a recent conjoint survey that will be published soon. A new survey of what Reboot Alberta should become is being circulated to current members and that will bring some clarity of where this citizen's movement goes next.
If you are concerned about the legacy of debt, environmental degradation and social problems that we are leaving our children and grand-children you might want to get involved in Reboot Alberta.
Fred is part of the Reboot Alberta progressive citizen's movement. We talked about what it meant to be a progressive in Alberta in the 21st century and how it had to be different from the values that dominated the 20th century. The new progressive movements that are forming in the States are grounded in the kinds of consciousness that was so much part of the social justice movements in the 1960s. Fred Martin was there!
Fred is featured in the Edmonton Journal today around his personal involvement and commitment to social justice issues in the States back in the day and yes, even today. Fred's story is worth a read. It will help those of us already in the Reboot Alberta movement and others who are still at the curious stage to get a sense of what Reboot Alberta is about. It is an emerging citizens movement intent on influencing the direction and destination of politics in Alberta. It is not a political party.
I don't remember who said that "History does not repeat itself. It rhymes." We can learn a lot from the values, commitment and socila justice experiences of citizens like Fred Martin. What we learn is to build on past strengths and events but do not presume tomorrow will be a repeat of yesterday.
Modernists, like the PC Party, and Traditionalists, like the Wildrose Alliance Party make that mistake all the time. For example, PCs seem to be waiting for oil and gas prices to return and that will be enough to attract the same old kind of economic investments of the past. The oilsands are the exception to such short term thinking because they are long term investments. Oilsands companies as tenants and Albertans as resource owners have lots of work to do on the social and environment impacts of oilsands development.
The WAP wants to return Alberta to an even older and even more inappropriate set of parternalistic authoritarian social values. They want to take Alberta all the way back tothe 1950s where government, as the father who knows best, controls our morality and defines our society on an "Us versus Them" approach. That old-style Tea-Party kind of anger and anguish comes from people who are longing for a time that is has outlived its usefullness and effectiveness decades ago. But they are becoming a force in Alberta's politics these days.
Progressive values for the 21st century come from a place in the hearts and minds of people like Fred Martin. Alberta is full of such people but we have to find each other and reactivate our responsibilities as citizens in some forceful and effective way. Progressive Albertans have to reassert ourselves and return to activistists in the political culture of the province. Progressive values and ideas are vital if we, as a people and a province, are ever going to realize our full potential in a responsible and sustainable way.
Reboot Alberta is trying to facilitate that renewed sense of responsible citizenship in Alberta. Check it out and join us in helping the next Alberta to become more than the last Alberta was. Reboot Alberta is only 5 months old so give it some time to gel and get some focus. We know the value drivers of the Reboot Alberta movement members from a recent conjoint survey that will be published soon. A new survey of what Reboot Alberta should become is being circulated to current members and that will bring some clarity of where this citizen's movement goes next.
If you are concerned about the legacy of debt, environmental degradation and social problems that we are leaving our children and grand-children you might want to get involved in Reboot Alberta.
Saturday, April 03, 2010
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