Renjie Butalid

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Popularity: 51% [?]

It is only the first week of the new year and I am already looking forward to what lies ahead! So many exciting events, projects and initiatives taking place in the near and not-so-distant future that I can tell that 2010 is going to be a transformative year.

That said, I will be speaking at the upcoming EpCon 2010 student technology conference to be held in Waterloo, Ontario next week on January 15-16, hosted by the up and coming student organization, EPIC Technology Organization founded at the University of Waterloo.

EPIC (which stands for Educate, Promote, Inspire & Connect) promises to bring together North America’s leading tech gurus and 300 student tech enthusiasts from schools all over Canada to imagine where the future of technology is headed. With tech heavyweights such as Google, Facebook, EA, Rogers, CISCO, RIM and IBM present at the conference, I am sincerely humbled to have been asked to deliver one of only three so-called ‘Power Talks‘ on a topic that I am extremely passionate about: social entrepreneurship, more specifically technology in social enterprise.

Given the context of the conference, I will be speaking on how an emerging generation of leaders and changemakers from all over the world, are harnessing the power of online and mobile technology to bring about significant positive social change, most especially to the world’s poor with limited or no access to such technology. Examples abound such as Kiva, where in just over four years, have managed to raise $100 million in the form of microloans for entrepreneurs in developing countries (and most recently, to entrepreneurs based in the US); to organizations such as Cell-Life and SIMpill in South Africa leveraging mobile SMS technology to revolutionize healthcare delivery for patients with HIV/AIDS and TB respectively.

These are only a few of the examples that I hope to showcase at EpCon 2010 next week. As I have said before and will say again, young people have the power and opportunities like never before to affect positive social change in this world, and this will become even more apparent in the decade to come.

If you are interested in attending EpCon 2010, there are still spaces available but you will have to register very soon in order to guarantee your spot. See you next week!

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View original post on www.t4change.com

See and download the full gallery on posterous

DigitalMediaCamp Toronto (#dmcamp) took place this past Saturday, where participants gathered in an attempt to address the question,

“How can we work together to propel Toronto’s technology, content and design communities into the future and make Toronto a globally competitive hub of digital media entrepreneurship and innovation?”

Facilitated by Mark Kuznicki, and supported by the Canadian Digital Media Network, some excellent conversation took place throughout the day around this question, with some concrete action items attached to specific timelines emerging at the end of the day. A number of blog posts have popped up following #dmcamp, providing an overview of the day’s proceedings, including a blog post over at TechVibes by Karim Kanji. For a much more comprehensive listing of blog posts to do with #dmcamp, please visit dmcampto.slinkset.com

The day’s events were captured in real-time, on the #dmcamp Toronto wiki, as well as on ScribbleLive, where any tweets or blog posts with the hashtag #dmcamp, were automatically fed into the ScribbleLive feed. It was almost disarming to find a picture of yourself projected on the wall in real time whilst engaged in a group discussion (look closely at picture 6 and 7 in the photo gallery above). It is interesting to see how social media is changing the way conferences and events are being communicated in real-time for those unable to attend, as well as documented for future reference.

#t4change at #dmcamp

Nick (@petten), Ruby (@rubyku) and myself (@renjie), took part in a conversation facilitated by Gabe Sawhney later in the day, where the topic revolved around connecting the technology industry with community organizations in order to create real change on the ground. Notes from this session can be found here.We brought up Time for Change, known as #t4change in #dmcamp-speak, and how this model is based on the original Timeraiser concept where we value time over monetary donations. We highlighted our pilot event on December 3rd as an existing ‘action’ item that we were already pursuing, and we acknowledged that we did not have all the answers as of yet, but were keenly interested in learning and adapting as the project unfolds.

A lot of people seemed to take interest in this, judging from the quality of the conversation at #dmcamp, as well as the number of times the hashtag #t4change appeared alongside the hashtag #dmcamp on Twitter. We outlined that we were looking to redefine the terms ‘volunteer’ and ’service’, and that we were focused in our efforts to engage young professionals working in the corporate sector, utilizing their professional skills and matching them with opportunities in the community best suited to their skills, interests and passions.

Next steps for #t4change

One of the concrete action-items that emerged from #dmcamp was a commitment to host a roundtable discussion on #t4change at the Centre for Social Innovation sometime in early January 2010, with the help of Mark Kuznicki and Gabe Sawhney. Notes from this session can be found here.

We invite all those interested, including those who attended Time for Change on December 3rd, as well as #dmcamp this past Saturday, December 12, to join us to discuss possible next steps forward with #t4change. We will be posting more information on our blog as well as on Twitter once we have finalized a date and time for the roundtable discussion at CSI.

For now, we are extremely excited for what lies ahead with this project, and will continue to learn and adapt as the project emerges. We want to make it clear that we would like to continue to be the holders of the process for #t4change, but we do not want to control the process. We want this emergence to be a product of co-creation, and we certainly welcome any input or critical feedback provided. As of now, we do not know if #t4change could spin-off into its own independent organizational structure, or become a project embedded into an already existing system infrastructure.

It is exciting for us to have people excited about #t4change. This project has certainly resonated with each one of us (myself, Nick, Ruby and Kristina) and perhaps this has to do with the much broader trend of young people in today’s world, wanting to pursue their passions and create meaning in their lives.

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Founded in March 2007 by Nick Petten while an undergraduate student at the University of Waterloo, Out in the Cold is a grassroots, student-run event held every November, where students and community members are invited to spend the night outside on campus, to raise money and awareness of homelessness issues in their local community.

We are continuing the Out in the Cold initiative by sharing a model by which other schools and universities can adapt to their respective campus and local community. www.outinthecold.ca was launched in October 2009 as an online portal to document the growth of this grassroots initiative. It is our goal to provide the tools necessary for people in other schools and universities to organize similar events in order to provide a better understanding of issues surrounding homelessness, poverty and housing stability.

Causes of homelessness include poverty and a lack of affordable housing. Root causes of poverty include low income, unemployment or underemployment, social isolation, racism, low literacy, poor education, and many more. Addressing homelessness is effective social, health, and economic policy.

• Learn more about the issues

After three years at the University of Waterloo, the Out in the Cold model was successfully adapted at the University of Toronto campus. In November 2009, Out in the Cold was run simultaneously at both campuses, and was organized by teams of students led by Kaija Saarinen (Waterloo) and Jenna van Draanen (Toronto).

• Learn more about Out in the Cold 2009
• Out in the Cold in the news

Out in the Cold Timeline

Out in the Cold has raised over $10,000 for organizations tackling the issues of poverty and homelessness in the local community.

March 2007: University of Waterloo

November 2007: University of Waterloo

November 2008: University of Waterloo

November 2009:

University of Waterloo & University of Toronto

www.outinthecold.ca launched

November 2010:

Our goal is to apply this model to schools and universities across Canada. Please contact us if you would like to host Out in the Cold in your local community.

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Out in the Cold 2009

A big THANK YOU to InsideToronto.com for putting together this video of Out in the Cold, held at the University of Toronto on November 20-21, 2009.

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