I am SUPER DUPER EXCITED to share that my application was accepted and I will be heading to Palm Springs in California towards the end of February to attend TEDActive 2012 Full Spectrum.

I have been a TED fan for a number of years now, and having been involved with planning TEDxWaterloo, TEDxAlAin and TEDxUW held at the University of Waterloo recently, attending TEDActive will prove to be a dream come true as well as a huge opportunity to connect with and learn from the TED speakers, TEDx organizers and TEDActive delegates in attendance.

I look forward to bringing the inspiration and passion of TED back to the Waterloo Region as well as to the University of Waterloo, especially with TEDxWaterloo 2012: DIS CONNECTED taking place shortly thereafter on March 21 at the Centre in the Square.

As for TEDxUW 2012, very BIG things are on the horizon…

Over the next two months, I will be planning the logistics of my trip as well as drumming up community support and sponsorship to help me out from a financial standpoint as attending TEDActive does not come cheap. If you would like to help out, feel free to drop me a line and I would be happy to take you out for coffee to discuss this in a more in-depth manner.

In the meantime, I am just going to take a moment to sit back and let all of this sink in, before picking up my pen and notebook, of course, and scheming ideas with the intent of bringing to life projects designed to create a better world.

Will definitely be aiming for the stars on this one, giving my mind permission to travel as far as my imagination will allow.

About TEDActive

TEDActive is an opportunity to let your mind travel the world of ideas while watching the live-hosted TED2012 program in a comfortable, customizable space. When the talks are over, your conversations with other passionate people begin — a chance to engage in inspiring discussions and projects.

Whatever you’ve been meaning to build, or learn to build, you can. Innovation happens when you tinker, explore and play. These opportunities awaken latent creativity and let you rediscover the joy of making something with your own hands. Attendees can sign up for workshops to learn to use the tools in these spaces or dig in and share skills by leading their own workshops. Think bike repair, hacking, sculpting in cardboard, 3D printing, homebrewing beer and more.

Included in the TEDActive mix are TED leaders from around the world who are helping to foster TED’s mission of spreading ideas: Volunteer translators, independent TEDx event organizers, rock-star TED Prize wish contributors and spectacular past TED Fellows. Special events create opportunities for these community members to meet face-to-face and exchange best practices.

Im looking forward to attending the inaugural TEDxUW at the University of Waterloo this Saturday, November 12.

Prashanth and his enthusiastic team of volunteers have been hard at work over the past year to turn the vision of this event into a reality: a platform to showcase the best ideas from the University of Waterloo to the world.

If you are not able to attend, I would highly encourage you to check out the livestream of the event at www.tedxuw.com/livestream beginning 830 AM EST this Saturday.

About TEDxUW:

We live in an age where ideas can spread like wildfire, where tools can be harnessed to connect people across vast distances and where people can be mobilized en masse with the click of a button. Social movements across the world are now being spurred on by the use of incredibly powerful, highly-scalable technologies that can turn desire into action within minutes. The gap between our ideas and ability to take charge of our reality can be crossed in a single stride. We are inspired by revolutionary ideas, but we are also inspired by revolutionary leaders and agents of change.

Why?

Because they took action.

This is what TEDxUW captures – the excitement of taking action and showcasing the achievements of those people who defied the naysayers and created things, built relationships and brought their ideas to life.

And that’s just today.

Can you imagine tomorrow?

]]> http://www.renjie.ca/2011/11/07/tedxuw-at-the-university-of-waterloo/feed/ 0 http://www.renjie.ca/2011/10/18/sig-inspiring-action-for-social-impact-series/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sig-inspiring-action-for-social-impact-series http://www.renjie.ca/2011/10/18/sig-inspiring-action-for-social-impact-series/#comments Tue, 18 Oct 2011 13:46:24 +0000 renjie http://www.renjie.ca/?p=3892

Social Innovation Generation is pleased to announce that the Inspiring Action for Social Impact Series is concentrating its next webinar events entirely on Canadian ideas in social innovation.

From November 2, we explore innovation through the eyes of our own SiG leadership team. It’s rare that we focus on our own collaborative, but this gives us an opportunity to share with you the strength of this unique structure, and the great learnings that each Director has to impart. It’s not so much a “how-to” but a “what I’ve learned and what I see in the future” series.

Launching the series will be Frances Westley, international social innovation thought-leader and co-author of Getting to Maybe: How the World is Changed. Frances will frame her discussion around social innovation & resilience.

• November 2: Frances Westley on Social Innovation and Resilience
• November 9: Stephen Huddart on Managing Innovation
• November 16: Allyson Hewitt on Shared Value and what it means for the non-profit sector. Allyson will discuss Shared Value, the concept first popularized by Michael Porter and Mark Kramer in their Harvard Business Review article. What is the impact & import for the non-profit sector?
• November 23: Cheryl Rose on Community-University Partnerships
• November 30: Tim Draimin on Supporting global learning: Australia/Canada social innovation synergies
• December 7: Al Etmanski on Natural Care
• December 13: Tim Brodhead on Key trends in philanthropy for grant seekers from a SI perspective
• December 20: Dr. Ilse Treurnicht on Upcoming Trends in Innovation

All webinars will be held for one hour, including time for questions and comments from participants.

Registration will be open soon.

Speakers in order of presentations:

Frances Westley: JW McConnell Chair in Social Innovation, University of Waterloo, SiG@Waterloo
Stephen Huddart: President and CEO, JW McConnell Family Foundation
Allyson Hewitt: Director, Social Entrepreneurship at MaRS, SiG@MaRS
Cheryl Rose: Director, Partnerships and Projects for SiG@Waterloo
Tim Draimin: Executive Director, Social Innovation Generation (National)
Al Etmanski: President and Co-Founder of PLAN, Director, SiG@PLAN
Tim Brodhead: Senior Fellow, SiG National. Fmr President, JW McConnell Family Foundation
Dr. Ilse Treurnicht: CEO, MaRS Discovery District

Full bios available on the SiG website.

With the Occupy Wall Street movement (also known as #OWS) finally making headlines around the world and capturing people’s imaginations, the timing of Contact Summit 2011, tagline: the evolution will be social, taking place in New York City on Thursday, October 20, could not be any more timely.

The emergence of the #Occupy so-called protests that started in New York City last month and are now spreading fast across North America (with #OccupyToronto taking place today, October 15 on King St. and Bay St. downtown) has been described by noted media theorist Douglas Rushkoff as the first net-era movement in North America, taking its cue from the collaborative, open source, and sustainable models many people around the world are working to build right now.

Mohamed El-Erian, CEO of PIMCO (with over a $1 trillion under management) argues that #OWS is more than just a nascent movement that will grow in the weeks and months ahead. Along with the non-violent grassroots protests that we have seen emerge from the Arab Spring earlier this year, particularly in Egypt and Tunisia, El-Erian argues that #OWS is part of a worldwide drive for greater social justice that has the potential to unify people from diverse cultural backgrounds, political affiliations, religions, and social classes. He also dismisses skeptics and critics of the #OWS movement as repeating the mistake that many made in Egypt, Israel and Tunisia—that of falling hostage to an outmoded way of thinking about seemingly-leaderless grassroots movements.

Rushkoff also makes a similar argument wherein he argues that the reason why some mainstream news journalists and many of the audiences they serve see the #OWS protests as incoherent, is precisely because the press and the public are themselves. He notes that it is difficult to comprehend a 21st century movement from the perspective of the 20th century politics, media, and economics in which we are still steeped. Rushkoff goes on to say that unlike a political campaign designed to get a person in office and then close up shop (as in Obama ’08), #OWS is not a movement with a traditional narrative arc. Rather, it is the product of the decentralized networked-era culture that makes up our reality today, where it is less about victory than sustainability; it is not about one-pointedness, but inclusion and groping toward consensus; it is not like a book, it is like the Internet.

Returning to the Contact Summit, convened and hosted by Douglas Rushkoff himself, and with the likes of Dennis Crowley (founder of Foursquare), Eli Pariser (founder of MoveOn.org) and Clay Shirky attending, along with a number of other very talented people, the conference should prove to be interesting especially given the very participatory and results-oriented nature of the event. The Collaboratory—a “collaboratory” of attendee-conceived and moderated conversations taking place throughout the day, along with The Bazaar—a two-hour midday festival of demos, have been designed to produce results with the question, What concrete steps can we take to realize a true potential of the networked era?, kept in mind.

From the Contact Summit website:

“Contact is a working festival of innovation where the net’s leading minds and entrepreneurs can connect with the people who are building the social technologies of tomorrow. The net of the future will not be fueled by ads, but by people solving real problems through distributed, peer-to-peer solutions. This is dormant promise of the Internet, finally coming to fruition.”

Im looking forward to attending and participating at Contact in New York City next week and will certainly be keeping close tabs on the #OWS movement, especially now that I am back in Canada for the next little while and all of this hits way too close to home.

Highlights include information on The European Trail Project and the full transcript of a speech delivered by Prof. Mary Kaldor from the London School of Economics, at the Corvinus University of Budapest in April 2011.

Download a .PDF copy of the ISES Spring/Summer 2011 newsletter here.

UNESCO Chair in Cultural Heritage Management & Sustainable Development – Friday July 8, 2011

We are extremely pleased to announce that the Institute for Social & European Studies (ISES) Foundation, already a Jean Monnet European Centre of Excellence, was recently awarded a UNESCO Chair in Cultural Heritage Management & Sustainable Development.

The UNESCO Chair will complement the ISES-Corvinus postgraduate programme in Cultural Heritage Management & Sustainable Development, a unique program that is the first of its kind in Hungary.

This postgraduate programme offers students the opportunity to become trained professionals with the skills needed to preserve and protect cultural heritage for future generations. The programme provides a solid, interdisciplinary foundation for specialization in cultural heritage, management and sustainable development.

We are also pleased to announce that we will be opening our new Advanced Studies Centre and Library in Kőszeg, intended for MA and PhD student researchers, as well as professors in the social sciences.

For more information, please visit www.ises.hu

We are extremely pleased to welcome you to the XVI International Summer University in Kőszeg at the Institute for Social & European Studies (ISES) Foundation, to learn more about our shared global future and understand the complexities of present transformations, new partnerships, and growing social and corporate responsibilities. This program will take place from June 25 to July 9 2011.

Since 1996, ISES has organized the International Summer University where the annual topic has always been constructed around contemporary European and global issues. This year, the XVI International Summer University will focus on: Reinventing the Future – New Strategies in Global Management and The Role of Europe.

The Institute for Social & European Studies (ISES) Foundation, already a Jean Monnet European Centre of Excellence, was also recently awarded a UNESCO Chair in Cultural Heritage Management. The UNESCO Chair will complement the ISES-Corvinus postgraduate programme in Cultural Heritage Management & Sustainable Development, a unique program that is the first of its kind in Hungary.

At the closing ceremony of the XVI International Summer University, we will also be inaugurating the new ISES Advanced Studies Centre and Library in Kőszeg, intended for MA and PhD student researchers as well as professors to further knowledge and scientific inquiry in the social sciences and the humanities.

Warm wishes,
Ferenc Miszlivetz & Jody Jensen, ISES

This year, the XVI International Summer University will focus on: Reinventing the Future – New Strategies in Global Management and The Role of Europe, 25 June – 9 July 2011.

The opening ceremony of the XVI International Summer University will take place on Sunday June 26 2011 at The Europe House in Kőszeg, Hungary.

Are you graduating from university this summer and not too sure where you’re off to next or what you want to do? Interested in traveling and want to discover and explore Europe?

Check out the graduate programmes being offered at the Institute for Social & European Studies (ISES)-Corvinus University of Budapest in Kőszeg, Hungary.

Applications are still being accepted for the MA International Economic Relations (deadline: 15 July 2011) and the postgraduate programme in Cultural Heritage Management & Sustainable Development (deadline: 31 August 2011).

For more information, please visit www.ises.hu/en or see the programme descriptions below.

Masters Programme (MA), International Economic Relations with a special focus on European Integration Studies

Since 2005, the ISES-Corvinus Masters programme in International Economic Relations, with a special focus on European Integration Studies, has provided students from around the world with the opportunity to obtain theoretical and practical knowledge in the fields of international relations and economics, regional and global studies, political science, sociology, European culture and history.

Upon completion of the programme, students will receive a unique degree that is recognized as being achieved at a Jean Monnet European Centre of Excellence institution, supported by Corvinus University of Budapest, one of the highest ranked universities in Central Europe. Obtaining an MA International Economic Relations degree from ISES-Corvinus will be highly advantageous in our current world system of global economics, business and political affairs.

For more information regarding this Masters programme, please contact Anett Horváth, Academic Coordinator of the programme at international.relations@ises.hu or via telephone: +36 94 563 055.

Application deadline: 15 July 2011

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Postgraduate Programme, Cultural Heritage Management & Sustainable Development

The ISES-Corvinus Cultural Heritage Management & Sustainable Development postgraduate programme is unique and the first of its kind in Hungary. It offers students the opportunity to become trained professionals with the skills needed to preserve and protect cultural heritage for future generations.

The programme provides a solid, interdisciplinary foundation for specialization in cultural heritage, management and sustainable development. ISES-Corvinus, a Jean Monnet European Centre of Excellence, was recently awarded a UNESCO Chair in Cultural Heritage Management.

For more information regarding this postgraduate programme, please contact Izabella Szász, Academic Coordinator of the programme at cultural.heritage@ises.hu or via telephone:
+36 94 563 055.

Application deadline: 31 August 2011

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Disclaimer: I am currently enrolled as at graduate student in the MA International Economic Relations program and also work as a Marketing Assistant for ISES.