 | Walking the talk in a post-carbon era - learning to use ICTs effectively |
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Good morning everyone ... I hope what I write about our work is viewed as a challenge for all the members of this exciting initiative. I apologize in advance if what I write offends anyone ... First Nations, and I would suggest that most remote and rural communities across northern Ontario, are attempting to effectively utilize Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to transition into resilient communities that are able to support and encourage innovation and new opportunities for their youth, families and businesses. This transformative effort utilizing ICTs is included in each of the areas of interest documented in the Northern Growth Plan. So hopefully this will translate into some dollars to support the effective use of ICTs in all the communities across northern Ontario. As I mentioned during today's meeting, we struggle to identify the northern institutions, faculty and graduate students interested in working with us to demonstrate the importance of these communication tools and the impact they have on the socio-economic resiliency of the communities where we live and work. What we experience instead is institutional strategies that continue to drain our communities of our children and drag them to the urban environments where they are “taken care of” within those concrete jungles. The recent report on the urbanization of Aboriginal Canadians highlights this manipulation of people and our society to feed the urban, institution and corporate environments. The April 8 meeting highlights the struggle we experience to get others to invest in and effectively use these communication tools, especially the institutions. Since our first meeting, only two other sites (PARO and CCedNet) took it upon themselves to work with Lyle at KNET to test out a video connection for yesterday’s meeting. So the four sites that were connected by video were community groups (KNET, KORI, PARO and CCedNet). The audio conferencing works ONLY IF everyone will do what is needed to make it work properly. There is a learning curve for everyone to make these communication tools work properly. Hopefully everyone will use this opportunity to learn how they can make them work properly so we can be demonstrating that each of us are continuing to transition ourselves to being more resilient in a post-carbon era [smiles]. Too often we are referred to institutional technicians who are expected to take care of these different tools (such as videoconferencing) that they often have no experience and knowledge about using correctly. The best way that we have been successful introducing these communication tools in different organizations is when the individual who needs to use them will take ownership of the challenge and begins to figure out how to make them work for themselves. Whenever we are directed to technicians who are usually hired to take care of someone’s Windows or Mac software and hardware and their internet connections, we often end up wasting a lot of our time training technicians who are often not around for the actual meeting or who ends up just doing it for others instead of showing people how to do it for themselves. Traveling to face-to-face meetings might be okay for some people but in a post-carbon era, I would suggest that each of us better work harder at learning how to effectively utilize these communication tools so we can begin to work with and understand the realities and priorities of others who have neither the financial or physical resources to be moving all over northern Ontario for meetings, dining, entertainment, etc. I believe that EVERY community across Northern Ontario has the opportunity to become THE place to be and do business IF we can get outside of this complex that we need to be like Toronto or any other urban environment. Our teaching institutions (whether it be in health or education) continue to create and perpetuate their myths about bigger, more centralized institutions that can provide for everyone's needs. The resulting socio-economic poverty that results, especially in remote and rural communities, is evident everywhere. I am hopeful that this team of people will take up the challenge to demonstrate that all communities and their citizens across northern Ontario can access the types of services they require to be healthy and contribute to making northern Ontario the place where everyone wants to live and work! Brian |
 | Yup, yup, yup! |
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Brian is pointing to a key point. It can cut carbon costs and make communities more sustainable in many ways. Our project should have a major focus on how to make it happen. Brian points to specific training issues for technicians and users. I would go a bit farther and say that this project has to have a serious analysis of ways to use communication tech to promote development, and of barriers to the use of the technology. Most of the barriers are in our own practice, I suspect. It is hard for all of us to become fluent in a new technique. Learning to collaborate using these tools is actualy a matter of creating a new culture. We need to understand that Skype and conference calls work very well with 2 or three people and we can deliver one-way talks fairly well remotely (although holding an audience is hard). At the same time, conference calls with more than three or four are very hard to make work well. Face to face IS better in many ways. But face to face is also very expensive. And the truth is that face to face meetings also require us to develop a lot of skills and trust to work. They work, in part, because we invest much more in them ( our bodies, our travel time, preparation) I think we should have a project that develops a network based on our analysis the IT opportunities and barriers. It would be a kind of Lab project conducted by all of the participants and evaluated by communities and organizations. It would focus on learning to make these tools work - literally on creating a new culture - a new part of our culture. David |
 | Walking the talk in a post-carbon era - learning to use ICTs effectively |
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Thanks for pushing the issue of use of technology, Brian. I will take your suggestions to heart and get myself hooked up via video for our next meeting (with Franz's help, I hope). Here I am at Lakehead University, with its Advanced Technology and Academic Centre, but I haven't checked about the best way to participate and have, as of yet, made no effort to set up video access in my office (I do have Skype at home). I agree with David's comments that ICT has its pros and cons. Maybe we can make this proposal writing stage a mini-lab in using the technology and also assessing it. I would suggest that we set up a thread on the "Joys and Frustrations of ICT" and post our feedback there, about its use for both our meetings and other kinds of communications--like this one. Following our meetings, people could post comments on how the technology worked. Has anyone done a carbon comparison of using ICT as compared to face-to-face meetings? If we're going to stick with "post-carbon era" aspect of the proposal, then we should be illustrating in all of our interactions and potential projects that we are thinking about reducing our carbon footprint and demonstrating how it's being done (and could be done better). I'm excited about this aspect of the project because it would bring a mindfulness to our actions that I haven't had before. |
