Posts Tagged ‘Intelligent communities’

Celebrating 5 years of SSE-O

Friday, August 4th, 2017

The School for Social Entrepreneurs – Ontario (SSE-O) recently celebrated 5 years of activity by organizing a retreat to reflect about achievements and challenges of the past five years and think about what’s next the next five years. As usual, SSE-O assembled a highly diverse and inspiring group of people and with support from the BMW Foundation was able to hold the retreat on Wasan Island in Muskoka’s Lake Joseph. Two years ago a similar retreat also organized by SSE-O on Wasan Island resulted in founding the League of Intrapreneurs Canada.

Wasan-2

SSE-O Retreat Wasan 2017

Wasan is a wonderful place where nature’s beauty and superb place-making, reflected as much in the design of the common spaces as in the quality and talents of the Island’s staff, creates ideal conditions to detach from daily tasks and engage in deep reflection and meaningful conversations. During the retreat SSE-O also tested new tools including a practice of Unlearning and the CPS method to explore if these could be used more broadly in the future. But the most valuable outcomes (aside from the action plan) were in the new friendships made and the inspiration gained.

Happy 5th Anniversary SSE-O. We are looking forward to your next achievements.

Connecting Citizens to Future Governance

Thursday, January 15th, 2015

The Design with Dialogue group in collaboration with Strategic Innovation Lab of OCAD University is dedicating its January session to discuss the convergence of governance and digital technologies. The session’s agenda is to use dialogic techniques to discuss the co-evolution of connected citizens in Canadian governance. DwD events usually attract 20-30 participants of diverse backgrounds. Discussions are usually rich and nuanced and participants leave often with surprising new insights.

The event takes place on Wednesday January 14th from 6:00 to 9:00 PM in the Lambert Lounge (Room 187) at OCAD’s flagship building, the Sharp Design Center (100 McCaul st., Toronto).

Conference Board Workshop: Foresight & the Learning Organization

Thursday, June 5th, 2014

The Conference Board of Canada is organizing June 11-13 the Joint Councils of Human Resource Executives in Quebec City. The title of the event is: Predictions and Plans for the Changing World of Work. We have been invited to provide a mini-workshop on the role of foresight in the learning organization. Using four scenarios for Ontario in the year 2032 participants will engage in a facilitated exploration of the implications of each scenario for their organization and the sector. The consideration of multiple scenarios supports expansive thinking and planning for possibilities not usually considered in traditional strategic planning.

Fifth Take Over Toronto Dinner

Friday, November 1st, 2013

Think you should be running Toronto? So do the organizers of the fifth Take Over Toronto Dinner. Come out for dinner on November 13th and meet a group of creative co-conspirators, who really ought to know each other better.

This is the fifth Takeover event in a series, each of which is hosted by a participating organization. This one is hosted by Idee Inc.  who are hosting us for the second time! There are always good conversations, interesting discussions and brief show & tell around hardware/software projects the host is working on.

Participants are to bring something with them to share: it could be a story, a favorite book they’d like to pass on, something they found of relevance or value for others. Be prepared to share or to sing for your supper! 🙂

Registration is here.

 

 

Taking Over Toronto

Saturday, February 2nd, 2013

The Toronto Overlappers community has been seeing a resurgence of activity recently thanks to the initiative of Michael Dila founder of Foundery and the support of Overlappers like Leila Boujnane, CEO of Idee Inc., and Mathew Milan, CEO of Normative Design who hosted monthly dinners for the group in November and December 2012. On February 6th the Strategic Innovation Lab (sLab) at OCAD University will be hosting the next dinner gathering of the community.

In true Overlap fashion, no strict agenda was set for these gatherings. Beyond strengthening the bonds and introducing new friends into the community, the conversation that is starting to emerge is exploring the real potential for Toronto to become the global hub for an innovation for change movement and how the Overlap community could play a leading role in it. Stay tuned for what is certainly a very exciting and promising emergent thread.

Mentoring a 2012 DiverseCity Fellow

Sunday, June 17th, 2012

DiverseCity Fellows is a one-year action-oriented fellowship program that is inspired by a collective leadership model where leaders from all sectors work together to tackle some of the most complex issues and opportunities in the region. The program is jointly sponsored by DiverseCity (the Greater Toronto Leadership Project), CivicAction (Greater Toronto CivicAction Alliance) and the Maytree Foundation.

Twenty-eight Fellows from across the GTA were selected through a competitive application process for the 2012 program. The 2012 DiverseCity Fellows are committed rising leaders with tremendous passion for the city- region and great potential to effect positive change. They are almost halfway through the one-year leadership development program. One of four components of the Fellows program is the mentoring relationship it offers. I am honored to have been invited to mentor one of the program fellows.  The 2012 mentoring program will be launched on Monday June 18 at 5:30 PM on the 40th floor of the RBC tower downtown Toronto.

Training 2010 Conference & Expo

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Training 2010 the premier event for workplace learning is taking place February 1-3, 2010 in San Diego, CA. Rahaf is one of the select group of keynote speakers at this conference.
Training 2010 covers the core areas of workplace learning: design, assessment, development, and management. Conference highlights include Stephen Covey, author of  The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and The Economics of Trust; Steve Harper, author of The Ripple Effect, an exhibition of learning technologies as well as 36 case study presentations. Fresh from her participation in the World Economic Forum’s summit at Davos, Switzerland, Rahaf Harfoush, author of the book Yes We Did: Strategic Insights and Social Media from the Campaign that Changed History will be speaking about implications of social media for building a brand.

Innovations in Visual Search & Its Applications

Thursday, December 31st, 2009

The YTA Business Innovation group holds its sessions on the second Friday of each month. The next session will be on January 8th, 2010  from 12:00 – 1:30 PM, at the Corporate Training Center of Seneca College at 10 Allstate Parkway, Rm 113 in Markham.

Leila Boujnane, the CEO of Idee Inc., will be the featured speaker at this session. Idee Inc. is a Toronto-based company with innovative visual search technology. The topic of recent developments in visual search is timely given the recent disclosures of Google efforts, called “Google Goggles” in this domain. Google’s Visual Search for Android, simply put, is a service that will allow users to take a picture of a location on their Android-powered device, and it will trigger a Google search, which will then pull up information related to the image. Imagine the applications not only in tourism, but even informing consumers decisions about items in stores.

Visual search technology will have significant impact on many industries. The discussion at the January session promises to be interesting and enlightening. Attendance is free for YTA members and for prospective members on approval. You can register at the YTA web site, selecting “Programs”, “Peer Group Meetings”, “Business Innovation Peer Group” and then clicking the “Register” button.

Season’s Greetings

Saturday, December 19th, 2009
Happy Holidays to All

Happy Holidays to All

As we wind down an eventful year and look forward to the upcoming holidays, it is time to celebrate the most important elements of our humanity:  The warmth of being with family and friends, generosity and compassion with our fellow humans near and far, reflection on what’s important in our lives,  a mind set of reconciliation rather than conflict, and of appreciation of our blessings.

The Manara team would like to express its gratitude to all friends, customers, partners, colleagues, and competitors for their support, advice, business, wisdom, and the challenges that kept us on our tows and made us a better team.

We wish you all and yours a Merry Christmas, happy and safe holidays and a New Year full of peace, health, and prosperity.

Season Finale – Designing with Dialogue

Monday, December 7th, 2009

Leadership in the co-creation of positive change in our organizations and communities facilitated by conversations for meaningful action.

Designing with Dialogue (DwD) is a Toronto community of practitioners that gathers monthly to convene dialogue as a practice in social designing for the purposes of engaging the organizations, projects, and civic communities to which we’re committed.

Manara has been participating regularly in DwD sessions as we see the facilitation methods and tools discussed by this practitioners community as a significant component in the wider spectrum of collaborative design tools required for organizational change.

December’s session will be held the second Wednesday, December 11 from 7:00 – 9:00 PM at the Strategic Innovation Lab (sLab) of OCAD. We are reserving this session to meet as a core group of committed participants interested in taking the DwD community to the next stage of its evolution towards serving the community at large. The December session, as an exception, will be dedicated to continuing the work we started in November for envisioning the plans and agenda for 2010.

From January 2010 on, we will meet the second Wednesday of every month at the Strategic Innovation Lab, OCAD, Toronto.