GORDON  MCDOWELL

TEDx, is the license used for independently organized TED Talks. Already in 2010, Calgary has experienced TEDxYYC followed by TEDxCalgary. I shot & edited the videos found on their respected YouTube playlists, so when I recently saw footage of Naheed Nenshi being interviewed by CBC, I kept wondering to myself… where have I seen that guy?

I’d edited his TEDxCalgary talk of course.

This got me thinking about the range of TEDx Talks given in Calgary. Some were extremely pertinent to civic issues, so here’s a brief summary for Calgarians.

Naheed Nenshi – Calgary 3.0

Journalist & mayoral candidate Naheed Nenshi (with the help of dataminer Natalie O’Toole) reviews Calgary’s growth patterns, and proposes that we are approaching decision time: What kind of City does Calgary want to become? Los Angeles and Curitiba (Brazil) are offered as potential futures, depending on choices Calgarians make today.

Grant Neufeld – Communicating for Change

Community activist & computer programmer Grant Neufeld shares his learning experiences on how to effect change. Since this blog entry is specifically for matters pertaining to Calgary’s 2010 election I’m skipping ahead in his video (you can of course rewind) to his discussion of http://CalgaryDemocracy.ca, his tool to assist Calgarians with Calgary’s 2010 municipal election by consolidating candidate information.

“Isn’t that something local papers like Calgary Herald and Calgary Sun do?” you may ask. All I know is that during the last civic election, I waited until election day to do research before voting. It was hard to find detailed consolidated information online (to the point I was not satisfied with my own knowledge about the candidates as I voted). Maybe bigger news organizations will provide easier to find, more detailed information for 2010… But I would suggest bookmarking http://CalgaryDemocracy.ca just in case. It is exactly what I was looking for in 2007, and never found.

Jennifer Martin – Innovative Spaces

Fostering innovation in youth isn’t normally thought of as a civic issue (with education being managed provincially). But Jennifer Martin argues that innovation can be encouraged by providing civic spaces for experimentation (her example being Telus Word of Science).

What Telus World of Science does for kids and teenagers, Calgary Protospace provides for young & young-at-heart-but-in-reality-old adults: A space for experimentation and shared learning. These spaces aren’t something I’d specifically expect a mayoral candidate to support in their campaign, but I would expect candidates to share ideas on how they would “foster innovation” in Calgary.

Chris Turner – Great Leap Sideways

Climate change is not an issue I normally associate with municipal elections… carbon taxes, cap-&-trade and fuel economy standards for automobiles are legislated federally & provincially, not municipally. And while a typical Calgarian’s carbon footprint exceeds the Canadian average by 30%, our municipal government is actively pursuing energy efficiency in its operations.

“They’re on it.” In fact (around the world) municipalities are taking action on climate change more aggressively than any other level of government.

However the significant per-captia carbon footprint of Calgary citizens is something which can be addressed by properly managing urban development. Here, author and journalist Chris Turner shares efficiency success stories which Calgary is free to emulate. “It can’t be done” is trumped by “it’s been done”. Calgary’s next mayor won’t be taxing carbon, but he/she still has many opportunities to help Calgarians lower their CO2 footprint.

Again, I’m skipping ahead in Chris’s video (past the argument that climate change is a problem) to his examples of success in improving energy efficiency.

That’s all the TEDx wisdom I can impart regarding Calgary’s 2010 municipal election. Beyond that?

#yycvote is the hash tag for Calgary elections, and it can be easily applied as a twitter search filter.