“Innovation evolves from the collision

“Innovation evolves from the collision of ideas and people,” Thanks @grayspoontweets! http://ow.ly/8DLnc

Another long but awesome night at the Hu

Another long but awesome night at the Hub. Fresh white walls (and black:) and a wicked Open House tonight with 4 new members!

#Kyoto on #CBC: Min. Kent, that was incr

#Kyoto on #CBC: Min. Kent, that was incredible spin. Talk about need for ‘absolute’ reductions while measuring ‘intensity’- if that. Sad.

Where’s Canada 20 years after Rio Summi

Where’s Canada 20 years after Rio Summit on #sustainabledevelopment? http://ow.ly/7W3qy green growth indicators good but can do more

I love my job:) Check out the Stratos Im

I love my job:) Check out the Stratos Impact Report 2011 http://ow.ly/7UFTG @stratos_sts #sustainability #reporting

After Hub Pop Up? The real work begins

Just came back from a meeting on membership packages with Ivy & Vinod. Crazy to think how far we’ve come since last November when I first met Vinod at Bridgehead downtown. I can actually say that I’M AT THE HUB (not just doing Hub stuff somewhere else).

Jason just did the recap on the Pop Up Weekend on the Hub blog so won’t say too much more except  - wow, after all of that hard work – now the real work begins! Haha.

And that’s the difference between planning the one-off events and building a company.  One of the many reasons we’ve heard the Hub is much needed in this city is that there are way too many ‘one-off’ events – where they ‘pop up’ and then disappear for another few months.  Our “pop-up” is leading us to our ‘launch’ in February.

Within the Founding Team we’ve been talking a lot about moving from Founding to Operating – and that’s one giant step. What’s my job moving forward? Well, happy to say that I’ll be managing a lot of the programming (along with the awesome Hub team and Hub volunteers).  My job this week is to take that awesome post-it note wall “A Day/Week/Month/Year in the Hub” and turn it into something tangible. What events will we be hosting for members? For  the public? What kind of events are our members wanting to host in the Hub? How does that work with hours etc.? My brain is buzzing with ideas – will be focusing on that this week. Stay tuned:)

The Hub Programming Wall

Ahh, what a feeling of happiness. Buildi

Ahh, what a feeling of happiness. Building a company = stress w the best payoff. First event at @HUBOTTAWA was fab. social innovation has a home in Ottawa! Come check out our Hub Pop Up weekend at our new space – open to public this weekend. http://ow.ly/7DGRW

Harvest Noir. Proof that Ottawa is getting sexier.

Who said Ottawa was a boring, unfashionable city?

So much going on in this city I simply can’t keep up. With Hub Ottawa on a roll (very cool TEDxOttawa Creative Actions Mixer we  put on last week), Fashion On Display, Oktoberfest etc…. It’s a crazy place to be!

Yesterday I, along with 700 other daring Ottawans attended  Harvest Noir, our city’s first ever flash mob black-tie picnic at the Museum of Civilisation. It started at 4pm and to be honest,  I only found out the time and location at 3pm!

Harvest Noir - flash mob picnic on Saturday at Museum of Civilisation

 

But what a sight! Ladies and gentlemen dressed to the nines with elegant nineteenth century black gowns, top hats, black parsols  sitting at beautiful fall decorated tables with mouthwatering locally harvested meals (and I’m talking gourmet meals… one table had roasted legs of lamb). As one party-goer told the Citizen

“It’s absolutely unique in that everybody embraced it 100-per-cent without knowing details in advance, and that’s very not-Ottawa.”

Agreed. More proof that Ottawa is changing for the better.

 

Harvest Noir & Hub Ottawa

First up, the Hub can’t take any credit for this awesome event…but the organizer, Greg Searle will be one of our Hub 60 Members when we open our doors:)  Greg and I met at the Manx about a month ago and had a fantastic chat about the Hub, Art of Hosting, sustainability consulting, Harvest Noir etc.  As it turns out, we run in the same global circle and share a lot of contacts doing fabulously interesting things around the world.

So what’s the connection with the Hub? The idea for this event was sparked when Greg and his partner happened upon a similar type of event in Montreal, which was originally started in Paris 23 years ago. A very creative, socially innovative idea happens in one part of the world and spreads across to other cities. And that’s the magic of the Hub. Our mission is:

To catalyze and support socially driven ideas, initiatives, and ventures for a better city, better world.

We’re connected with over 30 other Hubs around the world, with 5000+ changemakers like Greg Searle  - and poof! good ideas are transported:)

The spark of social innovation! (Okay, sorry that's uber corny....)

Can’t wait for next year’s Harvest Noir. I’m already thinking of hats:)

 

My friend Amy Husser and I at the party inside the museum - spectacular!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oktoberfest 2011 raising money with my Unshaven Mavens

What a day…cold, rainy, ugly, and awesome:)

Just spent the day at Beau’s Oktoberfest in Vankleek Hill raising over $3000 for Rethink Breast Cancer with my good friends Malorie Bertrand and Maureen Dickson, my Unshaven Mavens.

Unshaven Mavens is the brain child of Malorie Bertrand and Amie Beausoleil. Inspired by Movember and Mustaches for Kids, Unshaven Mavens’ light-hearted approach to breast cancer awareness hopes to create a lasting and memorable legacy that its participants and sponsors can be proud of.

Unshaven Mavens will grow their underarm hair for the entire month of October, all the while raising funds for Rethink Breast Cancer, a Canadian breast cancer charity that brings bold, relevant awareness to the under-40 crowd. Unshaven Mavens will zero in on the armpit because early breast cancer symptoms can be detected in the underarm area, not just the breast.

Over twenty ladies signed up to be fundraiser (today was the Clean Shave Day) but our real fundraising started when we brought the electric razors out. Beau’s Brewery (my fave beer – organic & local) even gave us a $500 prize for anyone who donated more than $40.  The kicker was also that if you donated $40 or more, you could get your head shaved on stage:)

I LOVE OKTOBERFEST AND BEAU’S BREWERY!

At $500, Phil, one of the Beau’s brothers agreed to shave his head. At $1000 raised, Steve, his brother agreed to shave his head (and both mind you had some pretty lovely locks!)

Well, that turned into more guys getting on the stage to shave their heads, beards, mustaches, and even chests….Shout out to Mark Kelly – the Irish who gave $500 to shave his head & chest and get the emcee to get on the chair and have his head shaved too.

Watch the fun on the video below. This is Steve Beauchesne, co-founder of Beau’s.

 

An answer to our ills: human touch

I just watched a deeply moving TED talk on A doctor’s touch. (When instead… I should be planning an upcoming Hub Ottawa event that we’re hosting for TEDxOttawa)

My friend who passed the video on is a doctor. I’m sure she was captivated by Mr. Verghese’s approach to medicine as she’s passionate about healing and listening to patients (something often missing in the hectic and busy world of doctors).

Although I understand his talk from a patient’s point of view, I was taken by his more holistic message, which in the medical sense or not, speaks volumes for how we live our lives and how we deal with others:

• To understand you must listen
• To heal you must touch
• To change a behaviour, you must connect

This video is about the human physical touch – but I’d argue that he likely ‘touched’ a great deal of people simply by the message and the methods used in his presentation.

What touched me perhaps the most was his use of history and the arts to get his message across about the health sciences.  His multi-disciplinary understanding of the world was enriching.  He explained his reasoning and his inspiration for putting his energy into the routine physical exam by sharing stories about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and historical physicians and sharing those stories through pieces of art over the years. If he had simply used charts and graphs to show why he chose to focus on the human touch, the presentation would have (obviously) lost its meaning.

I truly believe that the more we cross-sectors and see the world from different perspectives, the more we’ll know about how to ‘diagnose’ the world’s many ‘ills’. 

This was procrastination at its finest. Thanks Les for sharing:)