I’ve been really lucky with weather this winter. I left Victoria just before things went crazy here, got to Vancouver and left for Toronto just as things got hairy, then returned to Victoria the day before Toronto got nailed.
Now back to the huge backlog of work. Sorry to everyone waiting for an email reply, I’m working on it!
Blogged with Flock
It’s always been hard to put a label on the big bag of things I do for my work . At Flock I was the “Community Ambassador” (a term I made up), lately I’ve been talking to some people lately about “Director of Emerging Technology” roles and such…but “Technology Evangelist” is growing on me. The only catch is that my focus is more on people than technology, but I’ll try not to get too semantic about it.
A technical or technology evangelist is a person whose job or role is to promote technologies, usually new technologies. This may be, officially or unofficially, on behalf of a company or organisation, or on a personal basis, for instance open source evangelism. An evangelist promotes the use of a particular product or technology through talks, articles, blogging, user demonstrations, recorded demonstrations, or the creation of sample projects. The word evangelism is taken from the context of religious evangelism because of the similar recruitment of converts and the spreading of the product information through the ideological or committed.
Technology evangelist – Wikipedia
Blogged with Flock
My Dad, Stephen Pate, is using social media to fight the power in our home province of Prince Edward Island, Canada. When the provincial government cut $600,000 in funding for people on disability support, without public notice, he decided to take them on using the power of the internet. He’s blogging about the sad story of disability on PEI and posting clips on YouTube of question period in the legislature and news coverage. He’s already third on Google for “PEI disability”.
Despite implementing the Disability Support Program (PEI DSP) in October 2001, the Province of Prince Edward Island has failed to meet the needs of Islanders with disabilities. Only 1 in 19 Islanders with disabilities receives assistance from the Province and Seniors are excluded from any help. Further, the Province recently cut back $600,000 from the budget for the DSP without public notice. As a result, 50% of the complaints to the Information and Privacy Commissioner are concerning the DSP program.
Disability Alert Blog – Province of PEI Gets Failing Grade for DSP
I’m so proud of my Dad, I never would have guessed that he’d learn all about the stuff I work with every day. This gives me great hope that social media can empower the little guy to have a voice and be heard. Godspeed to my Dad and everyone using these tools to make positive change in the world.
technorati tags:disability, pei, socialmedia, princeedwardisland, activism
That’s my New Years reslolution for 2007.
It’s time to stop holding back and show the world what I can do. No more training wheels, no more perfectionism, no more fear of failure. It’s going to take me at least a year to really get into this mode in all ways, so it’s a worthy challenge.
For your reference, 2006 was “rock out with renewed authority” – hat tip to Kris Krug and Eric Rice.
Blogged with Flock