The grown-up table
During his DemoCampHamilton15 keynote Adrian Duyzer (@adriandz) made an argument that Hamilton’s future as a tech city was threatened by a lack of leadership. Most of Adrian’s criticism was directed at city hall, essentially arguing that while the community in Hamilton was doing its part, our political leadership was not doing its part.
I’m a “grassroots guy” in the sense that it’s my go-to-strategy for doing anything. It’s my comfort zone. Grassroots organization is just a matter of bringing people together with a common purpose in mind, after which they will make great stuff happen with no further intervention. You’re essentially playing the role of facilitator, and leaving the rest to the community.
Because grassroots is my go-to strategy for getting things done, I kinda resisted the point Adrian was making. I respected the opinion mind you, it’s just not something that I could personally identify with or relate towards.
At the end of the day though, Adrian was correct in the sense that political leadership and institutional support is necessary.
Hamilton’s bedrock institutions and the policies they pursue, support and enact matter. As an example, we absolutely need to give every child in Hamilton a great chance to pursue a career in software development. But right now, we don’t. No opportunity is bigger or more important than giving every child this opportunity. There have been numerous attempts to make this happen at the grassroots / community / non-profit level (CoderDojo, hack jams, coding days, etc.).
But the most expansive and successful attempt thus far has been “institutional” – the McMaster software outreach program. The program has reached thousands of children per year in Hamilton to encourage them to pursue software development. While other efforts in this regard have been important and worthwhile, none has had the scope and scale of the McMaster software outreach program.
When it came time to pursue economic support for this program via government grants (NSERC PromoScience), Keanin Loomis at the Chamber of Commerce, amongst other institutional leaders, was quick to write a letter of support for this program. I strongly suspsect that these letters of support put the decision to fund the program beyond any doubt of the funding agency. And now, as a result, thousands of children in Hamilton each year are being encouraged to pursue software development through fun McMaster-run workshops. That’s amazing.
Keanin asked me to chair the Innovation & Technology committee at the Chamber of Commerce. I said yes, because I believe the Chamber is an institution with potential. It’s 168 years old, older than the city itself. Committees on Chambers of Commerce tend to get pegged as “lunch clubs”. But Chambers are also strong at: measuring / assessing the current state of things, creating reports on the current state of things, and advocating for policies that improve the current state of things.
They have the potential to play the role of moving grassroots enthusiasm into a plan, and action. I truthfully have no idea if I’ll be any good at the role – this is a whole new ball game for me. I’ve been showing up to the meetings for the last few years, and it feels like the grown-up table for lack of a better term. But I’m very excited to give it my best shot, because Adrian was right, and the potential is there.
