Todd's Old Blog

Category: Society

  • Workplace Mental Health: Please share this video

    May 3 – 9, 2010 is Mental Health Week. Take care of yourself, and each other.

  • GCPEDIA Peer Helpers – “Official” Rollout

    Back in September of last year, sometime after I was already entirely swept up by obsessive compulsive wikignoming—grafting and pruning the site in a way I hoped would make it prosper—it occurred to me that a similar role should exist to help users grow and prosper.  I created the Peer helper category on GCPEDIA, made…

  • Facebook Is My F-word

    “Facebook has devolved from a social networking platform to an operating system for third-party applications.” I cringe at the mention of it. It’s more contemptible than “free”, with all that’s been done to make that word utterly meaningless—if not borderline fraudulent—mostly from the lips and keyboards of marketers. It’s more despicable than “f*ck”, which despite…

  • Clerk Website,Twitter Accounts Go Live

    Wayne Wouters recently announced the launch of the new Clerk of the Privy Council website.  That by itself strikes me as extraordinarily cool.  Actually delivering your own first-person message communicates genuine engagement with a new initiative and the people it touches in a way that a generic press release style announcement just can’t. But Mr.…

  • Clerk Edits GCPEDIA – Public Servants Rejoice

    Note: This post contains links only accessible within the Government of Canada network. On my administrative rounds this morning I was pleased to read a familiar name in GCPEDIA’s recent changes log: Wayne Wouters, Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to the Cabinet. I was already aware of Mr. Wouter’s support of GCPEDIA, having…

  • I can be led, so lead me.

    I’ve lost count of the number of times over the last decade that I’ve watched presentations that make reference to the generational differences in workplace motivation between the Baby Boomers and the younger generations of X (~1961 to ~1981) and Y (~1982 to ~1999). For the most part, they all tend to focus on the…

  • On Free Culture

    I love free.  I blog about it; I tweet about it; I consume it; I produce it. Free Culture is a difficult concept for some to understand, primarily because we have been born and raised in a capitalist society where few things in life are truly free, both in terms of their monetary cost and…

  • Should the Canadian Government Pull the Plug on WebEx?

    Last month I attended the O’Reilly Gov 2.0 Conference from the comfort of my desk. It brought together attendees from around the world using WebEx, a web conferencing technology that includes audio and video conferencing, desktop sharing, and other valuable communication and collaboration features. Later this week, I’ll be attending a meeting with colleagues in…

  • Open Formats and Open Source for Better Government

    The Government of Canada is currently reliant on proprietary file formats and proprietary software applications, which lock it into a licensing bind with a single software manufacturer — Microsoft.  There is not only a question of cost — as we pay a monopoly corporation for per-seat licenses to run software that already dominates the market…