One More Thing

Two weeks ago, I listed three things I'd done that week, and so far, I've provided details about two.

The third thing was, you may recall, an earnest conversation with a room full of strangers about an organization I know very little about.

This past week, I had a second conversation with the same not-quite-so-strangers about the organization I now know a teeny bit more about.

The organization under discussion is Samara, a non-profit group almost no one has ever heard of (but now you have) that has set itself the modest task of fixing democracy in Canada.

Right away you know this is a sign of how lucky we are here. Other citizens in other nations have to worry about being killed by their governments; or arbitrarily incarcerated; or tortured or systematically marginalized and worked to death. Or all of the above.

We, on the other hand, have to worry about why young people a) don't vote but b) do protest because, apparently, they think they have no other way to engage in civic discourses.

Here's the other great thing about Canadian democracy: a conversation about it at the Samara offices on Prince Arthur Avenue attracts the interest and consideration of, in no particular order: a producer for a pubic television broadcaster, the president of a corporate branding company, no less than three IT start-up entrepreneurs one of whom spent six years working in the office of the Premier and another who formerly headed up the marketing department at Tory's LLP, the head of fundraising for a major Canadian health charity, a former advisor to no less than three federal governments and a retired lawyer.

How I ended up at a table with this group of interesting people went like this:

I'd met the executive director of Samara, an impressive young woman named Alison Loat, as part of that conference I blogged about last year (the Polivery (ick) conference). I'm always looking for new avenues of endeavour, so I arranged to have coffee with her one morning and talk about her organization. To prepare for that meeting, I downloaded one of Samara's reports from their website to read and ... it was terrible.

By "terrible" I mean it was a bad piece of public policy research. The methodology, while fully described, was ridiculous; the conclusions drawn were out of proportion to the evidence and the report was hopelessly biased. 

I was in a quandary about what to do. Cancel the meeting. Go, but don't talk about the report. Go, and talk about the report.

I went with option three, and was heartened by Alison's response to my giving her paper an "F".  She was grateful for the feedback and genuinely concerned that the work of the organization be considered credible, well researched and relevant.

The next thing to happen after that was I was invited to attend two sessions to talk about the future of Samara with the remarkable people described above.

People who know me well (and know that I am more introverted than extroverted) understand what agony it is for me to do what I have just described: talk to strangers, jump headfirst into unknown waters, hang outside my comfort zone by a metre or two.

But it's been a lot of fun.

The other fun thing that's happened is I am a great aunt again and that's this week's picture:

Welcome to the planet Dylan William Scruton!

Have a great week!

Karen