MASS Birthday
This week MASS celebrates its second birthday. If at one you scramble, then at two you definitely run! And this year has been a dash, launching our heavily subscribed Bulletin and the popular MASS Talks series at Jamie Kennedy’s Gilead Café, conducting six civic lotteries reaching some 30,000 Canadians, publishing the first in a series of major reports on civic engagement, delivering more than 30 talks in six provinces and four countries, and kick-starting with our friends at IPAC the public planning process for Canada’s Sesquicentennial in 2017.

In the year ahead, we’ll be announcing a new raft of projects focused on economics, energy and infrastructure, and local governance. And possibly—no certainly—a surprise or two. To everyone—beloved digits, core HQ staff, friends, family and certainly our brave clients—we say thank you.  

MASS Welcomes
We love Danishes. That’s why MASS was happy to extend a hearty welcome to Louise Dalsgaard, our newest intern. Louise is in her final year at the KaosPilots in Denmark, and she’s hoping she’ll learn enough about what we do to be able to host the first Danish Citizens’ Reference Panel in spring 2010. Our first MASS export … excellent.

When it comes to certain publications, we’re unrepentantly old school. Fast Company’s original run under founding editors Alan Webber and Bill Taylor was a golden era of business journalism, breaking the stories and ideas that a decade later are still generating headlines and buzz. That’s why we were excited that Alan agreed to come to Toronto to talk about his new book, Rules of Thumb: 52 Truths for Winning at Business Without Losing Your Self. It was a classic MASS dash, but he was a great sport. For those who couldn’t attend, here is the video of Alan’s talk.  

MASS Learning
November 20 marks the launch of MASS Learning—a periodic master class program that shares with private and public sector executives everything we’ve been learning about reinventing public consultation. We’re offering two courses this fall:

Designing Great Public Engagement Programs: New Ideas and Engagement Models for Public and Private Sector Professionals
November 20, 2009—Toronto, Canada—Register Here

Get under the hood of the MASS LBP model and learn how to tackle highly charged situations through better program design and facilitation. Create a better fit between engagement initiatives and communications, and find out how to build a stronger business case for public engagement within your organization.

Solving the Project Paradox:
Lessons in Project Design from the KaosPilots
Co-hosted by the Centre for Social Innovation and MASS LBP
November 27—Toronto, Canada—Register Here Uffe Elbæk shares lessons from 20 years on the front lines of social innovation in Scandinavia. Participants will learn how to navigate rapid change and make sense of the weak signals in their organizations with the KP’s unique project design framework. If you’re an entrepreneur managing tough projects or looking to change the world, this course will help you make sense of the Kaos and turn big ideas into action.

Mass Shorts:
You may know this month as November, but to us and many others it’s “Movember”—the month when the bravest men sprout some lip fur to help raise awareness of men’s health, and particularly prostate cancer. This Movember, our own dashing tough guy, Chris Ellis, will be sporting some fearsome fuzz, and he wants you, generous Bulletin readers, to do your part with a donation to men’s cancer research: Donate here, now.

We’re giving a shout-out to our friends at Doors of Perception (DoP)—one of our monthly must-reads. Yes, it’s super nice that they ran a short profile of our work in their November issue—but really, DoP is still one of the best compendiums for new trends in sustainability thinking and transformation design. And, best, it’s written under the assiduous eye of European design impresario John Thackara.

We’re still waiting for his British DoTT project to come to Canada, and preferably Nova Scotia Four Days Of Design Festival, but until then you can find back issues and sign up for the genuinely great newsletter here.

Okay. So it’s fair to say that the whole direct democracy, ballot-initiative thing was getting out of hand. It bankrupted California, and turned a generation of elections into special-interest free-for-alls. Leave it, then, to the wholesome state of Oregon to come up with a fix. The Citizens' Initiative Review (CIR) is a new panel of randomly selected voters from across the state charged with reviewing ballot initiatives before they ever get anywhere near the ballot. The Review Panels will hear directly from proponents, opponents and policy experts. Then the panel will summarize its recommendations in voter information booklets called Citizens Statements, designed to be easy to read and understand. Advantage: Reasonable people, robust democracy. Thanks Oregon.

The TED model of using online video to spread discussion and ideas has hit Singapore. Qi Global is a social enterprise that uses multimedia to illustrate brilliant people doing extraordinary things for the greater good.

NYT Sunday Mag Ethicist Randy Cohen turns his attention to voting and doesn’t like what he sees. But rather than lament declining voter turnout, he wants to put the brakes on the get-out-the-vote campaigns. Why? Because, according to Cohen, “it’s irresponsible to encourage the unaware to put their ignorance into action so aimlessly.” It’s a knock upside the head to all the do-good vote-getters out there. We’re not entirely convinced, but it’s an argument worth rehearsing.

Also from the Times: Recreational mathematics? Are you crazy? Martin Gardner, the man behind some of the puzzles and tricks that have befuddled readers of Scientific America for years, talks about his path from public relations and journalism to enigmatist. Check out some sample puzzles here and read the article here.

Learning from the credit crisis. Ontario students from elementary school to high school will soon be taking one more course: financial literacy and money management. Here’s hoping they offer a class for adults as well. From the Globe and Mail.

In the latest LRC, John Ralston Saul puts a new spin on the idea of Upper and Lower Canada. According to Saul, “One third of Canada’s gross domestic product comes out of the three territories and the equally isolated northern parts of our provinces.” So much for the urban nation—a myth Roy MacGregor also tackles in a recent column. Apparently Stats Canada counts ‘“urban” as any settlement of more than 1,000 people. Raise the bar to 100,000 and Canada’s rural-urban divide is still 50/50. Read it here.

Finally. Hipsters rejoice. The luscious candy colours and sweet-pouch storage capacity of K-Way jackets are making a comeback, and we’re told they’ll hit Toronto this spring. An embryonic website offers a tease: here.