I had the good fortune to attend the Clinton Global Initiative Exchange in New York last week. In contrast to the rest of the CGI gathering, which is by invitation and membership only, the Exchange portion is more open. It is intended as an opportunity for the NGOs, Foundations, and social entrepreneurs to meet, exchange ideas, and connect resources to needs. It was exciting and daunting to be in a room surrounded by people who are doing such amazing things.
There were people working on clean water and climate change issues. The Global Fund for Children, Little Star, Going to School, Global Water Challenge, and The Alliance to End Hunger, among many others, were there. Curriki, You Tube, Flip, and TechSoup were there. It was energizing to be around so many good ideas at one time. Especially encouraging was seeing the technology companies showing up asking what they could do to help.
Going to work every day should be more like that. At Keystone Human Services, every day there are literally thousands of people going to work to make a difference in someone individual’s life, and by extension, all our lives. One difference is that we don’t celebrate it enough, we don’t encourage its celebration enough.
You may have discerned by now that I am going back to my innovation theme. At CGI the air was crackling with innovative ideas. While it would admittedly be tiring to face that every day, I know that the people I work with are no less smart and no less committed, both on the technology side and the service delivery/operations side. Today we can begin to re-create that spirit within our own agencies. I’m going to start by proposing our own version of CGI—pulling together in one room people with good ideas, people with resources, and people who know how to connect. Sure, it will be on a much smaller scale, but it will still be energizing and humbling.
Other ideas, anyone?
October 6, 2008 at 3:45 am
I love that idea and I want to play. Wanna do it when I’m in Pennsylvania next????
My ideas are all on the service delivery side and possibly on the funding side. But I would love to be a little fly on the wall for your process.
October 6, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Thanks! At the moment, my working hypothesis is that we are all actually quite innovative people with great ideas, we just need a little encouragement and a venue.
stay tuned . . . .
October 7, 2008 at 1:38 pm
A question banging around in my head is how to tweak the industry that runs around providing continuing education for those of us who need so-many hours every year to maintain licenses. The stuff offered there is mind-bendingly lame, and could easily be replaced with a journal article (if we could be sure that people would read it, which we can’t). Maybe your initiative, once you have it thought through and tested and successful in-house, could be replicable inside that system. You could take your show on the road?!
I wonder how we could get at where the “cow paths” are in service delivery. We need to figure out where the clients will be coming from in 5 years and start planning for that now. Is that what you mean?
October 16, 2008 at 12:51 pm
The Clinton Global Initiative provides a window on the great global issues of; poverty, population growth, health care, access to water & food, radical ideologies, failed states and education. These are the immense issues of our time. My hope is that as the people of the world become more connected and have more access to information, education and diverse views we will find solutions to these great challenges. One of my favorite authors is Arthur C. Clarke. I remmember one of his ideas, presented around 1960, that in the future we would see a satilite based global education system emerge giving all people access to a quality and advanced education.
October 17, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Thanks for the comment, Dennis. As a member of CGI, I’m sure you participated in some amazing conversations and insights. It really was great just to be on the fringes and in the public spaces.
I hope we can live up to some of the promise of that gathering.
January 6, 2010 at 6:28 pm
[...] meeting. I was very impressed by all the people I had the privilege of speaking with, and I wrote about it at the time. (It’s a little encouraging, actually, to reread that post and see how [...]