Ken Kelly: Connecting Communities in Downtown Victoria

Like any city centre, downtown Victoria is a place where people from different communities intersect; residential, visitor, business, service, cultural.  Each community is diverse. Residents may be living in high-end condos or in short-term residence at Our Place.  Visitors include tourists, local shoppers, and the transient homeless. Businesses range from big bank office to small, […]

CIIAN: Helping Nations build their conflict resolution capacity

I had a great long-distance conversation with Evan Hoffman this week.  Based in Ottawa, he is Executive Director of the Canadian International Institute of Applied Negotiation (CIIAN), a Canadian NGO, as well as being a Faculty member with the School of Peace and Conflict Management at Royal Roads University. Initially connecting with Evan through Twitter […]

It's a mediator's world

I spent yesterday in Vancouver, at an all-day gathering with my court mediation colleagues.  Part information sharing, part community building, always a learning experience… these types of get-together I really enjoy. There were a number of presenters during the day.  I was one of them, on the topic of Collaborating on Business Development.  That was […]

The Future Value of Increased Collaboration

It’s a wondrous world.  Just finished Michael Ondaatje’s book about his conversations with the seminal film editor, Walter Murch, The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film.  A companion to Murch’s own book, In the Blink of an Eye.  Two books; each shedding new light on my understanding of collaboration. In my previous […]

Culture Clash for Innovation

I’m reading The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film by Michael Ondaatje.  I got introduced to this book by local filmmaker Mandy Leith, one of the presenters at the recent Wired Words symposium I attended, in Victoria. Murch is one of the 20th century’s great film editors, having worked on many classics; […]