Change Nation

to dublin, to save ireland. 50 social entrepreneurs had been flown in from around the world to kickstart the adoption of their ‘proven solutions’ in ireland: the three day event was called change nation, and that really was its aim. ashoka have that kind of clout, and aren’t afraid to use it.

working again with event mastermind boz temple-morris and digital maestro stef lewandowski, their agenda was clear: stop three days of networking from being just a talking-shop. action and accountability needed to come out of it. for me, it was a opportunity to be at the heart of event conceived around audience-audience interaction, where facilitation and legacy were conceived hand-in-hand. stef has an excellent write-up on his site.

i arrived the day before to find stef explaining his digital strategy to ashoka. tip: if you want to impress somebody, draw the diagram upside down across the table…

day one, and tourist location number one: the guniness storehouse. lots of briefing the facilitators, lots of wrangling screens, pipelines and all things digital that that weren’t the website, and far too much time trying to get posterous to work on everybody’s phones. but through it all, the website morphed from a brochure to a live account of the event, and the commitments to action were coming in and becoming part of the public record.

photo credit: http://www.seanandyvette.com/

another day, another dublin landmark: dublin castle. a regal setting for an amazing day of action, as if day one were a dress rehearsal. the ‘live’ page we worked so hard on says it best, go take a look: http://changenation.org/live

this was also the day i was charged with disappearing for a few hours to produce the event-so-far look-what-we’ve-achieved video, quite the rabbit out out the hat. part video edit, but mostly keynote backed by a judicious music choice and the wonderful photos by sean and yvette. oh, do i love keynote.

to the country estate in the heart of dublin: farmleigh house, for the public day of change nation. and not just to the grand house itself – state photos of obama and northern ireland peace process on side tables, first prints in the irish language in the library – but to a boutique festival site pitched specially on the lawn. it was a wonderful day opening out the process to the public, starting with the two hundred handwritten commitments to action from ministers and all sorts of power brokers lining the walls of the main tent, and finishing with many more commitments made as the ticket holders brought their skills and connections to bear.

having worked some magic to visualise the actions back into the venues in realtime, aiming for a positive feedback loop of commitment, my legacy contribution was a film to capture the activity and commitments of the event to show as part of the finale - a review as celebration and reward that developed over the phases of change nation.

here’s the final version capturing the full three days. i’m proud of it, and it shows how these posts have barely scratched the surface. http://vimeo.com/39511237

there’s also a download of the poster image made for this post below, at 5000px wide.