On Monday and Tuesday this week I hosted a Digital Media Boot Camp at Canada 3.0 in Stratford, Ontario, on Canada’s digital media future. The goal was to come up with some concrete ideas around how to move forward on the vision of being able to do anything online in Canada by 2017, the country’s sesquicentennial year.
I was struck by a couple of things.
First was the diversity of people that showed up for what was essentially the “general public” stream of Canada 3.0. The range of experiences and backgrounds represented resulted in some great discussions.
The second was the recurring theme that emerged that access to the online world remains, in 2010, a real issue in Canada for a variety of reasons: economic disparity, urban/rural divide, fear, inexperience — all prevent full participation in Canada’s digital present. Ironically, technological barriers were emphasized at the conference, where both WiFi and mobile access were severely constrained.
(As an aside, there was also the irony, visible in the accompanying photo, of talking about a digital future using decidedly analogue markers and flip charts!)
There’s a lot of work to do to make a future a vision a reality.