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Audio recording from Garth Turner’s Owen Sound Town Hall

September 28, 2007

Garth Turner Owen Sound town hallLast night I had the opportunity to take in a presentation/discussion with Garth Turner at the Owen Sound Legion. I quite enjoyed the event and I learned a few things while I was there. I was also reminded of a few things too. Like, for example the troubling demographic situation our country faces. It was likely demographic study that first introduced me to Garth. During my previous teaching career I referenced a couple of his books in my courses: 2015 revised: after the boom: how to prosper through the coming retirement crisis and 2020: new rules for the new age.

Both worthwhile reads I would suggest, especially if you happen to be studying demographics.

More recently, my interest in Garth Turner has been in his use of technology, mainly the web, to maintain an ongoing dialog with his constituents and other’s interested in the Canadian political process.

“In this Parliament Garth is known for his proactive outreach to Canadians and his belief in the future of digital democracy. His interactive Internet blog has received international attention as a first for an elected politician, and receives more than 2,000,000 hits a month.

At the same time, he has founded MPtv, an Internet television-type broadcast which takes Canadians behind the scenes with MPs of all parties on Parliament Hill. He balances his Internet profile with many Town Hall public meetings in his own constituency and across Canada.”
Source: http://www.garth.ca/garth/

I really like the idea of a “digital democracy”. First off, it just sounds cool. It’s so futuristic. That of course is not really the case. The idea of a digital democracy has been around for a quite a while. This seems like a good time for a quote from Alex Steffan, another author/leading thinker I admire… “The future is here. It’s just not equally distributed yet”.

The tools required to really make the “digital democracy” work are currently at our disposal. This site itself is to a certain extent proof of that. We are not mainstream media, we work on a shoestring budget, we haven’t got an army of writers/editors/producers but we are getting “the word out” to an increasing number of area residents. Take for example our current audio series on democratic reform. In effect we are using a few of the “readily available” technology tools to capture and distribute some very timely, important political information. The biggest “value added” feature of this particular example of the digital democracy from where I sit, is the “time shifted” nature of what we are doing. We have taken an event that occurred 3 months ago and we are making it available to the public to consume at a time that’s convenient for you.

Same goes for last nights event. For those not in attendance (which by quick calculation would be about 99.9992% of the local federal riding) you have another chance to hear what went down.

You can listen at your computer when you have a few minutes to spare in your day or you can download the audio files and drop them on your favourite portable (.mp3) player. Now you can listen on the go, perhaps as you walk to work or at the gym, or on the bus, or…. I think you get the idea. It should probably also be noted that you don’t necessarily need a new fangled mp3 player to get this content to go. You could burn a CD to listen to in the car and when your done with the disc you can pass it on to a neighbour or co-worker. I am going to look into adding this and future audio and video content at from theOwen to the collection at the local library as well. This takes the while Internet based distribution out of the loop and should serve to make our content available to a much greater percent of the population.

Hopefully you are starting to see how this might be of important if we are going to re-engage citizens in the political process. Garth.ca is a good place to start when looking at how a “blogging” MP or MPP or Mayor… can communicate directly to those who elected them. I hope you enjoy the audio. After you’ve listened to the town hall you should drop by and listen to our MMP series if you have a question or two about the coming provincial referendum.

Garth Turner Town Hall in Owen Sound (about 38 and a half minutes run time) You can listen with the flashplayer below or you may download the audio mp3 here, (right click save as)

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Written by Ryan · Filed Under Podcast, The Area, Events, Politics, Audio, theOwen 

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