User: dwm

Name: Doug Mulholland

Hi, I'm a self-employed contract researcher and technical manager. I currently hold a position in and participate in active projects for a research group known rather vaguely as the "Computer Systems Group" (CSG) - csg.uwaterloo.csg within the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo. I also work with the recently launched Centre for Community Mapping - comap.ca and am involved with several community-based projects. I am registered for and plan to attend both the Sunday AgendaCamp and Monday broadcast at CIGI. After all, the AgendaCamp is being held in the building I spend much of my workday in. While I carefully guard my privacy and personal information on the internet (and I know that once it's out, it can be incredibly hard to change or withdraw), I can most easily be reached by filling in this form. You will be asked to identify a small text string and I reserve the right to disable it at any time! Any half decent detective can easily find me anyway.

Since it's founding in the early 1960s, CSG has worked to reduce barriers to technology and information. In the 60s, that work took the form of creating systems like WATFOR and WATBOL that, for the first time, enabled huge numbers of students to really take a stab at using computers. Today the context is obviously very different, but the problems aren't so different - many, many people have an important story to tell or information to share but are constrained by technology and "systems." Our group's projects aim to work around some of the barriers. When we see community problems or challenges that can be expressed as an information problem, we dare to hope that we can do something about them. Frequently though, information is only part of the problem.

We are well aware that we are far from experts in most sectors and we are constantly working to forge partnerships between individuals and groups that often appear to be pretty strange bedfellows. Nonetheless, we persist and claim success in several projects.

Here's some of the hilights:

• "Arts Portal WR" - artsportalwr.ca - in partnership with the Waterloo Regional Arts Council, this is essentially a guide to who's doing what in the arts in our area. The system has fallen a little out of date in the last year or so, but is in the process of being rejuvenated right now. Keeping content current is a critical part of this system.
• "Newcomers Waterloo Region" - www.newwr.ca - originally developed as a partnership with Waterloo Public Library, CSG, KW YMCA Settlement Services, the Social Planning Council of Kitchener-Waterloo/Community Information Centre of Waterloo Region, Region of Waterloo Public Library and K-W Counselling Services, the system was recently extended by the regional government and many other partners into the system that exists today.
• "Volunteer Action Centre" - volunteerkw.ca - The Volunteer Action Centre "believes in a community enhanced by volunteers who share their time, resources and talents." Until a few years ago, the organization was entirely paper based and heavily dependent on it's fax machine. Today they operate the leading volunteer placement system in the country. Be sure to give it a try - at any time, there are hundreds of openings for volunteer work in our community.
• "Applied Health Informatics Learning and Assessment" - learningspace.uwaterloo.ca/hi - Using computers and IT effectively in the healthcare sector presents enormous challenges. Prof. Dominic Covvey started the Waterloo Institute for Health Informatics Research (WIHIR) - hi.uwaterloo.ca a few years ago to start to address some of the issues. Just one example - today, as of March/2009, there are over 1,000 openings for HI professionals across Canada, and yet all Canadian colleges and universities combined graduate less than 100 HI professionals per year. Check out the extensive archive of seminar videos and research and maybe even take the AHI Competencies study. This represents the results of a formal analysis of the sector from so-called "Macro-roles, Challenges, Micro-roles and Competencies" through to Competency Assessment and associated courses and programs. While what you see here is clearly populated with information about Health Informatics, there's nothing in the underlying theory and technology that can't be retargeted to other sectors.
• "Mennonite Heritage Portrait" - comap.ca/mhp.htm - The Mennonite Heritage Portrait (MHP) web portal will be a reflection and an implementation of the Mennonite tradition of community collaboration. The MHP will be designed for community wide contribution and presentation of the wealth of Mennonite cultural heritage and history in Waterloo Region. This system is currently in the final stages of development but is being made available for early testing by a group of students at Rockway Mennonite Collegiate.

Finally, some members of our group, including myself, were involved in the submissions to the Intelligent Communities Forum. With many volunteer partners, we were thrilled to have our community awarded the designation of "Intelligent Community of the Year" for 2007. Check out the "Intelligent Waterloo Video" (requires Flash plug-in) at intelligentwaterloo.ca/en. To be clear though, the real goal of the work was less about any prize than it was to survey the capabilities and assets of the community and to begin to try and figure out how to move forward, collect useful information and to offer meaningful guidance for other communities. That's just getting going.