On June 16, we had a special livestream to celebrate the conclusion of Season 1 of Let's Think Digital! Listen to the Think Digital team to talk about how social media has been changing our world, the future of work, and reflections on the previous episodes. We also took some audience Q&A.

Thanks to Mike Kujawski, Rebecca Hollett, Mel Han, Aislinn Bornais, Meghan Hellstern, Jen Schellinck, Mike Gifford, Nilufer Erdebil, and Wayne Chu for appearing. 

Watch on YouTube

https://youtube.com/live/lGNJ1zHXM78

Related Links

• Open source and accessibility: How we can make government digital services available to everyone
• Catch-up on Season One of Let’s Think Digital!

Ryan 0:09

Good morning or afternoon, depending on where you're joining us from. I'm Ryan Androsoff, host of Let's Think Digital, and welcome to Let's Think Digital LIVE. This is a special live edition of our Let's Think Digital podcast. We are streaming out to you live on YouTube, as well as through our LinkedIn page, our Twitter page, and our Facebook channels. So hopeful- welcome to everybody who's joining us across all four of our social media properties. I've had a really great time hosting and putting together the first season of the Let's Think Digital podcast. And we're capping it off with a really special live episode here today of Let's Think Digital. And, you know, we started Let's Think Digital earlier this year because we really wanted to have a space where we could help people get beyond the hype of new technologies, and really try to unpack some of the implications of what this thing called Digital Government is, and more broadly, the impact that technology is having on society. You know, we were finding a lot of the podcasts that were out there that looked at technology, were really kind of looking for more of the startup entrepreneurship angle. And I think for us at Think Digital, who cared deeply about how government and the public sector are adapting to technology, we wanted to have a space to have those conversations. And you know, our goal for the podcast really has been to be a place that helps you be able to learn, to be able to ask better questions, and you know, ultimately be able to call BS when you have to if you're dealing with some of these impacts that new technologies are having in the workplace, particularly in the public sector. I did want to mention, for those of you who have been listeners throughout season one, we're starting to do some planning already for season two in the fall. And we've just put up a listener survey. If you go to letsthinkdigital.ca, you'll see the link for it right at the top of the site. We'd love to get your feedback on the first season, even if you've only listened to one or two episodes would be great to get your feedback as we start planning for what season two is going to look like. And we also have a blog post up on our website that we just put up recently that has a recap of the whole first season. So over the summer while you're looking for something to listen to at the cottage, or looking for some free learning resources while you have some time, please feel free to dive into some of our other episodes. But without further ado, I want to dive into the conversation today. And I'm going to invite my podcast producer, Wayne, to come join us. Hey, Wayne, how you doing?

Wayne C 2:49

Good, good. How are you Ryan?

Ryan 2:50

Doing great. And I have to just say, Wayne, I owe you a huge debt of thanks. The magic behind making Let's Think Digital happen is largely borne on your shoulders for the editing work and the coordination work. So huge thanks to you for being able to make this show a reality.

Wayne C 3:04

Well, it's been a lot of fun over the past few months.

Ryan 3:07

Yeah. So, tell us, Wayne what to expect today and what the plan is for the next hour or so.

Wayne C 3:11

So we got a great group of people with us today. Part of the- Think Digital- kick off at the start of this stream with a discussion about social media, generational differences, because we love talking about those generational differences, millennials, Gen X, Gen Z, Zennials, whatever you want to call them. So we're gonna talk a little bit about that and how technology has changed over the years. And then we're going to revisit some of the conversations that we've had over the past in the last 10 episodes of this first season of the podcast. So we're gonna bring in the guests from those, from those episodes, we're going to get the reflections now with a little bit of space and time and all through it, we're gonna take audience questions. So if you're on YouTube, put your question into the live chat. We're gonna bring them up and we'll put them on screen and we'll talk about it. You can also email us at podcast@thinkdigital.ca. And we'll also take questions that way. And have a, have a great time on this live stream.

Ryan 4:17

Yeah, and Wayne, I should- we should note as well that even though we're doing this as a live stream, we are going to post the recording afterwards on our YouTube channel. And it'll go up on our spot, on our platform for for audio podcasts. So if you can only stay for part of today's session, don't worry, you'll be able to come back and revisit it later. Wonderful. Thanks Wayne. Thanks as always, Wayne's gonna be backstage keeping the gears running today as we go through this special experimental live version of the podcast. So as always, bear with us if we have any technical glitches as we go along. But I always feel confident in Wayne's capable hands as he manages things adeptly behind the scenes. So as Wayne mentioned, we're going to start off with talking a little bit about this notion of kind of generational differences around technology and just how the Internet has changed our lives over the past few decades. And one of the things we haven't really explicitly talked about in the podcast yet is the impact of social media and it's somewhat ever present in our world. And really excited to have Mike Kujawski joining me to kick this discussion off. Mike's an associate of Think Digital, but the President of CEPSM, the Center for Excellence on Public Sector Marketing. Mike, you and I probably met about 15 years ago, for the first time in like the early days of what people were calling Government 2.0. This is, you know, back when social media was first becoming a force in society, you know, you've been a long time kind of advocate for governments using social media effectively, this is the work you do is kind of helping governments to be able to think about how to do effective online engagement. I'm curious to kind of kick this off to get your reflections on, you know, having been involved in this space for 15 plus years. How do you think it's changed in terms of kind of government's relationship with being able to engage with citizens online?

Mike K 6:10

Ryan 9:29

Right.

Mike K 9:29

in the government. The tools were blocked. It was sort of seen as early on as something those crazy millennials are doing Oh, what are those kids doing? And so that initial focus for gov, a lot of government organizations was to, okay, let's hire a summer student or bring somebody in and like let them run a social account once the access started being enabled in certain accounts. Now, this created a whole set of new problems because suddenly they had a voice.

Ryan 9:59

Let's write, initially, again, what I see the biggest change, and where I see sort of the biggest changes that have occurred right now is on the adoption front, on the shift now to new platforms and trying to, you know, move beyond. So back in 2010, it was all about, you know, one way engagement and trying to shift to two-way engagement that two way engagement finally started happening circa around 2015. But that led to what's the guidelines and policies were in place that you're mentioning, that led to sort of new movements to using social as a service delivery channel for government, providing real time updates, emergency management, etc. And then a big component, a new sort of use case for government at the time was situational awareness and monitoring and using social to help make better decisions for programs, services, policies, etc. And now, the the challenges I see and where a lot of government organizations are struggling is on standing out with, you know, the the ongoing battle between algorithms and visibility. So as global internet penetration rates increased, where you have such a sheer amount of content produced on a daily basis, and most internet use on a daily basis being social, the algorithms of each of the social platforms dictate what appears again, on top. And government, where they used to have the ability to get significant reach now, especially on the organic social face, face a challenge. So they're trying to get through through human tone. So that's one thing that a lot of government organizations are trying to do right now. They're trying to build back trust, because I see a massive erosion of trust that's happening as a result of misinformation and disinformation that's out there. They're trying to adapt to new content formats, new platforms. So obviously, short videos go in the whole direction of obviously, Government of Canada can't participate on Tik Tok. But obviously, that trend, and the whole concept of short form videos, has permeated into other platforms, YouTube shorts, etc. Instagram reels. But the big question is, and again, this is a major challenge right now. Well, what is the role of government? On social? Should it be, you know, a lot of times many people look at the private sector and say, What are consumer brands doing look at all these fancy, engaging videos they're creating, but the reality is that most people don't necessarily want to be engaging with government on social unless they need to write something for a particular product or service. And that's, that's a big wake up call for a lot of organizations, right, especially with all the negative negative elements, that double edged sword that is social media, on the mental health side, and the accessibility, etc, all the responsibilities that the public sector should have. So questioning the role is very important these days.

Yeah, for sure. And you know, and I think you're kind of getting at this whole notion of just how that online space has evolved in terms of the norms. I mean, when when social media first came on the scene in the mid 2000s, I think that shift from the internet, as we knew it, you know, back in the 1990s, to the social web, huge shift for government organizations that were very used to kind of top down communication, now having to kind of deal with a more horizontal internet for lack of a better way of putting it. And now as you said, we've kind of gotten into like the algorithmic era of social media and kind of this influencer culture, you know, that that tends to get promoted on these channels. And I think this is actually a great chance to kind of pivot to a couple other folks who I wanted to bring it on this conversation. You know, Mike, you and I are kind of like the old guys when it comes to the social media stuff. Now, I think you and I are both kind of firmly on the cusp of like Gen X and millennials. I think we were saying it's Zennials exact right?

'78 to '82, we're the lost generation that's the next- little bit Gen X, little bit millennial.

Yeah, or I've heard it referred to sometimes as the Oregon Trail generation, cause we all, we all grew up in elementary school with Oregon Trail being like that first, you know, educational video game we all played, if anybody's familiar with that, who's listening in. But I wanted to bring up a few, onto stage, a few other folks from our team, particularly Becky and Mel and Aislinn. Welcome to all of you. And Becky, I think you were like firmly in the millennial generation, and Aislinn and Mel, who are two co-op students are our Gen Z representatives here up on the panel. And I'm curious to get you know, your thoughts on how social media has been impacting your lives professionally and personally. And Becky, you know, maybe I'll start with you. And I think you and I were chatting a little bit before just about, you know, you're at that spot where social media kind of plays largely into major life events that are happening, and, you know, some of the real kind of mental health discussions we're having about the impact that this has on people's lives.

Yeah. Hey, Ryan, thank you for having me here today. And thanks, Mike, for everything you've said, so far, my brain's cooking already. Yeah, so I'm a early 90s baby, and so deep in the millennial generation. You know, social media, Facebook was popping up when I was in high school. For me, I'm kind of at that age of my life where I'm expected to have all these big life stages, marriage, buy a house, where's my career going? Do I have my professional brand ready? All of these different kinds of pressures. And everyone likes to announce when they've made their life goal on social media. And so that's kind of where I am in my life is, you know, I have connections through high school and university and where my career has taken me so far. And these people just sort of fizzle off into the ether. And then they pop back up, oh, I'm married, oh, I have this great career. It's great to learn about what these people are doing and how their lives are. But at the same time, it's like a lot of pressure, because you don't see though, you know, the day to day of their life. And it's, it's a really interesting exercise in kind of like self control and thought control in terms of how do you react to these people achieving their goals and not seeing their hiccups? And then comparing yourself to it?

Yeah

So yeah.

It's that phenomena of like, you know, selective sharing, as people sometimes call it. Right. And, and, yeah, and then some very real, like mental health, you know, kind of challenges or concerns that can come with that. I mean, that's one of the big things we've been seeing, right is the, you know, the interconnectedness that we have in a way that would have been unimaginable before the smartphone era. I mean, clearly has some benefits. But there's this growing discussion about what are the downsides of that? I mean, Becky, are you seeing, you know, kind of friends of yours and people that you kind of grew up with, I mean, are people enthusiastic about using social media? Or is there is there a backlash happening to it?

I mean, both, so in my house, my husband is all about social media and his online presence, I can't stand it. I've happily never been on TikTok. And I will continue that for myself, because it feels so refreshing. But I would say, in the middle, I read this article a couple of weeks ago, and it was the title was about sharenting, the sense that parents, parent, people that might have been my parents, but even like, people that are my age, sharing the milestones of their kids, and then their kids are now getting to an age where they're like, Mom, why did you share 100 pictures of me as a naked baby? That's embarrassing. So that's gonna affect their kids mental health as well. So it's kind of like this, like generational trauma of social media usage. Which is interesting, so.

Yup.

But both directions, which I guess doesn't answer your question, I'm on the side of social media is not good for my personal mental health. And I need to take, you know, my own agency in terms of how do I navigate social media, as a private person as an individual person? And but then at the same time, you know, I have my hands in social media professionally. And then how do I navigate that side? And how do I marry the two? So it's, it's a really complicated question that should have its own episode.

Yeah, no, absolutely. I think this is teeing some stuff up that we should dive into more and, and I see there's some actions and comments coming in on the chat from YouTube. You know, including Rashi, who just, I see her comment that she's grateful that her mum didn't have social media when she was little. And yeah, I think it's, you know, it's absolutely a you know, phenomenon for people who've grown up with that. Well, and I want to then pivot to Mel and Aislinn, you know, who I think who are, who are two folks from our team at Think Digital who have kind of grown up with, with social media as part of their life since beginning. Mel, maybe I'll go to you first. And you know, you and I were chatting a little bit before just about for you, where you do freelance work. You know, you've kind of been thinking about how you use social media to build a personal brand and maybe kind of share a little bit about how you've been approaching that.

Yeah. So with social media nowadays, there's a lot of jobs that most people would not be able to have, like, we got YouTubers, streamers, we got artists online, like sharing their work. And that also means that there's a lot of competition, and people are now resorting to more like making a personal connection with their audience. And people will support them more for the connection with the person rather than the actual product they're giving. So if you see, like, I don't, I know most of you don't really watch TikToks and stuff. But there's a lot of personal brands, businesses, who will like advertise their stuff with like, short little stories about their brands and stuff, and more about their personal life experiences. And me who I mainly advertise on Twitter, also make it more personal with my audience being more like a human rather than a business, because that, that actually makes people want to buy stuff from me more. And it's a very interesting kind of way where it's like, now businesses are becoming less of a business and more of a personal and your personal life is also becoming more integrated with your business. And how do you navigate that really? Well, we're all trying to figure that out.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, and, Mel, it's a super interesting point, because like, Mike, I'm thinking back to like those early days of the Web 2.0, you know, work, we had a lot of conversations about in government in particular, you know, the notion is that public servants are supposed to be anonymous. Yet we were suddenly moving into this world where, you know, I mean, those early days, there was lots of cases where individual public servants had a bigger social media following, you know, than their minister did. Right. And, and so with that, I think Mel is you're kind of bringing up this notion of that personal brand being really important. You know, in the focus of this podcast, when we're thinking about how government adapts to the digital age, how do you square that notion of essentially kind of needing an expectation around personal human touch, yet having still kind of institutions like government that are designed, frankly, to be impersonal?

Ryan, I need to interrupt you right now. And just comment on Mel's comment, because I think that Mel, you have just, you know, perfectly nailed why people are getting in trouble, professionally for decisions and actions they take in her personal life. Because of this marriage of like, personal and professional brands that you're talking about?

Yep.

That was the biggest challenge is the personal digital footprint element. I mean, we've, most organizations really struggled with that. Again, because it was, remember Ryan, how much we'd have to go back to the values and ethics code and really emphasize what you sign on to as an employee.

Yeah.

24/7 on your own time, right. And then as people started recording, with smartphones, with surveillance going on now, it really is a reality.

Well, and it puts, it puts, in some ways I think, a bigger burden on individual public servants in this case, where like, they have to kind of manage that, that, that tension themselves in some ways, right, because now, and Aislinn, I want to kind of pivot to you on this, because you and I were talking about, you know, in your case, you've just kind of grown up with social media being part of, of your life, you know, essentially, since birth, or certainly since, you know, you've been kind of active online. And that changes kind of networking, it changes how you engage professionally. And also like, again, in this context of folks coming into the public service. I mean, essentially, everybody that gets hired into the public service has a pre existing digital footprint, right? For good or for bad. And how do we navigate this? Yeah, Aislinn, curious to get kind of your thoughts on how, you know, as somebody who's relatively new into kind of the professional workforce, with this kind of social media, you know, milieu that we're all living in has kind of meant for you.

Yeah, so I'm just gonna, like put a bit of context, because I'm like, I know, I am technically Gen Z. But when you talk, like when people say Gen Z, like you're thinking of the TikTok generation, you know, predominantly. When I don't like necessarily think that I fit in that demographic, because I'm like, somewhere in between, you know, I'm after MySpace, MySpace was already dead by the time I was online, after MSM, that was all dead. For me, like, the big thing was Facebook, like Facebook was the first platform I was on. I was like 13. And that might like tie into what Becky was saying about like the parenting online, where it's like, her generation, like ended up on social media as it grew. And like they didn't know the implications of posting their kids online and stuff like that. Meanwhile, my generation was the one like posting the embarrassing things about themselves online.

I love that you say that.

I was one of them, it's personal experience.

Whose been there where they've had to tell a parent to stop tagging them on social media. Yeah, right.

Yeah. But I feel like like my generation, like has learned their lesson because we've done it to ourselves. So there's like, kind of like coming back around I feel to like a lot of people I talked to are like, I'm never gonna let my kid have a phone until they're like 16. What does draw into like another issue where it's like, well, are they going to be left out of all their peer groups like their friend groups, are they going to be, you know, missing out on those experiences, but by the time I graduated high school, which I think it's hard to say, because social media still really is early, I feel like a lot of people offload social media, like once they leave high school, at least, that's just like what I see. So I like kind of missed the TikTok trend. Like I have a TikTok, but I don't really use it, maybe like, check it once a month, but it's not like a big thing. But I know that like when you start getting into the job market, they definitely check your social media. And that was something that I don't know if it's just a personal experience, because I do come from like a tech family that it was always drilled into me, you know, noth- everything you post online is, like, it's there forever, you know, you've got the WaybackMachine, you can like check things that were, you thought were deleted, but aren't. And things like that. So it's drilled into me that I knew growing up that, that my employers would most likely be checking my social media. And I believe Ryan, when you when you're doing the hiring process, he did say that you checked, you check social media as an employer. And so it was, it's, for some people, I find like, you really start to crack down on like, what you post and then because that's a job implication, now, you don't post as much because you don't want to like post something that might like implicate your company. And that's another thing is, it is literally in job contracts for a lot of the jobs that I've had, that I can't post anything on my social media that might look bad on a company. Like, even if my social media isn't me as an employee of the company, doesn't even say on my social media, like they're still watching, and they still like don't want any implication. So that's been another thing that,

Yep

I find that, that didn't exist before. You know, there wasn't a social media contract being like you can and can't say this online.

Yep. Well, and Aislinn, I was just gonna say it gets particularly tricky. Again, if we kind of bring this back to the public sector. You know, for folks who come in to work in government, on the one hand, they've got, Mike, as you were saying, the values and ethics code that they need to adhere to, but they're also citizens of the country. And we don't want to get in a situation where people feel that they have to completely be muzzled to be able to serve government. And in some ways, the people who are going to be attracted into public service are probably the ones that are most passionate about political issues, right? And so this real tension behind how do we maintain a neutral public service in the air of people having you know, their own social media presences is tricky. Aislinn and Mel, I'm wondering from both of your ends, like right now, you know, you're both in university right now, is this talked about? Like, do you talk about this in classes around how to manage your personal social media footprint as you're kind of going into the working world?

For me, this was taught a lot in high school about the dangers of internet and all the fear mongering back in the day, but then in university, it might be just because I work in computer science, but no one really talks about that much. It's more like, for for my classes, at least, you're already expected to know all that. So it's, it's not much of a thing that's talked about.

Yeah, Aislinn have you seen that come up, like is this talked about in kind of career preparation at all?

Um, so I will agree definitely, in high school, like, I don't know what the curriculums are like, but in the one that I went to, we have a civics and career class. So that's like, they teach you how to like how to make your resume all that stuff. And they do definitely, like prepare you for the fact that employers will most likely be looking at your social media. I remember, like, we did a whole exercise where we Googled our own names to like, see what would come up and what employers would see. But similar, I think to Mel, like once you get into university, it's just kind of already expected that, you know that A, and B, I think university is a lot of like, you are now in charge of your own future. Like, the school doesn't really feel the pressure to prepare you for life, just like that specific subject that you're taking. So I, I don't really like it comes up in personal conversations with my friends, but not within the classroom setting anymore.

Although that's great to hear, though, that at least it does come up a bit. And it's being baked in. Becky, Mike, I just wanted to maybe go to you for any last comments on this before we close this particular segment. Lots to go on. Go ahead, Mike.

I think it'd be worth mentioning an overarching shift that has happened of a lot of people moving away from what's referred to as public social media and towards more private social media, not fully private, but what I'm referring to is messengers. Right and smaller groups, smaller circles as they realize that their boss, their colleagues, their grandparents, were on some of these platforms, this is what happened to sort of our generation early on. And so many of you, many people in the audience probably have a WhatsApp group, Apple iMessage group, something smaller, smaller, close knit communities, which are still referred to and fall under that social media lense. So some responsibility has shifted that way, as people are more conscious as to what they post. And last thing I wanted to mention. And I think we'll get into this a little bit later on the trust front and government's role in social media right now, I think one of the biggest challenges other than, again, building authenticity and trying to convey that, is going to be what's happening with AI? And who do we trust as to what content is real and what's not. So when there is controversial content, or when sudden bot farms are created by AI to argue or provide, or again, provide a different viewpoint or a contrarian viewpoint on a certain government policy? What's the role of government, then, how do they know it's a human or not a human? I mean, this is what we're entering right now. And this next phase of social brings with it lots of very real challenges.

Yeah, and just you know, your comment, Mike, about the private versus public social media, I noted the question, I think we got on YouTube, from Arlene, about, you know, this notion of kind of private social media use versus, versus kind of public. And I think there has, as you rightly kind of point out, there's been this real move from people kind of realizing even things like Facebook can be potentially accessed by a wide group of people. And, and that shifted, being a much more fractured kind of-

and there's a shift towards non-algorithm driven social, almost like we're going back in time towards forums or Reddit, etc. Or even substack, where you're guaranteed to get the content, providing your user base pays for it. Yeah, sort of thing. Right. So that sort of movement has been rising in popularity as people don't want to be held hostage to an algorithm.

Yep. Becky, any last thoughts from you as was we kind of wrap up the social media discussion?

And I'll be quick. It's similar to what Mike is saying. You know, I think that we're seeing intentionally public social media profiles, that people are not even as like large public figures, but as individuals that are not truthful. And so you know, I was watching a show recently, yes, it was Ginny & Georgia. And in it, the mom, the mom says, this is your daughter's fake social media profile. She has this there to intentionally mislead people into what she is doing, employers, parents, she has a fake social or different social media profile that's actually her social media, that's just for her peers. So I think we're- that's happening a lot. And we're seeing a situation where people are creating these personas that are not true, and are intentionally built to mislead people. And it's not just on the bot front. It's on an individual decision to for whatever purposes it might be. So I think we're seeing that and I think that we can probably start seeing that in businesses, or leaders, we probably already might see it in leaders. That's probably a sensitive topic. But that is kind of where I see this going. And what, what scares me.

Yeah. And it just it makes me kind of think I want to reference one of the other comments we got from from Suesan, on YouTube, you know, about this notion how we've moved from kind of the newness and experimentation back in the early days of social media, to now there's this real question, both as individuals and for institutions of, you know, what is the strategic purpose of it, right? And Becky, a little bit of what you're getting to as I think social media, people can tell authenticity pretty quickly. And sometimes, you know, there's the pressure to be online, but if you're doing it in an inauthentic way, that can actually be a bit of a detriment overall. So listen, thank you, everybody. This was a really good discussion. Clearly, we could talk about this for hours longer. And I think we definitely, Wayne, need to put an asterix on on doing a full episode on social media in season two, so some great threads to pull on. So thanks so much, Mike, Becky, Aislinn, and Mel for for being part of this discussion. We're gonna send you all backstage for a minute, but we will bring you back on towards the end. So you know, as I mentioned, we are going to have a second season of the podcast, we're planning to launch it this fall. In the meantime, if you haven't listened to any of our previous episodes, or you haven't caught up on the full first season, there were 10 episodes in season one, which we've all got up on the screen for you. Please feel free to go check them out. They're, they're on our Spotify and Apple podcasts and other podcast platforms. You can go to our website letsthinkdigital.ca to find the full listing as well as the video versions of them are all up on our YouTube channel as well. And we've got a blog post up on thinkdigital.ca that also gives a bit of a rundown and overview of all 10 of the episodes that we've had. And we've covered a lot of ground. We covered a lot of different topics over the course of these different episodes. And I'm really excited that we've got a few of the guests that we had in some of our season one episodes here with us today that we can bring back and want to get them to kind of quickly reflect a little bit on some of what they talked about and any thoughts they may have had since then, and first of all, we're going to bring up Meghan Hellstern, Meghan, welcome to Let's Think Digital LIVE.

Hello, Ryan and happy Friday. It's great to be here with you,

Likewise. And so Meghan's a trainer and facilitator with us at Think Digital and human centered designer and expert on user experience. And Meghan was part of two podcast episodes actually from this season. Episode Two, which was Welcome to the Metaverse, talking a bit about some of the metaverse-type work that we've been doing with Think Digital. And then our most recent episode, Episode 10. Where Megan was reporting live from the Code for America Summit in Washington, DC and had some great interviews with people on the ground there. Meghan, wanted to maybe ask you a couple of questions about the two episodes. And of course, just to mention, for folks who are watching us live, if you've got questions for any of our guests, as we're bringing them on, please feel free to put them in YouTube in the comments section or let us know through any of our channels. But Meghan, we've had you know, we had the conversation about the metaverse, you and I continue to do some training work using the metaverse, we were actually presenting at a conference last month in Ottawa at DPI's Professional Development Week about this. I'm curious, you know, if you think we are kind of generally speaking, societally talking about the right things, when it comes to what the future of the metaverse might be, and if there's any, you know, real blind spots we have that we haven't been focused on as much as we should be.

It's an excellent question that Ryan, and one certainly on my mind, as we kind of move along the, you know, hype cycle for this new technology, although, you know, it's not that new, as we talked about on the episode, it has been around for quite a while. But there's been some really critical breakthroughs, especially around price point of the technology, you know, even just availability of it, that type of thing. That said, there are definitely a few topics I'm not hearing enough about. And we touched on this a little bit, actually, at the conference we spoke at the Professional Development Week for DPI, where I'm really not hearing as much as I'd like around inclusion and accessibility of these technologies. Whether you think about our aging population where folks eyesight or mobility, perhaps is, you know, reduced as they age, or just, you know, the many different disabilities that folks have or neurodivergence, even, right, different ways of sort of the brain interacting. I'm not hearing as much about that as I'd like. And I'm hoping that that might be one of the next waves where we pay more attention to who isn't present in these Metaverse spaces, and what are the supports or adaptations that we need? You know, the internet, we have a whole suite of adaptive technology that I'm sure Mike could, Mike Gifford could talk at length about. But I haven't seen as much of that for Metaverse, and sort of the suite of you know, VR and related technologies like augmented reality. The other piece I also haven't heard too much about is this idea of sort of open source and getting away from, you know, sort of the pitfalls of the closed walled gardens that we've seen with the internet, right, there was sort of waves of kind of more openness and more cloistered, less accessible spaces, not necessarily in the human control component, but more so in the business model and the design. And so I'm really curious, you know, what's going to be if at all, the first big open source, virtual reality, you know, headset, or virtual reality, Metaverse where folks could go. Will that even exists, as a bit of business model and

Yeah

financials and economics allow for that type of thing?

Well, and I was actually thinking about these questions last week, Meghan, when Apple made its announcement of its new Apple vision product, which is their augmented reality, kind of first generation very impressive, technically. Very expensive price point on it. But it interestingly, one of the design choices they made is it doesn't actually have any physical controllers, it only uses eye tracking, and hand gestures to be able to control it. And on the one hand, I was thinking, you know, there would be some people from an accessibility standpoint, where that might actually be very useful. People who don't have have good motor control skill- skills. But the flip side is there could be other people who may have vision issues for which it would make the device essentially unusable for them. And so it was interesting, the design choice Apple made on that. And then similarly, Apple was kind of well known for having a very kind of walled garden ecosystem approach. And to your point about, you know, will there be an open source competitor in some of these technologies, I think, a really, really important question to be thinking about. I also wanted to ask you a little bit about the the most recent episode we did from when you were live in DC at the Code for America Summit, you had a ton of really interesting kind of short interviews with people who were at the summit, some real leaders in civic technology- encourage people if you haven't listened to that episode, it's well worth a listen to. One of the themes that I think really kind of came out in some of the content stations you were having there at the summit, were around kind of the burnout that people are dealing with in, in kind of the digital government's civic tech movement, you know, some of it because of kind of post COVID and having to deal with a few years of crisis, but just it seems in general, maybe this is a little bit too strong to say, but a bit of a malaise that seems to be out there. I'm just curious if you can reflect on that a little bit.

Yeah, absolutely. I, in a lot of ways, Ryan, it was a sort of omnipresent theme throughout the conference. And to be honest, not only at the conference, I've been hearing this in other circles as well, you know, it's sort of that combination of the maturity stage of the digital government and civic tech movements, right, it's kind of coming up on just over, you know, a decade plus-ish, right, of really mainstream adoption. GDS was sort of like 2012, right, that it came out. So there's an element of, you know, folks who've been doing this work, some of them have been doing it for quite a while, but you couple that with the pandemic, and not only the pandemic, with the personal, you know, cost for people, whether it's, you know, child care issues, health issues, family, etc, you couple that with the fact that public services were strained in a way that they never were really, at least in living memory, and especially from that technological component, where lots of folks working in and around sort of digital government had to pivot and really work very hard to get needed services out the door and adapt to these sort of analog things on short notice. I think it's this sort of whole bunch of chickens coming home to roost all at once. And there is sort of this renewed attention, I think, to sort of the self care aspects. And, you know, how do we take care of the people because as I mentioned on that podcast, you know, there's no progress without people, all of this stuff doesn't happen. We don't get the shiny, beautiful, amazing technologies, without actual people to build them, to design them, to test them, etc. And so it's a real reminder to me to continue investing in myself and check in with my colleagues and, and friends working in this space and find ways to really reconnect with our energy and our well being so that we can do this, I often remind myself, it's a it's a marathon, not a sprint, right, it's a relay race, we need to be able to keep that baton in the air and not drop it over a great distance. So yeah, it's definitely on my mind a lot lately.

It's a really important reminder, Meghan, and you know, we often talk about, you know, the goal, a lot of us who are in the space has to how to modernize, you know, government, and we think about government as being this mechanistic thing, but it's really just made up the human beings, right. And, you know, having that human element as part of it is really important. Meghan, thanks so much for popping on. I know, we're gonna we're gonna bring a few more folks up, but we're gonna stick around backstage for a bit. And we'll be able to bring Meghan back on if folks have questions for her later. So thanks so much, Meghan.

Awesome. Thanks so much, Ryan, see you soon.

And I'm gonna invite Jen Schellinck to join us next. Jen is coming to us live, I believe from the ViaRail terminal in Toronto.

Yes, I am. I am in the the train station. I love, I love the train, so I'm very happy to be here. If you hear a little noise, there might be a little musak in the background. That's what's going on. But very excited to be here.

Yeah, no, wonderful. And Jen, we had a really interesting episode that you were part of on government in the era of ChatGPT. Talking about all things AI, you're a data scientist, this is your this is your jam in the in the in the area that you're really passionate about. And, you know, it was a really well received episode, tons of interest in it. And I think, no surprise, right? We're hearing every, these days, with the rise of some of these new generative AI tools that's on the top of everybody's mind. You and I have been doing a lot of presentations in recent months for government clients who are interested in trying to get their heads around AI. I'm curious to get you just to reflect a little bit on you know, even in the month since we've published that podcast episode, a lot has been happening. I mean, do you think we're talking about the right things when it comes to AI? Or again, you know, kind of this issue of blind spots? Are there things that folks who are in the public sector should be thinking about that they're not when it comes to what, you know, this new wave of AI tools coming into the world?

Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, first of all, I have to emphasize like this is, this is changing so quickly, like the pace of change is intense. We're all just running to keep up right now with this large language model explosion. And so in terms of whether we're paying attention to the right things, I'm gonna go with a little of column A, little of column B answer. So in some cases, yeah, like, I think I think we are talking about the social impacts, which I think is really important. People are focusing on you know, how's this going to change the world of work, which is absolutely vital that we're all talking about that. And now increasingly, we're seeing people ask these key questions, how should we be regulating this technology? What will be most effective? You know, what are the risks, that kind of thing and I've had a number of really great conversations with people again, even just within the last couple of weeks. So people are really thinking about this. People are really talking about it so that I find very encouraging. I do think that I mean, the the challenge with this technology, everybody talks about disruptive technology, but I'm, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say like, Yeah, this one, this one counts. And so it's really hard to predict. But one of the things I think that we need to realize about humans is that we're so driven by relationships, we're so driven by, you know, people paying attention to us, to this desire for connection. And this technology is going to have an impact in that space, that's really hard to unpack. Because unlike our hammer, or our you know, our coffee mug, this is technology that talks to us, that interacts with us, that relates to us. And I think that that's going to have a tremendous impact on us individually, as well as a society. So yeah, and how to regulate that aspect of it. That's a really tough one.

Well, and as you and I have talked about some times, because there's that personification that comes from these AI tools, that that seem almost human when you're talking to them, sometimes it means we can ascribe meaning to things that isn't actually there.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. And we're going to be kind of hardwired I would argue to do exactly that. And when we what that means is that we sort of, you know, we often think of humans as like good social actors and bad social actors. And now suddenly, we're going to have bots that are, you know, good social actors and bad social actors as well. And, and they're potentially going to be really compelling. Like, I, when, when I see people using ChatGPT, one of the things that strikes me is kind of like the sheer delight that they experience like I experienced this too where I'm like, Oh, my gosh, it's not doing what I want it to, it's talking to me. It's it's that's so compelling, that I think that that's really going to be a force to be reckoned with.

Yeah, it goes back to the point that Mike was making in the opening segment about social media, right, you know, we worry now about the misinformation disinformation that the social media era has drawn on us. And that is, I think, gonna only be accelerated, you know, when when we're in an era where kind of citizens are interacting with machines and not people. We've got an audience question that we have up on the screen from Arlene about, you know, is the Canadian government using AI in processing immigration applications? It's a great question, because actually, Jen and I have just been finishing up a research report, looking at government uses of AI, and this was actually one of the use cases.

Yes, absolutely. So, so, so the answer, I think the short answer is yes. I mean, they're using certain I would say machine learning algorithms to do some processing of certain types of applications. And so it has been a really interesting case study, because in this case study, they, they have spent a lot of time thinking about how can we use this? I would say in a, in a responsible manner. I'm not saying necessarily that they got everything about that right. But they did think a lot about that. And so they looked at, you know, how can we apply these algorithms in a way where it's never making somebody's situation worse, it's only making their situation better. At least that was, that's the goal. So. So yeah, that's a really, really interesting scenario. And the short answer is, yeah, they're using some machine learning algorithms in there.

Yep. No, that's great. Jen, thanks for popping on here. I know you're gonna you're gonna stick around for a bit. I'm gonna, we're gonna pull you back to the backstage and then we'll come back if folks have questions specifically for Jen afterwards. But I want to bring Mike Gifford up onto the stage next, Mike, great to have you back with us. Mike is a senior strategist at Civic Actions and an associate as well with us here at Think Digital. Mike, you were with us for Episode Five, which was about making tech work for everyone and you know, your your background, it has big focus on accessibility, around sustainability. You actually very recently just published an article this week on Apolitical about open source technologies and how to develop fast and affordable government wide accessibility solutions. Curious maybe give you, have you give us a little bit of kind of a summary of what you were writing about and where you think some of those kinds of quick wins for government could be in the in the accessibility open source space.

I think one of the things that government often forgets is that they think of themselves as being large and large enough to do it all themselves. But but there are some problems that are just wicked problems, like accessibility and sustainability are both wicked problems. And trying to go off and build and maintain a piece of software that you're able to go off and to, to, to meet- you manage over time is something that is often outside of the scope of what departments are actually able to deliver on, they can think about it but delivering that's a whole other issue. And so by working with an open source community, this is one way that governments are able to take on wicked problems and be able to, to really try and embrace ways to, to, to look at, at, at issues like how do we make sure that the software is, is that this website is as accessible as possible that it meets the needs of not just JAWS and IE, or edge users, but be able to support of all Canadians no matter what assistive technology or what browsers are using. That's a real challenge when you've got a country that is as large as Canada, that has as many different people participating with different kinds of bandwidth and different levels of technology. And in trying to, to test for that it's really difficult. But by leveraging open source tools, and by collaborating and contributing back to them, it's something that governments can actually benefit considerably from, from that type of input. And can we can learn from, from other organizations and other other people in a way that they wouldn't be able to do that themselves within the bureaucratic structure that work within.

Yeah, and well, and there's almost kind of a, you know, a public good argument to say the government's just frankly, should be doing this, right, given kind of the nature of their mission is kind of contributing back. I wanted to bring a question up on the screen that came in from from Rob Davidson. And it's a little bit linked to this, but he's kind of I think Rob is teasing out this, this challenge around kind of centralized versus decentralized approaches, right, when we're dealing with accessibility complexity. I mean, Rob was talking about Mastodon as, as an example, where, you know, Mastodon kind of has risen up as an alternative to Twitter, where it's taking a very decentralized approach to having a social network. And I'm wondering, Mike, like, what your experience is on this, like when we're thinking about is we're just talking about, you know, accessibility in government, does this require, you know, strong centralized pushes, to be able to make sure we're seeing changes happen across the network? Or can we take a decentralized approach where people can kind of essentially act as individual nodes to be able to to kind of build these systems up what's what's been your experience around this?

There's... that decentralized approach is really quite an important one for governments to think about, people get, get afraid about the idea of the fediverse, because it's something new but, but frankly, it's just much like email was before Google went off and swallowed all of the other providers. Because spam was such a huge problem that people weren't able to, to manage that on their individual basis. In terms of Mastodon, we know that the German government went all in on Mastodon two years ago, throughout the pandemic they made the migration over to Mastodon and so they don't have to deal with the, the, frankly, the rather embarrassing state that the the Canadian government is in, where you've got little Twitter icons for social media engagement, and you've got people employed to go off and to tweet for the Government of Canada. And yet, you've got Elon Musk regularly making the news about all of the whatever wacky thing he thinks about today. And, and I think that that, when you have a decentralized system, there isn't that person who has that level of control on on the entire system. And people have have often thought that oh, well, Twitter is trusted as a big multinational organization, of course, it's going to be stable and secure. But frankly, that's actually not the case. And that we've seen other governments invest in other big open source or big, non proprietary, big proprietary tools, that frankly, once they've invested in them have gone gone belly up. And or have had, you know, disastrous problems that have caused, that have caused problems for the government. But an open source solution and a distributed service really makes it much more and much easier for governments to be able to, to, to deal with, with the, with communications, and also to be able to make sure that they're able to, to influence these platforms to be more accessible, to be more sustainable, because governments can have an impact if they are able to put their, their, their resources and contribute back to these open source platforms.

Yeah, and it's a very interesting paradox, you kind of bring up that, you know, as much as governments have become reliant on these social media platforms to engage with citizens, these social media platforms are all private platforms, right? Owned by private companies, which, you know, if they work well, great, but we're seeing some of the tension behind that. And it's a tough position to be in where there is this real kind of intermediary layer. And as Mike, Mike Kujawski was talking about earlier, you know, these algorithmicly driven platforms that that, you know, often cases are kind of throttling what people get to see. So it's, it raises a whole bunch of interesting questions around like the public good, and what that looks like going forward. Mike, thanks for thanks for coming on, you know, to talk about these issues. Your episode, I think was a great deep dive into all things accessibility, sustainability, open source. I'm gonna I'm gonna put you back on backstage for a minute, and then we'll come back to Mike if folks have further questions for him. But finally, the last of our guests from previous episodes is here at Nilufer. Nilufer, how are you doing today?

Me? Good, good to see you, Ryan. Thanks for having me on.

Yeah, good to have you too. So Nilufer, you were with us for Episode Seven, which was what, we called it the Human Factors of Digital Government. And as part of that, you were talking a bit about your new book that got released a couple of months ago that looks at design thinking in the public sector, and you know, one of the things that kind of stuck with me that you talked about in that episode was about design thinking being not just a methodology, but a bit of a way of life that people need to practice and wondering if you can maybe talk about that a little bit.

Yeah, there's, there's a huge component of design thinking that is about mindset and empathy. And it's funny when Jen was talking earlier about ChatGPT, I was recalling a conversation I had with some friends, the reason there's been AI before that, but the reason that one's taken off so fast, is because it's so easy to use.

Yep

They've looked at it from a human perspective. And I think if we're able to pull back and look at what we're creating, what we're delivering from all of the different types of end users, we're going to create even better products. And so couple of things that I'd want people to do if they just want to start in on understanding what that mindset is like is be a little bit more curious about the services, products and processes that they're consuming. And, and take a look at, what are some of the things that are working well? And what are some of the things that aren't working well. So that when they are looking at their own services and processes that they're craving is, is to change hats along the way. And so identify who the ultimate customer and user is going to be. And there's going to be several people, three, four, or five types, at least. And then as you think through stuff from their perspective, write down all the ideas that you're getting from their perspective, what are some of the challenges and and ultimately, you definitely want to be talking to those end users. But just to start your thinking, just to start looking at things from a different way, a different perspective, is putting these different hats on, as you're looking at the challenge you're looking to solve, I think, brings out an additional layer of information and clarity, but also creativity, too.

Yep. Yeah. And it's, you know, making that like a real practice that people build into their work, I think is the challenge, right? Because even even I see within, you know, within government, which is the domain that we tend to work within, there's been moves in the last 10 years to create, you know, user experience or human centered design teams. But I still find that in a lot of places, it gets kind of pushed off to be somebody else's job, right. It's like, okay, we got some designers in our organization, they will go off and, you know, talk to citizens. And like, from my perspective, I think we really end up like missing an opportunity, if we're not getting leaders in our organization actually interacting with people directly and having those kinds of human experiences.

Absolutely, yeah. And I think people aren't driven by relationship and having those leaders interact with the people that they're ultimately trying to impact is so powerful. I think that's when things really change, when they can see those comments, hear, hear what their their end audience's perspective is like. I would love to have more design thinking ubiq- ubiquitously the human factors, ubiq- ubiquitously around government so that it starts to become automatic, as people are starting to create, or, or renew things so that they're thinking about their end users or their customers right from the start, whether it's for citizens, businesses, or internally too because there's a lot of government services within government for other departments as well, too.

Right. Yeah. And I'm just looking at Suesan's question that she, you know, put up on YouTube in the chat, you know, that there's this real challenge, right around bringing stakeholders and building the competencies in it. I mean, have you seen I know, your your book kind of gets into this a little bit in terms of some of the very practical tactics, but are there any kind of really kind of highlights that you really mentioned to people that they want to get started? Like, where should they get started on kind of building up those skill sets in their organization?

I think first is to keep thinking about who is it that you're trying to create an impact for? Who are those end customers. And I know some departments and parts of the organization have a hard time bringing them in. I think when you have those people in and you're hearing their reactions of what you're about to create or about the challenge, that's when you can really thoroughly say that you have that deep understanding of your end user. If you can't get that then, then put on those different hats to get their perspective. I think being curious and empathizing with those end customers, or there, those end clients is is key to starting to make that change and that shift, and then incorporating that into what you're actually doing. So what is that challenge you're trying to solve based on what all those customers have said? And I know that sounds like a lot but once you start doing it, it becomes automatic. The more you do it, and that is my wish and hope is that people start to do that more automatically so that it just becomes a way of life.

Yep. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I often talk about, you know, changing incentives in our organization. And it was actually at a conference earlier this week that the Institute on Governance and IRPP was running. And one of the things I was saying was, you know, I would love to put in a rule that every executive in government has to spend one day every six months on the frontlines hearing real feedback from people in their departments that they impact. Because I think if you kind of build that practice in it would have such a transformational effect on people's mindsets around this, right? And, and, you know, Suesan's made another comment in the chat just about, you know, the a lot of the timelines that we build into our project plans don't accommodate that kind of user interaction and being able to incorporate that feedback in and I think, if we got, you know, if we got leaders hearing from those stakeholders directly, that that human connection I think makes it tough for them to ignore those, that type of feedback.

Absolutely. And I was chatting with another friend of mine last week, that's still in the software industry. And he reminded me that for last five or six years, in software, there's this term called shift left. And so it means that when you're starting out the project, spend that time early on, to understand what it is you're trying to do so that it's less expensive. The longer you wait in that process, and, and project management hasn't traditionally spent enough time upfront to identify what it is that really needs to be done. Because we're trying to get stuff out the door. But in that rush, we're actually creating things that aren't necessary or people don't understand why it's being done this way. And so spending that time upfront and, and being okay with spending that time and making the mistakes earlier on rather than later on. It's a lot less expensive. And so getting into that mindset of shifting left.

I love that. Yeah, I hadn't heard that terminology of shift left before but I really liked that. And I think it's, it's an important mindset to get into. Nil, thanks so much. Again, if people are interested in hearing more of Nil's thoughts on this, do check out her episode about this, I think some great some great insights that came from that. And maybe, Wayne, I'll invite you to bring everybody back up on stage for maybe one kind of final goodbye as we kind of come to close off our time together. It was so awesome having everybody as a part of this Aislinn, Mel, Mike, Mike, Becky, Jen, Nil and Meghan, and Wayne, Wayne bring yourself back up on screen to so everybody can can say hi to you. It's been awesome to have all of you on here. I think it was a really, you know, fantastic, exciting first season. Again, my big thanks to Wayne, but also Aislinn, Mell and Becky have all been playing big roles behind the scenes to put the podcast together, we could not, I could not do this without all of you. So thank you to all of you. And thanks to all of our team at Think Digital for sharing your expertise through this. And importantly, thanks to all of our listeners, we couldn't do this without you listening in. And we really want to hear from all of you in terms of what you'd like to see coming up from season two. So again, if you go to our website, Think Digital, or letsthinkdigital.ca to our podcast website, you'll see we've got a listener survey up at the top, we'd love to get your feedback on season one and some thoughts about topics you'd like to hear about in season two as we start doing some planning for that over the summer. Make sure as well, feel free to share the podcast with friends, colleagues who might be interested in it, a great time over the summer for them to get caught up. We've got about nine hours worth of content from this first season. Do have a chance to go check those out and put them on your listening list for the summer. As always, please click the like and subscribe button if you're listening to us on YouTube or give us a rating on your podcast app where you're listening to us that all helps in terms of visibility, and just really excited to have been able to bring this first season to a close. It's been a lot of fun putting this together hopefully these really useful conversations with all of you and look forward to seeing you on the phone when we start season two. So thanks so to much everybody who was joining us live today, thanks to those of us who are listening to us after the fact. And as always, let's keep thinking digitally.