Yeah – I had already filed that idea in the “wishful thinking” folder during the meeting… but it never hurts to start putting that stuff out in the universe :)

It’d certainly make sense at a subsequent BarCamp here in Toronto to maybe try and get a session going around the ICT and what the TorCamp community is most interested in seeing accomplished etc.

“we need to be more strategic about how we use the ICT forum”

Completely agreed – in the end I think it’ll be a fun and interesting rock to try and push up the hill…

Your point about the speed and absence of tech savvy in the work of ICT Toronto is absolutely true. They could use collaboration tools, but there seems to be zero appetite for it.

I think the weekend ICTCamp idea is a good one, but for this crowd I fear they’d call it a strategy retreat, expect accommodations and catering and the city wouldn’t pay for it.

To a certain extent, it is the nature of policy development with many stakeholders that progress is slow. It doesn’t help that this project is almost certainly under-resourced.

To move our agenda forward, we need to be more strategic about how we use the ICT forum, how we identify allies with shared interests and how we can create and support sub-projects that will fold into the larger framework.

I look forward to working together on this.

But I think I may have lost some clarity though – in terms of “retention” I was referring to skilled workers in the city and our knack for creating these highly educated & capable resources and then promptly losing them to other parts of the world (primarily the States).

Although I do think a city has to look at these people as customers and actively work on showing them why the Greater Toronto Area is the best place to live & work.

Thanks for stopping by :)

- Ryan

I don’t think there’s anything ‘simple’ about retaining customers. If you talk to most large brands, their marketing efforts are far more focused on retention than winning new customers. The reason for that is that brand evangelists are far better marketers than your own adverts, offers, mailouts and other marketing efforts.

The best way to grow a business, in an age when we’re far more likely to ask our friends what to buy than take in the masses of information being fired at us, (I think) is to look after the people who have already chosen your company’s products or services.