My Year 2010 in review: from mourning to gov2.0 dreams

In 2010, I faced several bereavements. This situation made me walk towards resilience. This new force also allowed me to start dreaming again, and I finished the year by beating the horses at full speed, multiplying the projects and deliverables.

Grief is seen as a necessary process for release (of pain), named resilience. When an event causes a crisis in the life of an individual, a radical change is made in the position previously established. The last of the five stages of grief is acceptance, where the mourner gets better. The reality of the loss is better understood and accepted. The bereaved can still feel sadness, but this person recovers enough be fully functional. The person adjusts her life to the loss.

In my personal life, I lost my father Yves Robichaud in April 2009. I also lost my aunt Huguette Robichaud in January 2010.

On a professional level, I ended the forum Zonegrippeaviaire.com on January 6, 2010, three years after having founded it. I tried to obtain cooperation from the Government of Quebec (Government 2.0): the first attempt at collaboration coming from an online community. The answer came in the form of a "market study" from Services Québec, which concluded that "social media are not worth the trouble to invest time or money because they are immature and not credible." This study served as a justification to close the door to any form of collaboration. I realized that the Flublogian community of practice would never become a collaborative team in Quebec. So I resigned and decided to move on. After four years invested in this sphere, I abandoned Flublogia.

The first months of the year, I stopped all activity in social media. I undertook an artistic production: I created 780 works of quilling (topiaries, handbags, jewelry, cards, etc.). My artistic approach. My art work on Flickr.

In August 2010, I signed up on Empire Avenue as (e)PAPIER. I met Adriel Hampton again (I had followed him for about two years). Watching Adriel Hampton in action moved me to the point of making me cry, because I realized how the ideal of government 2.0 was deeply embedded in me, rationally incommensurable, as a passion of the soul. Hope is like a kind of appeal; it can sometimes fell like an intense distress. I told myself that I had nothing to lose. "To hope is to deny the future." (Emil Michel Cioran) I then ignored the limitations of mind. I wanted to believe that government 2.0 would become possible, and that I would find my place in this sphere.

In September 2010, I set the goal of finding a job as a Government 2.0 implementater.

In October 2010, I went to Edmonton, Alberta, where I attended the Beyond 2010 conference.

I met in person Chris Moore , CIO of the City of Edmonton and Jordan Hodges, performance manager & coach, Department of Information Technology of this municipality.

I was fortunate to meet several speakers of this conference: Adriel Hampton , co-founded the popular public interest podcast Gov 2.0 Radio show, Kevin Curry , creator of CityCamp, an international unconference and online community dedicated to innovation for municipal governments and community organizations and Phil Ashlock , Open Government Program Manager at OpenPlans, a non-profit organization that develops technology and media to improve civic services, urban livability, and local democracy.

I wrote several posts about this conference: in French, this one, this one, and this one. In English, this one and this one. See all my pictures of Beyond2010 on Flickr.

I was pleasantly surprised by analysis of the data (according to TweetTronics). I discovered that that I came in third position of impact on Twitter during the two days of Beyond 2010. These results encouraged me, and I continued to make efforts to stand out in the government 2.0 sphere. A TweetTronics analysis conducted on November 16, 2010 showed that I ranked among the Top 10 for key word #gov2.0 on Twitter. At December 17, 2010, my number of followers on Twitter had increased (from 890 in October) to 1330.
I resumed my work with Adriel Hampton by covering live in French Gov20Radio shows.

I also wrote a series of blog posts related to what was said in Gov20Radio shows, thus developing French-language content:

- October 31 2010 show, guest Chris Moore, this post;
- November 7, 2010, guest Brooks Bennett, this post and this one;
- November 14, 2010, guest Geordie Adams, this post and this one;
- November 28, 2010, guest Lovisa Williams, this post and this one;
- December 5, 2010, guest Nic Adler, this post.

Via Empire Avenue, I met several people and strengthened networking ties. Two government 2.0 advocates - Adriel Hampton (e)ADRIEL and Alan Silberberg (e)GILGOV - participated in the project Men Calendar 2011 (get your free copy), an Empire Avenue online community that I manage with six other admnistrators.

Projects underway
In November 2010, I was excited about the launch of the project Global Citizenship, led by several people, including Lovisa Williams and Alan Silberberg. I was eager to communicate my interest to them, and I am look forward to collaboration. Blog posts about this project: this one and this one.

In November I was invited by John Moore to become a contributor of Government in Action. I am the first francophone government 2.0 advocate to publish content in French in United States. Other contributors to this site are, among others Andrew P. Wilson, Nick Charney, and Lovisa Williams.

In November, I met S. Rousselet from Youth Diplomacy, organizer of the Youth Summits G8 G20. I proposed an exciting project to be included in the forthcoming Summits, and I hope it will materialize in Paris, France, in May-June 2011.

I am currently planning a project related to Francophonie, scheduled for 2012.

Other projects I proposed
I suggested to promote and develop the G4, a coalition of Canadian open cities. See my post.

I talked about the need for a governement 2.0 multilingual communication strategy. See my post.I hope that an organization, a consortium of organizations, a government, or a group of governments, will support the establishment and financial support of a multilingual communication strategy in order to develop worldwide the government 2.0 tendency.

A job for me in 2011
In an interview published on Planet Empire Avenue by Brad Grier last December 13 (It takes a community to raise a calendar), I mentioned that I am looking for a job related to Government 2.0 in 2011.

"I have a tremendous amount of passion, an iconoclast way of thinking, analytical abilities, and moreover, I speak French: I can be a good voice for government 2.0. I want to find a job! I would like my dreams of becoming a Government 2.0 implementater to come true. The current Quebecois political situation is not conducive to this – our Premier Jean Charest’s nickname is ‘The Godfather’ – so I hope that someone, somewhere, will see me, and integrate me into an international (or foreign) government 2.0 team, or hire me as a community manager."

Despite the vagaries of life, I am satisfied by what I have accomplished in year 2010. I managed to bypass certain difficulties and to start planning many projects.