People are everything! Work hard! party hard!

An importnat part of consultants life is socialising 😀 – people are everything!

Last some of us managed to get together to celebrate. I am not going to write much. It was a crazy night. Just look at these happy faces! 🙂 So good to have some like minded, crazy people around!

Love you all guys! WORK HARD! PARTY HARD!

The Big Day – our first focus group at Pact

Hey all!

I’m pretty sure this is going to end up on the Home Page, but It’s pretty exciting!

This morning at 9.30am we had our first focus group/usability study with PACT and it went AMAZING. Talking with the 6 patients and their caregivers was a real eye opener about the practical use and implications of Lifetime Health Diary(tm). We were all amazed and impressed by the speed at which they picked up how to use the website, andcan confidently say that it can really help them better managed their health and communicate with health professionals and family member or support workers.

Privacy came up as being a concern, but most were happy/excited about the prospect of sharing their medical information with their doctors and families.

The morning was a huge success and I want to give a quick shout out to Jenna who ran the whole session beautifully (plus Anna and Aga displaying their general awesomeness). Great work team!

We also met up with the Maori group and have tentatively arranged a time to meet up next week.

medComm signing out,

😀

TEAM DCOSS UNITES

The group together spelling out DCOSS (incase you cant tell)

Kia Ora All!

Week one is over and dusted! Yeeeha!

You have Monique here, the Team Leader and a small party of the brains, brawn and beauty that makes up TEAM DUNEDIN COUNCIL of SOCIAL SERVICES (DCOSS).

This week team DCOSS decided to come out of the gates with a BANG! By jumping straight on the horse and jumping straight into work. Our first team meeting took place on the Monday after we finished our ignite Orientation. For our first meeting it was decided that we should begin the research stages for our project and see what we could find out about the company from different media sources that were directly available to us (aka Google)!

This meeting was namely to compare notes on what we could find, and use these notes to develop our preliminary questions to take to Sue Russell & Allan Shanks (DCOSS) on Wednesday.

After forming an extremely LONG list of questions, we went to meet with Sue and Alan. In the time that I was at the meeting (We could only arrange a meet in my lunch time) we made a nice we dint in our questions. We went through them in a very overviewic fashion, which for some questions made it very hard to pull information for them, and yet for others it worked very well. The meeting really only lead to more questions being formed and for us to realise how much information we needed from them that we couldn’t get anywhere else.

Having no information been given to us (minus the 5 minutes they talked about there initiatives on the first weekend we all met), meeting with council members was a great eye opener into who they are, what they believe they stand for and the different services that the organisation offers to the councils members, non members both individuals and organisations.

On Wednesday Team DCOSS had a verrrrrrrrrrry busy day! So after our two hour meeting with Sue and Alan that night we had our first meeting with Graeme Elkin, our all knowing mentor and I guess our gallant leader – who has the reins (see what I did there) in our operation.

Speaking with Graeme challenged our questions and our thinking, namely to be less ‘timid’ and ask the HARD questions. It was great having someone to point us in the right direction especially when we were kind of unsure of where we should head next.

After Wednesday we had a bit of a break whilst we waited on the ‘information packs’ from DCOSS to be prepared.

The pack’s arrived at the end of the week, initially we didn’t realise how important and amazing these little gems would be, but upon getting them a ‘silent meeting’ was inadvertently initiated whilst we sat looking through piles of information at our upstairs Link table. It was decided after awhile that maaaybe we should take the packs home and look through the breadth of information that we had received and to reconvene next week…

This thus ended our first week as the newly formed TEAM DCOSS (said in super heroic echoey tone)

Over this first week, it was great to see our team dynamic and how it evolved from being distinct individuals to forming our roles in the group. It was also great seeing how we all worked together and how in different environments we were able to adapt how we worked together.

Currently the finish line seems quite distant. We hope to keep pace heading into the next week and hope that we gallop full steam towards the finish line. I am immensely looking forward to see what this team produces and how we all work together in the coming weeks.

GO TEAM DCOSS (wooooooooh)

Monique outs (hi 2)

PACT



“Pact supports people to lead fulfilling lives, focusing on their strengths to help them reach their goals”

http://www.pactgroup.co.nz/

We arrived at PACT at 8.30am this morning, to discuss the feelings towards our product. The information we received was hugely helpful, as we began to delve into the current system and the potential for the future.

PACT are a not for profit organization that support individuals with Intellectual disabilities and mental illness. They have both full time patients and part time, and run a number of care residences around the city. Talking with them we discovered some of the challenges they face daily, ranging from education to medication monitoring. From out talks with them we determined what they hoped to gain from the product;

1. Better communication with patients

2. Empowering individuals to take control of their health.

3. Helping families living out of town to keep in touch with their family members health

In terms of usability, some of the individuals who joined us for the focus group had already used the system and gave us insight into issues and features that they thought could be improved upon.  One of the key challenges that was identified was motivating individuals to use the service. The idea of incentives or rewards was brought up and will be researched.

Next step, focus groups!

medComm

Welcome our interns: Ivana and Joe

They have been around for quite a while and most of you knew about them already, but I would still like to take the chance to introduce again the two very courageous, talented and motivated people who we have the pleasure of hosting in Dunedin for the next couple of weeks.

Ivana and Joe came all the way from Europe to do an internship with Ignite as a part of our Ignite/AIESEC partnership.

I am thrilled to have the opportunity to work with them, and to use some of their skills and insights to take Ignite to the next level. We have put a really challenging task in front of them: that is, to focus on the strategic aspect behind Ignite.  And believe me, it’s not an easy thing to do! You need to have guts to come all the way to New Zealand, and to be put in a situation that lacks a clear direction. At the same time, you would need to come up with a systematic approach to manage your tasks, in order to get your stuff done in the most efficient way possible.

One of the reasons we have decided to bring them in was because as we were all full-time students, hence we lacked the time to make all of our ideas happen. Bearing in mind the importance of the sustainability of an organisation, we have then decided to introduce some additional forces into Ignite, to get Ignite fully off the ground.

So here we are, Ivana and Joe! They are based in our new Office at the Centre for Social Innovation, working hard on our strategy behind fundraising, business model, new services, and events  etc.

They have only been here for two weeks, but the amount of ideas and energy they have already brought to the team have been amazing. I really want to give a big thank-you to you guys, and I am definitely very looking forward to working together with you for the next six weeks!

I am also hoping that during this time, you will be able to experience the amazing atmosphere of  New Zealand, the Scarfie lifestyle, and learn heaps along the way.

We need to make sure that they will, aye team?

Power of vision

The amount of brainstorming I have done over the last week with different teams has been unbelievable. The more we do it, the more I believe in the power of brains coming together in unity.

The one thing which is always coming up is the idea of  ‘vision’: where do we want to be, how do we want it to look like, why do we do it, and who do we want to be.

vi·sion [vizh–uhn] –noun

1.the act or power of sensing with the eyes; sight.

2.the act or power of anticipating that which will or may come to be: prophetic vision; the vision of an entrepreneur.

3. an experience in which a personage, thing, or event appears vividly or credibly to the mind, although not actually present,

<http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/vision>

When we have a task at hand, we always look firstly at how we’d envision the final product/event/future to be, and we’d then work backwards.  I believe that is one of the reasons that contributes to the success of the Ignite team. We do make mistakes, we do fail a lot (like a looooot);  but we always reflect, and look ahead. We have the courage to envision amazing things, and that is why we are not afraid of failing or to ask for help, so that we’d be able to stand up again from where we’ve fallen.

During our first strategy meeting we came up with the vision for Ignite:

“To build partnership, channel resources and develop leaders for the growth of sustainable society.”

We are indeed very committed to making it happen. I am excited as we are at the point where we need to reflect and assess if what we are doing really maintains and enhances this vision in the best way possible. The whole team will meet up again tomorrow to look into the future, and to brainstorm on creative ways to maximise the use of the resources we  currently have at hand. We will keep you updated.

Event planning meeting

We ended August with a bang!

Yesterday, in an intense 2 hour meeting at our brand new office space we planned the next 3 social events, exec recruitment and team-building activities.  We are gearing up for the next group event on 12 September.  Next on our To Do list is working on the sustainability of Ignite Consultants.  Exciting times are ahead and I can’t wait!

Social Innovation Hub

I had the pleasure to attend today  a workshop regarding the Hub 174 which is becoming a Centre For Social Innovation in Dunedin.  Louis Brown and the crew of Te Wai Ponamu Foundation managed to get a few organisations together, to get their feedback on the idea.

The idea of the Collaboration Hub is not new, and the concept has been growing all around the world. The Hub World and Social Innovator are just some examples.

In a nutshell: Innovation hubs are shared work spaces which are specifically designed to promote collaboration and innovation.

“It’s a place for meeting, working, learning, innovating and connecting dedicated to inspiring and supporting enterprising initiatives for a better world”.

As Louis Brown explained today, the idea about the Hub has been growing in his head for a couple of years, but it wasn’t until a couple of months ago when with the support of Malcolm Cameron, the founder of Malcam Charitable Trust he gave a green light to the idea. Together with the Crew from Te Wai Ponamu Foundation they decided to make it happen.

“We believe that there is no absence of good ideas in the world.  The problem is a crisis of access, scale, resources and impact. So it felt vital to create places around the world for accessing space, resources, connections, knowledge, experience and investment.”

In today`s workshop, representatives from Ignite Consultants, PH Factor, Sustainable Dunedin City, Green Peace, Flyers2U and some others got their brains working on developing the vision and ideas for the space.

The big launch is planned for the October the 1st, 2010. Organisers are hoping to bring different parties who are interested in the concept and would like to join the movement for social goods.

On the fraction of cost The hub 174 will, rent out space for those who would like to be a part of a dynamic, creative network of people making a difference in Dunedin`s community. Everybody is invited to contribute and throw some ideas.

Here’s to the Crazy Ones… Let the challenge begin!

Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-g4SXNgRQ8 🙂

18 students, 3 projects 8 weeks – race to research problems, find solutions and implement changes!

Let me introduce you to the “Crazy ones”! who took on the challange of tackling social problems:

Team 1: DCOSS

Monique Mclennan, Shanming Yang, Peter McDowall, Kate Berlova, Ben Krieble

Team 2: DPA

Nick Donald, Frith Bishop, Hamish Clapp, Tom Howell, Martin Antonio Guich, Charlie Gavey

Team 3: MedCom

Claire Mackay, Anna Dyer, Stefan Nikolaev Arabadzhiyski Michael Wang, Jenna Williams, Sam Wevers

Let the challenge begin!

Igniting Experience Day 2: Team work and leadership

Despite a very social Saturday night, the second day of training started on time with full attendance and active participation. Lorna Zeman, gave us a lot of useful information about leadership, effective team work, different roles of team members and how to deal with them.

Some of the key elements of a successful project are detailed planning, good communication and listening to the client. Lorna pointed out that every team member is different and that this is a huge advantage when working on a project. It is important to recognize the different ‘types’ of  people so that we can take advantage of their strengths and work on their weaknesses.
Our newly formed teams had the opportunity to show their strengths in different activities such as building a tower and a bridge out of a newspaper. The four, very different constructions were masterpieces!

Leadership was one of the key words during the training and we were very happy to announce our new team leaders- congratulations to Claire, Monique and Nick. We also appreciate the contribution made by the mentors who have offered their time to assist their assigned team for the next eight weeks.
We are going to have a great time over the next 8 weeks and hope you all enjoy it and get out of it as much as you can. The Ignite team looks forward to seeing you all in the next session.