The City of San Francisco is one of 20 finalists (out of 305
cities across America) in the Bloomberg Philanthropies Mayor’s Challenge. Bloomberg Philanthropies, for the first year,
challenged American cities to come up with a bold, innovative idea that could provide local solutions to national problems
and possibly win $5million.
Shannon Spanhake, who works in the SFO Mayors
Innovation Office, took time out in getting the final cut to NYC, to speak with
Ellen (my colleague from Sutherland Council) and I about the Program and their
initiative.
Shannon is fresh back from ‘Ideas Camp’ where 4 people from
each of the finalist councils spent 2 days in New York with top innovators across the
Nation to get their initiative ready for implementation and voting by the
judges. They brainstormed using many tools including ‘rapid
prototyping’, ‘user and human-centred design, ‘waterfall modelling' and spent a great deal of time
assisting and collaborated with each other. It’s a competitive but there is
also the incentive to collaborate as the main objective is that the initiatives are replicable across cities says Shannon.
I asked how the City started to prepare for the Challenge. The most important
ingredient, Shannon advised, was partnering with the private sector – sourcing
the innovative companies to get on board and opening it up to all citizens and
businesses was vital to them. Their brainstorming events
were sponsored by local Businesses, they networked to get the best minds,
creative and enthusiastic citizens in the room and gave them 30minutes to push out ‘crazy’ ideas.
Shannon had a
team of city government executives and private sector firms who then chose the
initiative to put forward to the Challenge. The Initiative is about enabling graduates to move more easily into the work force as the first step has many hurdles and jobs are scarce, especially in government at this time. They hope to match graduates with professional development opportunities through micro-volunteering on city government projects.
Now we sit back until April to find out who wins
How brilliant Soph. So many transferable ideas within what you have highlighted. Think of the possibilities back here!
ReplyDeleteKelly
Looks great, quite an investment in time and thought from the private sector, but good payoff for all if they win support due to the potential upscaling of solutions. Love what it does for graduates, would like to see our council providing more opportunity for graduates to learn and add value - I found great gains in working with some really intelligent, motivated and productive volunteers/interns from such programs i've been on in other Council/State govt - worth more thought if we can find some desk space....
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments guys, I am off to pick up more ideas around the graduate program. Fiona the mentoring, coaching, 'next generation' programs they have in California is extensive, they work really hard at it. I'll get more details.
ReplyDeleteSoph
Hi Soph, did Shannon share with you some of the best 'crazy' ideas? Sometimes its really challenging to be open to the really crazies but they can be interesting, Cheers Jo
ReplyDeleteJo, great thought. I only had 45mins with Shannon so didn't think to ask, but I'll email and check if she might share a list of some of the other ideas they produced.
Deletethanks
We have so much potential in terms of young people and our workplace - we have major issues with our aging workforce and the need for contingency planning in so many areas. We also have aspects of our industry into which fewer and fewer graduates are emerging(i.e. environmental health and town planning are areas I have spent time researching). So we need to encourage people into the 'business', to develop the industry and improve our outcomes. And we natually have issues of resourcing these ideas. This is all great stuff Sophie!
ReplyDeleteHI Sophie
ReplyDeleteCan you find out any groovy, innovative ways the Councils are building community connectednes. It is a topic the guys here are workiing on with the LGMA challenge so any info on that score would be welcome - this includes the ways they engage with their communities beyond the things we do already. Cheers Melanie