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Northumberland Youth Advisory Council and the Queen's Executive Decision Centre

The Northumberland Youth Advisory Council was established in October 2005, in part, as a response to a number of reports produced over the past few years regarding issues affecting youth and the growing trend to the out- migration of young people, particularly in smaller, rural communities.

These reports included the Joint Youth Task Force prepared for former MP Liberal MP, Paul Macklin, and former Conservative MPP, Doug Galt, The Redden Report on Youth Attraction and Retention, and the Northumberland Schools Report prepared for current Liberal MPP Lou Rinaldi by Chris Berrigan. Read more....

A new twist on the Old Talking Stick

Queen's Executive Decision Centre celebrates 20 years of computer -based meeting support

Last November, Erik Lockhart, the Associate Director of Queen’s Executive Decision Centre, stood alongside 4,000 people facing a monumental task: how to rebuild New Orleans post-Hurricane Katrina. After deciding on a game plan with his fellow facilitators, he got down to work. Laptop poised, he sat down at the nearest table of 15 current and former New Orleans residents and dove right in to the hot-button issues – education, crime and policing, health care, neighbourhoods, and resettlement.

No issue was too contentious. No idea too extreme.

Erik was in facilitator heaven.

“Creating the Unified New Orleans Plan,” as the super-sized strategy session was called, was Erik’s largest team decision making meeting by far. It was also the first time he had worked with multiple facilitators. The 10-site, coast-to-coast meeting included a cast of more than 100 facilitators who shared his group dynamics skills and passion for computer-based meeting support. Download the article to read more....

Brainstorm Software Lets Ideas Speak, Not Egos (globetechnology.com)

Jack Kapica - Thursday, February 6, 2003

Ego is inseparable from human nature and plays a huge role in corporate governance. Put any number of people into a boardroom, and invariably the largest ego will dominate, shouldering aside everyone else, including those with better ideas or more constructive suggestions.

Just ask female managers, and they will tell you how tough it can be.

That's the premise behind group decision support system software. The School of Business at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., has created a high-tech service with the goal of ridding the decision-making process of personality, so that ideas can speak for themselves.
(Click to see the full article at globetechnology.com - will open a new window.)