City of Surrey launches Social Innovation Summit

Over the past decade, the City of Surrey has changed from your typical edge city to a municipality that is becoming more forward thinking with how it develops, provides services to residents, and addresses complex issues facing the community.

One of the new ways in which Surrey is dealing with complex issues is its Social Innovation Summit which starts tomorrow. As stated on the Surrey’s website, the summit “is the first in a series of annual meetings aimed at engaging the community, with all of its talent, resources, energy and creativity, to foster and grow a progressive city.”

The aim of the summit is to bridge the knowledge gap that can sometimes exists between local government, residents, non-profit service organizations, academia, and the business community. Hopefully what is learned at the summit will be applied on-the-ground in Surrey.

The summit takes place tomorrow between 7:15am and 2:15pm at Surrey City Hall. The registration fee is $149.00, but it is reduce to $50.00 if you are a student.

The scheduled sessions during the summit include:

The Social Innovation Challenge and Opportunity
Around the world, social innovation is being called upon to help provide novel solutions to social problems that are more effective, efficient, just and sustainable. The Summit’s opening panel will help define and decipher some of the latest thinking about social innovation, its reach and limitations, and how it can help a progressive city such as Surrey reach its potential.

Social Innovation and Cities: Networks, Neighbourhoods and New Ideas
City administrations face a unique set of modern challenges on social, environmental and economic fronts. In these increasingly complex times, social innovation is a new asset as citizens, business and not-for-profits work alongside city governments to help provide more sustainable solutions to day-to-day problems. Going it alone is no longer a viable solution for any level of government, particularly municipalities where the ties to the daily lives of citizens is strongest and most pronounced. How is Surrey engaging citizens and organizations in the search for solutions, and what can we learn from other cities?

Out of the Ivory Tower: University-Community Engagement for Social Innovation
From student energy and ingenuity to world-class research, universities represent key agents of change in our communities. How can they work in alignment with city goals to help design, test and support impactful responses to social and economic challenges? This session explores three unique approaches and hears from students, the community, city staff and university leaders.

From the Drawing Board to Reality
To build a progressive, resilient city, Surrey needs to engage across sectors, neighbourhoods and individual interests. Finding and nurturing new ideas that can make a difference are key to achieving real change. The Summit’s final session talks with “disruptive innovators” driving new ideas, “bridging innovators” that help spot and move great ideas to the mainstream, and “receptive innovators” that know how to influence whole systems and take good ideas to scale.

Summit panelists and moderators include:

• Shawn Bayes, Executive Director, Elizabeth Fry Society of Greater Vancouver
• Kiri Bird, Local Economic Development Lab Manager, Ecotrust Canada & RADIUS SFU
• Hazel Borys, Managing Principal, PlaceMakers, Winnipeg, Manitoba
• Dr. Ryan D’Arcy, Surrey Memorial Hospital Foundation BC Leadership Chair in Multimodal Technology for Healthcare Innovations, Simon Fraser University
• Dr. Miklos Dietz, Leader, Global Banking Strategy and Corporate Finance Group, and Managing Partner, McKinsey & Company, Vancouver, BC
• Stephen Dooley, Executive Director, SFU Surrey
• Al Etmanski, Community Organizer, Social Entrepreneur and Author
• Nathalie Gagnon, Faculty Member, Kwantlen Polytechnic University
• Bruce Hayne, Councillor, City of Surrey
• Anna Mathewson, Manager, Sustainability, City of Surrey
• Kevin McCort, President & CEO, Vancouver Foundation
• Jennifer McRae, City Studio
• Anna Migicovsky, MBA Candidate and LED Lab team member, Simon Fraser University
• Mohamed Muktar Mussa, Community Peer Research Assistant, Simon Fraser University
• David Podmore, Chairman & CEO, Concert Properties Ltd.
• Ellen Pond, Program Coordinator and Instructor, Policy Studies in Sustainability, Kwantlen Polytechnic University
• Shawn Smith, Director, RADIUS, Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University
• Shira Standfield, Civic Beautification Planner/Neighbourhood Team, City of Surrey
• Tonya Surman, CEO, Centre for Social Innovation, Toronto
• Tamara Vrooman, President & CEO, Vancity
• Michael Wilson, Executive Director, Phoenix Society
• Jason Wong, Co-Founder & Chief Project Evangelist, BETA Collective

If you have time tomorrow, you should attend this summit.