It appears that a tide of change is washing not only acro
ss the US this fall, but in my home city on the Pacific as well. On Saturday night, Gregor Robertson became the city's new choice as mayor, and his party, Vision Vancouver gained 90% of city council and big majorities on both other elected boards.
This is a sweet victory for me personally and professionally in a number of ways, as he used "web values" to get there, and our team helped him do it.
I've known Gregor Robertson for almost 10 years, and he is one of the most authentic, thoughtful, passionate, and truly fun people in my world. So when he chose to jump into the gnarly world of politics, I decided it was time to throw my company's resources in with him, and we became the online team guiding his digital campaign.
You can see some of the work here, here, and here, and the results here and here. 
Secondly, the platform he ran and won on was downright inspiring:
- Working collaboratively to end homelessness by 2015
- Making Vancouver the greenest city in the world
- Supporting more creativity and innovation amongst our artists and entrepreneurs
- Making a safe city for all
The first 3 pillars of his platform are deeply aligned with the foundation 
of our own work at Communicopia and in helping foster a community of innovative social entrepreneurs over the past 13 years. After working on these issues for many years of relative obscurity, it's rewarding for these kinds of issues resonate with voters on a mass scale. The other party played it safe, Vision went big, and it worked. The times, it appears, are demanding it.
Thirdly, Vision had built the largest and most engaged civic party in Canada, with over 16,000 active members, which made them ripe for digital engagement. Many of these people – like me – are new to large P politics, and felt disconnected and not at all represented in big institutions and traditional left/right parties. This people-powered energy of Vision's members combined with Gregor's clear goals and charismatic, open leadership inspired a lot of fresh thinking people to get involved.
Finally, it's now clear that Obama's victory was due not just to his bold ideas but also to his deep community organizing values that were grafted directly onto his online campaign strategy. More and more leaders are realizing that online plays a significant – if not the primary – role in campaigning and grassroots organizing. The participative energy of people combined with open leadership and harnessed by innovative web tools is the key to breakthrough success today.
Victory after so much hard work does taste sweet. But the challenging work of governing well – and remaining open and humble – is next. And this is perhaps where online tools and "web values" (as I understand them: transparency, collaboration, participation, and listening) will be the key to the kind of new leadership we are all craving from our institutions.
As Gregor said in his acceptance speech, after thanking everyone for their efforts: "I have one more big thing to ask you. We're asking the people of Vancouver to stay involved. The Vision council won't solve 
homelessness on its own. These are complex challenges and we need your ideas and engagement to make a real and lasting difference". (I am paraphraising here, it was a wild party)
As I wrote last week, President Obama is committed to bringing radical transparency and citizen participation directly into government to encourage openness and engagement (see how the National Post says his CTO is the most important cabinet appointment he will make). This is a huge experiment and the world will be watching. I hope with our much smaller budgets up here Gregor can bring a little bit of the same thinking to city hall.
Congratulations Gregor, the Vision team, campaign staff, and the tens of thousands of Vancouverites who voted for change! And special thanks to Maria Dobrinskaya, Kori Brus, Kevin and Kurt, Philip Djwa, Christine, Emily, and Catherine at Agentic, and Tim and the boys at Biro Creative for the amazing collaboration we pulled off with the online campaign. Woot!
