I have had a few phone calls from William Azaroff at Vancity lately and these conversations typically start like this, "Hey Tim, have you guys ever designed a [insert a something we haven't done before]."
And my typical response has been, "No, but I think we can figure it out!" The latest is a wiki project for microfinance.ca.
What is cool about this new website is the position that Vancity has taken. Rather than trying to own Microfinance in Canada, Vancity has decided to act as a facilitator to grow the sector. Not for selfish reasons, but because its the right thing to do. The wiki platform will enable the entire sector to contribute and to use social technologies to move the social economy forward.
"Building on that first version of microfinance.ca, we wanted to do more: we wanted to help practitioners of, and thinkers about, microfinance in Canada to come together in an ongoing conversation about how microfinance can help alleviate poverty in Canada."
This is yet another innovative project backed by Vancity and we are super proud to be involved.
William has blogged about the launch as well. What's great about working for William is that he totally understands the social media space and is 100% open to using whatever technology is going to get the job done. This is refreshing (and slightly scary). Sometimes we get so locked into a single technology platform that we forget to come up for air and see what else is out there.
Tim