the fruits of imagination

End of the line

photo via

As some of you may have heard, I'm leaving Leo Burnett. I'm going to be head of planning and part of the leadership team at a new start-up agency. As cliche as it is, this wasn't an easy decision, because Leo Burnett is truly one of the best agencies in Canada, I have a lot of friends here, and the agency has been incredibly supportive of me over the years. I owe them a debt of thanks for giving me the space to learn and grow over the past 6 and a half years. But the opportunity to help build a new agency doesn't come along very often and I'm incredibly excited about this new venture.

I also need to thank each and every one of you, because your readership and comments and linking here over the past couple of years have helped me to challenge, evolve and shape my thinking, and my new opportunity is in no small part due to your support (I'll buy you each a beer). I continue to be honoured and grateful that so many of you have chosen to make this a small part of your day. And I'm proud to call many of you friends now. So: thank you.

This blog has been very quiet recently - partly for reasons you'll understand now - but it will be picking up steam again under the capable leadership of Brent Nelsen and some of the other planners here. So stick around. And for those of you who wish to follow my new adventures, I've set up shop over at jasonoke.wordpress.com. I hope you'll keep in touch.

Likemind

For those of you in Toronto, there's another Likemind coffee this Friday. Same time, same details as before. This will be the last one for 2007. Hope to see you there.

Friday November 30th
Over Easy
208 Bloor Street West (near Avenue Rd)
8am - 10am

Planning For Good update

While it's been quiet around here recently, some great stuff has happened over the past month. With Ed's excellent leadership, the fledgling Planning For Good network came together with about 10 groups of people around North America and the UK working on our first project: helping out New Orleans' Idea Village.

The thinking was presented to the IV people in mid-October and was very well received. There were a lot of amazing ideas, and you can see the whole presentation here. Ed also presented it to the Polygamous Weddings conference in New Orleans last week (which by all accounts was excellent - well done Mike, Robbie, and everyone at Trumpet). A huge word of thanks to everyone who participated, and to the Idea Village for allowing us to test out our new organization with them.

The PFG group on Facebook is up to over 850 members, and one of the pieces of feedback we've received from many people was they wanted to contribute but couldn't find others to work with. Given the success of Likemind and various other social coffee-morning type things around the world, we're trying a new approach based around local meet-ups.  So far 31 city groups around the world have been established - see the PFG Facebook page for details in your area. If you can't make a meet-up in your area, you're also still encouraged to contribute on your own - everything is appreciated.

The new brief is for UNICEF, to help them with an end-of-year fundraising campaign in the US. The timing is especially tight, and we need to get ideas back to them by end of next week.

If you'd like to help out in Toronto, we're having a meet-up Monday or Tuesday next week. See the new PFG Toronto page on Facebook or leave a comment here.