Category: innovation

At a workshop a couple of years ago, I asked a group of participants to break into groups and identify the top four things settlement workers need to know, top four skills that they must possess, and the top four work-related attitudes and behaviours in the era of digital service delivery. Interestingly, there wasn't much overlap between groups. This suggests the richness of human service work, as well as its complexity.

One thing that I'm learning about the future, from futurists, is that it's not something we can predict. But it's something we can work toward.

Much of the current writing on AI is about how AI will replace some human functions, but just as much on how important humans will remain (and perhaps more so) in the future. Current writing also emphasizes the importance of the choices we make now about AI, innovation and technology. It's not all quite as out of our control as the tech bros might want you to believe.

I read an interesting article recently from the Ontario College of Social Work that discussed "cultural humility" as an essential skill for Social Workers to acknowledge, achieve, and continue to develop throughout their careers.

“I always thought it was a scary buzzword so I never really used it. But before coming here I looked in the dictionary and I realized that it means to interrupt (an event, activity, or process) and to drastically alter (the structure of something), to change. So I was like, okay, that’s not that scary after all.”