» Learning from Publishing » Glory! Steel! Onward!

» Publisher in Residence » About Signature

Learning from Publishing

Optimal Practices for Improving Competency Proficiency

from the Cultural Human Resources Council

Principles of Learning and Changing Behaviour

All learning consists of an accrual of behavioural capabilities, and this process can be formal or informal. Formal learning is what one thinks of immediately when the term 'training' or 'development' is used: courses, books, lectures, and manuals. But most learning throughout life is experiential: seeing and doing. Workshops contain a good amount of that kind of learning, and certainly learning on the job is mostly that. For some competencies formal learning is the best channel, for example, "Create and maintain an accounting system". For others, multiple approaches may be feasible, for example, "Apply for grants and funding". And for many competencies hands-on, experiential learning is the only way to expand them, for example, "Demonstrate credibility". Often, a variety of techniques are required to improve one's capability, especially when the competency in question is of a general or relational nature. It is important to keep in mind, however, that all learning (adult and otherwise) has a number of specific principles in common that play a role no matter what competency is involved. These include: Learning is visible only in its outcomes, i.e., changed behaviour, or in the outputs of new but less-visible behaviour. The "active ingredients" in all learning, formal or experiential, are the same: Something has to energize such change (e.g., the business need for a competency), something has to steer learning in the desired direction, something has to maintain that direction, and something has to strengthen (reinforce) the new behaviour or else the new behaviour will weaken or disappear altogether.

The person has to be able to learn the required competency. This condition is not always met: for example, a person who has weak numerical skills will have a hard time learning effective accounting. New learning is always accrued to what already is "there". Competencies are not learned in isolation. This is why, if you have grown up speaking French, when you learn English as an adult, you are likely to have an accent. Sometimes residual old learning is helpful (if I know French and Latin, learning Spanish is easier than if I only know Norwegian and Dutch) and sometimes it can interfere (if I have played a lot of cricket, it will make learning a decent golf swing harder).

Learning Channels Alternative to Formal Courses

Here are some suggestions that may help to complement the kinds of "formal" learning that can be gained from courses or manuals. It will usually be intuitively clear what mode of learning is the best channel for what kind of competency.

Read a book

If a person wants to be completely independent in how she pursues learning new things or expanding competencies reading a book is one way to go. Employers and senior managers in the work place often have favourites they will share or specific recommendations. Having read a book that others value helps a great deal to engage in conversations about work and professional issues that not only expand one's knowledge but also make people come across as in charge of their knowledge, which will in turn enhance their career.

Read Trade Publications

To stay abreast of issues in the professional field, the general business of publishing and the surrounding economy, it pays off to read what relevant trade publications offer. Examples of competencies that lend themselves to expansion in this manner would be: Identify Weaknesses and Threats, Identify Title and Series Opportunities, Develop Partnerships and Sponsorships, Advertise Books and Authors, Gather Information from Outside Sources, etc.

Cruising the Internet

The Internet has quickly become the richest source of information about anything. Use discretion: much of the available information is less than valuable (broadcast news, blogs, advertising) while other information is more useful (e.g., Wikipedia, sector council sites, etc.). Note that the Internet is no substitute for active knowledge exploration in refereed publications.

Using a Coach

We now get to the many ways of learning by seeing - imitating - doing - getting feedback - acquiring competence. The Use-a-Coach approach is particularly effective when it is necessary to acquire specific professional skills that in turn are based on generic competencies. An example might be "Assess manuscripts". This is not easy to learn in a course or from a book - there might not be any courses. The competency requires being able to read analytically and critically (does the manuscript stick with its alleged theme? Do the subject headings follow an intelligible line?) and also think commercially (will this line of argument instill interest? Is this topic saleable given the present political climate in the country? etc.). Clearly, this is a complex competency and it is one that is often most easily learned by discussing the task with one's superior, trying a relatively simple task, getting specific feedback and then applying that to a more complex task. A coach, or the supervisor in her coaching role, can be the most effective channel of learning in this kind of competency.

Mentoring

Mentoring is a professional and intense relationship between senior and junior members of an organization, based on trust and confidence, which enables learning and development. This kind of informal (and sometimes formal) relationship is especially helpful in learning high-level, relatively subtle competencies that require experience, insight into "politics" and specific niche savvy (for example, the present "culture" in a publishing arm in a large communications conglomerate). This kind of learning can be more effective than any other kind in acquiring competencies such as "Maintain relationships", "Demonstrate credibility", "Exercise resourcefulness" and others in the realm of personal competencies. One option is to actively seek a mentor in general, to become an effective and high-potential employee. Another option is to seek out a mentor to develop a specific competency, e.g., "Network"'.

Starting a Peer Study Group: Show and Tell

This approach is particularly useful when skills and competencies are needed that already reside in people around such as peers and colleagues. It comes down to learning experientially and profiting from the experience of others, while at the same time networking within the organization. This approach helps people to be more multiskilled. Some specific occupational skills lend themselves well to this type of learning. Examples are "Lay out books", "Print and bind books", "Coordinate reprints", "Produce electronic editions", and skills in the area of promoting and selling, such as "Create and maintain website content", "Arrange author events", and "Arrange merchandising".

Serving as role models

Observing enables imitation and emulation, another informal experiential learning approach. Role models can be internal to the employing organization, such as a sales director, but they can be external as well. An example is learning to speak more effectively in public. One choice is to join Toast Masters to observe peers practice public speaking and getting some practice directly. This is perhaps the most natural form of learning and usually happens without spending any effort on it. But the most effective and lasting learning takes place in the activity of spending conscious effort and actively observing and imitating role models. Imitating role models is not flattery, but respect for others' style and capability.

Lunch and learn

A final effective mode of learning is to deliberately search out situations in which it is natural and relatively easy to learn new competencies experientially. One good way to do this is to volunteer for activities that are up for grabs. Employees themselves can also identify such opportunities as potentially helpful to enhance their career and learn new competencies (for example, asking the supervisor for the special task of managing the company's involvement in the United Way). This approach can be very useful in that it creates a relatively 'safe' environment: if a person volunteers, she has exercised some control over what she does and thus has gained some 'credit' that warrants some right to ask for support and guidance. Output of that special task is not strictly part of the job and so provides an excellent opportunity to acquire or expand a competency. Many employers like to offer their staff opportunities to profit from the expertise and competence of outsiders. To that end they use speakers' bureaus or their own networks to invite speakers to come in and share their experience. One good format is the lunch hour, when the staff usually like some diversion from their work tasks. In that brief hour they can easily meet the need to be exposed to some new knowledge. Employees bring their lunch and spend a half hour absorbing new information. This may not be very active learning but it can contribute a good deal and leads to follow up. This approach to learning works very well for many and diverse competencies such as "Identify trends and issues", "Design sales and marketing strategy", "Interface with external information systems", and "Encourage employee morale".

Volunteering in the work place

A final effective mode of learning is to deliberately search out situations in which it is natural and relatively easy to learn new competencies experientially. One good way to do this is to volunteer for activities that are either up for grabs (for example, who will thank the lunch-and-learn speaker?). Employees themselves can also identify such opportunities as potentially helpful to enhance their career and learn new competencies (for example, asking the supervisor for the special task of managing the company's involvement in the United Way). This approach can be very useful in that it creates a relatively 'safe' environment: if a person volunteers, she has exercised some control over what she does and thus has gained some 'credit' that warrants some right to ask for support and guidance. Output of that special task is not strictly part of the job and so provides an excellent opportunity to acquire or expand a competency.

Publishing Internships at Okanagan College

FOR WRITERS AND EDITORS

FOR MARKETING AND SALES SPECIALISTS

Earn credit for your work, and add credible materials to your portfolio.

CONTACT
Robert MacDonald, Publisher in Residence, Okanagan College
250.870.2690, rmacdonald@okanagan.bc.ca

Glory! Steel! Onward!

A short story by Colin Snowsell

Transcription of Keynote Address
Delivered July 20, 1958
On the occasion of the Feast Day of National Independence
At the Palacio Room; the Maritime Club
By The Honourable Waldemar Haensch Bejarano

The story of Oscar Palacio Jr. is well known to all of us. In the July uprising in the year of our liberation, how many other of the glorious three hundred and fifty horsemen of whom our national anthem sings, the illustrious men of courage, who for two nights and a day rode their steeds from the capital to the port where the froth from their stallions' mouths anticipated the froth of the turbulent sea, backdrop to the siege of the Treasury building, where Spanish loyalists barricaded inside rolled out a welcoming carpet of grape shot and cannon fire, how many other of the immortal three hundred and fifty, stuffed their riding boots with the hair of our nation's daughters? We know that the stuffing of hair, so important to our national lore, was a gesture both symbolic and practical. Hair may not have been the obvious choice for insulation, but, at the very least, it seems preferable to infested hay or infected rags. Perhaps its use was purely talismanic? Oscar Palacio Jr., as we all know, never explained.

As our history books tell us and I hesitate to tell you, as all of this is known to every schoolboy from the first district to the nineteenth, from the northern desert to the southern fields of ice, Oscar Palacio Jr., patriot of patriots, was a short, short man. How many others who that day and in that unforgettable and terrible battle that forged our nation, stood only 5 foot one inch, even upon 3 inch heels? We know this for his boots are forever on display next to his saber, his scabbard and two balls of hair (impossible to disentangle) - one from each boot - at the national museum. What did his compatriots say to such a short person? Probably, "thank you" since around him and his steed laid a circle of Spanish corpses, felled by the sword of Oscar Palacio Jr. short of height, giant of heart.

Of Oscar Palacio Jr., the 17th signatory of our glorious and immortal national proclamation of Commerce, Dignity, Independence and Concord, so much has already been written that I watch you all now for nodding heads and heavy eyes. I hope that the satiety we all feel, after that most resplendent of banquets on this, our national day of feast, will not be aggravated by the memory of Don Oscar, without whom none of us would be here, without whom none of this could have happened.

When I was a boy of 12 I learned, as did all of you, how Oscar Palacio Jr., patriot, statesman, ambassador to seven different nations throughout an exemplary diplomatic career that included postings in Japan, Bolivia and finally, before Don Oscar was recalled to the capital to serve the first of three terms in senate (as senior member of the fifth district), Chad, how he singlehandedly enforced his will in the taking of the Treasury Building. Who led the charge when defeat seemed imminent? Who galloped towards the enemy when others were turning to flee the bloody field? He is the saviour of our country; more, he is the saviour of my country.

How can we now fail he who failed us never?

Now, when certain of our poets and philosophers are attacking his legacy, saying things so scandalous I hesitate to repeat them, now is the time when all patriots must fight for Oscar Palacio Jr. We must fight with the same ferocity that he once fought for us. This is why I discuss him now.

I do not favour, as some of our nation's young poets and new philosophers have lately suggested in the opinion columns of certain newspapers, the exhumation of Oscar Palacio Jr.'s corpse. What has laid undisturbed beneath the soil for 123 years this past February, has no obligation to answer the caprice of the curiosity of men who could not mount an ass in a bathhouse - pardon my French, I forget there are ladies here present and, while we are thinking about these, the mothers and daughters of our Republic, I raise my glass to you in a toast: health, happiness and harmony to you and yours - such men could never rush headlong into steely mouths of fire, astride a charging beast no more than I could stand idly by, on this the National Day of the Patriots, while the memory of one of this country's most resplendent and effulgent heroes is sullied. And for what? Was Oscar Palacio Jr., Minister of War during our country's finest hour, when our Maritime rights and our mineral wealth was secured against the incursions of foreign invaders, thereby preserving it for our grandchildren and our grandchildren's grandchildren, was such a man as he other than who he said he was? Let us consider.

Have you seen the oil painting? Of course you have. All patriots have seen it. It hangs on the second floor of our national museum, where the union of the twin spiral staircases signifies the union of our native tribes and our European saviours. Some of our modern painters say this is a derivative work. They scoff at it, call it a third-rate imitation of second-rate Dutchmen. I say how can any painting on such a scale, portraying the moment when our national identity was forged in the blood of our patriots and the iron of our heroism, be anything less than magnificent? Go, observe, tell me - and tell the memory of Oscar Palacio Jr. - if you think me wrong. Have you seen the saber Oscar Palacio Jr. waves at the men to his rear, as his stallion leaps a cowering Spanish battery? Have you stopped to observe the Catalan cowards? Have you seen how the flashing of the steel in the eyes of Don Oscar caused more grievous wounds to the hearts of the European tyrants than did all of their steel and all of their fire in the hearts of our patriots, even the 286 who died in that terrible struggle, most of them screaming, we are told, in voices so agonized their pitch sounded even above the gunfire, even above the crashing of the waves on the beaches beyond them? On this, the Feast Day of National Independence, we remember you who fell. I wonder, do we remember why?

These men died for us. Yes! Nonetheless, they live forever in the blood of our people. They live also in their likenesses, fashioned in poolside monuments across our bountiful country. As you may or may not know, it was Oscar Palacio Jr. who implemented this program during a largely unheralded role - immediately prior to accepting a lifelong position as Chief Justice of the Federal Reserve and Appellate Court, as Minister of Patriotism and Aquatics. As a child, I bathed every Saturday in the 173rd national pool, in the second city of our fifth district's primary seaside facility. What joy I felt as I backstroked in the shade cast by the Capricorn sun and the shadows of the statue of patriot horseman Ignacio Suazo Iguirre, about whom little is known other than the nature of his fatality: A gold bar entered his left temple and exited, halfway through his right.

For those who have not yet had the pleasure of visiting the fifth district I want to assure you this was not how he was immortalized. Of course not. His statue is of him mounted and charging, the correct posture for all patriots. As all schoolchildren know, a group of Royal Fusiliers operating from behind the steel doors of the treasury itself had grown low on ammunition. Insolent and impish, as so many of their regiment were in this era of Spanish history, they shouted out to our charging three hundred and fifty, requesting the loan of some ammunition. Ridiculous! Naturally, our heroes did not answer. The Spaniards then proceeded to load their cannons with the contents of the safe. The initial hail of gold bars killed three. Much more fatal was the subsequent salvo of silver ten pieces, for the silver was poisonous. Maybe it is good to be born with a silver spoon in your mouth. It is not good to die with a muzzle load of silver coins in your intestinal cavity.

Ignacio Suazo Iguirre, in your shadow - and that of the high diving board - I became a man and to you I raise my glass. May a temple filled with gold be your resting place with God, who favoured us on that immortal day in the July of our independence. Thanks to the wisdom of Oscar Palacio Jr. and his patriotic swimming pools I understand that strength comes from the endurance of healthy lungs, the power of well-toned muscle and allegiance in perpetuity to our founding fathers.

I have heard those who favour exhumation say that the past is a foreign country. Nonsense. Peru is a foreign country. Bolivia? Definitely. I have never seen a passport bearing a customs stamp from The Past. The past is where we are great and in our devotion to it, our remembrance of it, this is where we become greater still. I do not understand metaphysics. I am amongst friends so I may as well admit this: I do not even understand physics. How is it possible, our poets and our philosophers say, for a man so short to have, as he and the history books claim, descended from pure Castilian blood? They say that no man from that country - without physical deformity or musculature and skeletal aberration - has ever stood less than 5 foot 6, 5 foot 7. When I read this sort of nonsense in the editorial pages of our so-called best newspapers I have to shake my head in sorrow.

What, I say? Oscar Palacio Jr. is no longer a patriot because he stood shorter than the men he killed by the dozen? Let us not forget that this short patriot killed, not because he suffered from what I have even heard some people refer to as "little man syndrome." No. Oscar Palacio Jr. killed so that all of us may enjoy the freedom we squander by doubting and lamenting the qualities of humanity that gave us the freedom to indulge ourselves in such infelicitous speculation. I do not say we should not have such freedom.

Bash your head against brick walls. Lie in bed all day staring at your ceiling. Scratch the weak chin on your pallid face. Play your guitar, guitar player. To me, it matters not. I will be on the verandah with my grandchildren and my cafecito. The sun, when it sets, will warm me all the more because I know that when it rises, I, and those like me, those who forbid the peril of travel to the recesses of the mind, will still be here. And one day, as surely as Oscar Palacio Jr. grew his own facial hair and did not paint his mustache on with charcoal and boot black, as some of these same unfortunate yet inevitable detritus of democracy now insinuate, men who are too complex to enjoy the simple pleasures of life, that Oscar Palacio Jr.'s heroic charge made possible, will not.

Oscar Palacio Jr. was the originator of the Izquetoluche Accord. Without this accord, we have no economy. Without this accord we are not even a country. As you know, the Izquetoluche Accord offered the southern treaty tribes one wooden bungalow per nine-person family unit plus free and compulsory education to all males between the ages of five and fifteen. This education was conducted at immaculate and centralized educational housing facilities in two modern and antiseptic locations, places easily accessible by rail. By the way, and since we are on the subject, our rail system exists, of course, because of the coastal mesa route earlier devised by Oscar Palacio Jr. who served a two-year term as special steam engine consultant appointed to the Deputy Minister of Transportation's office - an interim position. We offered our loyal native tribes all of this in exchange for a tract of land consisting of 30 million hectares of evergreen forest. There are some who say this deal was a swindle. To people like this what use are words? Roll your eyes and roll your "r"s as you call them ridiculous, a single word before you show them your back.

This deal made us a country. It gave us goods to export. It gave us funds with which to build. It made us who we are. Naturally, as all of us who have worn the wool from the sheep raised in our supple south or dined on the succulent lamb that is now exported to all corners of the world and served in the finest restaurants anyone cares to name, knows, the cultivation of this land exceeded the skill and knowledge of these treaty Indians. And on this, our national day of Feast, let us drink to our native brothers and sisters, who so generously share their ancestral lands with us. Marvelous people. We also salute you German immigrants. In the hands of willing German immigrants our unproductive southern forests were razed in a matter of decades. Our national herds of sheep are second only, I understand, to New Zealand. I say, why stop there?

Now the same people, who tell us The Izquetoluche Accord was nothing more than thievery, have another idea. They have proposed the great experiment; the exhumation. Our poets and philosophers tell us there is the possibility that this national hero was himself a member of one of the southern treaty Indian tribes. Before we can reply they insist that this is only a possibility. Be calm they say, as though they are talking to slow schoolchildren, as though what they are saying is not an insult to everything we, as a people, hold dear.

To quell our outrage they tell us all of this is only in the interest of science. They tell us the accomplishments of Oscar Palacio Jr. can never be diminished. Let science have its day. They say to us, what are you so afraid of? If you are sure you are right, why not relax in tranquility? They tell us we can eliminate this possibility easily by simply agreeing to the exhumation of his corpse.

More likely, they say to us in soothing voices, that he suffered from a rare disease. Lumbago. I don't know. Growth stunted from smallpox, a type of peninsular measles. They tell us the great Patriot's greatest achievement could well be yet to come. I have heard - and I know many of you have as well - a certain senator say Oscar Palacio Jr. would, were he alive and with us today, lead the charge on the occult areas of science the same way he led the three hundred and fifty patriots in the July siege on the treasury in the year of our independence. I know why they say this. I know what they want. Already they have said it.
These days when people hear the name Oscar Palacio Jr. now, they stop and they wonder.

Why are they doing this? Journalists, intellectuals, artists. Leave us alone! Oscar Palacio Jr. is Oscar Palacio Jr. That's it! Case closed. Isn't it enough that they have ruined the future with their free love and their tight trousers? Now they want to ruin the past too? No, I say that far and no further. They tell us shocking things. Historians tell us they've been investigating. They tell us things no good person should think much less believe. They tell us what? I don't want to say! But we've all seen the papers. We all know the absurd allegations, the depths of our new national depravity. They tell us that Oscar Palacio Jr. was not a man. They tell us that he was a woman dressed like a man!

Shocking! But it doesn't stop there. Scientists tell us Oscar Palacio Jr.'s DNA sequencing is that of a native woman. Literary detectives tell us of new discoveries in the archival fonds of Oscar Palacio Sr. They tell us things that -look at me! I'm shaking before you! I'm yelling! I'm sorry. Let me drink some water.

There. Please. This is a holiday. We will continue this celebration deep into the night. But these charges upon my heart lay heavy. I must speak my mind even though, as you can see, my prepared notes lie unused before me and I speak from a troubled place. Our men of letters say they have evidence of what? Of a love affair between Oscar Palacio Sr. and the woman who called herself Oscar Palacio Jr.!

So let me get this straight.

They think: was his name really Sancha Watupe? Was he really a her? Was Oscar Palacio Jr., at the time of the siege of The Treasury Building, really a fifteen-year-old Indian girl, orphaned by Oscar Palacio Sr. whose "son" she became? Was the character of Oscar Palacio Jr. a gift bestowed as mere redress for the old man's regret? Did the old man adopt this girl as his son, later his mistress?

All of this they say because Oscar Palacio Jr. was short and he was brave. I say to you, any of you with short sons, feed them beef and stretch them out on a rack at night before you let them fall asleep. Otherwise, my God! Next thing you know, to be a man will no longer be a question of what side you dress on, it will become a question of what size your suit is and if you say smaller than 36 may God help you. Long haired metaphysicians you have never met will suckle at your breast and call you mama.

Let Sancha Watupe lie where she is. Let Oscar Palacio Jr. charge forever atop the twin staircases of our national gallery and let the past alone. Nothing you unearth can change this. Nothing I can say to you here can stop them from failing to realize that we war not with our history but with the ideas of a new world that wants to prevent us from preparing against the defeats of regret, the funeral pyre of introspection. They say our civilization is built on cruelty, injustice and greed. They say that if Oscar Palacio Jr. can be proven to be Sancha Watupe a true national reconciliation can begin.

I say, what national reconciliation? We came to these parts long ago to build new worlds in the image of the old. The cost was sometimes terrible, yes. But do we tarnish the legacies of those who fought so that we no longer must? We, who have everything, do not have this: the right to judge those whose steel gave us such luxury. What, after all, will the inculcation of guilt give to those whose world we ended? Like the immortal oils capturing Oscar Palacio Jr., we must charge and charge forever. I said I do not want to dwell on Oscar Palacio Jr, and on what every schoolchildren knows and indeed I do not. I want just to ask this: why did he stand in boots filled with women's hair?

Like every true patriot, as I grew older, I reflected on this hair, on the hair of the daughters of our nation stuffed in our greatest patriot's boots. I came to understand that, in all likelihood, they were trophies, snippets from the bordello. And why not? We know the history of our nation. We know the passionate blood of our men; we understand - do we not? - that patriots will seek consolation in the arms of the angels; and which nation's women are more angelic than our own? I say this, having just returned from a trip to the North. In all confidence, I want to tell you - Venezuela the answer is not.

But what if what they say is true? I know it is not, for how could a 5'1 Indian woman rise to our nation's very cabinet, as of course Oscar Palacio Jr. did. For two coalition governments, stretching over ten years, he served. Wouldn't a woman have raised some attention in the parliamentary water closet? What they say is not practical. How did she bind her breasts? Why did not our most esteemed national morticians advise us earlier that Oscar Palacio Jr. was not, in the strictest technical sense, biologically a man? Such a series of omissions would point to a conspiracy no patriot can even allow himself to consider. But if it were true - I know, brothers, I know sisters, remain tranquil, indulge me for one brief moment - if it were true, what would it mean?

Why did Sancha Watupe collect the hair of women? Already the curious men have removed this hair from its permanent place behind armoured glass in the national museum and have subjected it to the most rigorous of microscopic examination. Already they are saying in its molecular structure, all of it is hair belonging to the known DNA sequences - listen to me! Talking about things I do not understand but which I am told have become essential areas of knowledge for the modern man; next, I suppose, I will be discussing with you space travel and laws of nuclear fission, words I know only from the dictionary and certain newspapers - they tell us now that this hair belongs, every last strand, to the same tribe they say Sancha Watupe belonged to. Sancha Watupe - what were you doing with all that hair?

Was it all just padding? Or was it mementoes of the women in your village slaughtered in the raid of pillage led by your surrogate father Oscar Palacio Sr.? You couldn't have loved these women, whose hair you took. If you did, wouldn't you have had to turn your steed and fight against those who did this to them, to you, the same thing they'd now taught you to do to others with whom you had no particular quarrel?

Sancha Watupe you are always Oscar Palacio Jr. and you are forever a patriot, a hero and a never-ending instructor to the future of the great nation you, with the grace of God, called into being. The hair in your boots was the locks you could never wear. You saw that those who did were not allowed to live; and you, Oscar Palacio Jr., knew the great lesson of this new world, that life at any cost, is better than no life at all.

If you are who they say you are, then your life remains to us the most valuable lesson of all. In a strange and defenseless land we ended your world. In our new world, we built markets for foreign men upon whom we'd later turn arms. We learned that to loathe everything we once were and to embrace everything we've become is practical and patriotic. Like you, Oscar Palacio Jr., horseman of the July uprising and like the hair in your boots, memory of the past and absence of all regret, defines who we are.

Patriots, your glasses, raise them high. Oscar Palacio Jr. and the 350 horseman of the July uprising of our independence.

Glory! Steel! Onward!

The Office of the Publisher in Residence at Okanagan College

Robert MacDonald is well known in the Okanagan for the active role he has taken in promoting the arts and the creative sector. As a highly-rated editor and designer, a publisher and promoter of books and magazines, the founder and director of the Okanagan Institute, and an advisor and mentor to a number of individuals, organizations and businesses, he has demonstrated a solid commitment to the creative community throughout the Okanagan. His extensive international experience as a publisher and marketer over his 30 year career in the creative industries, and his 15 years as director of the Publishing Workshops at the University of Toronto and the Banff Centre, make him ideally suited to support a wide variety of existing and emerging College initiatives.

The Creative Industries

Okanagan College has long recognized the critical importance of the creative industries - and specifically the literary and communications arts - to the College and in the communities it serves. The creative industries are moving from the margins to the mainstream of our society. The digital age has fostered huge opportunities for creative business. It has reduced costs, given birth to new tools, enabled new business models, facilitated new forms of creative collaboration and generated a new co-creation dynamic between creator and consumer.

Projects in Progress

» The Okanagan Institute: now more than 2 years old, the programs and services of the Institute - including its publications and Express series of public presentations - are reaching a growing audience in the Okanagan and generating considerable interest across a broad spectrum of issues and initiatives in the creative sector.

To join the discussion: www.okanaganinstitute.com

» The Ryga Initiative (outlined in detail in the previous issue of this newsletter): preparations are underway for the annual George Ryga Week in November and the launch of the Ryga: A Journal of Provocations - our quarterly literary journal.

For complete details and schedule of events: www.ryga.ca

» Works: we are developing a consumer magazine in collaboration with the Foundation, Alumni Affairs, Public Affairs and others that is intended to present the compelling case for thought and community leadership at the College.

For a preliminary look under the lid: www.ocworks.ca

Projects Under Review

» Internships and practicums: we are seeking applications from writing and business students for a number of opportunities related to our current and future projects.

» Culture and creative collaborations: we are working with a number of community groups exploring projects and services that will benefit the creative economy of the Okanagan..

We welcome enquiries from all members of the College fraternity regarding collaborative projects and opportunities.

Contact: Robert MacDonald, 250.870.2690, rmacdonald@okanagan.bc.ca

Number 2, November 2009. ISSN 1920-5848

Copyright © 2009 Okanagan College. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the publisher.
Published in association with the Okanagan Institute.