Increasingly, innovative leaders see empathy as a critical and foundational skill, allowing people to effectively spot problems and advance ideas that are invisible in traditional hierarchical structures. In particular, as rules are in flux, as people move fluidly in and between formerly homogenous groups, cultures, and societies, and as power is shared by all, every person needs an even higher level of empathetic skill in order to thrive. We forsee a need for applied empathy—the ability to understand what other people are feeling and to act in response in a way that avoids harm and contributes to positive change. While exploring why empathy is now more critical than ever, this session will explore:
The field of news, journalism and access to media information is in a major transformation. We are, slowly but surely, evolving into a everyone-a-publisher world, one that allows people around the world to engage freely and powerfully with information to advance their own lives and society. Citizens are coming into the professional field, changing the composition of newsrooms to change what is reported and how. We are looking at a different way of understanding citizenship--one where efficient access to quality knowledge, freedom of press and expression and the right to privacy and security of information-- become key to understanding who is or isn't a 'knowledge' citizen.
How are we mapping this change in the way citizens consume and share news? And what ultimately is born of this awareness-creation process? What steps do we need to take to ensure such a world comes to pass and who are going to be the stakeholders of this process? And most importantly, how is the role of the citizen, within considerable limits of privacy, security and inclusivity, going to evolve in this information economy?
Over the last few years, we are seeing new actors complementing the efforts of social entrepreneurs. They are bringing new perspectives from different bodies of knowledge - psychology, design thinking and sciences to catalyze change. In some cases, they challenge prevailing approaches and in others they are bringing greater efficiencies to achieving scale and impact. The citizen sector is now garnering new allies – resulting is greater inter-disciplinary thinking and collaboration. Bringing together these new actors and social entrepreneurs, this session will discuss: