It has been a delightfully interesting—and busy—few weeks for Matt and the Lessons Learned team! Unfortunately, this has put us a little bit behind on our regular updates. Read on for a roundup of events past and posts to come.
Firstly, and most importantly, on February 23 and 24 we delivered our first full-scale professional development course. This was delivered for free to students of York University in Toronto, in collaboration with the Centre for Refugee Studies Student Caucus. The course was a resounding success: participants were excited, engaged, and learning. A series of reflections on the event will follow shortly.
In the past month, I attended the Connections North conference at McGill University, hosted by Prof. Rex Brynen and featuring simulation and serious gaming luminaries such as Jim Wallman (Stone Paper Scissors) and Brian Train (GMT). Conference attendees and interested students also participated in a semi-serious “megagame” simulating the progression of an epidemic disease across the United States border into the Canadian province of Ontario—“semi-serious” in that the epidemic happened to closely resemble a zombie horde.
Recently, I was invited to join a pilot “matrix game” exercise on global health and security, organized for Global Affairs Canada by their Foreign Policy Research and Foresight Division and Defence Research and Development Canada. The exercise explored the utility of matrix games as policy development tools as opposed to tools for training and learning.
Updates on the above, as well as a few more exciting developments, will be forthcoming—keep watching this space!