Cameron Burgess
On December 18, 2014 I visited Amman, Jordan, to participate in #DDX – a conference hosted by the Munathara Initiative. Founded by Belabbes Benkrada in response to the Arab Spring, Munathara is a Tunisian-based online and television debate forum that aims to foster the participation of youth, women and marginalized communities in Arab public discourse. The theme of this conference …
Love comes with a knife, not some shy question, and not with fears for its reputation! ~ Rumi Dear America, Almost five years ago, as the reality show you called the 2016 Presidential Primaries was kicking off, I wrote you a letter. I took a tone, granted — one I know that some parts of your body politic (especially progressives, who questioned my …
Cancel culture is often the selective application of outrage to an individuals’ actions in the absence of context. Rather than seeking to highlight behaviours that may be detrimental to the wellbeing of society, it conflates who people are with what people do, and uses mob mechanics to maximise suffering, rather than to empathise and educate. There is nothing ‘woke’ about …
— Want to cut to the chase? Click here to download the concept note — Each year hundreds of millions of people work in tens of millions of organisations, and deploy trillions of dollars in an effort to solve the most pressing challenges of our time. Yet despite this vast commitment there remains an estimated $50 trillion funding gap required to …
For about a decade now I’ve been opening my keynotes and workshops in pretty much the same way: “Hi, I’m Cameron, and you may not like everything I have to say – and that’s ok. In fact, by the time I’m done, you may not even like me, and that’s ok too. I’m not here to make friends, although I’m certainly …
There will be many words written about the election of Donald Trump over the coming hours and days, and I feel bound to add mine to the mix. The easiest response of all is despair. The much harder, yet more essential response, is to practise self-awareness, and to find out who is despairing. Compassion requires the willingness to feel another …
The business of change is brutal. At times it is glorious, uplifting and inspiring, certainly, but the real work, the work of solving the most pressing human challenges is arduous, heart-breaking and, at times, interminable. It is messy. It is tedious. It isn’t instagrammable, or quotable, and nor is it fit for Facebook. It is, more often than not, the …
Dear America, We need to talk. Actually, I need to talk. And I’d like you to show me how great you already are by sitting down, resisting the urge to interrupt and listening – I mean really listening. Listen like your life depends on it. Because even if you think it doesn’t, mine does — and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone. I …
Today is Martin Luther King Day. I woke up this morning to a feed full of inspiring quotes from a great man, most of which exhort tolerance, love, compassion, forbearance – the essential and gentler side of change. At this time, when racism, classism, religious fundamentalism, economic extremism, xenophobia and hatred for all that is not ‘us’ fills the airwaves, …
While living in Boulder in 2010, I was invited to guest-lecture at the University of Colorado on the intersection between social media and social good. My lecture, perhaps not surprisingly titled Do Something That Matters derided the infantile obsession displayed by many of the great new minds who were fiddling with intricate technologies of limited value while all about them …