Twas a funky week in Ottawa. It ended with kids dancing around a maypole in the backyard of the Swedish Ambassador's residence. But that's not what this post is about. My Thursday and Friday led me to two different Department of National Defence HQ's for very different albeit CDSN-related purposes.
On Thursday, I met a couple of folks from Valens, an American-based simulation firm, David and Matt, at the entrance to the downtown DND HQ, as they had a grant to do an environmental/climate change simulation. My role was perhaps translator from American to Canadian and back and forth (disclosure: a rare example of my getting paid as a consultant). The simulation was of three towns in northern Ontario vying for a new investment by a firm while facing big decisions about the future of the local nuclear power plant and then threat of forest fires. The Department of National Defence was involved in a couple of ways--whether/how to build a new base while also facing demands for domestic emergency ops. The four teams really got into it, and the Valens people did a terrific job of handling the moves while making the game engaging and educational. The light was pretty bright so my pics aren't great, but here's an example of how they reported the various moves:
I bumped into a couple of former NPSIA students including one who took my zoom class during the height of the pandemic. Glad to see these folks employed and pretty happy with where they are.
I followed up that session with the CDSN HQ's annual lunch where I gush about how wonderful the team is. And I mean it. The team here in Ottawa is small but mighty. Melissa, who joined me at the start of this adventure, has done such a great job of not just doing the comms stuff (her original role), but managing the rest of the team and engaging our partners and contributors. Sherry, who handles our accounting/reimbursing stuff as well as our event planning, joined us about a year and a half ago, and my stress level has plummeted. These two communicate so well together that I really don't put much time into managing the team--a big change from the first few years of CDSN-ing. Racheal has been our RA for several years now, and will be moving to fieldwork next winter. She has done a great job of preparing us for the podcasts and for putting together most of our reports. Morad couldn't make it, but he has been helpful in our reports. Ayshia was been a terrific RA for us and is now moving onto medical school. Jakob couldn't make it, but his RA work was also great. A key part of CDSN-ing is working with students, channeling their enthusiasm (some might accuse us of vampirism), connecting them to our network, and maybe providing a bit of professionalization along the way.
On Friday, Melissa and I headed over to the other DND headquarters out in Carling. It feels like a combo of airport (wide hallways) and university campus (with geese as the primary threat). We first met our new Visiting Defence Fellow Colonel Nick Roby. We didn't get a chance to fete our outgoing VDF Brigadier General Marie-Christine Harvey, who did such a great job of co-hosting our French podcast: Conseils de Sécurité.
We scheduled this meeting because we were already going to be at this HQ for a presentation of research that JC Boucher, Charlotte Duval-Lantoine, Lynne Gouliquer, and I have done on whether scandals about discrimination in the Canadian military affect public trust in the CAF, support for defence spending, and support for friends and family to join the military. We find, not surprisingly, that, yes, bad news about the military weakens trust, undermines support for defence spending, and discourages recruitment. This was our second of three presentations to the military: first to the command responsible for culture change, second this week to the military personnel analysis group, and next month to the public affairs folks. As these folks at DGMPRA are mostly social scientists, they had very good questions to ask about our methods and findings and possible extensions. We are nearly finished with revising the paper and hope to submit it soon to a civ-mil journal near you.
And to finish off the week, I went to the Nordic Midsommer event at the Swedish Ambassador's residence. It was the most kid-friendly event at any embassy that I can recall with games, dancing around the maypole to silly songs, and, yes, ice cream and cake. I bumped into some folks (including one of the former NPSIA students I had met the day before) that I knew and met some new folks (I still suck at big events like these where I am surrounded by strangers). The sad news is that the Norwegian ambassador died last week. The Swedish ambassador invoked her spirit and encouraged us to enjoy the festivities as that is what she would have wanted. So:
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