For three days I have attended the annual Engineers Without Borders conference where 600 student and professional chapter members were probing the challenges of effective international development and the continued growth of EWB. Unlike a typical cheerleader conferences, the folks at EWB actively pursue the limits and limitations of their efforts. They promote Fair Trade as a strategic direction by spending Thursday evening on the streets of Toronto talking to thousands of commuters while inviting vocal opponents to speak at the conference. Every breakout session is at least two-thirds participant workshop rather than speaker monologue. Their founders & co-CEOs ask "where are we going" and literally set flame to their published mission statement without an immediate roll out of a replacement solution and encourage a decentralized analysis of future direction.
World leading physicist and Perimeter Institute director Neil Turuk gave the Gala dinner talk about his African Institute for Mathematical Sciences and Jim Balsillie opened Friday by suggesting EWB take advantage of his Centre for International Governance Innovation's IGLOO information sharing platform. Roy Steiner, Deputy Director of the Gates Foundation opened Thursday with a 45 minute talk but stayed an extra day to gather data from EWB's oversea volunteers.
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