Canada’s Top 10 Digital Thinkers?

How about David George-Cosh? He is the only tech writer from Canada with any kind of international name recognition !

Reading this list of Canadians and the recent list of top influencers in Quebec and I can’t avoid the feeling that there is really two solitudes in Canada, if you don’t blog in english you are not part of Canadian lists… and if you blog in english you are potentially only marginal for some Quebecers.

Anyhow, might still try to contribute some names, but that was my first reaction, à froid.

Mathew Ingram should be on the list. Especially as it relates to the evolution of pay for content in all kinds of industries (including journalism) and the rise of social media.

Mitch Joel
Hugh McGuire
Julien Smith
Sebastien Provencher

If I liked lists and if I believed in them (heh heh), I would suggest Martin Lessard, Miriam Verburg, Nora from Spark (CBC), Clément Laberge and Mario Asselin.

@hugh : you are right. Anyway I should not complaint and just propose grat thinkers I can think of… I would add (some of these are good friends too):

* John Husband (we would not name himself)
* Bruno Boutot (mediamachina – soon)
* Sébastien Provencher (my praized colleague)
* Cory Doctorow (needs no intro)
* Mark Evans (always covers the canadian perspective of tech news)
* René Barsalo (awesome stuff happening at SAT)
* Evan Prodromou (I think he’s Canadian now)
* Hugh McGuire (yep)
* Sébastien Paquet (back to blogging!)
* Aaron Straup Cope (papergeek and flickrite)
* Michael Lenczner (of ISF fame, entre autre)
* Patrick Tanguay (meta connector of people and ideas)
* Yannick Gélinas (but I’m really biased)
* Martine Gingras (altought she’s less into thinking out loud about big ideas these days)
* Sharon Hackett
* Stéphane Couture

That’s a short list from the top of my head, might come back to add some. My criteria was “did they made me think or re-think more/better/differently about digital media / the internet.

Guys, thank you for everything, but I’m a journalist, that’s it, that’s all. Please, take me off those lists.

But I’ll vote for René Barsalo, Jon Husband, Michel Cartier, Seb Paquet, Evan, Carole Guévin (NetDiver), Boris Anthony, Karl Dubost, and Philippe “motor mouth” Le Roux. ;-)

And Clément Laberge…

@Michel journalist can’t be thinkers?

Mine would be (I choose outside the Sylvain’s list and outside Qc as francophone):
- George Siemens Sask. (http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/ )
- Jacques Cool N.B. (http://zecool.blogspot.com/ )
- Roberto Gauvin N.B. (http://cahm.elg.ca/ )
- Alec Couros Sask. (http://educationaltechnology.ca/couros/ )
- Dave Pollard Ont. (http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/ )
- Konrad Glogowski Ont. (http://www.teachandlearn.ca/blog/ )
- Stephen Downes N.B. (http://www.downes.ca/ )

I’ll assume we’re talking about people who live in Canada… my unordered list:

Hugh McGuire, Jevon MacDonald, Hassan Masum, Michael Nielsen, Evan Prodromou, Karl Dubost, Michael Geist, Clément Laberge, Sylvain Carle, Roberto Gauvin, Mario Asselin, Michael Lenczner, Mitch Joel, Martin Lessard, Stephen Downes.

Hence, Paquet’s Law: of If you first or last name starts with M, in you have a great future ahead of you as a digital thinker.

seems like one solitude, with a penis.

+ George Siemens

I don’t like lists like this but :-)…
There seems to be no representation of West Coast people here (other than Jon Husband, who I vote for as well)

Off the top of my head and in no order since I have no idea what you mean by “digital thinker”, here are some West Coast digital thinkers:
Rebecca Bollwitt
Karen Fung
Yule Heibel
Alexandra Samuel
Megan Cole
Boris Mann
Kris Krug
Roland Tanglao
Tris Hussey

West coast too: Chris Corrigan

I second Chris Corrigan!
Another Bowen Islander: Peter Rawsthorne

Great folks in this list. Do all digital thinkers have to be bloggers? I went with Mike (Ile Sans Fil +) and Jen (Visible Government) to Darin Barney’s talk at the CCA last night (http://www.mcgill.ca/ahcs/faculty/barney/). He’s amazing and has some important critiques and insights re technology. Along the lines of Ursula Franklin. (Who I learned about via Mark Surman — who should for sure for sure be added to this list too.)

I was going to list those from above who I would nominate. But looks too much like a list of my friends ;)

I would like to add Brett Gaylor though and Jennifer Bell and Kate Raynes-Goldie.

Okay one more I forgot before:

Tracey Lauriault
https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Lauriault

That access to data and maps combo is just soooo hot.

Anne Galloway: http://purselipsquarejaw.org/blog_archive.html

I forgot to add Sylvain Carle, Mario Asselin, Chris Corrigan, George Siemens, Stephen Downes, Seb Pacquet, Cory Doctorow, Bruno Boutot, Martin Lessard, Michelle Blanc … there’s so many awesome thinkers !

Darrin Barney, Mark Federman, Kate Tyrgovac, Sue Gardner (in the USA with Wikipedia), Susie Gardner, Yule Heibel, Jim Harris, Kris Krug, Boris Mann, Roland Tanglao, Daniel Levitin, Darren Barefoot, Alexandra Samuel, Richhard Worzel, Len Brody … there’s so many, there’s no “top”, really … everyone has elements and aspects of the overall picture, and we’re all learning as we go.

Jon Husband
Evan Prodromou
Dick Hardt
Boris Mann
Stephen Downes
Seb Paquet
Kris Krug
Leonard Brody
pk
Don Tapscott

I agree with many of those listed, and would add Leila Boujnane http://ideeinc.com/about/leila-boujnane

Nice list. I would add Maggie Fox (http://socialmediagroup.com/), David Feldt (http://blog.davidfeldt.com/) and Marcel LeBrun (http://www.mediaphilosopher.com/)

I don’t know who 75% of the people on these lists are – I guess I have some homework to do.

A scholar who is quite a bit ahead of the curve is William J. Turkel.

respect your forefathers.

Marshall McLuhan
Derrick DeKerkhove

(Jon, thank you for your vote. ;)

Boris, excellent additions. :-)

woops, and:

Steve Mann
(privacy, copyright, journalism, awareness, information acquisition and storage and retrieval. He not only has thought about it all, taught about it all, published about it all, but has built close-to-the-body hardware and software implementations of it all. nec plus ultra++)

In no particular order, Michael Geist, Marshall McLuhan, Cory Doctorow, Tara Hunt, Seb Paquet, Steve Mann all leap to mind.

What are digital thinkers? Why do we have to stop at ten? In addition to those above, here are names of people forging Canada’s lead role in online thought: Jutta Teveranus, Dave Cormier, Dean Shareski, Brian Lamb, D’Arcy Norman, Scott Leslie, Paul Stacey, Murray Goldbeg, Terry Anderson, Rory McGreal, Tony Bates, Harold Jarche, Tim Bray, Wayne Hodgins, and many many more

Dick Hardt++, Tim Bray++, Brian Lamb++, D’Arcy Norman++

Would love if someone converted this into an OPML file. :-)

Good idea, Alec. See? That’s the kind of thinking we need. Are you going to post it on your site when you’re done with it? A trackback would be nice so we can all find it. :-)

Please if you create such a list and distribute it as OPML, remove me from the list. (Categories and lists create expectations from people. It focuses the attention on a few when the richness is in the voice of every individuals. Fame creates walls.)

Thanks for the understanding.

Ditto.
Silliness.

As a matter of fact, such list of names will represent a subset of people we read (or know of). Bilinguale people will surely have a wider pool to choose from (as I think was what Sylvain meant –and as Jon showed quite clearly in his choice).

Seems to me always as hazardous task to narrow it down to a short list of ten (I admire ones who deal with such challenge) whithout falling into some “representation issue” (hey you forgot Nunavut! Hey where are the albinos?).

For sure spanish and innu speaking thinkers in Canada won’t show up in my list, not because there aren’t good, but I can read them. I apologize in advance.

Seb Paquet
Houssein Ben-Ameur (Hou-Hou blog)
Mario Asselin (Mario Tout de Go)
Jean-Michel Salaün (UdeM)
Gaël Laliberte (paquerettes.wordpress.com)
Clément Laberge (Remolino)
François Guité (relief)
Mitch Joel
Jon Husban
Michael Giest
Sébastien Provencher
Sylvain Carle
Dave Pollard
Stephen Downes
et j’en oublie sûrement…

Let’s list the first top 100 000 and we’ll have a more representative list to start with ;-)

+Alain Désilets

Robin Millette (who knows even more than he shows :)

Hugh, about your “digital thinkers?” def, I guess we’ll all realize pretty soon this would sounds ackward: is “digital stuff” means publishing online? being not on dead tree or old airwaves? Seams to me those hard core trad birds would be harder and harder to find as all goes digital.

respect your forefathers.

Marshall McLuhan
Derrick DeKerkhove

What Boris said !

How can I have overlooked Harold Jarche ? One of the clearest, most avant-garde-while-pragmatic thinkers and doers I know.