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Louise Merlihan

Louise Merlihan
An experienced facilitator, Louise has been designing and supporting local and national communities of learning since 1997. She is currently working as a Training Program Manager at Communitech in Kitchener, Ontario.

Recent Posts

Technology and Community Engagement

Posted by Louise Merlihan on November 27, 2015

Fifteen years ago, there was no easy way for large sections of the community to share their opinion without calling a meeting, voting, or going door-to-door. The terms "social media" or "smartphone" weren't part of our vernacular, largely because they didn't yet exist. The first Blackberry smartphone was introduced to the market in 2003 and the first iPhone was released in 2007. Facebook was launched in a college dorm room in 2004, while YouTube arrived in 2005 and Twitter just one year later in 2006.

Today, our smartphones, tablets, wearable technology and the apps they run connect us to the cloud and to each other in ways few would have imagined just 15 years ago.

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A Call for Movement Building

Posted by Louise Merlihan on September 3, 2015

Creating a healthy, humane world will require more than new organizational designs, writes Hildy Gottlieb in a recent Stanford Social Innovation Review article, Building Movements, Not Organizations. It will take rethinking the nature of organizations entirely.

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Field Guide to Human-Centered Design

Posted by Louise Merlihan on June 4, 2015

Human­centered design is the application of design thinking to some of our most complex social problems, starting with the people you're trying to impact and ending with creative new solutions that meet their needs. While it has elements of a typical design process, including brainstorming, prototyping, and testing, human­centered design begins with empathy.

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The Global Momentum of Collective Impact

Posted by Louise Merlihan on May 7, 2015

When a sufficient number of people adopt an innovation in a social system, the innovation can become self­sustaining and create further growth. Are we at that point of critical mass for Collective Impact?

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