Happy Birthday OpenCanada.org!
CIC President Jennifer Jeffs celebrates our site’s first birthday.

Past President of the Canadian International Council (CIC).
One year ago today we launched OpenCanada.org with pieces on the role of social media in the Arab Spring, the impact of Wikileaks on diplomacy, and good banking as good foreign policy. We created OpenCanada.org to be Canada’s hub for international affairs, an aggregator of the best content on international affairs, and a curator of great ideas from universities and think tanks across Canada and the world. This year has been incredible for OpenCanada.org, and I want to share some of our successes with you:
We have grown. One year after launching OpenCanada.org, we have published over 270 articles, 90 video interviews, curated 220 of the best international affairs content from around web, and gained more than 2,600 Twitter followers. We also launched the Weekly Dispatch newsletter to keep our readers and members up to date on OpenCanada.org content.
We have impact. Thanks to our amazing contributors, OpenCanada.org articles have been published by The Globe and Mail and Maclean’s, and our content has been featured on the websites of Foreign Policy Magazine and the Council on Foreign Relations, to name a few.
We engage in policy discussions. Earlier this month Minister John Baird answered tough questions from our readers about Canada’s foreign policy in a candid on-camera interview. Our e-conference on the future of the Canadian military, launched in partnership with the Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute, was far-reaching.
We have adapted. Thanks to feedback from our contributors and readers, we have experimented with new formats for online content, online events and online engagement. We look to our readership to continue providing us with feedback as we experiment with online media.
We continue to grow. We have a lot of plans in store for year two. This year we will be launching a site redesign, working on longer essays and reported pieces, hiring more editorial staff, entering into new publication partnerships, and funding a wide range of research at the intersection of technology and international affairs through the Global Media Lab, a project beginning this summer.
As we mark our first birthday and plan to break new ground before our next, we hope that you will make a donation to support OpenCanada.org. We are non-profit and non-partisan, and our success this year is thanks to generous donations from our supporters and friends.
Photo courtesy of Flickr