About

Welcome to my blog!

Right now I am on the downward slope as a PhD student at the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Regina Campus. My supervisor is Kathleen McNutt and I am looking at the ways in which social media are effecting decision-making in governments. This work includes more historical & policy analysis as well as quantitative social network analysis including a good amount of code development in R and Python.

Some of the things that I am most proud of include being a founder of Podcamp Halifax, which has been going on steady since 2009 and helping to organize a yarn bomb for the ‘love tree’ as part of the consultations for the Halifax Central Library. I talk about it at a TedX talk.

Ryan Deschamps’s past as a librarian included a Director of Public Services position at the Regina Public Library in Regina Saskatchewan and e-Learning Manager at the Halifax Public Libraries in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

He was the first graduate of Dalhousie Universities combined MPA/MLIS program and won the Louis Vagianos Medal “awarded to a graduating student who combines the capacity for blending originality with practical thinking and the courage to seek solutions to professional problems outside the mainstream.”   I like to think that describes me — practical, yet innovative; thinking outside the box, so that the stuff inside the box gets better.   That sort of thing.

His main interests include technology, ethics, public service and education.