Community Engagement

Michael spent some time with the people at ACE Byron Shire: Richard, Rob, Kirsty, Diane and Rex. Things were hectic, because most of them were also involved with the Online Facilitation course run by Frankie and Josie.

A good time of year for this crew, as many aspects of their project are coming together. Part one is all about getting their sustainable housing project online, while part two focusses on allowing the people in local government to more actively connect with local communities.

ACE Byron has been running their sustainable housing course for many years now, and this project was an opportunity to put the course online, to enable people to study and interact from many different locations. Rex put the course into a web site, while Rod used wikispaces to set up an interactive companion site, inviting trial course participants into collective discussion and publishing.

The local government in Byron Bay Shire has been wanting to interact more closely with their community around issues of concern. But there aren’t really any models of community engagement using online technologies.

Kirsty and the team from from ACE Byron spent time interviewing council members on topics of local environmental importance, then Rex put this audio online.
So then, to enable community interaction trials, Rod has installed some open source forum software known as “phpbb2″.

This software has just moved to version three, and Rod found this version much better than the earlier model. One requirement of the council, was the ability to moderate discussion very pro-actively; it looks like the new version will allow this.

The team has shown considerable good sense in this project, trialling each aspect before going public. They’ve had plenty of obstacles but due to good spirits and good teamwork, have managed to overcome all their difficulties so far.