Brisbane

Government 2.0 at Barcamp Brisbane

July 19, 2009 By Des Walsh

Yesterday, Saturday July 18, I spoke at Barcamp Brisbane on some impressions from the Public Sphere #2 event Government 2.0: Policy and Practice workshop held a few weeks ago in the Australian National Capital, Canberra and shared some thoughts about more local possibilities, especially at Queensland State Government level.

There is a two part video record, made on my Flip camera – the audio is poor, because I forgot to tell Steve who was filming that the camera needed to be closer to where I was standing. It is audible, just.

Click here to play the first of the two videos.
Click here to play the second of the two videos.

I have endeavoured to capture, in the notes that follow, the main points that came up during the session (i.e. you don’t need to watch the videos to get the gist .

At the Government 2.0 workshop in Canberra, Federal Government Ministers the Hon. Lindsay Tanner – Finance and Deregulation – and Queensland Senator The Hon. Joe Ludwig – Special Minister of State – launched the Government 2.0 Task Force, with a brief to report to Government by year’s end.

The Government 2.0 Task Force was up and running on the day of the workshop with its own blog and has a Twitter hashtag #gov2au. Chair Dr Nicholas Gruen spoke briefly at the workshop and gave every indication the Task Force would be very open to inputs.

In the period since the workshop in Canberra, people have been contributing, via wiki, to the development of a briefing paper to be submitted to the Task Force.

The Task Force is seeking written submissions to assist in the development of an issues paper: deadline is the start of business Monday 24th of August. There is a document on the Task Force site which includes detailed guidelines about submissions for the issues paper, and the current content of issues paper.

The Task Force has money

It will be able to fund initiatives and incentives which may achieve or demonstrate how to accomplish government 2.0 objectives.

New South Wales Government member and blogger Penny Sharpe MLC attended the Canberra event and is coordinating a NSW publicsphere event – Twitter hashtag #nswsphere

What about some Queensland demonstration or pilot projects?

In Brisbane yesterday I suggested it would make sense to have some State-specific focus in Queensland, on the issues being examined by the Task Force (and see the point above about the Task Force having money – although on reflection my thought bubble at the time that the Task Force might help fund a seminar in Qld should probably have copped a click on the Delete button: as a public servant I learned how quickly project funds could be swallowed up in funding seminars).

In terms of getting some action in Qld, I pointed to the presence on the Task Force of at least three people with significant Queensland connections in the IT/digital space, Professor Brian Fitzgerald, Dr Ian Reinecke and Dr David Solomon.

At least one other person present agreed with me that Professor Brian Fitzgerald would be an excellent first point of contact to discuss how best to proceed.

I suggested also that it would be great if the Queensland Government could be encouraged to get Senator Lundy and her adviser Pia Waugh, a prime mover for the Canberra event, to visit Queensland and share their experience at the national level.

I suggested too that it would be good to look at Brisbane City Council and the Government 2.0 issues at the level of local government.

Sharing the story

I mentioned too the question/challenge put to me by Senator Kate Lundy at the conclusion of my presentation in Canberra, asking how people – e.g. parliamentarians and public sector managers – not familiar with the technologies and processes could learn. I thought the suggestion at Barcamp to establish a kind of mentoring program was brilliant: the phrase “adopt a parliamentarian” might not gain traction, but I certainly liked the underlying idea.

I hope that covers the main points of background and foreground from the session yesterday. I welcome clarification, amplification, challenge etc by way of the comments function.

Hannah Suarez has posted a neat summary of her experience of Barcamp Brisbane yesterday.

Cool New Tool for Finding and Sharing Travel Information

May 29, 2009 By Des Walsh

Some cool people I know have produced a cool tool for creating short map links for your email, Twitter, social networks and blogs. aMAP.to is a tool to guide people to destinations with travel-related information for their trips.

If you have ever gone through the process of trying to send to someone, successfully, a link to a Google map, you will know that the process is, putting it politely, a nuisance. The URLs are just so long!

This for, instance, is the Google map for where I live

View Larger Map

This is the URL:

http://maps.google.com.au/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=-28.184858,153.544257&spn=0.038205,0.077248&z=14

I’m always concerned that, in transmitting a link like that, in an email or on a forum, it can get broken up and thus not work.

So up till now I’ve tended to use one of the standard URL shorteners, like TinyURL or SnipURL . So if I use, for example, TinyURL, that long URL comes out something like this: http://tinyurl.com/tweedhds

Which is ok, as far as it goes. But for the recipient it could be a link to any web page, not necessarily a map.

What if the shorter URL was more obviously a map link?

This is what the application aMAP.to provides.

How it works, basically, is that I go to the site, http://amap.to and enter the location I want. A Google map is produced and I can create a link, or links. For example, the long link above becomes, in the short version, http://amap.to/a3dqp I can also generate a longer link, more informative than either the source link from Google or the short version from aMAP.to, spelling out the street and street number, town/city, zip/post code, country. I can even create my own custom link (with a bit of extra code tacked on), such as http://amap.to/wheredeslives.._362g5

In the example here, it looks from the map as if I am living in or on the Tweed River. In fact, although I live on the shore of the Tweed River I don’t live on the river itself. Although there are some perfectly lovely houseboats nearby. Why it looks that way is that I’ve moved the red marker because I can’t show my exact address (long story, but it won’t show on Google) and if I put the marker closer to the house it comes up with a street number that’s not ours (and I don’t know who lives there).

Incidentally, the red marker impressed me, because I can’t see with the original Google map how to have a marker like that.

There is more to it than that. There is a huge amount of information loaded into the aMap.to tool, including over 140,000 hotels worldwide, some 200,000 Wikipedia pages with travel-related information.

For example, one of my favorite hotels, which I recommend whenever someone is looking for an excellent, not expensive hotel with free wifi, close to transport, clean, helpful staff etc etc, in New York City, is the Pod on E 51st St. In the past I’ve given people just the URL for the hotel. Now I can give them a customized map referenced URL with more information – and the map! Here it is: http://amap.to/podhotel_2m6mz (no liability, not responsible if you get a grumpy desk clerk etc etc etc).

aMap.to is a project of Social Horizon, a development team based in Brisbane, Australia. They are seriously smart, creative and passionate about what they do. And they’ve traveled a lot.

This is what they say about aMap.to:

We think that there is still a lot more that can be done to improve the way that people find and share travel information via the web and mobile devices. aMAP.to is the first of our tools that will help guide people to a destination, supported by travel related information that they may need to plan their journeys.

I like it. And not just because the people at Social Horizon are friends.

But they are nice people, with real smarts not just about tech things and worth talking to if you have a project you think they might be able to help with.

Filed Under: General, Social Media, Travel Tagged With: aMap.to, Australia, Brisbane, Google maps, map links, Social Horizon, Travel, travel information

Social Media Club Events Canberra, Gold Coast and Brisbane

January 15, 2009 By Des Walsh

Looks like Social Media Club is on the move in Australia.

I’m so excited!

In March last year I asked whether Brisbane, an hour and a half drive north of where I live on Australi’s east coast, was ready for a Social Media Club. .

Entering 2009 it is clear that Brisbane was ready: Social Media Club Brisbane has an event scheduled for next week (see below). But not just Brisbane.

Gold Coast, the region where I live, and the Australian National Capital city of Canberra are not just ready but launchingt their own Social Media Clubs.

My guess is that other Australian cities, including the major conurbations of Sydney and Melbourne, will join in sooner rather than later.

Social Media Club Canberra, with the leadership of social media expert Stephen Collins (@trib on Twitter), kicks off tomorrow morning, Friday Jan 16, with a breakfast at Cafe CREAM in Bunda St, Civic, 8 am to 10 am. I noticed at least a couple of Twitter-savvy politicians have been pinged on Twitter to come. On Friday, in Canberra? Well, you never know. You can join SMC Canberra at the Facebook site. And you can RSVP (please, so Steve and the cafe have an idea) at the event site also on FB.

Social Media Club Gold Coast has a committee let by Associate Professor Michael Rees – a social media enthusiast par excellence – from Bond University and we have our inaugural event at Bond on Thursday January 29, at 6 pm. We also have a Facebook site. If you would like to join and get all the info about events, use the contact form on this site.

The inaugural event for the year for Social Media Club Brisbane is next week, on Tuesday January 20, commencing at 5.30 pm. This will be at what looks to me from the website as being rather more stylish than your average pub, the Melbourne Hotel in West End, Brisbane. Co-hosting this event with SMC Brisbane, and generously covering venue costs and providing refreshments, is the blogger advertising network Nuffnang, established recently in Australia. Nuffnang Co-Founder, Cheo Ming Shen is flying in from Singapore that afternoon and will be at the function, explaining for 15 minutes or so how interested bloggers might be able to benefit from being part of the Nuffnang network. Should be great fun as well as informative. RSVP (please) at the Facebook site for this event.

So much for the idea of us all lazing around on the beach in mid-summer. It’s not even Australia Day yet and it looks as if Social Media Club in Australia is Going Off!

By the way, you don’t have to be in a city to have or be part of a Social Media Club. Whether you are in Sydney or the Back of Bourke, and want to know more, please contact me via the contact page, or go to the top via the main Social Media Club site.

Filed Under: Blogging, Events, Social Media, Social networking, Web 2.0 Tagged With: Australia, Brisbane, Canberra, Gold Coast, SMC, Social Media Club

Social Media Club Brisbane Launches Today

July 11, 2008 By Des Walsh

Back in March this year I asked Is Brisbane Australia Ready for a Social Media Club?

Today I have not only an affirmative answer to that (rhetorical) question, but the very pleasing prospect of participating in the official launch, at 6pm this evening, of Social Media Club Brisbane.

This is the first Social Media Club chapter to be formed in Australia.

The fact that we are able to mark the launch with more than a blog post, indeed as a suitably Queensland/Aussie manifestation of the Social Media Club concept, i.e. with a barbecue, has been made possible by the generous sponsorship of SJK Consulting. SJK describe what they do as being “about turning improbable ideas into functional prototypes and prototypes into scalable commercial software”.

As well as the support from SJK Consulting, we are developing some exciting connections in the higher education and research sector.

One of the things I like best about the preliminary discussions some of us have had about how SMC Brisbane might function is that we are agreed that we intend this to be a group which will be very welcoming for non-geeks as well as geeks. We want to attract people who are interested in ways they can use social media for practical outcomes. We want to help “de-geekify” social media.

We drew up a “thought-starter” list of things that might form part of the purpose and goals framework for this local chapter of Social Media Club:

social networking – as in meeting with people with some common interests
technology presentation/discussion, including evangelism for social media in government, education, business…
imparting knowledge to the novice user
surfacing clever ideas which could become business opportunities
highlighting/demonstrating the potential of social media tools
providing examples of how people can be genuinely engaged with these tools
encouraging local developer talent and also providing some wise advice

(Should keep us going.)

If you see something there that you, or someone you know, could find interesting to learn about or talk about, visit the Social Media Club Brisbane wiki and feel free to get in touch via the email address there (or via the Contact page on this site).