Program

Registration and welcome

Registration opens at 8:15am

Welcome 9am

Opening Keynote

18 August 2011 - 9:15am
Crisis Communications from Inside the Red Zone

With Jason Dawson

As Regional Public Information Manager for Northland Civil Defence & Emergency Management Group, Jason was deployed to help manage the Public Information Team during the devastating Christchurch earthquake in February 2011.

Jason will share his learnings and experiences on communicating during a crisis - from traditional to online, websites to social media - and give you tips on being prepared.
 

Morning Tea

10:00 - 10:30

Case Studies

18 August 2011 - 10:30am
Sutherland Shire Council Web Project

With Martin Boyce

In 2010 Sutherland Shire Council undertook a project to redesign and build their website in a new content management system. In this presentation we will share the process undertaken, highlighting both the successes and failures, in the hope that it may provide some insight for other councils undertaking similar projects.

18 August 2011 - 10:50am
When sexy economic development makes your online presence uncontrollable

With Anne Bransdon

Have you ever wondered what happens when Mad Max moves into your street?

In the old days, it may have made the front page of tomorrow's local paper.

Now it makes Hollywood's news headlines in a nano-second.

Broken Hill’s international reputation as a destination of choice for film makers came of age in 2011, when Broken Hill City Council opened the doors to the fifth largest film studio in the world. The City known mostly for its mining and tourism was thrown into the international spotlight.

Suddenly, there was a new range of stakeholders to be considered and when your mandate is to ensure that your organisation remains consultative, participatory and well managed, planning, monitoring and analysing the internet becomes a primary activity rather than an adjunct to the media monitor.

This presentation looks at the impact of speed-of-light communication on a community that has less than 50% internet access in the home and the inevitable impact on how Broken Hill City Council has started to negotiate the obstacle course created by its new sexy online identity.


 

18 August 2011 - 11:10am
Live support: Customer Service through Online Chat

With Eric Dinkin

Earlier this year a thought occurred to me while browsing an online shop website, why not provide customer service through chat? Online shops have been doing this for few years, but how would organisation such as council deal with it.

This presentation is about trial of Live Support at Parramatta City Council and what we learned.
 

18 August 2011 - 11:30am
E-newsletters – the Toyota Camry of Communication Channels

With Anita Hulm

“It’s definitely not sexy but boy can it deliver for an organisation.”

Yes, e-newsletters. In our rush to be on the latest social media channel, some of us might have overlooked the fact that we have some wonderful existing communication channels - what are we doing to improve and enhance them?

Coffs Harbour City Council has launched a new website - with no budget. But we did spend money on an e-newsletter system to make sure we could reach more people and target information to them. More people read our e-newsletters than the local newspaper - now that's got to be good!

I also want to explore the connection between e-newsletters and online booking. We have had some great successes this year.
 

Lunch

12:30pm - 1:30pm

Presentations - Room 1

18 August 2011 - 1:30pm
Does Online Community Engagement work?

With Matt Crozier

A warts and all view of successful and less successful online community engagement projects.

18 August 2011 - 2:20pm
Crisis Response, Google and You

With Anthony Baxter

Google Crisis Response seeks to make critical information more accessible around natural disasters and humanitarian crises. In this talk I will cover what we do, and how we do it. I will also provide a description of the things local government can do to as far as providing information online to help people before, during and after a disaster (and some best practices for this.)
 

Afternoon Tea

3:10pm - 3:40pm

Presentations - Room 1

18 August 2011 - 3:40pm
PDF's and Accessibility: Can they really be made accessible?

With Gian Wild

PDFs have always been an issue when it comes to accessibility. With the advent of WCAG2, it becomes the decision of policy-makers such as AGIMO and the Australian Human Rights Commission (formerly HREOC) as to whether PDFs are deemed an 'accessible technology' and whether they can be on a site without an accessible alternative.

AGIMO has underaken a review of PDFs and their capacity to be made accessible, concluding that PDFs are not an accessible technology and therefore should always be included with an alternative format (HTML, Word, text or RTF).
This was followed by a talk by AGIMO and Adobe on educating people on using PDFs. The feedback from many attendees is that now PDF is accessible.
 

Presentations - Room 2

18 August 2011 - 1:30pm
Open Access Policies, Creative Commons and Local Government

With Professor Anne Fitzgerald

In Australia, as in other countries worldwide, there is a growing awareness at the governmental level of the advantages of using open content licences when distributing their copyright materials. During the last decade much attention has focused on policies and practices to enable public sector information (PSI) to be more readily accessed and used, as governments have come to appreciate that significant social, cultural and economic benefits stand to be gained from doing so.

This presentation will cover the application of copyright to government material, and consider how open content licences - specifically, Creative Commons (CC) licences - can be used by governments as a simple and effective mechanism to support the reuse of their copyright-protected PSI. Professor Fitzgerald will also canvass practical examples of how this has been done, and briefly consider the operation of the Government Information Public Access (GIPA) Act in conjunction with open access policies and practices.

18 August 2011 - 2:20pm
Online and On Track: Delivering solutions for public library clients now and into the future

With Mylee Joseph

Public libraries have always been early adopters of technology as library workers find ways to use new tools to anticipate and meet the needs of their clients. With a wide brief to serve everyone in the community and the added challenge of using digital technology to deliver library services, create new services, communicate with clients and archive information for posterity there are many interesting initiatives to be found in the world of libraries.

This presentation will consider the opportunities and challenges that these trends present for councils as we take a look into the future of public libraries.
 

Afternoon Tea

3:10pm - 3:40pm

Presentations - Room 2

18 August 2011 - 3:40pm
Mobile Apps

With Oliver Weidlich

This presentation will cover the key aspects to delivering great mobile experiences, including research, strategy and design, with best practice examples from locally and around the world.

Oliver will help you to understand the different approaches to mobile services, like mobile applications and mobile websites, and the strengths and weaknesses of each.

We'll talk through the Mobile App process from conception to execution: How does it work, how are they built, costs, considerations that that are specific to the platforms, eg. Android vs iPhone vs BlackBerry etc.

Closing Keynote

18 August 2011 - 4:30pm
Closing Keynote - Tweeting Your Way out of Paranoia

With Stilgherrian

My argument, such that it is, is that corporations like local governments avoid change because they're paranoid, so they need to get themselves some mental health. Twitter, I argue, is the perfect low-risk example for a government starting to involve itself in social media and social networking. I then present some suggestions for how they might do this.

Image credits may be found in the video file. Audio recording by James Purser. The video footage was taken with a Flip Video, hence the poor quality and framing.

Tweeting your way out of Paranoia from Stilgherrian on Vimeo.

Wrap up and Prizes

5:00pm

Submitted by Administrator on 6 June 2011 - 11:32am