Conference News

Just a quick note to let you know that conference planning is well under way and we’re very excited about what we have in store for you.

The Dates: 19-20 August 2010

The Location: The Portside Centre,Lobby level, 207 Kent St, Sydney

Confirmed Speakers: Mandi Bateson from Daemon Digital and Jason Dawson, General Manager – Community Relations from Northland Regional Council, New Zealand

With way more to come…

We are thrilled to announce that registrations for our Third Annual Conference are now open!

Get in quick to secure your early bird ticket, and be one of the first to check out the new Local Government Web Network Site.

You can create a group around an interest, participate in one of the forums or keep up to date with what's going on in the local government world online through one of our feeds. 

We hope you use this new site, and that it's new features allow you to interact with each other in a much more useful way.

As if the conference wasn't exciting enough, we've added more by teaming up with some excellent partners to give you some awesome, and hopefully useful prizes!

Lightning Talks

Thanks to Contented.com we have 4 course licenses for the popularly voted winner of the Lightning Talks. This means that the winner and 3 other staff at their council can undertake the Online  Diploma in Web Content: an online writing for the web course,   from the comfort of their desks at their own pace.

Feedback Form

Okay, so filling in the feedback form might not be the most thrilling part of the conference, but it's invaluable to us to get your feedback. We don't always expect to get everything right and we want to know how we can improve things for next year. So make sure you fill in your feedback form and hand it in before you leave, or fill it in online before the closing date to be eligible to win a one day Expert Usability Review of your site, by Objective Digital

Our friend Bern De Broglio from Mosman Municpal Council has built this nifty little map using the Twitter API and the Google maps API so you can mark where you're coming from!

Just fill out the details and refresh the map to see where you and others are coming from.

Add me to the map!

The countdown is on to our Third Annual conference! Have you registered yet? Better hurry!

You wouldn't want to miss out on the workshop on Google Analytics or the presentation by Shirley Southgate on the new GIPA Act.

How about the fantastic case studies to be presented by Leeton Shire Council, Pittwater Council, Tamworth Regional Council and Mosman Municpal Council?

Don't forget that there's an opportunity to win 4 course licenses for your council from Contented.com if you participate and win the Lightning Talks!

Registrations for the Third Annual Local Government Web Network Conference have now closed!

If you missed out, don't worry, we'll be recording as much of the conference sessions as we can and we'll have them available to listen to after the conference.

Stay tuned!

Thanks to Terri Leeds from Jerilderie Shire Council for being our resident photographer for the duration of the conference:

Thanks to Objective Digital we have a one day usability review to give away to a council whose delegate submitted a feedback form. 

That winner has been randomly drawn and it is Richard McManus from Warringah Council! Congratulations Richard and thank you very much fro providing us with your feedback. We hope that you find the prize useful and valuable.

Thanks to David Eade, one of our conference delegates, we have captured all the conference tweets as a shiny pdf document using a  Nifty little tool called tweetdoc.org

Thanks David!

And we are now well on our way to organising the 2011 WE Believe in Community Conference.

Each year, we scour your feedback to get ideas and address issues that you've had with the conference. This year some of those changes include a change of venue and a stronger focus on the council case studies. 

So far we have a couple of speakers and topics confirmed including our old friends Matthew Crozier speaking about about whether or not online community consultation actually works and Oliver Weidlich who will give you the low down on everything you wanted to know about Mobile Apps: how they're built, how they work and how much they cost. In addition we're very pleased to have Professor Anne Fitzgerald who will be giving us an introduction to Creative Commons licensing. As we get closer to the conference we'll announce more topics and speakers.

But we still need your feedback!

Where do you want to go for the conference dinner?

Is there a council you'd like to hear from?

Is there a specific topic you want covered?

Let us know!