Welcome to Wellywood

There I was, on the plane with all sorts of people heading to Wellington, New Zealand for my first ever international conference AND speaking gig. To say I was excited was an understatement!

Sitting next to me on the plane were some guys also heading to a conference in Wellington about Geo-something or other…but wonderfully, due to their knowledge they were able to point Mt Ruapehu to me from the plane…The North Island of New Zealand’s highest point and a most active volcano!

I was gob smacked as I flew into Wellington. I’ve never been to NZ before, so wasn’t prepared for how pretty it was. I flew through customs etc and got myself as quickly as possible to the hotel so I could spend the last couple of daylight hours walking around and getting a feel for the place.

I didn’t know that Wellington was about the same size as Canberra. What struck me most was how like Melbourne it seems in style. Lot’s of hipsters and lot’s of people in black!

That evening I met up with the organizers of the conference, Jason Dawson, Community Relations Manager at Northland Regional Council and Marion Dowd, IT Manager at Western Bay of Plenty District Council . Along with a bunch of other delegates, we headed to a fantastic restaurant in town called Matterhorn. We had a great evening getting to know one another, and it was wonderful to hear about their experiences and start getting a feel for how things work in NZ council land.

After battling with the time difference I managed to get up and grab breaky and head down to the conference. Their conference is slightly larger than ours, with around 120 people attending including sponsors.

First up on day 1, was a session on usability and information architecture from Dave O’Brien of Optimal Usability. He gave an excellent run down on the basics of information architecture, why it’s important and some basic principles around how to “do” IA..

Then it was my turn! I was a little nervous as I didn’t really know what to expect or what was expected of me, but I got up there and did it. There were no questions, but afterward people did tell me that they enjoyed my presentation and were so interested to hear about what we’re doing here in NSW as well as what we’re NOT doing!

The next session I was most curious about was from Jason Dawson on the ALGIM Local Government Website Survey. ALGIM have been conducting this survey for a couple of years now, and it aims to provide a benchmark for standards in the sector. As well as a general survey, ALGIM hand out awards, I’ll get to those soon! So the survey is a fascinating snapshot of the current “State of the Web in Local Government” and charts the changes in over the course of 12 months. What I found really interesting was that there was a marked change in the top five tasks that councils reported on in the 12 months. In 2009 it was:

1. Job vacancies
2. Rates
3. Council services
4. Contact us
5. maps and property

Yet in 2010 it changes to:

1. Property and rates
2. Job vacancies
3. Cemeteries
4. Environmental data
5. Contact us

Quite different to ours*:

1. Business papers and minutes
2. Events calendar
3. News
4. Information about the area
5. Council jobs/community services

*Local-e user survey report February 2010

Rowan Smith from the Department of Internal Affairs in the central government delivered an excellent session on Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Made Easy. He illustrated his points and made it very easy to understand the requirements and how to meet them. One of my favourite things from his presentation is this little mind map the guidelines WCAG 2.0 Map (PDF) Once you know the basic principles involved it makes the whole thing so much easier: There are just 4 principles that underpin the guidelines:

Perceivable – can it be easily seen?

Operable – is it usable for different audiences?

Understandable – How complex is it?

Robust – will it last?

Once you understand these principles more fully, the rest is a lot easier.

Rock star appearance of day 1 was by Nat Torkington of Open New Zealand. Nat talked about how by making our data open people can go off and build useful practical tools that cost us nothing. He also looked at some of the cool things governments and others are doing in this area.

And there we were at the end of our first day. By this stage I was pretty tired, and the adrenaline from my talk had subsided and I was looking forward to dinner and the announcement of the web awards!

The categories and winners are:

• Best of the Best website (based on web audits) Porirua City Council
• Best New Feature Website (judged – small, medium, large, People’s Choice)
  • Large: North Shore City Council,  Online Consenting Solution
  • Medium: Taupo District Council,  Adopt-a-dog
  • Small:N/A
• Best New Feature Intranet (Judged) – Western Bay of Plenty District Council: Personal Development & Achievement Plan
• Best Redevelopment Website (Judged and people’s choice)
  • North Shore City Council
• Best Redevelopment Intranet (Judged) Hutt City Council: Our Space
• Best Accessibility/Usability Website (judged by Royal NZ Foundation for the Blind): Thames-Coromandel District Council
• ‘People’s Choice’
  • Best New Feature: Website (Large Council)
    North Shore City Council, Online Consenting Solution
  • Best New Feature: Website (Medium Council)
    Western Bay of Plenty District Council, Online Submissions
  • Best Redevelopment: Website
    North Shore City Council
• Web Study Award Web staff within local government are nominated to undertake $3,000 worth of professional development or study. This is the first time this Award was offered and it was externally judged. 2010 Web Study Award winner:
  Mike Jansen, Western Bay of Plenty District Council

With the awards handed out, congratulations given, dinner eaten, it was time to party (of course not too hard) to a 1980’s cover band!

Day two of the conference started bright and early with case studies from Councils around the country. I was really looking forward to hearing about what the councils were doing and the challenges they face and what they were doing to overcome them.

First up was Tracey Morris of Northland Regional Council who presented on making your publications accessible online. Now in and of itself, this is not a glamorous topic, but it is the everyday reality we face in council. We are prolific producers of reams of paperwork, and often our default position is to just “stick it up on the web” with little thought or time invested in making sure the document is accessible. I found Tracey’s session illuminating and really useful. Check it out (download as PDF)

Then Jason Dawson gave people a great overall introduction to Social Media. Great info for beginners on this contentious area.

Presentation in slideshare

Handout (download as PDF)

After a break, more case studies!

One I was most interested in was from Jenni Worboys from Matamata-Piako District Council who told a tale of rebuilding their council website in Joomla! Fascinating for me as Local-e is in the process of transitioning to this product.

I really enjoyed this part of the conference, and it has inspired me to change the program of our conference to also include these case studies, as people found them so valuable to hear what each other was doing.

The last session I attended was on Writing for the web. I was keen to check this out as I had heard about the online writing for the web courses that Alice and Rachel offer via their company Contented. It was a great fun romp with copious chocolate and give-aways that really focused on improving the basic skills of the people mostly responsible for content. These are the points  that stick in my head from this presentation:

• Fix your headlines
• Fix your links
• Get rid of the redundant, the outdated and the trivial

And you will instantly improve your:

• Readability
• Usability
• Credibility

We have so much in common with our Kiwi neighbours, but we also have someway to go before we are on an even playing field. We need to improve our standards, our communication with each other and our communities. The best way to do this is via our network, and our annual conference, and hopefully through the establishment of some NSW Web Awards.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank the Association of Local Government Information Managers who invited me to speak at their conference, in particular Marion Dowd and Jason Dawson, and the amazing people I met.

I’d love your feedback and your involvement: would you like to be on the organizing committee of the conference?