Doing it Better
The time has come for me to plug my friend and colleague’s project called “Doing it Better’. Whilst this conjures up some fanciful images it is actually an ambitious project he describes as follows:
“The Doing IT Better project is a 3-year social justice initiative of the Centre for Community Networking Research, Faculty of Information Technology Monash University, and the Victorian Council of Social Service, generously funded by a foundation.
The goal of the project is to enable community organisations to significantly improve both their organisational technological expertise and their ability to transmit that expertise to their clients—ultimately empowering both.
The project is lead by Dr Larry Stillman of the Centre for Community Networking Research at Monash, with Dean Lombard of VCOSS.”
Despite becoming very selective about what I get involved with these days (old age and cynicism?) I have put my hand up to be on the working group for this project and I have done so because:
• The project is actually funded for three years…in the community sector anything funded beyond a year is a supreme rarity
• It has the ICT needs of the community sector as central to its mission
• The working group is drawn from a very broad range of community organisations (from the Victorian University of Technology, Engineers Without Borders, The Good Shepherd, InfoExchange, community consultants, small business with a community focus)
• It works creatively about identifying and addressing what community organisations need and will need in the future if ICT is not to become the albatross around their organizational necks)
• It has an action research focus
Last week a working group meeting was held in the fabulous computer lab at Duke St Community House (Sunshine, Melbourne, Australi ). About 10 people attended and had a free flowing discussion that touched on Drupal, other CMS software, the capacity and willingness of community organisations to problem solve a range of ICT issues in their organisations, the romance and reality of ICT and its future in community organisations.
For more information about this worthwhile project visit: Doing it Better Project
2 comments:
Hi Toula - As a participant in the workshop I want to let you know that I went away and explored Drupal 5.3, and have managed to install it on a web server. That had its times of despair, the worst one moments before it started working, when I had a screen full of errors!
There were (and are) still difficult times to come, but I have managed to set up a website, (with Access Control!), which I am quite pleased with, and hope to go on to learn more.
I have a role in a national network of large and small agencies, and we have a need for internet collaboration. It will be interesting to see if Drupal can assist us with these developments over the next few months.
So the workshop has had some real benefits already, and I can see the word spreading further from here....it also demonstrates the potential of the "Doing IT Better Project", so if you haven't joined in, join in now!
oh dear paul...sorry to hear about your drupal troubles...told you she was a temperamental mistress!!!...i myself have decided not to tamper with any more versions of drupal 5...i await (impatiently) the release of drupal 6, whose appearance i am hoping will dispell many of the harrowing adventures we've had...good however to hear bout you making some progress...well done...i look forward to seeing what you conjur up!
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