Going to NetHui

I will be at NetHui on Thursday the 30th of June talking with Luke Goode of the University of Auckland Film, Television, and Media Studies department, and Russel Brown, a journalist and broadcaster, and owner of the Public Address blogging network, about Civic Engagement online in New Zealand.

In the short amount of time I imagine we will have, I may talk about a project we worked on at Waiheke Radio in August 2010 after the creation of the Auckland Supercity and the subsequent reframing of local and community board powers.

Under this new structure, Waiheke Radio (a community run low power FM radio station) considered how it could facilitate conversations and discussion around the Waiheke local board election. With a very vocal political community and a record number of candidates standing for election, radio volunteers combined their skills with audio broadcasting and podcasting, with a strong web and social media presence to create a valuable online and on-air conversation and community discussion. I hope to give a brief overview of the project and highlight some areas where community approaches to media might be improved as a model for future political and civic engagement on Waiheke and elsewhere. 

Candidates for Waiheke Community Board 2010 page: http://www.waihekeradio.org.nz/candidates

Waiheke Budgeting Service on Wordpress & Facebook

We've been working away setting up a new Wordpress site for the wonderful Waiheke Budgeting Service and hooking it up with their Facebook Page and soon their Twitter account. RSS Graffiti, an app for Facebook, will take your RSS feed (this comes out of any blogging software like Wordpress) and turn any new posts that are made on your Wordpress site into Facebook status updates. Great way to post once and have the message multiplied across many social media platforms.

Check out their new website here: http://www.waihekebudgeting.org.nz

RSS Graffiti: http://www.rssgraffiti.com/