Social Change Online Provides Consultancy To The UN Conference On Engaging Communities

Engaging Communities 2005 was an initiative of the Queensland Government and the United Nations. Over 1500 delegates from around the world attended this major Conference in mid-August 2005. Keynote speakers included Mary Robinson and Dr Jose Ramos-Horta, Foreign Minister of East Timor.

Social Change Online provided strategy advice to the Conference and the Queensland Department of Communities on how to provide an effective online environment for the conference.

The objective of this work was to research, review, and recommend options for extending the Conference using the internet. They wanted to understand what they could do online before, during and after the Conference to better engage with participants, through allowing online participation in conferences, and improving the documentation, discussion and action that flowed out of the Conference using online communication tools.

Ideas adopted by the Department included:

• Audio-casting plenary sessions live (including having online questioning of speakers) - Audio-casting is similar to internet radio, this allowed people to listen to the plenary sessions live on their computers (with the only technical requirements being a sound card on your computer)

• Pod-casting other sessions - Pod-casting is a type of automated downloading of audio or MP3 files, designed to support digital audio players

• Online discussion forums to support conference sessions.

See http://www.engagingcommunities2005.org/ for more details of the Conference.