Local Government Web Network

Connect with the LG Web Network Community

The Local Government Web Network has setup a few new groups so that it’s easier for the network to share ideas and resources, make connections with other government and non-profit web workers (and those interested in working with our sector), and also so that you can keep up to date with news from us.

Discuss, share, and connect with peers

We have a few different groups for sharing information and links, and starting discussions with us and your peers. Check out the options, choose your preference, or if you’re new to all these then perhaps try a new network out and see if you like it. We welcome feedback on how useful or not these networks are, and let us know if you have any other suggestions.

Share your favourite bookmarks in our Ma.gnolia group:

Here you can share useful web links and start discussions (this group is open to the public, anyone can join). Ma.gnolia is built for bookmarking your most useful links and seeing what other people and groups have added. When you add each new link you can tag them which helps you and others explore and find relevant links in the future.

I’m quite excited about this one as I think it could prove to be a really useful tool. I’ve just started using it and it’s really easy to use and is helping me keep of all the useful things I find on the web, I’m planning to pull in the tag clouds onto this site from our ma.gnolia group when things get going too.

Connect with professionals and join our LinkedIn group:

LinkedIn is a professional networking site that offers you a way to connect with colleagues and make industry contacts. We’ve created the group to provide another way to stay connected with other LG Web Network members, and it also has a facility to start discussions within the group. (Anyone on LinkedIn can join this group.)

Join in with the discussions in our Google Group:

We have set up a private Google Group which is an email discussion group and is open to government, public sector, and not for profit people. (Sorry to all you other industry professionals, whilst we value your involvement in the network we need privacy in this case so we can share sensitive data.)

News and updates from the LG Web Network

Keep in touch with news and updates about what we’re doing and interesting things we think are worth a mention:

• Subscribe to news and interesting things we find posted on our TumbleLog (via RSS or Email), or if you’re on Tumbler you can follow us. We’re using Tumblr to post short messages with links, videos, and other mixed media quickly. Here we post news, events, new tools, useful articles, and anything interesting we stumble across on the web.
• Subscribe to blog posts via RSS or EMail, and if something sparks your interest please comment on the post.

And don’t forget Twitter if you want a bit of all the above!

No post on how to stay connected would be complete without mentioning Twitter. I personally find it a great, low resource intensive way of keeping generally abreast of webby things, and in touch with peers and people I am interested in. Many bloggers post their latest blog posts to Twitter - as do we! Whilst I’m a great fan of RSS feeds, the list of feed updates tends to pile up when I’ve got a big project on and I often find that Twitter is how I find out about the latest happenings.

We post all our blog posts and TumbleLog posts to Twitter, as well as posting small messages, and answering quick questions. So essentially Twitter gives you a way to keep up to date with our network, participate in discussions online, and connect with your peers and other network followers.

Follow us on Twitter!

McFarlane Prize for 2008

The McFarlane Prize recognizes excellence in Australian web design and development in the broadest sense, and is decided by a jury of experts in design, coding, accessibility and usability.

The prize, which was started in 2006 in memory of Australian web and open source pioneer Nigel McFarlane is open to any Australian web developers or development teams, for a site completed between August 1st 2007 and August 31st this year. Continue reading McFarlane Prize for 2008…

What’s this all about?

Okay the short version is that we’re trying to create a wider web community within Local Government, and we’re starting off with New South Wales as that’s where we’re based. We’re doing this by creating this site and also with a conference we’re planning in August this year. Continue reading What’s this all about?…