North
Argyll Islands Digital Community Workshop
The
workshop was held on Saturday April 12 2003 as part
of a seminar for Digital Champions participating in
the pioneering North Argyll Islands Digital Community
- one of two digital communities promoted and supported
by the Scottish Executive.
Nearly
2000 computers have been distributed to people living
on 13 islands off the west coast of Scotland. Training
courses have been run, and a new community portal launched.
 |
A
key part of the strategy is to support volunteer
Digital Champions, and paid mentors, who will
promote and support use of the computers, the
portal and other online activities. |
Summary
of the workshop
Digital
champions and their strategic support team spent two
hours 'playing through' the activities and projects
that may be needed to make the digital community a success.
The
champions developed their ideas by working in groups
drawn from different islands, to help people get to
know each other better.
| The
groups invented some typical island situations,
and then used a menu of ideas, on cards, to develop
action plans to tackle problems and improve or
protect the community, economy and environment
of the islands. They also added their own ideas.The
workshop was facilitated by David Wilcox of Making
the Net Work. |
|
The
strategy team from Argyll and Bute Council and portal
developers UniTech developed their own priorities and
some strategic objectives for the programme - and fortunately
the island and support team views broadly agreed.
Three
main strands emerged from the discussion:
-
More
help is needed for champions and members of the
digital community, with a support service, help
desk, trouble shooting, and clear set of procedures
for champions.
-
More
planning is needed to make sure developments meet
the needs of the islands, through additional research
and visioning workshops.
-
Priority
developments to make use of the technology should
include island websites, ecommerce to help businesses,
and further development of the 2000Friends site
that already provides forum for community members.
Additional
suggestions will be developed following circulation
of the draft report.
These
web pages are a first draft for discussion with the
organising team.
Download
this draft as Word document.
(117K)
Links
On to Workshop programme >
 Movies
from the workshop >
Photography
Daniel J Wilcox
|
