stephen blyth’s blog

I’d like to bestow my inaugural Award for excellence in community directories today. This is a personal award and doesn’t attract a cash or even in-kind prize. Just my gratitude.
As part of a website writing project I’ve been working on I’ve scoured the country for online community directories. The aim is to provide a way [...]

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Just over three and half years ago Wellington ICT ran a workshop to see if there was interest in a service providing IT advice and support to local community groups. We were entering an unknown process with a real sense of optimism.
Although I can’t locate the notes from that workshop right now, I did find [...]

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The creche our daughter attends is organising a novel fundraising event. Mix wind, exercise and play to create the inaugural Wellington Windwalk.
It’s quite a walk from the Brooklyn village up to the lone turbine which frames the suburb. About 7kms return. But there are buses back to the start, for those struggling with the hills. [...]

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There’s always something that you forget to mention when you’re doing a lecture or presentation. I’ve just got back from running a guest lecture slot with students on the stakeholder communication and image management course run through the Unitec Graduate Diploma in Not for Profit Management, and realise I didn’t talk about creative commons (amongst [...]

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I actually struggled to find the Downtown Community Ministry (DCM) page on Facebook. Being a Facebook absolute beginner I found all sorts of other ministries, mostly run by fundamentalist christians, before I arrived at DCM’s page.
When I got there I found a very short description of what DCM do, an advert for the upcoming bookfair [...]

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To accompany a second version of the Webguide (see my earlier post “Connect your community, again”) , Miraz Jordan has set-up the Groupings blog and is sharing round duties to keep it up-to-date. A small team of people working with community groups are contribuing posts. I’ve agreed to make the occassional posting [...]

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I’m holding in my hands a hardcopy of the Webguide. The booklet aims to help Aotearoa New Zealand community and voluntary organisations get a web presence. I helped out with the contents early on, so I was really pleased to see it released earlier this year.
In 94 pages it covers everything from beginning to [...]

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When I visited the Community Sector Taskforce’s new website I actually had a few problems signing up. An RSS-feed was broken, I couldn’t find my profile to change a password and an unsubscribe email address didn’t work. These niggardly things were more irritating than earth-shattering.
Thankfully within a couple of hours of sending an email [...]

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Bravo for Claire Sawyers and the team behind the DonateNZ website. This site was the winner of the Community or Government website in the 2007 People’s Choice Netguide Web Awards.
DonateNZ was launched in February 2006 to match people with stuff or time to share and schools, childcare centres and not-for-profit organisations who might have a [...]

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Yesterday deja vu struck me as Environment and Conservation Organisations of NZ (ECO) hosted a website launch. In the same room as the new SeaNet was unveiled, three years ago ECO launched a similar webite focusing on the resource management act.
The new website has been set up to “help people and communities and environmental [...]

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