Public Sphere Briefing paper #3 – Australian ICT and Creative Industries Development

“This Public Sphere has created some important advice for the Government” Senator Carr said.

“I will take a close look at this paper, and will also send it to the IT Industry Innovation Council and the Creative Industries Innovation Centre. Both the Council and the Centre are perfect fits for this significant paper.

“I wish to thank Senator Lundy and the Public Sphere participants for the passion so evident in this work.”

Senator Lundy handing over the briefing paper to Minister Carr

The event drew together people from all over the country as well as Australians residing overseas and pushed the boundaries by including three locations (Wollongong, Melbourne and Brisbane) with Senator Lundy running the schedule from Wollongong.

There were approximately 100 physical participants on the day, and another 600 people remotely participating. There were also several organisations and groups get involved and contribute, most notably the Australian entrepreneurial group Silicon Beach who wrote a significant paper called the Silicon Beach Lifeguard Paper to contribute to the consultation.

“This has been a fantastic effort, and I know it will be of great use to the Minister and the Information Technology Industry Innovation Council in their policy development and future directions. I am proud to have finished my third Public Sphere which again has resulted in a high quality briefing paper with some really useful recommendations to Government,” Senator Lundy said.

The IT Industry Innovation Council is dedicated to championing IT-enabled innovation, while the Creative Industries Innovation Centre provides hands-on assistance to boost the competiveness of our world class creative enterprises. Details at http://www.innovation.gov.au/Section/Industry/Pages/InformationTechnologyInnovationCouncil.aspx

Background on Public Sphere 3:

Senator Lundy ran her third Public Sphere on Australian ICT and Creative Industries Development with the event in late August this year. It built upon the Public Sphere model by including remote nodes in multiple locations to encourage participation and contributions to the topic. The event was run in collaboration with the University of Wollongong and the associated Innovation Campus (iC), NICTA & the NICTA OpinionWatch project and the University of Melbourne’s Trinity College. Volunteers from all three locations helped out enormously, and are thanked in the briefing paper and throughout the Public Sphere 3 blog posts.

Full details of the Public Sphere event and topic – including talks, discussions and outcomes – are available at http://www.katelundy.com.au/category/campaigns/publicsphere/ict-industry-devel/

The aim of this Public Sphere was to engage with the ICT and creative industries, as well as the broader community to identify areas where government policy can be developed or enhanced to better facilitate the growth and development of these industries in Australia. There was a great cross section of the industry contribute, and organisations who got involved.

After the event a draft of the briefing paper was put on the wiki for public contributions and this wiki was open for just over 2 months due to community feedback asking to keep it open beyond the originally planned one month. The wiki was closed for public contributions earlier this week.

Media contact: Pia Waugh on pia.waugh@aph.gov.au or 0400 966 453

http://senatorlundy.ideascale.com/

The voting is open for one week, after which the results will be sent through to Minister Carr along with the briefing report.

We’ve created a draft PDF based on the wiki data which will be handed over to Minister Carr over the next week and will be published here on Senator Lundy’s website in the coming day or two. It includes additional graphs, photos, a wordle of the content and statistics of the event.

The wiki briefing paper is available here for reading: http://wiki.katelundy.com.au/PublicSphere3 and all video and other content from the topic are available at the Public Sphere wrap up post at http://www.katelundy.com.au/2009/08/31/public-sphere-3-wrapup/

Many thanks,

Pia Waugh
Office of Senator Lundy

The original recommendations were derived from the Public Sphere process, and honed in the Public Sphere 2 wiki.

Please click through for a larger version of this image.

Recommendations arising from Public Sphere 2: Gov 2.0

We had some technical issues with this vodcast wchich resulted in us having to capture the video via a screencast, so our apologies for the low video quality. We are changes tools for the next vodcast.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Transcription and captions soon to follow.

Update: all the Public Sphere 3 data was also put into an interactive analysis tool by Palantir, which would be useful for people to look at.

The Public Sphere on ICT & Creative Industry development last Friday drew together people from all over the country as well as Australians residing overseas. The event pushed the boundaries by including 3 locations (Wollongong, Melbourne and Brisbane) with Senator Lundy running the schedule from Wollongong.

Due to the complex nature of this last Public Sphere, there were some technical issues on the day as each location had streaming video to broadcast talks. Regardless, the outcomes from the day are excellent. There were also several pre-recorded talks that were submitted. The schedule was made up of primarily self-identified people from the ICT & Creative industries interested in putting forward some ideas for the day, and stimulating the discussions from which great policy and other ideas can be drawn.

Participation

We had around 100 physical participants on the day, and another 400 people remotely watching the Live Wall, which aggregated the video, Twitter, Flickr and Live Blogging content for easy access. We also had representation from the AIIA, ACS, OSIA, ICT Illawara,  Innovation Cities, the Creative Industries Innovation Centre and the Silicon Beach group, amongst other organisations, as well as many individuals and businesses.

Outcomes

The direct outcomes from this Public Sphere event include the many discussions and presentations from the day.

• Talks from the day are linked from the event schedule. Currently pre-recorded talks are up, and we anticipate having all the video up by the end of the week. Attendees will be notified by email.
• The Silicon Beach Lifeguard paper was put together for this Public Sphere and it includes the combined ideas from at least 60 people, along with feedback from hundreds on the mailing list. The Silicon Beach mailing list is made up of ICT industry entrepreneurs who aim to “to foster the growth of Australian technology companies”. As such this paper was a great starting point for further discussions.
• James Dellow did Live Blogging throughout the day, which also drew a further 212 comments plus James’ 282 comment effort. Thanks James!.
• The transcription of the #publicsphere tag for the last week shows over 1100 Tweets and 151 contributors. The value of contributions was quite high with a lot of external links and value discussions around the topic area. We had a lot less Tweets than the previous Public Sphere event largely due to a large number of the in person discussion outcomes being put into Zing.
• Zing was used to facilitate the in person discussions. The Melbourne discussions are tabled here, and the combined Brisbane and Wollong discussions are here. The reason for the split was an unexpected lack of wireless internet access in Melbourne for some of the day. Each person who commented in Zing was the scribe for a group of 7 to 9 participants (except for Brisbane who did it as one user for everyone). It worked reasonably well, and we anticipate further expanding either the same or similar technology for use by in person and remote attendees at the next Public Sphere. A big thanks to Donna Benjamin from Creative Contingencies for her assistance with Zing. There were almost 400 Zing comments by the end of the day from all three locations.
• There were and continue to be more comments added to the website along with additional external links.
• All the Public Sphere 3 data was also put into an interactive analysis tool by Palantir, which would be useful for people to look at.

Next steps?

But the Public Sphere event is just part of the process, and anyone interested in this topic is encouraged to continue to express their thoughts and ideas to the main Public Sphere 3 website comments, and directly to the briefing paper which will be published soon on a wiki, open for anyone to contribute. This wiki will be open for 3 weeks, so there is roughly 4 weeks still to contribute your thoughts. The final briefing paper will be contributed to the Information Technology Industry Innovation Council, an initiative by Minister Carr, the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research.

So the next steps for this Public Sphere are:

1. Contributions – any last contributions people want to make – blog posts, links, evidence, case studies – should be posted to the comments of the Public Sphere on ICT & Creative Industry development to be included in the briefing paper.
2. Briefing paper draft – we will put together a draft briefing paper on the wiki for public contributions by Monday the 7th September. It will include ideas, responses, evidence and recommendations from this Public Sphere topic.  It will draw on all comments, Tweets (#publicsphere), papers, tabled discussions, talks and blogs posts from above and that people link to in the comments. Please check out the briefing paper from the last Public Sphere on Government 2.0 for an idea of the format. It includes three parts – 1) about the topics discussed 2) about the recommendations and 3) statistics and information about the Public Sphere itself.
3. 4 weeks to edit – the briefing paper will be open to public contributions for four weeks. Till the 7th October.
4. Finalisation of briefing paper – the wiki will be closed off, and the briefing paper turned into a beautiful to read PDF. The original wiki page used for collaboration will be left up for probity and to review the public contributions made.
5. Handover to the Information Technology Industry Innovation Council – Senator Kate Lundy will hand over the finalised briefing paper to Minister Carr’s office to put to the Council, and they are looking forward to seeing the briefing paper.

Sponsors

The sponsors for this Public Sphere were:

• The University of Wollongong & the associated Innovation Campus (iC)
• NICTA & the NICTA OpinionWatch project – which will be used for Public Sphere theme and sentiment analysis, and will be showcased at the Canberra Techfest Sept 8th
• Trinity College – The University of Melbourne

Final thanks

Many thanks to all those who have already contributed, and specially to the volunteers who are helping to make the event happen. In particular our thanks to:

• From Wollongong: James Dellow and all the staff at the Innovation Centre
• From Brisbane: Steve Dalton, Des Walsh, Professor Brian Fitzgerald, Paul O’Keefe
• From Melbourne: Donna Benjamin, Christopher Hire – Donna & Chris had an exceptional challenge due to technical issues on the day, and we are very thankful for their perseverance in getting great outcomes in spite of the issues!
• From NICTA: Liz Jakubowski, Phil Robertson, Jonathan Gray, Terry Caelli, Barbara Duncan, Max Vit, Issam Ibrahim, Matt Hope & Clinton Buhse

Update: the event streaming and main online discussion will be at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/gov-2-taskforce-q-a

This event is for the handover of the finalised briefing paper and the recommendation voting results from the Government 2.0 Public Sphere held by Senator Kate Lundy July 22nd 2009.

http://www.katelundy.com.au/2009/07/29/briefing-paper-and-recommendation-endorsements-from-public-sphere-2-government-2-0/

The entire Australian Gov 2.0 Taskforce will be available for a Q&A on the results from the Public Sphere and to receive the final recommendations voting results. Senator Lundy will be interviewing the Taskforce, and accepting questions from either people in the room or remote participants.

The priorities are at http://au.nationbuilder.com/branches/9/priorities/top

If you wish to attend the physical event which will be in Canberra, please RSVP as there are limited numbers. Alternatively you can participate remotely by listening to the stream, posting questions on Twitter or emailing questions to pia.waugh at aph.gov.au

Date:       Friday the 21st August 2009
Time:      1:00pm till 2.30pm
Venue:

Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations
29 – 31 Brindabella Business Park
29 BBP Amenities Room
Please let the guard know you are there for the Gov 2.0 Taskforce event to be escorted to the meeting room.

RSVP:     http://publicsphere2-briefing.eventbrite.com/

We look forward to your participation in this final chapter of the Government 2.0 Public Sphere, and thank you again to everyone who has contributed!

The audio stream will be linked here on Friday the 21st. Please watch #publicsphere on Twitter for commentary on the day and to post your questions. If you don’t have a Twitter account, please email questions to pia.waugh at aph.gov.au by Thursday the 20th August COB. ]]> http://www.katelundy.com.au/2009/08/18/gov-2-0-briefing-paper-handover-and-qa-event/feed/ 1 http://www.katelundy.com.au/2009/07/29/briefing-paper-and-recommendation-endorsements-from-public-sphere-2-government-2-0/ http://www.katelundy.com.au/2009/07/29/briefing-paper-and-recommendation-endorsements-from-public-sphere-2-government-2-0/#comments Wed, 29 Jul 2009 05:19:57 +0000 Pia Waugh http://www.katelundy.com.au/?p=4152 The Government 2.0 Public Sphere briefing paper was finalised on the wiki a week ago, and now we have launched the prettified pdf version, complete with graphs, photos from the day, and a useful mind map!

The briefing paper has been sent to the Australian Gov 2.0 Taskforce, and in the coming weeks we’ll coordinate a Q&A event for the taskforce so people can discuss specifics of the report, as well as to hand over the findings from the report recommendations endorsements.

All recommendations from the report have been put into an online endorsement system, primarily to ensure one last public quality assurance of the reports findings, and also potentially to assist in the prioritisation of the recommendations.

The briefing paper references the talks from the Public Sphere Camp, comments from the original topic blog post, liveblogging (by Craig Thomler, Des Walsh and Nathanael Boehm), and the #publicsphere Twitter stream. The wiki draft of the paper was open for public contributions between 30th June and 22nd July 2009.

The endorsement system requires a login for transparency and accountability purposes, and is a beta system for Australian priority setting. We support the efforts of Australia 2 BETA, the Australian not-for-profit behind it, and thank the volunteers for setting us up a category for our event recommendations.

Update: The briefing paper for this Public Sphere topic is available for public editing from the 10th September till the 7th October 2009.

Update: The draft schedule  is below and all information for the day (including a link for the video, but also the aggregated Twitter and such) is on the Live Wall. Also the Silicon Beach group have released a policy ideas discussion paper for this Public Sphere.

The Australian ICT industry is extremely broad in scope and expertise – from core infrastructure to mobile, Web 2.0 and of course the creative industries such as gaming, film and digital arts. Australia has done quite well on the international scene, however we could still do more to inspire many smart Australian professionals and companies to base themselves in Australia in the long term and to encourage international investment in the Australian ICT sector.

Having a strong Australian-based sector means a positive contribution to a number of important national goals: economic growth and exports, provide opportunities for skills development and experience in Australia’s workforce and finally, reinforcing Australia’s international reputation for excellence.

The ICT and creative industries have been shown around the world to be a massive contributor to national and global economic and productivity growth. It is extremely important – particularly given the current global climate – that we prioritise  support for ICT industry growth and development in Australia.

The global financial crisis has sharpened the focus on the efficiencies and innovation that ICT offers. When combined with the investment in the National Broadband Network, Australia is uniquely placed in the world to further grow a globally competitive industry and benefit the entire economy through improved infrastructure and innovative solutions.

This Public Sphere will engage with the ICT and creative industries, as well as the broader community to identify areas where government policy can be developed or enhanced to better facilitate the growth and development of these industries in Australia. The feedback we have had from the Silicon Beach group (which consists of many leading Australian ICT industry entrepreneurs) and others is that it is a good time to have this discussion.

How to participate in a Public Sphere topic

• Post comments, links to papers, case studies and ideas to the blog post comments – comments will be summarised and presented at the event as part of the proceedings.
• Blog with the tag publicsphere or Public Sphere and Twitter with #publicsphere so we can find your ideas, then post them below.
• You can also contribute to the topic through our web form or sending us a letter, but please note all topic correspondence will be published here on the topic blog.
• Run your own events and post your outcomes here in the comments.
• Join us for our short workshop event, which will be streamed online so you can participate remotely.
• Volunteer to give a (maximum) 10 minute talk (including questions) at the Public Sphere Camp event by adding your name, topic and which industry segment to the comments at the bottom of this post. We have only about 10-15 talk slots, so we won’t be able to accept all talks, however everyone can contribute through the many other mechanisms available.

Please note – links to the Twitter feed, video feed, liveblogging and live policy documents for the day will be made available on this page on the day.

All content and ideas are then presented in a one day event – the Public Sphere Camp – and anyone is welcome to propose a 10 minute (including questions) talk in the comments of this blog. There will also be a few talks accepted on the day, and discussion encouraged between participants both local and remote.

Anyone is welcome to attend the Public Sphere Camp, however seats are limited in the physical component of the event. Anyone will be able to see streaming video online and participate in the event discussion via Twitter, and we will ensure there is liveblogging on the day to also help capture the ideas presented on the day, and to capture external feedback on those ideas.

This Public Sphere event for this topic is being done in consultation with the community, in particular the Silicon Beach group.

Outcomes

All outcomes from this Public Sphere – including the event – will be collated into a briefing paper including the specific policy ideas put forward through the blog or on the day, all comments, Tweets, talks and live-blogging. The draft briefing paper will be put on the wiki and published to this Public Sphere topic where it will be publicly modifiable for 2 weeks after the event, after which we will finalise the post the final briefing paper to this topic.

The briefing paper will immediately go through to the Commonwealth Commercialisation Institute, an initiative by Minister Kim Carr. The briefing paper will also go to the Information Technology Innovation Council, also an initiative by Minsiter Kim Carr focused on ICT industry development. We will also circulate the briefing paper to other appropriate channels in Government.

Minister Carr’s office will be participating in this Public Sphere event.

Interested parties are welcome to contribute to help make the briefing paper as useful and concise as possible to the appropriate channels in Government.

Public Sphere Camp

We have decided to change the format of the Public Sphere Camp to encompass more discussion and realtime collaboration on policy development. We will put the schedule online within the coming week.

The day will have specific time and discussion allocated to the following industry segments:

• Web 2.0 and mobile
• Creative industries
• Infrastructure and architecture

Each segment will tackle a combination of new trends and opportunities, funding models, startup support and a variety of other specific areas of relevance to government policy development.

The Public Sphere Camp will be in Wollongong, and we are planning to simultaneously have events in Brisbane and Melbourne to broaden the input.  This is to see whether multiple physical locations improve a Public Sphere Camp, and encourage meetings and discussions therein.

Why will this Public Sphere be in Wollongong and not a capital city? Because we want to recognise that our regional areas are an important part of this knowledge and creative economy too. The University of Wollongong has created an Innovation Campus to foster industry development in the area and local ICT businesses are being supported by a new local ICT industry cluster, called ICT Illawarra (ICTI).

We would like to acknowledge the support of ICTI as representatives of the ICT industry in Wollongong and the sponsorship of the University of Wollongong who have made the facilities of the Innovation Campus available to us for this Public Sphere event.

We would also like to acknowledge the support of NICTA, who are providing venues and teleconferecing facilities in both the Melbourne and Brisbane remote nodes.

We’d also like to thank the very active Queensland BarCamp community, who are coordinating the Brisbane event. Information about the remote events will be added her as soon as it is finalised, and people can RSVP as both physical and virtual attendees below to be kept up to date.

Public Sphere Camp Outline

This schedule is divided into:

1. Introduction to the day
2. Mobile and Web 2.0 – including talks, discussion and policy development
3. Creative Industries – including talks, discussion and policy development
4. Infrastructure – including talks, discussion and policy development
5. Location specific discussions along with presentations from each location
6. Wrapup and thanks

The schedule will consist of self-selected speakers who proposed talks on the blog, as well as some special guests we invited to share their thoughts. It will be a very busy schedule (as is every Public Sphere!) and so talk proposals are open until the 15th August.

Please remember everyone can contribute to this topic on the blog comments below, or on the day via Twitter, comments on the liveblogging or directly into the policy documents on the day.

Public Sphere Camp event details

• Topic: Australian ICT and Creative Industries Development
• Date: Friday 28th August 2009
• Schedule: Will be linked below by the 20th August. To follow basic schedule outline above. Involves short 10 minute talks with simultaneous online discussion and questions along with structured discussion and policy development.
• Time: 8.30am for a 9am start till 5pm.
• Social Media: Twitter: #publicsphere or blog: publicsphere or ”Public Sphere”. Post questions on the day to #publicsphere prepended with “QUESTION: “. Liveblogging will also be happening where non-Twitters can post comments into the liveblog interface. We will also be using Google Docs for the facilitated discussion. More information will be linked closer to the day.
• Video/audio stream for the day: Details to be announced closer to the event.
• RSVP: RSVP to reserve a spot as either a physical or virtual attendee, and to be kept up to date with event information. Further details on Brisbane and Melbourne events to follow.

Physical event information

• Wollongong
  • Place: Wollongong University Innovation Campus – details at http://www.innovationcampus.com.au/
  • Coffee and refreshments: Will be available to attendees with thanks to the University of Wollongong.
  • Parking or Transport: Parking available at the venue, details for transport and parking at http://www.innovationcampus.com.au/index.pl?page=112
  • Internet: Will of course be available for attendees, details on the day.
• Brisbane
  • Place: Level 5, Axon Building,  Staff House Road, University of Queensland, St. Lucia QLD  Australia 4072. Google map here.
  • Coffee and refreshments: Will be available to attendees with thanks to NICTA.
  • Parking or Transport: Available at venue.
  • Internet: Will of course be available
• Melbourne
  • Place: This venue was changed to the Gourlay Room (previously the Woodheap Room), Trinity College main campus, Melbourne. Map here.
  • Coffee and refreshments: Will be available to attendees with many thanks to NICTA.
  • Parking or Transport: Details on the Trinity website.
  • Internet: Will of course be available

We may also include another remote node, and will update this page accordingly.

Schedule

Please note, whilst many of these talks will be done at Wollongong, several are prerecorded, or done from Brisbane and Melbourne. All talks will be streamed for outside viewing from a single location to be linked to this site on the day.

All slides available on Slideshare.

We look forward to your participation in this very important topic, in person or online. And thank you for your support in developing this mechanism for public engagement in the political process.

Sponsors

The sponsors for this Public Sphere are:

• The University of Wollongong & the associated Innovation Campus (iC)
• NICTA & the NICTA OpinionWatch project – which will be used for Public Sphere theme and sentiment analysis, and will be showcased at the Canberra Techfest Sept 8th
• Trinity College – The University of Melbourne

Final thanks

Many thanks to all those who have already contributed, and specially to the volunteers who are helping to make the event happen. In particular our thanks to:

• From Wollongong: James Dellow and all the staff at the Innovation Centre
• From Brisbane: Steve Dalton, Des Walsh, Professor Brian Fitzgerald, Paul O’Keefe
• From Melbourne: Donna Benjamin, Christopher Hire
• From NICTA: Liz Jakubowski, Phil Robertson, Jonathan Gray, Terry Caelli, Barbara Duncan, Max Vit, Issam Ibrahim, Matt Hope & Clinton Buhse

Upcoming related events

• http://barcampmelbourne.org/

Update: We also had over 300 viewers of the liveblogging, and actually over 400 people who watched the live video streaming.

The contributions have been mostly thought-provoking, interesting and genuinely constructive to the goal of community collaboration on public policy and directions in this area. For that I want to extend an enormous thank you and shout out to everyone who has already contributed, and who intends on contributing to this Public Sphere.

We also had on the day, an increadible announcement about the launch of the Australian Government 2.0 Taskforce which was delivered in two excellent speeches by Minister Tanner and Minister Ludwig.

So the next steps for this Public Sphere are:

1. Contributions – any last contributions people want to make – blog posts, links, evidence, case studies – should be posted to the comments of the Public Sphere on Government 2.0 to be included in the briefing paper.
2. Briefing paper draft – we will put together a draft briefing paper on the wiki for public contributions on Monday the 29th June. It will include ideas, responses, evidence and recommendations from this Public Sphere topic.  It will draw on all comments, Tweets (#publicsphere), talks and blogs posts that people link to in the comments. Please check out the briefing paper from the first Public Sphere event on High Speed Bandwidth for an idea of the format. It includes two parts – 1) about the topic and 2) about the event/context.
3. 2 weeks to edit – the briefing paper will be open to public contributions for two weeks.
4. Finalisation of briefing paper – the wiki will be closed off, and the briefing paper turned into a beautiful to read PDF. The original wiki page used for collaboration will be left up for probity and to review the public contributions made.
5. Handover to Government 2.0 Taskforce – Senator Kate Lundy will hand over the finalised briefing paper to Nicholas Gruen, the Chair of the new Taskforce as community input to their work. They are very excited about the Gov 2.0 Public Sphere and looking forward to seeing the briefing paper.

So, the effort is not over yet! Please continue thinking about the contributing to this extremely important topic.

As we heard yesterday, Government 2.0 is far broader that just applying Web 2.0 for government delivery of services, it also includes looking at making government processes (such as policy development) more transparent and participatory, and opening up government data/systems to create the opportunity for public and private innovation. What does Government 2.0 mean to you, and what would you like to see? No matter how small or large the idea, it is worth getting down, and putting it to the Government 2.0 Taskforce, which is made up of an incredible group of people led by Nicholas Gruen who himself, has spoken on the the benefits of openness and transparency many times in the past.

All the speakers obviously put an enormous effort into their presentations. I am really grateful everyone was good-humoured about working within very tight time frames, and still able to convey such depth and substance! As a result, the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ was shared with hundreds of people both in the room and online.

In my closing remarks yesterday I outlined what happens next and I thought it would be good to blog those comments. I know Pia plans to post a follow-up too with respect to the details about what comes next.

In general, the Public Sphere continues online for a week. This is the opportunity for speakers to answer questions that were tweeted or blogged during or after the event. It is also a general invitation for members of the audience and/or people participating online to add their thoughts, comments, responses and more ideas in the blog.  I really encourage the conversation to continue so that we really get a feel for what you think are priorities and so forth.

Pia and I thought that because of the time constraints for presentations, we wanted to invite and encourage speakers who were not able to give their whole presentation to record it so we can publish it online. 

We hope to have the video up soon… maybe a few days, so please keep blogging.

After a week Pia we will post a draft report on a wiki for you all to contirbute to. This wiki will be open for 2 weeks.  This phase of public sphere is essential as the result of this collaration will be what we present to the Ministers and the newly formed Gov2.0 Taskforce , chaired by professor Nick Gruen.

I was really pleased that we had so many people who will be on the taskforce at the public sphere! Three were on the speakers list. Professor Brian Fitzgerald, Alan Noble, Martin Stewart-Weekes. Other members present were of course the Chair Professor Gruen, who gave a brief outline of the taskforce and Lisa Harvey, and Sebastian Chan was tweeting! Adrian Cunningham from the National Archive would have been there but I know he was giving a presentation in China!  Also, I want to send my regards to Alan Noble who is recovering from injury. Raul gave a terrific presentation on your behalf!

I want to thank again the wonderful sponsors that allowed us to stream the event live to facilitate online participation as well us providing the catering. Transact was the main sponsor and I sincerely thank Ivan Slavich and his team for their support. Thanks too to Agileware, BizCubed and Cisco. Public sphere is not a government funded initiative so we couldn’t have approached in the way we did without this sponsorship.

I also want to acknowledge and thank the hard working staff in sound and vision in the parliamentary departments. It was a sitting day in parliament and that means a very busy day for everyone. Their cooperation and support was essential to the success of public sphere.

Finally special thanks to the team that helped Pia in the organisational detail, program and setup: Stephen Collins, Craig Thomler, Rae Buerckner, Andrew Boyd and Jeff Waugh.

And to my intrepid staff, who are alwasy fantastic. Especially Pia whose talents are immense!

Kate